Scott Stilphen

Yes!  Finally   And very cool of Ron Fortier to chime in.

Thanks for the update, Darren.  I'll echo the comments of others in saying I'm looking forward to this.

I agree.  From what he's said were his plans for AirWorld over the years, it was far from yet another rehash of the same game, which is all FireWorld and WaterWorld were (and in retrospect why the whole contest was pretty much doomed from the start, since there was never a great vision for the games to begin with).  It's a shame he never kept a copy of the code he had at the point it was cancelled, but there's only one person on the planet who could possibly make the game, because he's the only one who had the idea for it.  I don't know if doing a Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaign would be enough to 'light a fire' under him, and given how often he changes his accounts of his experiences at Atari, and how 'serious' he claims to have been back then about his work, there are plenty of stories about how goofy and doped up he was, and how hard it was to motivate him to complete projects (his former manager at Atari, Dennis Koble, stated Tod had trouble focusing on deadlines even back then, so it would appear that's still very much an issue with him).  If he made a concerted effort to show he was serious about doing it, I have no doubt he'd have plenty of backers from the community, but unless he does, I think it would be a wasted effort for anyone to initiate it.   But personally, I'd sooner start a fund campaign to have the 4th comic book done

Yeah, Tod claims he has plenty of time to defend his Pac-Man game - a game that by every possible metric is undefendable.   Yet for all his plans to recreate all his tech demos, to fix Pac-Man (which several people have already done), and to finish up SwordQuest AirWorld, he's quick to admit he probably won't get around to doing them.

The nubs fit into holes that are in the controller jacks on the 2600 JRs, Sears Video Arcade II, 2800, and 7800 systems, with the intention likely being to make the controller plugs fit more securely in the jacks, to keep them from falling out during use. The same design was also used on the 5200 jacks and controller plugs.  The easy 'fix' to making them fit the older-style jacks is to simply file them down  

The nubs fit into holes that are in the controller jacks on the 2600 JRs, Sears Video Arcade II, 2800, and 7800 systems, with the intention likely being to make the controller plugs fit more securely in the jacks, to keep them from falling out during use. The same design was also used on the 5200 jacks and controller plugs.  The easy 'fix' to making them fit the older-style jacks is to simply file them down  

The nubs fit into holes that are in the controller jacks on the 2600 JRs, Sears Video Arcade II, 2800, and 7800 systems, with the intention likely being to make the controller plugs fit more securely in the jacks, to keep them from falling out during use. The same design was also used on the 5200 jacks and controller plugs.  The easy 'fix' to making them fit the older-style jacks is to simply file them down  

That controller was originally designed by Atari for "Army Battlezone":
http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/arcade/arcadebattlezone.html

A local news station did this piece from 1982:   https://wnep.com/2019/03/25/video-vault-video-games-just-a-fad/   Games shown:
Galaga (Midway)
Ms. Pac-Man (Midway)
Pac-Man (Midway)
Congorilla (Orca)
Space Battle (Mattel Intellivision)
Tempest (Atari)
Monaco GP (Sega)
Super Cobra (Stern)
(unknown game to left of Super Cobra)
Asteroids (Atari)
Battlezone (Atari)
Challenger (Centuri)
Vanguard (Centuri)
(unknown Universal game to right of Vanguard)

A local news station did this piece from 1982:   https://wnep.com/2019/03/25/video-vault-video-games-just-a-fad/   Games shown:
Galaga (Midway)
Ms. Pac-Man (Midway)
Pac-Man (Midway)
Congorilla (Orca)
Space Battle (Mattel Intellivision)
Tempest (Atari)
Monaco GP (Sega)
Super Cobra (Stern)
(unknown game to left of Super Cobra)
Asteroids (Atari)
Battlezone (Atari)
Challenger (Centuri)
Vanguard (Centuri)
(unknown Universal game to right of Vanguard)

A local news station did this piece from 1982:   https://wnep.com/2019/03/25/video-vault-video-games-just-a-fad/   Games shown:
Galaga (Midway)
Ms. Pac-Man (Midway)
Pac-Man (Midway)
Congorilla (Orca)
Space Battle (Mattel Intellivision)
Tempest (Atari)
Monaco GP (Sega)
Super Cobra (Stern)
(unknown game to left of Super Cobra)
Asteroids (Atari)
Battlezone (Atari)
Challenger (Centuri)
Vanguard (Centuri)
(unknown Universal game to right of Vanguard)

A local news station did this piece from 1982:   https://wnep.com/2019/03/25/video-vault-video-games-just-a-fad/   Games shown:
Galaga (Midway)
Ms. Pac-Man (Midway)
Pac-Man (Midway)
Congorilla (Orca)
Space Battle (Mattel Intellivision)
Tempest (Atari)
Monaco GP (Sega)
Super Cobra (Stern)
(unknown game to left of Super Cobra)
Asteroids (Atari)
Battlezone (Atari)
Challenger (Centuri)
Vanguard (Centuri)
(unknown Universal game to right of Vanguard)

Battlezone
Atari 2600
Difficulty: Game 1
High Score: 359,000
February 28, 2019
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Battlezone
Atari 2600
Difficulty: Game 2
High Score: 182,000
February 28, 2019

There's a great documentary about it that was done in 2003:
As well as a couple retrospect videos about the original and the BG 1980 'sequel':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af6wuq0h6Fc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RWpZlin6so
Personally I loved the show when it first came out.  Here was a show that boasted the same special effects that were in Star Wars, with ships flying around in space having laser battles.  The sequence showing a Viper ship launching and hitting Turbo was also cool to see (at first..). The main characters Apollo (perfect scifi name, given the Apollo moon missions were still recent enough) and Starbuck (basically Han Solo, complete with laser pistol) were interesting enough, not to mention the bevy of beauties that were always around them.  There was even a robotic dog (which was actually a monkey in a costume!).   The effects were done by John Dykstra - the same person who headed Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic division which created the special effects for Star Wars.  Dykstra left ILM before SW was released, and set up his own special effects company, Apogee, with a few ex-ILM folks, and the first project they worked on was BG.  Seeing screens showing squadrons of Cylons and Vipers in vector graphics was also very reminiscent of Star Wars.



The show borrowed from Fred Saberhagen's Berzerker series of stories, which tell about an ongoing war between humanity and the Berserkers - self-replicating war machines programmed with one main objective: destroy all life.  They were created by the Builders, who were humanoids with a single, 'sliding' eye.  Both found their way into Battlestar Galactica in the form of the Cylons and their Base Stars.  The Cylon's sliding red eye and monotone voice was the stuff of nightmares to a kid back then   It was a great audio and visual effect, which were used in Stern's Berzerk (the sliding red eye also appeared again in another show, Knight Rider).
It's a shame the series was cancelled after 1 season, but watching the show years later, it's not hard to see why it was cancelled.  After seeing the same handful of special effects footage shown repeatedly, and the same Viper ship launching and "turbo-ing",  you realize where most of the budget went (ironically, Dykstra left ILM over Lucas being upset with the effects being over budget and over time.  Have to wonder if the same issues doomed BG).  Plus the stories run the gambit from very entertaining to very poor.  The followup (BG 1980) was just awful, save for maybe the last episode (featuring Starbuck and the Cylons), which was certainly "too little, too late", though there was one special effect from the show that was noteworthy - the time travel visual effect.  You've seen the same effect before, in Atari's Star Wars arcade game, when you destroy the Death Star.
Atari had plans to create a laserdisc game based on the show, but the project only went as far as this test footage that was assembled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUwU6dqSsQ
Notice the intro shows a similar "flying through rings" effect
Mattel nearly had the first BG video game.  Space Battle for the Intellivision (and Space Attack for the VCS) was to be that game, but someone failed to realize they only had the license for electronic games, not video games.  The graphics were left unchanged, which is why the enemy ships look like Cylon Raiders.  But BG actually influenced another game the year before - Atari's seminal Star Raiders.  The game has the player battling the Zylons, with the fighters using Star Wars' Tie-Fighters and the same BG Base Stars:

There's a great documentary about it that was done in 2003:
As well as a couple retrospect videos about the original and the BG 1980 'sequel':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af6wuq0h6Fc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RWpZlin6so
Personally I loved the show when it first came out.  Here was a show that boasted the same special effects that were in Star Wars, with ships flying around in space having laser battles.  The sequence showing a Viper ship launching and hitting Turbo was also cool to see (at first..). The main characters Apollo (perfect scifi name, given the Apollo moon missions were still recent enough) and Starbuck (basically Han Solo, complete with laser pistol) were interesting enough, not to mention the bevy of beauties that were always around them.  There was even a robotic dog (which was actually a monkey in a costume!).   The effects were done by John Dykstra - the same person who headed Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic division which created the special effects for Star Wars.  Dykstra left ILM before SW was released, and set up his own special effects company, Apogee, with a few ex-ILM folks, and the first project they worked on was BG.  Seeing screens showing squadrons of Cylons and Vipers in vector graphics was also very reminiscent of Star Wars.



The show borrowed from Fred Saberhagen's Berzerker series of stories, which tell about an ongoing war between humanity and the Berserkers - self-replicating war machines programmed with one main objective: destroy all life.  They were created by the Builders, who were humanoids with a single, 'sliding' eye.  Both found their way into Battlestar Galactica in the form of the Cylons and their Base Stars.  The Cylon's sliding red eye and monotone voice was the stuff of nightmares to a kid back then   It was a great audio and visual effect, which were used in Stern's Berzerk (the sliding red eye also appeared again in another show, Knight Rider).
It's a shame the series was cancelled after 1 season, but watching the show years later, it's not hard to see why it was cancelled.  After seeing the same handful of special effects footage shown repeatedly, and the same Viper ship launching and "turbo-ing",  you realize where most of the budget went (ironically, Dykstra left ILM over Lucas being upset with the effects being over budget and over time.  Have to wonder if the same issues doomed BG).  Plus the stories run the gambit from very entertaining to very poor.  The followup (BG 1980) was just awful, save for maybe the last episode (featuring Starbuck and the Cylons), which was certainly "too little, too late", though there was one special effect from the show that was noteworthy - the time travel visual effect.  You've seen the same effect before, in Atari's Star Wars arcade game, when you destroy the Death Star.
Atari had plans to create a laserdisc game based on the show, but the project only went as far as this test footage that was assembled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUwU6dqSsQ
Notice the intro shows a similar "flying through rings" effect
Mattel nearly had the first BG video game.  Space Battle for the Intellivision (and Space Attack for the VCS) was to be that game, but someone failed to realize they only had the license for electronic games, not video games.  The graphics were left unchanged, which is why the enemy ships look like Cylon Raiders.  But BG actually influenced another game the year before - Atari's seminal Star Raiders.  The game has the player battling the Zylons, with the fighters using Star Wars' Tie-Fighters and the same BG Base Stars:

There's a great documentary about it that was done in 2003:
As well as a couple retrospect videos about the original and the BG 1980 'sequel':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af6wuq0h6Fc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RWpZlin6so
Personally I loved the show when it first came out.  Here was a show that boasted the same special effects that were in Star Wars, with ships flying around in space having laser battles.  The sequence showing a Viper ship launching and hitting Turbo was also cool to see (at first..). The main characters Apollo (perfect scifi name, given the Apollo moon missions were still recent enough) and Starbuck (basically Han Solo, complete with laser pistol) were interesting enough, not to mention the bevy of beauties that were always around them.  There was even a robotic dog (which was actually a monkey in a costume!).   The effects were done by John Dykstra - the same person who headed Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic division which created the special effects for Star Wars.  Dykstra left ILM before SW was released, and set up his own special effects company, Apogee, with a few ex-ILM folks, and the first project they worked on was BG.  Seeing screens showing squadrons of Cylons and Vipers in vector graphics was also very reminiscent of Star Wars.



The show borrowed from Fred Saberhagen's Berzerker series of stories, which tell about an ongoing war between humanity and the Berserkers - self-replicating war machines programmed with one main objective: destroy all life.  They were created by the Builders, who were humanoids with a single, 'sliding' eye.  Both found their way into Battlestar Galactica in the form of the Cylons and their Base Stars.  The Cylon's sliding red eye and monotone voice was the stuff of nightmares to a kid back then   It was a great audio and visual effect, which were used in Stern's Berzerk (the sliding red eye also appeared again in another show, Knight Rider).
It's a shame the series was cancelled after 1 season, but watching the show years later, it's not hard to see why it was cancelled.  After seeing the same handful of special effects footage shown repeatedly, and the same Viper ship launching and "turbo-ing",  you realize where most of the budget went (ironically, Dykstra left ILM over Lucas being upset with the effects being over budget and over time.  Have to wonder if the same issues doomed BG).  Plus the stories run the gambit from very entertaining to very poor.  The followup (BG 1980) was just awful, save for maybe the last episode (featuring Starbuck and the Cylons), which was certainly "too little, too late", though there was one special effect from the show that was noteworthy - the time travel visual effect.  You've seen the same effect before, in Atari's Star Wars arcade game, when you destroy the Death Star.
Atari had plans to create a laserdisc game based on the show, but the project only went as far as this test footage that was assembled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUwU6dqSsQ
Notice the intro shows a similar "flying through rings" effect
Mattel nearly had the first BG video game.  Space Battle for the Intellivision (and Space Attack for the VCS) was to be that game, but someone failed to realize they only had the license for electronic games, not video games.  The graphics were left unchanged, which is why the enemy ships look like Cylon Raiders.  But BG actually influenced another game the year before - Atari's seminal Star Raiders.  The game has the player battling the Zylons, with the fighters using Star Wars' Tie-Fighters and the same BG Base Stars:

It's the same basic strategy used for the original arcade version.

It's the same basic strategy used for the original arcade version.

182,000
I use the tried-and-true strategy of turning and going in reverse.  Don't let the tanks get behind you, no matter what.  Keep them off to the sides.  When you see a shot fly past you, that's when you turn to shoot them.

182,000
I use the tried-and-true strategy of turning and going in reverse.  Don't let the tanks get behind you, no matter what.  Keep them off to the sides.  When you see a shot fly past you, that's when you turn to shoot them.

182,000
I use the tried-and-true strategy of turning and going in reverse.  Don't let the tanks get behind you, no matter what.  Keep them off to the sides.  When you see a shot fly past you, that's when you turn to shoot them.

182,000
I use the tried-and-true strategy of turning and going in reverse.  Don't let the tanks get behind you, no matter what.  Keep them off to the sides.  When you see a shot fly past you, that's when you turn to shoot them.

http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/classifieds/o2carts.html

http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/classifieds/o2carts.html

3-D Rubik's Cube - 250 copies were made.
Actionauts - 250 numbered copies were made, with an additional 50 "unnumbered" copies (but from what I've heard, those are numbered as well).
Boulder Dash - 250 copies were made.
Bouncin' Baby Bunnies - 60 copies in first run.
Good Luck, Charlie Brown - 50 copies were made.
Halo 2600 - 130 copies were originally sold at CGE2K10 with a black label.
Lasercade - 100 copies were made.
Racer - 75 copies were made.
CGE releases: Bugs Bunny, Combat Two, Crack'ed, Elevator Action, The Entity, Looping, Pick Up, RealSports Basketball, Snow White - 250 copies of each were made.
VideoSoft releases: 3-D Genesis, 3-D Ghost Attack, 3-D Havoc, Atom Smasher, Depth Charge, S.A.C. Alert - 100 copies of each were made.