Scott Stilphen

Sounds like something either Nolan or Al Alcorn would have said.

I uploaded an article I had put together about 10 years ago about the site of Parker Brothers original headquarters: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/parker_brothers/parker_brothers.html It's in the Archives section of my site, under Articles: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/articles.html

Can you ask Roger about whether or not he was involved with this German flyer for Atari's Starship 1 coin-op game, since the artwork is near-identical to Boston's first album (in 1976)? http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=6192&image=1

I received the Capsule book today. It's only 119 pages, or 1/3rd as many as the original edition, and much smaller in dimensional size as well (see photo). There's an abbreviated Introduction and image credit section. All other sections were removed. Basically all the book has are photos of boxes and packaging artwork for mostly VCS/2600 games and some 5200 games, with a few pages devoted to artists or 2-page spreads for ads and artwork.

Cosmic Ark Atari 2600 Difficulty: Game 1, Difficulty B High Score: 24,130 February 21, 2017

Omega Race Atari 2600 Difficulty: Default High Score: 282,500 February 21, 2017

I don't remember The Thing ever being hated then and it's certainly not now. Though in some respects not as good as the original, the special effects were mind-blowing at the time. Now, if you're talking about a truly bad remake, check out the one they did a few years ago.

That's the first I've heard of that. Several games back then used the same basic components and were nothing more than fancy projectors. Chicago Coin's Speedway was another. I have an F-1 and there's nothing to catch fire and burn up inside it. The projection cabinet is metal and the seat is metal and fiberglass.

I have a list of manuals on my site: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/manuals/vcs/manuals.html Whenever I come across a different revision, I'll add it to the pdf file. Though it would be nice to know what was changed between revisions, my collection is far from complete.

Thanks. I missed that. It should have been mentioned somewhere -in- the book, and not -after- it. I also updated my comments about Pg. 164 regarding Atari paying "handsomely for the exclusive rights to bring Pac-Man to the 2600.” I knew that wasn't true, and I tracked down comments about it from Steven Kent's "The First Quarter/Ultimate History of Video Games" books. In them, according to a quote from Al Alcorn, Atari signed a deal with Namco in 1978 for $1 million that gave Atari the rights to all of Namco's arcade games. Pac-Man (AKA Puck Man) didn't exist in 1978, and considering the success the game would eventually have, Atari paid far less than it was truly worth, and Atari also got Galaxian as part of the same deal. Here's the quote from the book: The deal would have covered Galaxian and Pac-Man - both of which were released in 1979. So Atari had a good 2, almost 3 YEARS to port both games, and what we got was a lousy 4K port of Pac-Man, done in the 4th quarter of 1981, and finally released in March 1982.. VCS Galaxian wasn't released until a year after VCS Pac-Man, and even then was contracted out to GCC. Atari had all the time in the world to do both, and didn't. Makes me wonder how many games Atari licensed to port, and didn't for whatever reason (never assigned, forgotten about, etc). Btw, the deal didn't cost Robbins his job, since he was with Atari until 1982. If anything, Robbins should have lost his job over the $50,000 Centipede contest fiasco (http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/search?q=joe+robbins). Alcorn was right about Namco not having any hits. In fact, they didn't have much of anything at that point, other than Gee Bee. How long (how many years) the deal was effective is unknown, but it didn't cover Pole Position, which was released in 1982, which was part of a different deal Atari made with Namco.

As an artist, he should know how critical his signature is when determining proof. Just to give one example, with the U.S. TV show Pawn Stars, how many times have you seen the owners bring in an expert to prove/disprove the signature or do a writing analysis on something (usually memorabilia, but quite often for documents or books)? Something simple like that 'M' would have been enough to raise doubt in an expert's mind (why would the same artist take the time to PRINT it differently?). I agree, it's likely same artist did both pieces, but then again who's to say the S.I. one wasn't faked in the style of the original artist? I for one would like to see this mystery put to rest. 37 years is long enough

Not with the Atari lamps. The rod goes right through where the chip itself would normally be, so the boards are removed first, and the dust covers put back in place. The M Network lamp carts still have their boards since they're only COB pcbs and are very small, so the rod doesn't go through them.

Don't know, but I will soon. My guess is it's just a "light" version of the original that doesn't include everything. Sure, but you already answered your own question, as we're only talking about 2 years between pieces Until someone finds out more about the artist (and that person should have been Lapetino...), we just don't know for sure the same person did both or not.

Pac-Man one now available.

It's possible, but we don't know. I noticed the "M" in both signatures is written a bit differently, and the sig in the S.I. artwork doesn't have a first name. Typically artists always sign their works the same way with every piece they do. Lapetino certainly didn't dig any deeper on it, since he simply lists the artist as "Norman". Apparently this Norman wasn't an in-house artist, as none of the other artists had anything to say about him or his artwork. And if this was an outside contract job, why? Why not turn to your own in-house artists? Maybe Huyssen can offer more info about him. Let us know if you have any success contacting him. Likewise, what's the story with Ralph McQuarrie - the most famous artist outside of Atari mentioned in the book - doing the artwork for VCS Vanguard? The book only mentions he's worked on many films. His name isn't even included in the index. @ Lost Dragon Yep, the book is called "ART" of Atari, not "History of". A book shouldn't try to be something it was never intended to be to begin with. I mean, you don't set out to write a cooking book, and spend 1 or more chapters on the history of stoves and cooking utensils. What you end up with is some glossed-over section that ultimately doesn't need to be included. There's plenty of books already on the history of game consoles and vaporware hardware, so why bother covering the same ground, especially when that's not the focus of your book? Well, it seems Lapetino is certainly going to "milk" the topic for a bit longer, as he already has 2 more books out on it. There's Art of Atari: Capsule Edition and Art of Atari: Poster Collection. Not sure why the Asteroids artwork continues to be shown at a different angle than how it was originally used, but I'll stick with my original poster I guess.

Maybe it's me, but the top label on that Bachelor Party cart looks fake/homemade, with the white edge across the top and the fact that the whole thing looks ready to fall off. And no, no Atari in-house programmers made any Mystique games, or any other adult games; in fact, Atari went after such companies to prevent them from selling them. I can ask some alumni, but my thinking is the main reason some 3rd-party titles have been found as legitimate Atari Loaner carts is for Atari's own research. Every top company back then looked at the code for their competitor's games, to gain insight on how certain tricks were done. The other reason would be for legal reasons, as Ballblazer mentioned. Atari was quick to sue competitors over any perceived notion one of their licensed games was being knocked off. For example, Atari sued Imagic over Demon Attack since they felt it was a knockoff of Phoenix. Although Atari took more of an issue with Imagic's Intellivision port of Demon Attack, an Atari Loaner cart of the VCS version has been found.

The same-shaped saucer, with a glass dome on top with a city/buildings underneath, a hole in the bottom with 3 rays coming down, with mountains all around? You don't think they look the same? Really? No, the S.I. graphic doesn't say "Boston" on it, and there's 3 saucers instead of one, and it's night instead of day, so it's not an exact duplicate. lol But there's no way in hell 2 different artists came up with the same design like that. I suppose you're going to tell me Outlaw's artwork is original too... It's like any artistic field - the artists of today are influenced by those who came before them, whether it's intentional or not. But that S.I. artwork certainly is something the artist for Boston's albums could have had a very good case for, and probably should have received some money from Atari for, esp. considering how many copies of VCS S.I. they sold. That's just it. If this was some quick-publishing thing somebody cranked out for $9.99, I'd say, you got what you paid for. But I paid a lot more than that (and I bought both versions). This was something I was looking forward to ever since the author announced it 3 years ago (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/220583-), and according to him, he had already been working on it for several years before then. So considering the quality of some of the photos included, It's hard to believe better copies could not have been found anywhere within the last 5 years. At least have someone Photoshop some of the creases out. Besides Atariage, I don't know if he asked for help anywhere else, but not everyone is on that site. Questionable photos aside, some of the factual errors are just maddening, like claiming SwordQuest FireWorld winner Michael Rideout is the one who melted his prize down (!?), or that the 5200 controllers are "spin-sensitive" (??). I get that Tim Lapetino isn't a 'history' guy; clearly his focus was on artwork. But to have someone like Goldberg fact-check your book? He can't even fact-check his own book. I wonder if Tim ever read that awful book Goldberg put out. Why not have someone like noted author Leonard Herman (http://www.rolentapress.com/) do your fact-checking?

List updated

A beautiful-looking book, albeit a misnamed one. From the moment you flip open the front cover, you immediately realize the focus is on Atari’s VCS/2600 games, which is a shame since Atari was a coin-op company for 5 years before the VCS was released, and coin-op games are only briefly covered. The author probably should have stuck to the topic of game artwork, instead of veering into other areas (like prototype hardware), and attempts at being a historical reference book only succeed in making some of the factual errors within even more glaring. Starting at pg. 57, there’s plenty of photos of VCS game boxes, although some of the boxes photographed are noticeably creased or damaged – starting with the first box, Air-Sea Battle. Hundreds of thousands of copies were made and sold of the games in question. Time should have been spent finding better copies to photograph, considering the overall look (and price) of either edition. Also, the games appear in random order, not alphabetically, so finding a specific game requires use of the index. The first and last 3 pages are all screenshots of VCS games – except one. Of the 108 screenshots, one is the 7800 version of Galaga. Two are of games originally released by Coleco (Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior), and one is a bad screenshot of BASIC Programming (which was used again on page 98). Notable errors (considering Marty Goldberg is credited for his "fact-checking", I suppose this is yet another book he has corrupted): Pg. 18, 49 The 7800 was initially released by Atari Inc. in 1984, not Jack Tramiel’s Atari Corp., who re-released it in 1986. Pg. 61 Cliff Spohn talks about Atari wanting to cut the artwork off from the outer edges. Only the original, gate-fold Combat boxes included the full artwork as shown. The 2nd trimmed should have been included for comparison. Pg. 64 Atari’s coin-op Starship 1 was released in 1976, not 1977; the VCS version (Star Ship) was released in 1977. Pg. 66 There were 3 coin-op “snake” games released in 1976 - Barricade (Ramtek), Bigfoot Bonkers (Meadows) and Blockade (UPL, Gremlin). Pg. 76 “I thought of Monte Carlo, outdoors, images of the car…” Should be “images of the cards”. Pg. 86 Night Driver was the first VCS driving video game to offer a 1st-person perspective, but the arcade game was inspired by Nürburgring 1 (Dr.-Ing. Reiner Foerst GmbH 1976). Pg. 87 No mention of Outlaw’s artwork being a copy of that found on the poster for the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales. Pg. 113 The interior manual artwork appears in the 1988 re-release of Pele’s Soccer. Pg. 115 As with Outlaw, there’s no mention of the artwork for VCS Space Invaders being a close copy of the artwork for Boston’s early albums, particularly their 2nd album, “Don’t Look Back”, except for in the book's afterword. The artist for the Boston artwork was Gary Norman, but the artist for S.I. is simply Norman. There's no other information the book about him or whether or not he's the same artist, or why an in-house artist wasn't used. Pg. 123 The Asteroids artwork is turned 90 degrees to the right, compared to how it appeared on the packaging. Pg. 130 Only half of the interior 5200 Missile Command artwork appears in the manual, and only in 1 color (red). Pg. 133 Both the coin-op and VCS versions of Warlords were developed concurrently. The coin-op version was released first and featured multiple balls. Programmer Jim Huether was the model Steve Hendricks used for his artwork, but the book makes no mention of this. Pg. 135 States the photo on the preceding page was for a 4-player Football ad, but the photo shows a baseball pitcher. Atari never released a 4-player Baseball coin-op. Pg 136 States the VCS wasn’t able to reproduce the arcade game’s speech, which is incorrect. Not only was the VCS capable of digitized speech, as shown with Quadrun and Open Sesame, Mike Mika released a version of Berzerk in 2002 that included voice samples during the game. Also, the interior artwork shown is cropped, compared to how it appears in the manual. Pg. 152 There’s no mention of this but besides Elliot’s expression, another change was made with the artwork – the “diamonds” around the center of the spaceship were made smaller. The large diamonds appeared on a promo box and the initial run of cartridges. Pg. 164 States, “Atari paid handsomely for the exclusive rights to bring Pac-Man to the 2600.” According to Al Alcorn, Atari signed a deal with Namco in 1978 for $1 million that gave Atari the rights to all of Namco's arcade games. Pac-Man (AKA Puck Man) didn't exist in 1978, and considering the success the game would eventually have, Atari paid far less than it was truly worth, and Atari also got Galaxian as part of the same deal. Pg. 170 States, “the technical aspects of the 2600 made creating a mirror image of the arcade counterpart nearly impossible”, which is incorrect. Several hacks and homebrews have been created in the last 15+ years to prove a better version could have absolutely been done with only 4K. Pg. 182 The RealSports cover art is reversed on the packaging. Also, only the 2nd interior artwork appears in the VCS and 5200 manuals, and both are in color. Pg. 202 Ralph McQuarrie - the most famous artist outside of Atari mentioned in the book - did the artwork for VCS Vanguard and yet there's no story as to how this came about. His name isn't even included in the index. Pg. 206 The photo caption states the artwork shown appeared in the Yars’ Revenge manual, but it didn’t. Pg. 211 The description for Big Bird’s Egg Catch says you have to catch eggs from one of two chutes, but different variations offer anywhere from 2 to 5 chutes, and a screenshot for the game on the first page shows 4 chutes. Pg. 221 The top photo caption states the color guide and marker comp was for the 400/800 version, but the illustrated screenshot is clearly for the VCS version. Pg. 222-223 The artwork shown is for the 400/800 versions, but the screenshots shown are for the VCS versions, which weren’t done by Atari but rather Coleco. Pg. 234 Incorrectly states players in Mario Bros. hurl fireballs. Pg. 238 The first interior artwork shown did not appear in either the VCS or 5200 manuals. Pg. 244 The Pole Position artwork shown is actually for Pole Position II. Pg. 246 The artwork shown on page 247 also appeared on the July/Aug 1983 V2N2 cover of Atari Age magazine. Pg. 262 Incorrectly states the winner of the SwordQuest FireWorld contest, Michael Rideout, melted down the Chalice prize to pay for college. The winner of the SwordQuest EarthWorld contest, Steven Bell, is the one who melted down his Talisman prize to pay for college. Pg 264 Claims the SwordQuest WaterWorld contest was held and the Crown prize awarded, but as of yet, there’s no evidence that any of this happened. Pg. 266 Claims the final 2 SwordQuest prizes were returned to the Franklin Mint and ultimately destroyed, but again, there’s no evidence that any of this happened. Pg. 258 No high-resolution packaging artwork for SwordQuest EarthWorld; instead, a picture of a box with creases. Also, Atari Age magazine is written as one word “AtariAge”. Pg. 260, 262. Atari Age magazine is written as one word “AtariAge”. Pg. 276 Jr. Pac-Man featured a side-scrolling maze in the arcade version, but the VCS version features a vertically-scrolling maze. Pg. 279 The first photo caption states this was interior manual art for the 2600 and 5200 versions, but it only appeared in the 5200 manual. Pg. 280 Incorrectly states the artwork shown was for the VCS manual. It didn't appear in the manual, but was featured in an ad for the game, on the back cover of Atari Age magazine (V2,N5). Pg. 291 Incorrectly states KLAX was released 12 years after the VCS system was released; it was 14 years. Pg. 298 The VCS model 2600A was a 4-switch version, not 6-switch as incorrectly stated. Also, the Space Age joystick is a copy of Milton Bradley's proposed HD2000 joystick, and not based on the prototype trigger controllers shown. Pg. 303. The 5200 controllers were not “spin-sensitive”. Pg. 317 Axlon is misspelled as “Axalon”. Pg. 321 “Tank II was to be the numerical sequel to Atari’s Tank arcade game.” Atari (under Kee Games) released a Tank II arcade game in 1974, the same year as the original. The “II” moniker for the home console was likely to indicate it was for 2 players. Pg. 328 Atari Age magazine is written as one word “AtariAge”. Pg. 329 Key Games didn’t just clone Atari games, they released many exclusive games, like Drag Race, Sprint One, Sprint 2, Super Bug, Tank, and Ultra Tank.

Smaller companies sometimes used EPROMS with their released carts. CommaVid, Games By Apollo, Spectravideo, Universal Gamex Corp, and Wizard Video Games all used EPROMS in their VCS carts.

That site doesn't even list Air Raid, which has sold for far more than that, more than once.

Actually, this is everything you need to know about it.... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dN1l_iw3N4lJ69Wq2cqoLGKAxbo-gHLMohrhlSHwYNI/edit?usp=sharing

I have a copy of The Foxbat Strategy movie treatment up on my website now: http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/unreleased/unreleased.html#foxbat

The 3rd link above has a note about it: "Night Racer was the only game they produced (released just before Midway's "Midnite Driver"/"280 Zzzap")."

That's not a book, that's a column from Joystik magazine. AFAIK there was never a dedicated book about Dig Dug.