Scott Stilphen
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Posts posted by Scott Stilphen
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The 800 version does have some variable movement with the controls, so if the 5200 version supports analog, then the position of the stick should determine how fast you move in any direction, and not how long you hold the joystick in one direction like it does with the 800 version.
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Besides Kaboom and Gorf, are there any other 3rd-party games that support analog controls?
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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.
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RGVC thread from 2007 on the same topic:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.classic/c/Ipchr6TACGc/m/CUx8gN3tGgAJ
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Listed updated.
- DegasElite and greenween
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You don't need a Trak-Ball to confirm whether or not it fully supports analog controls.
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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 BreakoutThe 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?
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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.
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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...
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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.
- DegasElite, RickR, Sabertooth and 1 other
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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.
- Sabertooth, RickR and DegasElite
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Here's a Space Port training video that shows employees using painted quarters:
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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 :)
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This is sold
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Can't find a photo of this one, but it should have been used for the flyer :)
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List updated.
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Thanks Rick. I forgot there's also reverse-image apps to figure out the sources of images.
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On 4/17/2020 at 5:02 PM, RickR said:
And finally, a bunch I'm not terribly familiar with. Murphy's Mart. Woolworth, some other "W", and so on.
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:
- RickR and nosweargamer
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Here's a few more.
- nosweargamer and Justin
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Question for Atari 5200 Vanguard owners
in Atari 5200
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Star Wars: The Arcade Game supports analog controls, which it should, since the arcade game did :) But games like Pengo and Jungle Hunt supporting them makes no sense to me. I read somewhere Jungle Hunt actually doesn't, even though Atari indicated it was "Trak-Ball" compatible on that poster.