Scott Stilphen

Someone confirmed for me the game doesn't support full analog movement. That is to say, the ship moves at the same speed no matter how far over you push the joystick. I know GCC programmed it but I don't know who the programmer was. Whether they planned to support full analog movement (perhaps a prototype exists with it?) or if the person putting the manual together made a mistake, who knows.

RGVC thread from 2007 on the same topic: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/Ipchr6TACGc/m/CUx8gN3tGgAJ

Listed updated.

You don't need a Trak-Ball to confirm whether or not it fully supports analog controls.

The manual mentions the game fully supports the analog controls. From what I know, there's only 12 games for the 5200 that fully support analog controls: Centipede * Galaxian * Jungle Hunt * Missile Command * Pengo Pole Position * RealSports Basketball * RealSports Football RealSports Soccer RealSports Tennis Space Invaders * Super Breakout The ones marked with an asterisk are noted on Atari's 5200 catalog/poster as being Trak-Ball compatible, which would indicate full analog support. Vanguard is listed on the poster and is not indicated. So did Atari forget to note it on the poster, or is the manual incorrect?

That, and it was a better name than Epyx had for it - "Handy".

Ronald Wayne. Check out his book, Adventures of an Apple Founder, which was released 10 years ago. It's an excellent read, if you get a chance to pick up a copy.

There were actually 3 people who were involved with founding Atari (another Ampex co-worker of theirs - Larry Bryan), but the '5th Beatle' dropped out before the paperwork was filed. And Dabney was bought out the following year (1973), so Bushnell was the one at the top making all the major decisions. Having guys like Al Alcorn and Joseph Keenan certainly helped with Atari's early success, as did the guys from Cyan Engineering. So when I refer to Bushnell's Atari, there's a lot of people under him who helped and deserve credit as well :) The 'real' Atari was run by engineers who were always chasing the latest innovations. Warner's Atari was run by 'suits' who had no desire to make any meaningful changes to how it was run, because that's what Kassar wanted, and all he understood - keep selling the same product over and over. Like people are happy buying the exact same model vehicles or the same furniture...

Well, the real Atari was under Bushnell. The VCS and 800 were already being planned and developed by the time Bushnell sold Atari to Warner. The only new hardware that was developed and released under Warner/Kassar came out of the coin-op department, which thankfully was largely free of Kassar's influence. Kassar allocated millions to Atari's R&D department, only to sit on everything that was developed. When Tramiel took Atari over, all that wonderful tech that was created walked out the door, along with all the engineers who developed it. If you think about it, Kassar was handed a company that was positioned to be where Apple is today, but he had absolutely no vision for the future, let alone the mindset to effectively manage Atari during his time. So under Kassar, Atari "rested on its laurels". Under Tramiel, Atari tried to reinvent itself into a computer company - something it never originally set out to be. The 800 was never intended to be a computer, but Apple's success with the Apple II prompted Warner to re-purpose the hardware.

RickR pretty much nailed it with his comments about Tramiel. The guy was just a ruthless businessman and his track record for that is a mile long. Certainly his experience during the holocaust shaped him. To paraphrase a line from "V for Vendetta", what they did to him was monstrous, and the result was they created a monster. The sole reason he bought Atari was to compete (get back) with Commodore for firing him. His motivation was one of pure revenge, and his focus was on the home computer market. Whereas there were several causes of the video game crash, there was only one cause for the home computer crash - Jack Tramiel. In his effort to hurt Texas Instruments, he initiated a price war that nearly toppled everyone. He effectively 'erased' the market by lowering Comodore's prices to the point where only Commodore could make any money, thanks to their vertical integration (from owning their own chip fabrication company - MOS Technology). He tried a similar tactic with the XE and ST lines, pricing them far below the competition, except this time he didn't have MOS to back him up, so he turned to making them as cheap as possible. As for the video game market, all he did in the first 2 years of his ownership was sell off the backlog of inventory in Atari's warehouses as a means of raising money for his computer ambitions. He had zero interest in competing in the vg market, and publicly stated that several times. It was only when he saw the vg market roaring back with Nintendo and Sega did he decided to make an effort to re-enter it. But even if he had paid GCC's contract obligations and kept the 7800 on the market in 1984, it still would have failed - the NES was the future, and they had the IPs and the creative development folks behind it. Jack's mindset at Commodore was, if he released good hardware, the software would naturally follow (from others); it happened with the VIC-20 and C-64, but only with those. The Lynx only came into Atari's possession due to Jack's unethical business practices, basically putting a financial squeeze on Epyx until they were on the verge of collapsing, allowing him to grab the Lynx for cheap. That pattern would repeat itself with Jack many times over. The Jaguar could have really made an impact in the market, but besides Tempest 2000 (which was the only reason I bought a Jag), aside from a few standout titles (Alien vs Predator, Doom) the software library was mostly forgettable. Its hardware was also hamstrung when compared to the Playstation. Like the Lynx, the 3rd-party support was almost nonexistent. Atari's time in the vg marketplace under Tramiel was one of missed opportunities. Tramiel had the NES and Amiga in his grasp, and dropped them. The Atari ST was a terrible game machine, but then again, unlike the Amiga, it was never designed to be. The TT and Falcon aren't even worth mentioning as they made zero impact in the computer market, much like Atari's PC clone. The Lynx was really the hidden gem in Tramiel's lineup. Great machine that should have captured the handheld market, if not for its unyielding size and voracious battery appetite. The Lynx II was an improvement, but once again - too little, too late. Like the VCS, Nintendo's GameBoy won out against superior consoles with its simplicity. To summarize, Jack hurt Atari's reputation in the video game market. Nothing released under him had much of an impact. He also hurt Atari financially by trying to support multiple systems (VCS, 7800, XEGS, Lynx, Jaguar) because he didn't have the money to effectively market them and compete with Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. It wasn't a case of David vs Goliath, it was a case of David vs 3 Goliaths. As for the ST computers, The Amiga outsold them more than 2 to 1, and that was mainly due to its fantastic abilities to run games. So ultimately, his plan to exact revenge against Commodore failed.

Here's a Space Port training video that shows employees using painted quarters:

That was an old trick that spread around to Star Raiders fans BITD, and certainly predates DP. FYI, DP hasn't been updated in 10 years. My site (www.ataricompendium.com) has the most current info.

sold

The rules also say: Screen captures are not allowed as they are more easily manipulated for falsified scores. ... and I'm the only one who posted a video :)

This is sold.

This is sold

104,400

Can't find a photo of this one, but it should have been used for the flyer :)

List updated.

Thanks Rick. I forgot there's also reverse-image apps to figure out the sources of images.

One of the Adventure photos I posted has that same "W" sticker, and here's another Skiing with the same: And here's a box for a pirate version of River Raid:

Here's a few more.

But not proper credit to the person who wrote that comic (Warshaw). I thought the full-size Atari Force comics were just as good as the mini-comics, if not better. The artwork was superb. Gerry Conway and José Luis García-López worked on the first 13 issues, which is basically where the story ended IMO. The last 7 issues were done by different folks. Conway also wrote the mini comics with Roy Thomas. I have all of them on my site: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/comics/comics.html Atari Force certainly wasn't Conway's best work, but was certainly acceptable (esp for pack-ins). With the minis, story-wise, the game titles were primarily used as chapter titles. Some of them were loosely tied into the story. Ex: #3 features a Star Raider ship, complete with the same scanner screen (btw, there were also several Berzerk mentions in #5, which was more appropriate). The full-size comics allowed for more creativity It would have been nice if he continued with the original characters, instead of relegating them to brief cameos (and seeing Martin Champion as a sullen, bitter old man was a bit too cliche for me). But the 'ending' in ish #13 was memorable. You can't argue with the destruction of an entire universe :)

List updated.

I'm more concerned about how the game kept 'crashing' when ZPH was booting their system up. So after seeing their website and commercial, and the ZeroPageHomebrew premier, here's my 2c about it (and then some). There were some questionable statements made in that Audacity video that some of the comments on AA have commented on. The biggest of course was the comment about how they're not homebrewers. Crane says homebrewers make games from home whereas they're a publishing company. My take is, they're programming and producing the games from HOME. Just like... every other person who's made new games for vintage systems in the lat 25 years. Plus they went on someone's YouTube channel to promote it - Zero Page HOMEbrew - which the guys films from his ... HOME. AG reasons having cartridge shells made up somehow helps qualify their releases as official and not homebrew. Sean Kelly had new Vectrex shells made up for his multicarts, and those are considered homebrews as well. CGE used new shells for Lasercade and a few other releases. And Yarusso has been releasing games with professional-looking manuals and boxes for years, and he's basically a 1-person operation. Atariage is a publisher of homebrew games (and considering he gets 50% of all sales, he's not doing it for primarily the 'love' of the community, it's very much a business for him). And I think one of them mentioned in the video they still have a 'day' job (like Yarusso and Kelly). So the only real difference is, Crane and the Kitchens are veteran designers. The Audacity Games website lists their address as: 3494 Camino Tassajara #403, Danville, CA 94506, USA Which is in a strip mall. But their website is registered to an address in Washington: PO Box 639, C/O AUDACITYGAMES.COM, Kirkland, WA, 98083, US Crane claims he worked on the game for over 3 years, but he can't convince me never saw or heard of Dan's game before then (which Dan started working on back in the early 1980s). Crane's one of the best VCS designers, no doubt. But he and the other designers also started Activision by knocking off several of Atari's games, so we can't forget that. Yes, the game looks good and there's some new graphical 'tricks' that Crane is employing (like the translucent icon). But he then claims he never designed a game around a trick. What about Dragster? What about Laser Blast? What about Pitfall II?? Of course he did. And Pitfall II remains the 'pinnacle' of his VCS games IMO. But they didn't want to 'cheat' by using something like the special DPC chip? Why limit yourself at this point? It's great that someone finally designed the first 128K game, even though the bank-switching tech and pcb designs have existed for some 15 years. But to limit yourself to designing such a large game using only 128 bytes of RAM? Sure, not many people could have designed with that constraint, but I expected more for a game that large. I expected what some of the later Starpath games look like (Escape from the MindMaster, Dragonstomper, Survival Island, Sweat, etc). He designed a new board, so he could have easily added a DPC chip or more RAM. But now everyone else who uses that board will be restricted to the same limits. And clearly you can see the limits of it in Circus Convoy. Like most of Crane's games, you have only 3 or 4 truly different screens, with variations of those screens. with CC, you have the outside/cars screen, the mini-game screen, and moving objects confined to specific areas (to avoid flickering). No scrolling, like with Pitfall II, but more like Pitfall - 255 static screens, all of which are variations of the same screen. Yes, technically CC has scrolling, but it's limited to the shrubs on the side of the road, much like the trees in Skiing, except you can at least interact with the trees in Skiing. Now, if he designed the game so that the screen scrolled as you ran along the top of the cars, then yes, that would have been far more impressive and worth the top prices they're asking. And with 128K, he could have included digitized music or voice. Atari pulled that off with Quadrun, and that game is only 8K w/o any special hardware. Am I supposed to be impressed with the little tune he implemented for CC because it's in tune? Does it even use both channels? He used Dan Kitchen's method of how he created the music for Pressure Cooker (again, copying Dan!). Like I said, I expected more from Crane at this point. All the various trinkets and extras that come with the higher packages don't interest me. I'm a gamer, not a collector. So they're definitely targeting collectors. Also not thrilled about having to pay $100 to get a digital copy of the game, esp when the U.S. allows you to make 1 archival copy of media for yourself. If I have the means to do that myself, why would I pay an extra $40 for someone else to do it for me? I'd sooner just buy another copy of the game. At 48m in, Crane also commented how the $100 Collectors Edition price is equal to what people paid for games back in the early 80s. He then made a followup comment, instead saying the $140 VIP edition price was equal to that, "taking inflation into account" and said Pitfall originally sold for $39.95. All of these comments are false. First, the retail price of Pitfall was $31.95: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/pitfall/pitfall.html (Video Game Update review mentions the retail price). You can't use retail prices, because nobody pays that! A few months ago, I spent considerable time archiving video game ads from one of my local papers. When Pitfall was first released (late September 1982), the earliest ad I found had a price of $28.95 on it. A month later, the price was down to $25: Boscov's http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/boscovs/citizens_voice_12-16-82_boscovs_ad.jpg week before Christmas, below manufacturer's price (not listed) http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/boscovs/citizens_voice_3-5-83_boscovs_ad.jpg March 1983 $28 http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/boscovs/citizens_voice_12-15-83_boscovs_ad.jpg December 1983 $15 General Radio http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_9-30-82_general_radio_ad.jpg earliest ad http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_11-4-82_general_radio_ad.jpg earliest ad with price (1 month later) - $25 http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_11-18-82_general_radio_ad.jpg 2 weeks later. Same price http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_12-16-82_general_radio_ad1.jpg week before Christmas, same price. http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_10-27-83_general_radio_ad.jpg October 1983, same price More proof? Here's Zayre's ad from September 1982 ($25, with retail $29.95), and Shop Rite's ad from October 1982 ($24). So nobody uses retail prices in price comparisons. Video game prices on average today are approximately 2x as much from what they were 40 years ago. Using this inflation calculator, that $25 in 1982 is now equivalent to $68: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm The recent release of CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 has an MSRP of $59.99 but was sold for $10 less a week later, so it's actually cheaper than Pitfall was! https://www.pcgamesn.com/cyberpunk-2077/sale Well, their server crashed Saturday afternoon and the sale was delayed 24hrs, at which point it was hit-or-miss whether you got your order processed. The VIP editions seemed to have sold out within the first hour, and best estimates on AA are they between 500-750 copies were sold overall, so they certainly made some decent money, not to mention the record for the fastest-selling homebrew and most-copies for a homebrew ever. But there's several pages on AA of people's complaints about their website, as well as AG's Facebook page. I just can't imagine why, since they're only accepting Paypal, why they wouldn't use Paypal to simple create some order 'buttons' for their website. I did that with the VideoSoft games I sold 10 years ago, and it worked w/o any issues. Speaking of that AA thread, when the question of royalties came up, Yarusso made a comment about how Activision didn't pay Atari royalties, which is completely false. Atari sued Activision and the lawsuit was settled. The specifics have never been released, but Activision did pay Atari. Same with Coleco (see attachment). Same with Imagic. Same with every 3rd-party company back then that Atari sued. I don't think the royalty was that much, but even $1 per cart would have been a significant amount of money, especially with games selling a half-million copies or more (especially the 3.5 million copies of Pitfall).