Scott Stilphen

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Jack Tramiel was a ruthless business person, no doubt about it.  As someone mentioned, he would absolutely go after any developers and suppliers who were on precarious financial ground,  and if they weren't already, they soon would be because he leveraged them to the point they had no choice but to either bow to his whims or go under.  With Commodore, he had 'vertical integration'; he owned and fully controlled the chain of suppliers (such as chipmaker MOS), but without that, he strong-armed companies to get get the same advantage.  Epyx learned that the hard way, which ultimately contributed to the Lynx's demise (lack of software).  The same scenario played out with the Jaguar, and all the 3rd-party developers that signed up to support it.  I have a stack of company memos that detailed how that played out. 
Video games, and software in general, was low on his list of priorities.  He always felt the hardware would drive the sales of software, which is the exact opposite of how the market worked.  How else do you explain how inferior systems like the VCS and GameBoy overwhelmingly outsold superior hardware offered by the competition?  He "bought"  a video game company because it allowed him the quickest path back into the market to compete with Commodore.  The Atari name had some value as far as recognition, but for the first 2 years under Tramiel, his only focus was on selling computers.  The 2600JR (and later the XEGS) were released in order to help sell off the warehouses full of software he had.  The NES revitalized the home video game market in the US to the point it was worth it for him to release the 7800
I suspect he tried the same tactics with GCC over the 7800, which is why it wasn't released nationwide until nearly 2 years after the initial limited release in California in 1984.  Revisionists like Goldberg and Vendel would have you believe its release took 2 years because of all the paperwork and contract wrangling involved.  Ask yourself - how was it Tramiel was able to buy a company like Atari within days, but couldn't secure a deal with GCC regarding the 7800 sooner?

One of the true Atarians 😞 
He appeared in the famous Atari Quest article from Ultimate Gamer (January 1996):
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/documents/ultimate_gamer_jan96_atari_quest.pdf
Here's the photo of him that appeared in the article, wearing one of the MindLink controller prototypes.

Justin, I think you'll agree that anybody who can roll the score on this one can pretty much marathon it :)  And considering you were the first here to do it, I gladly yield my place to you.  

Watch William Rosa's 2+ million game:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/178334

Add me to the 1 million club, just in time :)  I point-pressed Slipice as well. You can kill up to 255 Slipice per level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z5ZwaySWYA
It's possible to roll the score counter w/o point-pressing.  The strategy is observing the fireballs on each level.  The first 5 fireballs of a level are random; after that, the pattern continues to loop those 5.  The next level will randomly have a new pattern of 5, and so on. 

Add me to the 1 million club, just in time :)  I point-pressed Slipice as well. You can kill up to 255 Slipice per level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z5ZwaySWYA
It's possible to roll the score counter w/o point-pressing.  The strategy is observing the fireballs on each level.  The first 5 fireballs of a level are random; after that, the pattern continues to loop those 5.  The next level will randomly have a new pattern of 5, and so on. 

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They always do 🙂 

The game does have an inherent issue with that variation. The captive balls are brown and flicker, which allows them to sometimes pass through a brick and even your paddle.  Here's 2 videos I just put up.  The first shows one of the captive balls going right through a brick multiple times.  I was only able to knock it out using the blue ball.  The other shows a captive ball going right through the paddle.
 
 

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See the auto-fire modules section of this FAQ:  http://www.2600connection.com/faq/controllers/faq_controllers.html