MaximumRD

THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ATARI DISTRIBUTOR
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
 
  Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the eighth entry of what will be my personal Blog, sharing small slices of life with you from around the Twin Cities and from within my Lab. For those who are new to Atari I/O let me introduce myself: My name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and I am the world's oldest surviving Atari dealer. You may have heard of me before as Video 61 Atari Sales which I have consistently operated since 1983 and I have been at it now for over 40 years!
Before we jump right into the story of the Atari XE Mario Bros. cartridges, let’s take a giant step back and see the big picture of how Atari was ran in those years. Have I ever told you about the 400 400 computers? Well, in one of Atari’s warehouses around Sunnyvale they stumbled upon 400 Atari 400 computers they still had brand new in the box, that they had inherited from Warner. This was in the early 1990s during the time of the Atari Lynx when Jack Tramiel ran the show with his three sons. When this happened, Jack’s people at Atari called up and wanted to know if Bruce, Brad and I wanted to go in on this together and buy out their remaining inventory of 400 400 computers. We said “YES! We’ll be there to get them the next day.” - But that’s not what ended up happening. More on that one in a minute…
 

 
It had come down from Jack that this was the only way they would sell to us. Let me tell you how expensive it was for Atari to process an order - it cost them about $125 to write out a single invoice. And you have to understand, even under what Jack had done to Atari, his austerity measures, cutting down their workforce by over 80%, it was still a huge company. Efficiency experts had figured out that for Atari to write out one invoice and ship an order, it was $125, regardless if it was one video game cartridge or 100. This wasn’t the shipping expense, this was Atari’s time and labor. So when you’d send in an order to Atari for one 2600 game or one 7800 game, a new joystick or something like that, it cost Atari $125 to fulfill the order in time and labor - for someone to write out your order, for someone else to find your game in a warehouse, for a worker to pack it, label it, and ship it to you. For it to cost them $125 to fulfill an order for a $15 cartridge, Atari went in the hole. They’d lose money, and Jack wouldn’t have that. That’s why when you’d pick up the phone and call Atari in those days for a cartridge order or service repair, they sluffed that off onto me because it cost them too much money to do it themselves, although it shouldn't have. It was much easier and much less expensive for them to just answer the phone. It became a very expensive thing.
 
 
 

"Many of the people who try to pry information out of me, like the Vice guy who ran the hit piece on Brad, have this idea in their head that Atari only had one warehouse. NO THEY DID NOT. They had MULTIPLE warehouses around the world, and it was expensive to have all these employees and insurance, air conditioning and electricity, property upkeep, taxes, everything needed to keep those warehouses going day in and day out. It's expensive for me too."
@Video 61 
 
 
 
Jack Tramiel never looked at video games as a premium. He looked at games as too costly, too much money to develop, publish, warehouse, retail. And of course that’s how he made money, but he just didn’t understand it. He thought it was all hardware sales and games were up to third party developers who were left all on their own. "Here's a Jaguar and a dev kit, you go do it." Jack would do everything he could to sluff off sales onto other places like Federated electronics stores, which Jack Tramiel owned through Atari Corporation from 1987 - 1989. Jack used Federated as a way to directly retail warehouse loads of Atari merchandise almost into the 1990s and beyond, especially overstock remaining from the Warner Communications days:
 
 
“Business is war” Jack said. I’m sure every little boy or little girl buying Mario Bros. understood that. They were so eager to make me a distributor - “We need somebody in the midwest to help us out, we made a lot of mistakes” - and me not having been a distributor before and not knowing the ins and outs, of course I said YES. Boy, I had no idea just what I was in for.
 
 
 

"I didn’t realize they were setting me up to be not just an Atari Distributor and Service Department for them, but also a public relations sort of thing for them too. You wouldn’t believe how many invoices I wrote for $9.95 power supplies and TV switch boxes. $10 orders that would’ve cost Atari $125 or more to fulfill. So just think about all the money I saved them, and I think that’s one of the reasons why they looked so fondly on me and didn’t want to burn me, because if they had burned me then I would’ve been just like everybody else. Everybody else got burned but us."
@Video 61 
 
 
 
Just to give you some sort of idea how Jack managed things and micromanaged almost every aspect of the business: This one time, one of the developers who was working on one of the Jaguar CD games (I can’t remember which one) needed more blank CD-Rs for testing the game. This was a game that Atari had over $1 million bucks tied up into developing. This was before CD-Rs were in peoples' homes and spindles of CD-Rs would not have been commonplace yet in stores like Office Max, CompUSA, or Sam's Club, but they should’ve been available within a place like Atari.
 

 
The programmer went up to the office manager and requisitioned more blank CD-Rs for testing and development, expecting that there’d be a spindle of them somewhere. “We don’t have any” the office manager told him. The programmer thought the manager didn’t understand what he was asking for. “What do you mean, this is a million dollar game with a deadline and I’m under pressure to get this done. When are you going to get them in?” Manager said “I don’t know, Jack’s waiting for a sale.” So he held up production on these games waiting for one of his suppliers to have a sale on blank CD-ROMs, and only then would he okay the office manager buying them. That’s called micromanagement, and it’s not something the President or CEO or Chairperson of a company that size should be doing.
 

 
POW! Losing Sleep Over A Plumber And A Trucker
So the Mario Bros. story: There was another time when there were 1,500 brand new Atari XE Mario Bros. cartridges sitting at Atari new in the box, being offered to me and I wasn’t able to get them. I’m still sick over that one. I had accepted Atari's offer for me to purchase the Mario Bros. cartridges and they slipped through my fingers like sand.
You really don’t know what “pinching pennies” means until you hear this stuff Jack Tramiel used to do. He did this sort of stuff all the time. I still lose sleep over this XE Mario thing. This is a story that should be told, though. Atari had me as a distributor supplying foreign Atari dealers. I was told it was cheaper for Jack to have me deal with these Atari dealers in Latin America and Europe than for Atari to do it themselves. But if you knew some of the reasons why, you’d be stunned, because he’d probably have made more money directly dealing with these people.
 
 
 

"I was on the phone with Atari as much as ten to twenty times a day, if not more. It was a constant barrage."
@Video 61 
 
 
 
You see, one of the ongoing things was Jack didn’t like dealing with all these dealers and distributors - he just wanted to deal with a couple of them. I don’t know why. It's how Jack did business. So I had Atari’s inventory and I was watching it GO-GO-GO. It sold well, and of course I had access to all of that stuff and the ability to buy more directly from Atari. But I couldn’t buy it all, because of course there were millions of cartridges. So I was trying to buy up the cartridges that were going faster because I knew those were good games. And Mario Bros. was one of them, especially the version that had been released for the Atari XE. Atari wisely made this Mario Bros. for the XE, and there was still a huge userbase for the Atari 8-bit computer from before Jack took over that would love to have a Mario Bros. game for their Atari XL computer too. So I put an order in for a couple of master cartons of Mario Bros. cartridges for Atari XE. That’s 72 cartridges to a master carton. I receive them at my warehouse and they sell through quickly. I come back later to order more from Atari, and another huge chunk of XE Mario Bros. cartridges are gone from their inventory. They were going fast!
 

 
One time I went to order some and there were only 1,500 left. “I’ll take them all...” I said to the person from Atari the phone, "...everything you have left." Atari came back and said “Well there’s something here you might be unaware of about those Mario Bros. cartridges.” I said “Well, what are they?” and they said “Those games are locked up in semi truck trailers in our lot.” Okay, fine. I asked that they open the semi truck trailers up and take them out - “We can’t do that” she said, “because they are parked against each other, bumper to bumper, so you can’t open them.” Hmm, okay. I said “Well get a truck and move them.” Atari responds: “Oh we can ’t do that.” I asked why. “Oh Jack won’t let us, that will cost money.” Me: “Well how do I get them then?” Atari: “Well you’ll have to hire a trucking company to come in and do this. You’re just going to have to do this on your own. Once the trucking company comes in and moves the trailers apart and we can get into them, then we will call you back and tell you what cartridges we have, but for sure we have 1,500 new Mario Bros. for the XE game machine. What else is in there we’re not exactly sure.”
 
 
 

"Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. Here I am on the phone ready to buy 1,500 Mario Bros. cartridges directly from Atari, who wants to sell them to me, but are held back by Jack’s penny-pinching policies. Spend a dollar to save a penny. This is just how things were ran. This is the reality of things that I dealt with day in and day out."
@Video 61 
 
 
 
So to get access to the Mario Bros. games in the semi trailer, I have to go and hire a trucking company myself, to go do the work for Atari. Remember the $125 it cost Atari per invoice to fulfill an order? Not only was Atari not paying for the trucking company to come do the work, they were having me do all the legwork with making arrangements with the trucking companies, so that Atari didn't have to pay their employees to do it themselves. That's a cost saving measure. 
I called some trucking companies here in Minnesota to see if they had anybody out in California who could do this for me. Yeah, some of them had some guys available out there near Sunnyvale, CA - but this wasn’t over yet, it would take some time. The trucking companies came back and said YES, they could do the job of going out to Atari, hooking their truck up to the trailers and pulling them apart - but I’d have to pay for the licensing and insurance, yada yada yada, pay for the truck drivers to go in there, move things around, unhook the trailers, and then let Atari go in and take inventory and wait for DAYS. So I would have to pay for the truck and the driver, for all of those days, until they are done with Atari going through everything and taking inventory. For every minute of every day they are doing that, I would be charged by the trucking company to sit and wait. So you can only imagine how much that was going to cost me.
 
 

 
This took some doing, but I got it all sorted out. I called Atari back, and said the expense of the trucking company could cost me $5,000 - $10,000 dollars. In those days that was the price of a nice new American car. Atari said “Don’t worry about it. Jack got mad and we just trashed it all. We sent the semi trailer full of games off to the scrappers.” I said “Well then you had to hire a trucking company to come in and do the work.” Atari: “Yeah we did. But the thing about it is we didn’t have to have any of our Atari employees inventory anything. The truck drivers just pulled the trailers apart and hauled it away. We didn’t have to spend money on employees doing inventory.” You got to remember those trailers were rented also, so by throwing the Mario Bros. games in the dump not only did they avoid having to pay the expense of employees inventorying the games, they also didn’t have to pay the rental on the trailers anymore or the taxes on the inventory. That was "Jackthink".
 
 
 

"When I say 'Bruce and Brad' I'm referring to my old colleagues, Bruce is Bruce Carso of B&C ComputerVisions, and Brad is Brad Koda of Best Electronics. The three of us have operated independently in the Atari business for many, many years, and we dealt directly with Atari every day. Yes, Bruce and Brad are my 'competitors' but not really, we each have a speciality: Mine is games, Brad is parts, and Bruce is mostly computers."
@Video 61 
 
 
 
People think the E.T. in the garbage dump in New Mexico story is bad. This was insane, I still can’t believe it. Jack would rather manufacture cartridges to just sit unsold, parked in a hot trailer in a parking lot, and then throw a truckload of brand new Mario Bros. games in the garbage - than to spend a few extra pennies inventorying the games so he could sell them to me and have plenty of room for him to make a profit in the end. This is how this guy thought, it was just beyond unbelievable.
In the end, Brad, Bruce and I managed to get all the 7800s out of Atari and we managed to get what was left over of the Lynx stuff except for 10,000+ units sitting in Hong Kong that needed to be repaired. I may have gotten some of them, I don’t remember it’s so long ago, whatever happened to the bulk of them. Brad doesn’t have them, Bruce doesn’t have them, and I don't know what happened to the rest of them but, that will be a story for another day.
 

 
Oh, and what happened to the 400 400 computers you ask? Well when we went there the next day ready to buy them and load up the truck, Atari had already tossed them into the dumpsters and the dumpster divers and scrappers got them for $ZERO. Most of the Atari 400 computers went to the scrappers because if the dumpster divers had gotten them we would’ve known immediately. Many of the dumpster divers at Atari would call us up immediately, because they knew they could only sell them to flea market type things one or two at a time, and it was easier for them to call me, Bruce, and Brad, and try to get money out of us because they knew we’d buy a bunch of them. And they were right.
This was Jack saving money. Instead of waiting a day or two for me to get everything organized, it was “Well we don’t need the labor, we don’t need the added expense of paying more employees to do more work, just get rid of the computers now.” That’s the way things operated under Jack. It was ran as a feudal system with Jack as King and his three sons as Princes. They wouldn’t wait five minutes, they’d just ask if you wanted it or didn’t. Sometimes Atari wouldn’t even ASK if you wanted it or not, they’d just ship it to me. Things would arrive on trucks to my warehouse that I didn’t order, or ask for, or knew anything about. Jack would decide to get rid of something and use Lance as his dump. That’s how I ended up with so many random things out of Atari that I’m still uncovering and have to make heads or tails out of. (See my recent series of Blog posts titled “Raiders of the Lost EPROMs”.) That was the frustrating problem - there’s quite a bit of Atari stuff that I have no idea what it was or asked for, and some of the Atari stuff I wanted bad went to the scrappers or the dumpster. Had I been able to purchase them back then, today they'd all be in the hands of loyal Atari players out there like you, instead of in the dump.
 
Thanks for reading,
- Lance  
 
Please visit me online for more at www.atarisales.com

I redesigned all the levels in the Hamburgers game for the Game Gear. I think I'm done with that game.
I went back to work to see if I could get rid of the scanline issue I had with Fruit Fly Fun for the Atari 2600. I think I did.

I played it on an Atari 7800 and I was surprised that a 6 button Genesis controller works, only fire is B. So now I'll continue work on some of my other projects.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Always Player 1's Turn
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Always Player 2's Turn 
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Revolutionary.
This word is tossed around a lot when it comes to NES games. Indeed, a lot of NES games were groundbreaking titles unlike anything else people had seen on the Atari 2600, Colecovision, or any other system prior to 1985. Super Mario Brothers was revolutionary because it offered a game with a size unlike 99% of the previous generation's games. Zelda was revolutionary because it had a massive open world with secrets to explore in every nook in cranny, offering an adventure so vast that it had a battery installed in the game to save one's progress across multiple sessions without the need of a password. But what if we took both these games and mixed them together? We perhaps get the most influential game Nintendo has ever published on the NES. This is Metroid.

Metroid was unlike anything else when it came out in 1986 for the Famicom Disk System. It barely had any precedent at all on home consoles at that point. The game had no score at all. It didn't even have levels (even Zelda had those to an extent). No, Metroid was truly a world you could explore to your heart's content. It seemed like there were secrets hidden everywhere, like there was no end to the game at all. Nowadays, the map of Metroid seems tiny, but back then it seemed to be a massive, sprawling, never-ending adventure.
You start Metroid in the middle of a place called Brinstar. You control the little orange-and-red "space robot". He can jump shoot up, left, and right. He can't duck, he can't shoot down, he can't jump on enemies or shoot farther than a few feet from himself. In other words, you seem very limited and outmatched at this point in the game. Enemies are too close to the ground to be shot. You only start with thirty health and die in just a few hits. This is intentional.
You head right, as anyone in 1986 or 1987 coming off of Super Mario Brothers would. Enemies crawl around the ground and swoop down at the space robot (maybe he's named Metroid?). You find out that shooting the blue hatches opens them and allows you to go into the next room. You keep heading right until...

What's this? You're officially stuck. Remember, "Metroid" as we're calling him now can't crawl or duck, and the passage is too short to walk under. You TRY to duck under this passage, but pressing the down arrow doesn't seem to do anything at all. This means, at this point, there's absolutely no way to clear it. Out of desperation, you move left and realize that unlike Super Mario before it, Metroid allows you to go left. And if you keep going left, past the point in the game you started at, you'll find this:

The game pauses for a moment as a jingle plays. This is the Morph Ball, sometimes called the Morphing Ball or Maru-Mari. The game doesn't show you what this strange ball-shaped item does with a text box or anything. It doesn't even tell you what the name of it is. But after collecting it, you'll soon find out that the passage you entered this place with is too high up for Metroid to jump to. The passage below you is too small to walk under either. So you try to duck again by pressing down on the D-Pad again, and this time something happens. That strange sphere seems to allow you to turn into a ball once collected! Now you can roll under the passage and get out of the area you got the item in. You immediately remember the narrow passage from earlier and start running right again, and this time, you're able to clear it. Then, Metroid truly starts.
After this experience, you find out that Metroid is no Super Mario Brothers. This is a game you're going to have to pay more attention to. A game where you're going to have to spend countless hours looking for secrets that help you progress further in the game. You'll find obstacle after obstacle; blocks you can't break because you can't shoot down, red hatches impervious to your beam, areas too high to jump too, etc. Eventually, you'll find items like the Bombs, which are in Morph Ball mode and can be used to break blocks below you, Missiles that take out enemies quicker and let you open those red doors, and High-Jump Boots that let you jump higher than before. The Metroidvania genre is born.
Let's back up a bit. What are you supposed to do in this game? Basically, there's a group of space pirates on the planet Zebes who are using and breeding life-sucking, jellyfish-like creatures called Metroids (yeah, you're not actually named Metroid, like how Link isn't named Zelda) to try to take over the galaxy. The galactic police have sent the bounty hunter Samus Aran (that's Metroid's real name) to defeat the space pirates alone. The brain behind the operation (pun intended) is the "mechanical life-vein" Mother Brain, who is basically a cybernetic supercomputer with extensive databases and networks throughout the planet. Her two main henchmen are the "mini-bosses" Kraid and Ridley, who live in their own lairs below Brinstar and Norfair respectively. While exploring the early parts of the game, you'll most likely come across a room with two statues and an inescapable pool of lava should you fall in. This is the road to Tourian, Mother Brain and the Metroids' hideout and the final area of the game. You'll need to come back to this place once you kill Kraid and Ridley. Then, once you shoot their now-flashing statues, a bridge will be built leading to the final stretch of the game. But first, you'll need to find them, which is easier said than done.
Now is a good time to mention that the original Metroid on Famicom and NES didn't have a built in map. The game has five main areas to explore: Brinstar, a hub that connects most of the places together and is also the area you start out in, the firey Norfair, Kraid's and Ridley's lairs, and Tourian. That's quite a bit to keep in mind while playing, and in 1986 and 87, there was no Google to look for maps on. Your best bet was to draw out your own as you went along, or get Nintendo Power once that became a thing. That wouldn't be much of a problem if the game was easy to navigate on your own. Metroid requires you to take random shots in the dark until something works. For example, you may need to bomb a completely random floor tile in a random room that looks just like the hundreds of other floor tiles you've seen in the game to access a route to a boss's lair, or shoot out a random ceiling to access a crucial item. That's bad on its own, but Metroid also likes to blatantly copy/paste rooms over and over again. In Kraid's lair, for example, there are over a HALF-DOZEN rooms in the first shaft of the game that start out IDENTICALLY! This makes the game very frustrating to navigate around blindly, and coupling that with tougher enemies that hit harder in the later areas means that you'll end up dying a lot without making much progress.
And that leads to another thing: dying. Dying in Metroid is brutal. Throughout the game, you can find energy tanks that increase your max health by 100 HP. Despite that, however, every time you die Metroid will start you off at the beginning of the area you died in with only 30 HP, the same amount you started with when you first arrived on Zebes. That means that you'll have to spend dozens of minutes of your time shooting enemies and grinding the health refills they occasionally drop. Each health pickup restores 5 HP, and the drop rates are very, very low. You'll likely spend your time standing in one spot next to an enemy spawner holding down the B button to shoot until you collect enough health to continue on exploring. There are no other ways to recharge your energy or missiles. This happens every single time you die, and you don't stand a snowball's chance in Norfair surviving unless you grind for health. The energy tanks do refill your health to the max, but there are only a few of them in the game and once you run out of them, you'll have to grind. This is EASILY the worst part about this game. Metroid is brutal, with hard-hitting enemies, instant death pits, and cheap deaths aplenty (you can even get killed during room transitions). This sucks the fun right out of the game for many people. I've gotten to the point where I almost never die in a playthrough, but even if you load up your game via a password you STILL start with 30 health and have to grind. This isn't fun. It's just padding.

Throughout your journey, you'll find many more items to help you reach places you couldn't before. I've already mentioned the Missiles, Energy Tanks, High-Jump Boots, and Bombs, but there are much more than just that. Alongside Samus's peashooter he gets at the beginning of the game, he gets three more basic guns. The Long Beam is the only beam in the game that stacks on top of others in the game. This simply allows Samus's bullets to travel across the entire length of the screen instead of disappearing a few feet from his face. The other two beams, the Ice Beam and the Wave Beam, can't be used with each other. The ice beam will temporarily freeze enemies and allow Samus to use them as platforms, though they require twice as many shots to kill. The Wave Beam can travel through solid objects and travels in a sine wave pattern, finally allowing Samus to shoot the ground-based enemies shorter than him. Sadly though, the Wave Beam is somewhat pointless in the game as the toughest enemies in the game, the eponymous Metroids, can only be disposed of once frozen and shot with five missiles. Speaking of missiles, they are completely separate from the beam weapons. Missiles, unlike the beams, have limited ammo. You can increase your maximum amount of missiles you can carry by collecting more missile tanks scattered about the world, each one bumping the limit up by five. These missiles become quite important when it comes to the bosses and the final area of the game. You simply press the select button to toggle between the beams and missiles, and that's as advanced as inventory management gets in this game.
You also have items like that Varia Suit and Screw Attack. These are completely optional and good bonuses for those who were able to find them. The Screw Attack charges your running jump with electricity, allowing Samus to instantly kill almost anything just by jumping into it. The Varia Suit (which can be seen in the second picture) is a pink palette swap of Samus that simply doubles his defense. The suit will become much more utilized in later games, but here it simply acts as a defense boost.
Let's talk about those mini-bosses, Mother Brain's henchmen Kraid and Ridley. Technically, you're supposed to fight Kraid first, but the game is so open-ended and nonlinear that you can fight them in any order without the game stopping you. Kraid's lair is incredibly hard to navigate. The enemies do a ton of damage and the layout of the place is so confusing that it's nearly impossible to find Kraid without a map. It's so BS that you even find a fake version of the boss. Who does that? EVENTUALLY, you will find the real Kraid, though. He's easily the harder of the two. He'll shoot spikes out of his stomach and through his toenails at you without mercy. The best plan of attack here is to freeze the center spike in place, drop into Morph Ball mode, and spam bombs that'll hopefully blow up in his face. Hopefully you'll have enough energy to damage-boost your way through the fight and have Kraid die before you do. When he dies, you'll get 75 more missiles and begin the worst section in the game.
There is a tower in the chasm that leads to Kraid's boss room made completely of breakable blocks. This tower is no wider than one block and goes up for several screens. You have to shoot a hole in the block tower, shoot the blocks above you, and keep jumping until the blocks respawn below your feet. This requires precise timing and persistence, as if the blocks respawn ON TOP OF you, you'll take damage and be knocked back, falling off the impossibly high tower and having to start all over again. This is outright terrible game design. I have the timing down now that I've played the game for years, but initially this seemed completely impossible. This has absolutely no reason to be in the game other than to pad the length and frustrate players. You're better off committing suicide back at Kraid's room and respawning back at the beginning of his lair.

Navigating through Norfair will eventually lead you to Ridley's lair. His lair is a lot more straightforward and less labyrinthine than Kraid's, but the enemies are even more aggressive and dangerous to make up for it. Once you find Ridley, he's super easy. Simply freeze his fireballs midair (he won't shoot more until they unfreeze) and pump him full of missiles. Then he just dies and you get 75 more missiles. Yeah, if you couldn't tell, these first two bosses are terrible. This is one of the most broken boss fights in any game I've ever seen. I don't think I've died to this guy a single time before. But that's okay. The game more than makes up for it in just a few minutes.
Before we get to that though, I want to tell you all about what this game means to me.
One of my first games ever was Super Metroid, and it immediately became my favorite game. I was only four or five years old (I can't remember if it was 2010 or late 2009) when I started playing it with my dad (he did most of the playing anyways), and that experience really influenced my gaming tastes for the future. We did get stuck a few times, though, and used YouTube walkthroughs to help us. Sometimes the tab would be open and I would click around YouTube and watch the videos that they played. I couldn't really read at the time and just clicked the videos based on the thumbnails. Thankfully I didn't find any naughty things I shouldn't have been watching, thank God. What I did find was a different Metroid game. This game looked AWESOME to me back when I was little. It looked like Super Metroid, but the graphics weren't as good. I really wanted to play it. I assumed, based on the inferior graphics, that it was an older game, but I thought at the time it was the original Metroid. I now know it was actually Metroid 2 played on a Game Boy Player. So my dad, bless his soul, persuaded his brother to give me his old NES and went to the now-long-defunct Star Video and bought a used copy of Metroid for me. This was back in the day when you could buy expensive NES games like Metroid and Castlevania for like five dollars, which is what he paid for those two games. Only one problem though: the NES didn't work. At all. It was in the shop being repaired for what seemed like an eternity, and I spent much of my time laying on the sunroom floor, staring at that silver Metroid cartridge, waiting for the day to play it.
When the NES finally was fixed, I eagerly popped in the game once my dad set the system up, and... I got this. I was completely wrong; the Metroid I wanted was actually the SECOND game, not the first! I was only disappointed for a second though. I really liked this game. I was terrible at it but I played it a lot. Though I still really wanted to play Metroid II, but it would be five years before I would have the chance to.
My dad started up a caramel business in 2013 for reasons I don't want to get into here. He leased out a building that used to be a diner called The Villa to use the commercial kitchen in to make the caramel and sell it at farmers markets. Nothing was sold out of the building, so my sister and I had the entire front of it to ourselves. The front of The Villa was a piece of garbage, though the kitchen was perfectly fine. Every spring there would be a giant puddle of water in the middle of the place, and during the winter there would be no heating or anything. There were also no bathrooms. My parents didn't trust us kids home alone yet, so we had to stay there for hours at a time while my dad and his business partner Jon (same Jon as Atari Jon) made stuff. Our only entertainment was a couple of my sister's Barbies, the NES, and like seven games. One of which was Metroid. I remember playing that game quite a bit there and I have fond memories of repeatedly starting new games and telling myself I was going to beat it this time, only to get stuck in Kraid's lair and quit every single time. Still, it's a fond memory.
I eventually got good enough at this game and beat it, though I gave in and used a map. I think I was 11 when I did this on the 3DS Virtual Console. Nowadays I can beat the game effortlessly with a map and well enough without one. I have had a map of this game and its direct sequel hanging on my wall for years now. I do love this game, though I will admit it has not stood the test of time.
Anyways, let's see what Samus is doing.
As you leave Norfair and make your way back to the statue room, you realize how powerful Samus has become. Rooms that you once struggled with now are cakewalks. As you climb the same vertical shaft you did at the start of the game to get to Tourian, you feel really good about how far you've come. As soon as you shoot the statues and build the bridge, though, that feeling of power turns into one of pure dread and helplessness.

 This is Tourian, the final area of the game.That green thing is a Metroid, this game's namesake. These are the toughest enemies in the game by far. They dart towards Samus with unparalleled speed and latch on to him, rapidly sucking his energy away. The only way to escape is to lay down bombs and hope the Metroid loses its grip. To kill one, Samus must freeze one with the Ice Beam and shoot it with missiles five times. Metroids are always generous enough to drop loads of missiles and energy when they die. And you'll need every bit of them you can get for the final battle.

This is the final battle. Before this, Samus must shoot down several "Zebetite" barriers that can only be destroyed by missiles, which is a pain in itself. The fight against Mother Brain, though, stands alongside the block tower as the most frustrating part of the game. You'll need all the energy you can get to stand a chance here. The floor is lava and the platforms are small. Cheerio-like Rinkas and acid turrets are shooting at you as you try to pump Mother Brain full of missiles. These nearly-unavoidable attacks will send Samus into the lava, which is very hard to get out of. And remember, if you die here, it's back to the start of Tourian with only thirty health. Eventually though, you'll blow up Mother Brain, who will set off a self-destruct sequence that'll blow Tourian to smithereens. The last room of the game involves Samus climbing to the top of a large shaft on tiny platforms while a timer ticks away. If you make it to the top of the elevator and have beat the game fast enough, you'll see one of the most shocking moments in video game history:

 
SAMUS IS A GIRL?!?!
This came as a shock to many back in the day. You almost never saw a woman in the leading role of a game before. In most games at the time, women were the damsels in distress meant to be saved by a male character, like Princess Peach or Zelda. They were almost never badass, awesome space bounty hunters. The game's manual even keeps this a secret by referring to Samus using only male pronouns, which is why I used them in this blog up to this point. This game was incredibly progressive at the time, not just for influence but for women's representation in games. And though the whole goal of "beating the game faster so more suit comes off" isn't GREAT by today's standards, I suppose you have got to walk before you can run.
So that's the end of Metroid. Has it aged well?
NO.
This game is frustrating in almost every way possible. I might like it, but I would never, NEVER recommend this game to someone playing the series for the first time. To the right kind of person, though, I'd recommend this game with a map. For most, though, Metroid is nothing more than a historical curiosity for those who just want to see where the series started.

In 2004, however, Metroid recieved a full, ground-up remake for the GBA: Metroid Zero Mission. I won't be going into too much detail with this game (I might cover it more in the future), but I will say that it does improve almost everything from the original. The map is incredibly faithful to the original game, but slightly different, though that has the unfortunate side effect of making the game incredibly short. There are now save rooms and places to recharge your health and ammo. The secrets are more well-hidden and the levels better designed. The bosses are actually bosses this time, and there's more of them. Items and abilities from Samus's later adventures are here too. It even has a special surprise twist at the end. This game is pretty good and completely replaces the original, even going as far as including the original game as an unlockable when you beat the game on any difficulty.
Zero Mission, unlike the original game, is a GREAT place to start with the 2D Metroid series. A little too great. You see, I actually don't care much for this game because I feel that it thinks I'm stupid. Metroid Zero Mission, to ME at least, seems like "Baby's First Metroid". Unless I'm trying to collect everything, I don't think this game is much better than "good". I seem to be the only person to think that, though, so please don't listen to me and play it.
And that wraps up Metroid and its remake. These games are good, don't get me wrong, but as far as the 2D Metroid series goes, every other game in the series beats them to a pulp. I still pull out Metroid every few months and have a blast with it, and Zero Mission has been growing on me more and more the past few months since I got a repro cart for my GBA. All the 2D Metroids are great games, but these two are slightly less great than the rest, at least to me. This shows us, though, that there is a lot more to look forward to in the series. And that's coming very soon.
Next week: Metroid's flaws are ironed out in my favorite Game Boy game, and Samus starts two new eras of 2D Metroid twenty-six years apart.
 
I hope you are enjoying Month of Metroid so far. This took me a long time to write! Hopefully you guys like this and consider trying out the Metroid series. It's not my favorite series ever without a reason.

THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ATARI DISTRIBUTOR
Monday, September 18, 2023
 
  Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the third entry of what will be my personal blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab. For those who are new to Atari I/O let me introduce myself. My name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and I am the world's oldest surviving Atari dealer. You may have heard of me before as Video 61 Atari Sales which I have consistently operated since 1983 and I have been at it now for  more than 40 years!
I need to update my website about my longevity. I always have so much to do. Anyway, with everything going on in the Atari world right now, I had some thoughts from these 40 something years as an Atari dealer that I wanted to share with you. I have now survived at least FOUR incarnations of “Atari”. I started as an Atari dealer in 1983 under Atari, Inc. - “Warner’s Atari.” I really didn’t know anyone there.
 

Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications in 1983. Steve Ross is not often spoken of within the Atari community, but it was Steve Ross who bought Atari from Nolan Bushnell, who both hired and fired Ray Kassar, who single handedly took control of Atari in 1983 often showing up in person to run the company, who ultimately sought out Jack Tramiel with a deal to take Atari off his hands, and who orchestrated the Time-Warner merger.
 
WARNER'S ATARI
Atari dealers at the time were contacted and supported by dealer representatives who were supported by Warner Communications and would occasionally stop by the stores. I had a good one that supplied me with lots of dealer cartridges, floppy disks, and promotional materials. This is essentially the same way PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo support their retailers today, with reps who go into the stores to update the demo games in kiosks and make sure there’s current promotional signage in the stores. They usually have goodies to give to the workers too.
One day my Atari dealer rep came into my store and announced “This might be the last time I see you. A new owner is taking over… everything is up in the air, and the rumor is he does not support his operations in… let’s say… “a traditional way.”
That was Jack Tramiel, later on affectionately known as “Jack".
He was right. That was the last time I ever saw my friendly dealer rep, and I never heard another word from Atari until the Atari ST computer was released.
 
 
Alan Alda from the popular TV show M*A*S*H* was a celebrity spokesperson for Atari Home Computers during the Warner Communications era of Atari. (1984)
All high-paid celebrity endorsements were dropped when Jack Tramiel took over.
 
One day out of the blue I received a packet along with an Atari ST with some software. Gone were the days of glossy print ads in National Geographic, and sophisticated TV commercials with Alan Alda, the popular actor who played “Hawkeye” on the top TV show M*A*S*H* and was Atari’s spokesperson. The Atari ST that I was sent came with the instructions that - as a dealer - it was up to ME to educate my customers about the new Atari ST computer line, and it was up to ME to support and sell the machine as support from Atari would be minimal. STUNNING, to say the least.
This began the second incarnation of “Atari” - Atari Corporation, or Atari Corp., - “Jack’s Atari”. This was the incarnation of Atari that I was most involved in, and had a lot of day-to-day interaction with. That was sometime in 1985.
 
JACK'S ATARI
I did not hear from Atari again until 1986 or possibly 1987. It’s been so long that it’s difficult to remember the exact timeline, but around that time I received a letter from Atari Corporation with a hefty “release schedule” of games lined up for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, and Atari XEGS. I was impressed! For nearly two years it was crickets out of Atari, and finally we were receiving real support and a commitment for new games.
At the time, the only real major supporter of the Atari 2600 was Activision. It felt like they were the only kid on the block. Atari had been quiet, and most other third party publishers like Imagic, Coleco, M-Network and Parker Bros. hadn’t survived the crash. Activision was still with us though, and at Video 61 Kung-Fu Masters, Ghostbusters, and Pitfall II were serious strong sellers.
 

Jack Tramiel with the Atari ST
 
When I received the new release schedule from Atari, I thought “Hey, maybe the new owners figured it out!” There was still plenty of life left in Atari, even for the 2600, which I could see in my stores. To my dismay, many of Atari’s newly announced titles never came even close to being released on time, or worse - never came at all!
This was very frustrating because I could see the demand for new Atari stuff and yet the Atari potential was being pissed away. There’s this common belief that “The Atari 7800 was released in 1986.” That’s not really true. I had received a few 7800s from Warner’s Atari Inc. in 1984, and they sold quickly. This was in Minnesota, not California or New York City. I never got a thing from Atari again until 1986.
So as Nintendo took America by storm with Mario, Zelda and Metroid on the NES, and with Atari being run so poorly, I thought the jig was up.
 
 

"When I received the new release schedule from Atari, I thought 'Hey, maybe the new owners figured it out!' There was still plenty of life left in Atari, even for the 2600 which I could see in my stores. To my dismay, many of Atari's newly announced titles never came even close to being released on time, or worse - never came at all."
- Lance
 
 
Then came the fury. After defaulting on their release schedule and missing any new releases at all one Christmas season in 1988, I was outraged. I picked up the phone and called Atari. I wasn’t just a customer, I was in business with Atari as a dealer responsible for a percentage of all Atari games sold that year. I was helping make them money. When I called Atari, I was given the run around about “how hard it was to keep these games in stock” and “how hard it was to bring out new games.” I interrupted the lady and told her what she was saying was word for word what Nintendo was saying to their distributors - she broke down and agreed that what she had been instructed to say was not really the case.
Later on I came to find out about certain “business details” and “practices” that were happening under “Jack’s Atari” which made it clear to me HOW and WHY Atari had missed so many release dates, launch windows, and even lost new releases, but thats a whole other story that we will go into another time in an upcoming Blog entry.
 

Jack's Atari: This was the incarnation of Atari that I had the most day-to-day involvement with
 
I continued on the phone and was trying to be nice. It wasn’t this nice lady’s fault that she had been instructed to lie. So I asked what can be done. I was sent “upstairs" and told that Atari "had messed up and badly damaged the market" and had really had messed up in my region of the country, the upper midwest. Sales and support in our part of the country needed help, and I was asked by Atari Corp. to become a service department and distributor for Atari. I was stunned. I dealt with other Atari dealers, but it was mostly to buy or trade what was needed.
I said yes. I was blown away later on when I found out how just badly Atari had shrunk. They had lost almost 90% of their workforce. Yet the "Atari" brand still commanded household name recognition and selling power, which they underutilized thanks to certain business ideologies and practices from the Tramiel family.
Here is a link to my Atari distribution paperwork, which is hosted on my website:
 
  http://www.atarisales.com/dis.html
 
I became really enmeshed in this as Atari sent me to deal directly with third parties, who I then bought from as what’s known as “direct". During this time I got to know many good people in third party companies like Activision, Avalon Hill, S.S.I., Datasoft, Eypx, Sierra Online, Microprose and more.
As an Atari distributer I purchased immense amounts - truckloads - of games and software direct from Atari and all third parties at the time. When Atari pulled the plug, I had about 250,000 pieces of software in my warehouse. Today it’s dwindled to under 40,000 pieces left.
 

Jack Tramiel's son Sam Tramiel took over leadership of Atari in the mid-'90s with Jack's continued close involvement.
Was the Atari ST named after Sam Tramiel? Was TOS the "Tramiel Operating System?"
 

Jack Tramiel and wife Helen in their retirement years
 

Jack Tramiel traveling the world
 
HASBRO'S ATARI
After Jack Tramiel pulled the plug on Lynx, Jaguar and the Atari computers, I could see what he was doing. Sam wasn’t going to save the company, and J.T.S. Corporation - an Indian hard drive manufacturer founded after the Jaguar’s launch - acquired Atari though a “reverse merger”. (Was Atari, as an entire company, "laundered" through J.T.S. so it came out nice and clean to be able to sell to a potential buyer?)
This lead to Atari, or what IPs and documentation was left of it, being sold to Hasbro. This became the third iteration of the of Atari that I dealt with, “Hasbro’s Atari.”
When Atari was sold to Hasbro, Atari gave Hasbro a list of contacts. I was one of them. Not only for service, parts, and software, but I was also Atari Corporation’s person who interacted with movie studios and television networks. Atari no longer had the game systems, computers, many times the software and games, nor the man power to supply the entertainment industry with Atari “props” when filming a movie or tv show that was to feature Atari in it.
Atari just sent them to me for systems, computers and games, and I supplied the movie studios and television networks with what was needed, under the license agreement from Atari.
 

 
One day I got a call from Hasbro, and very arrogantly told me that they would do the supplying, and the legacy Atari market was really no interest of theirs. They were going to release new games for new platforms.
I supplied Atari items to Columbia Pictures (now Sony) Warner’s of course, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and others. I almost got some footage into one of the Alien movies, but Fox still owed me money from Fox Sports, and they could not come to agreements with “Jack". Many TV shows had my Atari stuff in it, one name I remember was The King of Queens, there was an Atari 7800 and Video Olympics if I remember right.
 

Atari 2600 and 5200 game cartridges on NBC's cult classic show Freaks and Geeks (2000)
 
Later on, my contact at Paramount studios was dismayed they could no longer get legacy Atari hardware and software for their productions, and that Hasbro’s Atari would only supply them with the newest games, which in the case of the studios and networks, was not what they wanted. I apologized to her, and said my hands were tied, "I can’t do a thing."  These people at Hasbro were clueless as to what they bought. They didn’t understand what Atari was, what they still had, or the potential even for legacy markets. Hasbro really messed up quickly, and quickly sold Atari off.
Meanwhile - almost daily - ever since “Jack” sold off Atari, I would get calls from disgruntled stock holders, former suppliers, and people who were owed money by Atari. Some even made threats of suing me, because in their eyes, I was Atari. That lasted even into the early Infogrames days, which is what came next.
 
FRENCH ATARI
The French company Infogrames Entertainment SA acquired Atari in January, 2001 as the biggest part of their purchase of Hasbro’s software division “Hasbro Interactive”, which also included MicroProse, and Hasbro’s game.com monochrome handheld system which was a joke compared to what the Atari Lynx could do, even years later, and couldn’t compete contemporaneously against Game Boy Color.
This began the fourth incarnation of Atari - “Infogrames Atari” or “French Atari” which now goes by Atari, SA. (Infogrames rebranded themselves as Atari in 2003 and began releasing games like Splashdown, Driver 2, The Matrix and Ghostbusters for modern game systems of the time.)
 

Splashdown was one of the first new "Atari" games released by Infogrames in November, 2001
The cover art featured branding for both Atari and Infogrames
 
Infogrames never contacted me period, until one day a fellow named “Wim” (not sure of the spelling…) gave me a call. I tried to enter him into my contacts database, he would not spell his name for me, and acted quite annoyed that he even had to speak with me.
I found out that Infogrames had an operation that was local to me in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Minneapolis / St. Paul, in a suburb named Plymouth I think.
“Wim” wanted to know who I was, and he was looking for certain items. He would discuss nothing, could care less about Atari’s legacy, knew that many, many people were looking for Atari service, parts, games etc., but "Wim" was only interested in my Atari 2600 power supplies, Atari 7800 power supplies, TV switch boxes and R.F. cables.
He demanded to buy them all. I said no. “What about my customers?” I retorted … let alone the legacy Atari systems that found their way to me.
 

 
"Wim" had no interest in the Atari legacy, nor the history I was privy to, and had lived through much of. "Wim" only wanted to get the people off his back who were looking for those particular legacy parts. Why?
I found this simply amazing. Here I was, and of course the two other legacy dealers (we’ll get into that in a minute) who could step in and help Atari’s legacy customers, and help guide Infogrames in making decisions around the needs and potential of the legacy market.
I thought to myself "Here we go again!” Never interacted with them directly again, only indirectly when I was contacted by a debt collector wanting to know “what happened to Atari" as they were owed money. Something I have heard about many times before before, and I thought “Man, will this ever end?”
I told the collector Atari was now located in New York, last time I heard. As it turned out the collector ended up being an old friend from high school that I hadn’t seen in decades.. small world indeed!
 
 

"'Wim' wanted to know who I was, and he was looking for certain items. He would discuss nothing, could care less about Atari's legacy, knew that many, many people were looking for Atari service, parts, games, etc. but Wim was only interested in my Atari power supplies, switch boxes and R.F. cables... Why?"
- Lance
 
 
Here we are, now well over 20 years since Infogrames acquired Atari and has become the longest owner of the name, with new products being developed - finally - around Atari’s greatest strengths - it’s legacy.
So that's the history of my involvement with the many evolving incarnations of Atari. The history in my eyes that counts the most, was the "Jack" era. The stories, what happened within those walls, what they pulled off and what they got away with - it’s almost too amazing to be true.
When "Jack" merged with J.T.S., the government would only allow the "reverse merger" to proceed if Atari kept the American market supported. That was ignored entirely, and Atari was sold to Hasbro.
The other two legacy dealers are Bruce at B&C Computervisions who started in 1984, and Brad at Best Electronics who started in 1985. I was introduced to both of them by Atari Corp.
Together, the three of us became heavily involved day to day under “Jack's" Atari. This is just a minor rundown in who I am in the Atari world, and I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences with you. Today, after over 40 years, I continue to march forward in the legacy Atari world, still providing sales and support, and developing new games which I hope will continue to entertain and dazzle Atari players for generations to come.
What comes next?
Thanks for reading,
- Lance  
 
Please visit me online for more at www.atarisales.com
 

Hello. I decided to make a blog for all my stuff I get busy working on. I have made lots of projects. I completed a lot, but I continue to make more. I live here in Oregon, which, while having a reputation for being rainy all the time, I don't find it so. It's supposed to be in the 90s this weekend.
I maintain the Atari 2600 Land, which used to be a project of mine, but I don't care about it much any more. Even so, I will NOT entertain offers from Atari about buying it. I also periodically make a periodical, an e-zine about my computer-related musings, called the Big Belch Computer News.
I have quite the menagerie of consoles, ranging from a Maganvox Odyssey to a Nintendo Switch. Sometimes I am awake all night and sleep all day, and other times I'm asleep all night and awake all day. Right now I'm awake a little after midnight here.
I used to play my Atari 2600 a lot, but not as much since i got the other retro consoles. Now I have about 350 Atari 2600 games in the pantry just sitting there collecting dust. Perhaps I should sell them.

A quick trip on a beautiful Saturday to the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville Oregon.  It's about an hour drive from my home.  This museum is most famous for housing the giant WWII Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose".  I assure you, it is huge. 
Also a picture of the author on Atari Day with an Atari shirt, relaxing in an old airline seat, a delicious lunch at a place that serves sandwiches on fresh-made bread, a sweet late 60's Ford Falcon I spotted in a parking lot, and our current sweet ride too, which looked nice in the sun. 

I consider my RETRO GAMING CORNER officially complete ! 😎🤟🧐includes 14inch TOSHIBA CRT / ColecoVision w/ AtariMax Flashcart / Retrobit SuperRetroTrio (nes, snes, genesis w/ Everdrives for each) / TG-16 w/Everdrive 😎👍as well, I can hook up the 2600 module to ColecoVision or even play Master System using the Everdrive on the RetroTrio. Happy covering 7 platforms with 3 consoles. Wanted to cover as many platforms with what I already have in the space I am limited to.

 

Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the second entry of what will be my personal blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab.
For those of you who are just getting to know me for the first time, my name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and for nearly 40 years I’ve been in the Atari business operating Video 61, one of the last surviving original retail Atari distributors. We started in the video business as a local chain of video rental stores serving the Twin Cities area with locations along U.S. Highway 61, the road that musician Bob Dylan referred to in the album and song Highway 61 Revisited. I also love classic "Drive-In" movies and spending time with my family and friends at my cabin up north.
For decades I’ve gotten to know you guys as my customers and friends, buying, selling and remanufacturing Atari systems, games, software, and computers, and developing my own line of Atari-compatible Video 61 games and controllers. I’m still in my Lab working away dreaming up new creations and shipping off new original Atari products, and I thought after all these years of being in the Atari community it was time to start sharing tidbits of Atari memories and Minnesota life with you here on my blog. To old friends and new, WELCOME!
This is my first BIG Blog post, and I wanted to talk about an interesting bit of Atari history that still applies today and can be helpful to homebrewers and independent developers like me:
To remain profitable if you don’t have the buying power that Atari did themselves you have to look at alternative ways of packing your products.
 

 

 
Having been in the Atari business for decades and running Video 61 as an independent company for nearly 40 years, I began selling Atari products in my video store when Warner still ran Atari. Once Atari got back on their feet during the Tramiel era, I became an officially authorized Atari distributor and service provider. In that time I’ve seen things in the World of Atari that you couldn’t begin to imagine. I’ve had good conversations with Jack Tramiel, I’ve had inside information on the development of games and products which Atari never released, I’ve talked with other 3rd party publishers, I’ve seen absolutely insane things happen in the world of Atari - I’ve even received death threats over this stuff. I’ve survived it all and lived to tell the story.
All through Atari’s history, smaller 3rd party game publishers came up with alternative methods for packing their products. Did you know it was common at the time for many 3rd Party Atari developers to release game cartridges, floppies, and other accessories in simple “budget” packaging such as clear inexpensive clamshell cases and plastic baggies? Some publishers even just shrink-wrapped the floppy disk and documents! (Examples are shown below, and in my Atari I/O photo gallery). Unique, alternative packaging kept costs low for the buyer, while keeping the games profitable enough for the small developers to stay in business and continue publishing Atari games and software.
 

 
The way to get the costs down is to make things in quantity. It's the same idea as shopping at Sam's Club or Costco: the more you buy the less it cost per item. Retail boxes, glossy cartridge labels and colorful instruction manuals cost much less per game when you’re manufacturing 100,000 of them at a time, as Jack Tramiel's Atari did. BUT - when you’re making 10 to 20 games at a time as an independent developer, glossy packaging drives the price up significantly. The developer pays more and you pay more. This is one reason why you see the new Atari charging upwards of $99 per Atari XP 2600 cartridge, and why many new homebrew and independently released cartridges cost so much to buy while the developer makes such little profit on their work.
When Atari was still in business, during the Tramiel era, Atari would regularly provide me with inside information and Atari’s sales history. Beginning in 1985, Atari would fax me their sales history numbers for video game hardware and software and continued to do so until around 1990. These faxes were HUGE. I still have them after all these years, although the faxes are now yellowed and almost impossible to read.
 
 

"Like Jack Tramiel, independent Atari game developers and homebrewers have to weigh costs and pricing, and understand that some games sell well, some so so, and some hardly at all."
- Lance
 
 
The sales figures provided in the fax covered the product lines for Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari XEGS, and I think the Atari Lynx. For each Atari game, I was able to clearly see how many were manufactured and how many were sold. This gave me a big picture understanding of what things looked like at Atari, and just how big of a slice of the video game market Atari still had going into the 1990s. 
People have no idea just how big a piece of the video game industry Atari still had in the late 1980s, in the midst of Nintendo dominating the market and Sega making moves. It was still a big slice of the pie, and certainly enough to make money. Between the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari XE and everything else, Atari often had a bigger chuck of the video game market than Sega did with the Sega Master System.
 
Jack Tramiel discussing "Business is War" at Commodore and Atari
 
What I learned from the insider info on Atari sales figures, and through my conversations with Jack Tramiel, was that Atari had a very lean business model that “spread risk” over many games, and to publish a game with a fancy box, slick labels and docs, Atari had to order 100,000 units of a game to get good enough pricing to make a profit on a title.
But there was a problem. Not all titles sold well! Jack Tramiel wanted to get pricing down low enough for each game, so that in case one game did not sell very well, the risk would be spread around different games, so that the successful games would more than make up for any financial loss from games that did not sell.
Like Jack Tramiel, independent Atari game developers and homebrewers (both then and now) have to weigh costs and pricing, and understand that some games sell well, some so so, and some hardly at all. So you need to spread the risks out to make a profit. Do you grasp that concept? Your winners cover your losses.
 

 
So for Atari to be profitable with the XEGS, which used very good packaging in the iconic “blue tile” boxes, and to cover the cost of materials and the cartridge itself, Atari put out around 30-35 new titles for the XE. That meant to get good pricing, spread risk, and make a profit, Atari had to order over 3 million+ units of video game cartridges for the XEGS.
Take for example Necromancer, a video game for the Atari XEGS. Atari manufactured a standard order of 100,000 units of Necromancer, and ended up with around 50,000 units left because the game didn’t sell very well. On the other hand, Atari XE games like Crystal Castles, Airball and others were almost completely sold out.
The idea was to spread risk - to create different games for different genres. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, instead spread them around! If you create too much of the same thing - the same world, the same ideas, the same game - it may sell out or it may flop. Infinite diversity in games leads to infinite success.
This is one reason why you see some independent developers and homebrewers struggling. Some of them focus all of their time and attention,  years even, developing a single game, a passion project. Often it will come in an expensive box with glossy label and colorful instructions, all put together by hand. Other developers work on multiple games at once, and work hard to keep manufacturing costs down, and passing those savings on to both the customer and to themselves.
 

 

 
Say what you will about Jack Tramiel, but he understood this simple concept. Atari would release a few games at a time, each in a batch of 100,000, and the successful games would cover any shortfall of the less successful games. Atari would order 100,000 games at a time - enough to keep the manufacturing cost low on slick docs, a nice box with that beautiful Atari XE blue box artwork, and a glossy label, which was something the Atari 7800 didn’t always benefit from. If the game sold well, another order of 100,000 games could be manufactured, should Atari believe there was enough excitement about the game to sell out a second batch.
A similar story was unfolding at Activision in the late 1980s. After the video game crash Activision was a much different company than it had been during the Atari 2600 boom, when Activision saw incredible success with games like Pitfall! and River Raid. Yet they survived the crash and lived to fight another day. Now Microsoft is buying them. By the time Jack Tramiel was running Atari, Activision (and their sister company Absolute) was a much leaner operation. I used to speak with the Activision guys often, and developed a pretty clear understanding of their sales history numbers for Atari systems, and how they ran their business.
 

 
Activision was smaller, and did their ordering 10,000 games at a time. To make a good enough profit, Activision and Absolute needed to sell all 10,000 units to justify a reorder of the game. The first order of 10,000 games sold would break even, and Activision/Absolute would recoup all of their money put into the development and manufacturing of the game. Then, if the game was successful, Activision would order another 10,000 units and suddenly that game would become pretty profitable! However, they told me that only one of their Atari games was able to surpass 10,000 units, which was Title Match Pro Wrestling, and that was a reason why they pulled out of the Atari market. Yet Jack Tramiel was able to sell out quite a few of their video game titles at 100,000. Even with games at the end like Alien Brigade for the Atari 7800, they were able to sell all 100,000 out, and this was with Jack not only not supporting the system properly, but competing against himself with the Atari XE.
There was a reason why so many 3rd party Atari developers released games in alternative “budget” packaging like clamshells, zip lock baggies, and even just shrink wrapped the disk and docs without a box. Because if you cannot attain the high number of sales per unit as Atari still could, you could not get the price per cartridge down low enough to be profitable. This meant finding creative ways to cut back on packaging, and just about every 3rd party company did just that. Broderbund, Adventure International, Epyx, Sierra Online, Datasoft, S.S.I., as well as many others sold games with limited “budget” packaging.
Those 3rd parties made up sales volume with budget packaging, cartridge labels and instructions, because they did not have the customer base Atari still did at that point.
 

 
The new Atari charges a lot for their line of limited run "Atari XP" games for the 2600, many of them are priced at $99. I’m betting its because they use fancy boxes, instructions and "labels". But they do not have the same Atari market that Jack had in the 1980s-1990s, thus much smaller sales volumes and the inability to order a large enough quantity to bring the price down. The Atari XP program harkens back to APX: The Atari Program Exchange and is meant as a gift to the Atari community, and not focused solely on being a profitable, but it's not likely that Atari wants to lose money either.
So when it comes to passion projects like the “Atari XP” games, the new Atari has to cover their costs and hope for a profit. To do this they have to charge a lot more for their games due to much smaller sales volumes. That’s a pretty big risk for the new Atari, and a pretty big expense that gets passed onto you, the customer.
In the 1990s, some classic video game collectors called me a liar for pointing this out, and insisted that game companies like S.S.I., Epyx, Sierra Online, Datasoft, and many other well known (and not so well known) companies never offered their games in clamshells, zip lock baggies, and other forms of budget packaging to be able to offer their software at prices people could afford.
In this blog post you will see lots of pictures I recently took of my own inventory, showing  just that: actual software releases from said companies and more, in alternative budget packaging. I’ve never received an apology from those who were so quick to berate me and call me a liar for being so kind as to explain the truth. Today is their chance.
- Lance  
 
SEE MORE PHOTOS IN MY PHOTO ALBUM:
 
 

I have had this game called Crossbow in my collection for a while now.  It is for the XE computers.  Tonight, I played it for the first time.  Keep in mind that I have never played this game before let alone heard of it. How did I do?  I got 478,000 points.  I have no clue if that is good or bad because it doesn't take long to start racking up points in this game.

Did I enjoy the game?  Oh yes!  I even played a second game but did not do as well.  I have yet to discover how to reach the Evil Master.  But I have to admit that this is a really nice piece of software.  The graphics look really good, especially the environments.  The sounds are good and I swear the friends dying is almost digitized.
I believe this is one of the most active light gun games I have ever played on any console.  Well...almost.  Gumshoe on the NES required a lot of trigger pulling as well but on the Atari this one is easily one of the more trigger-happy games on the system.  That I'm aware of.  One characteristic aspect if the game that I find a bit odd is the cartridge design.  I use to seeing the small gray ribbed edges.  The Crossbow cartridge is different.  Then again it might have done that way because of the XE computers and where their cartridge slots are.  I use an XEGS so I tend to forget about the XE computer design.

Regardless of the cartridge design it is probably one of the best light gun games on the system.  Im glad to have it.  Y'all need to play this one.

I consider my RETRO GAMING CORNER officially complete ! 😎🤟🧐includes 14inch TOSHIBA CRT / ColecoVision w/ AtariMax Flashcart / Retrobit SuperRetroTrio (nes, snes, genesis w/ Everdrives for each) / TG-16 w/Everdrive 😎👍as well, I can hook up the 2600 module to ColecoVision or even play Master System using the Everdrive on the RetroTrio. Happy covering 7 platforms with 3 consoles. Wanted to cover as many platforms with what I already have in the space I am limited to.

 

I originally did most of the work on this 5200 about 8 years ago. It was also one of the first projects I did and to be honest, the wiring work inside wasn't that great. For some time I had wanted to redo it all similar to how I redid my 7800 about a year ago but just never got around to it. Well, now that I have a new BackBit Pro flash cartridge and it was designed to allow resets back to the game menu, I felt it was time to perform a small modification to allow this function of my BackBit Pro to work and also decided it was time to redo the wiring work and give my 5200 a much needed bath.
So first I will share some old pics of when I first AV upgraded the console. The wiring wasn't that bad I guess but it was before I was using better quality wire and wasn't using connectors so it was all tethered down. Also, not long after this was first done, the s-video jack kept coming loose on me so I had to hot glue it into place. No pics of that hot snot but suffice to say it was pretty ugly. 

 
Here is another shot showing how all the wiring was done originally in this setup. 

 
All of the wiring was completely redone with better quality wire and using install methods that I've been using on client consoles for the past 5 years. 

Some of the wiring was to redo the power and ground wiring as I now have it attached to the main power and ground rails that run along the middle of the board. As a result they are much shorter than they were previously. All the of the video output wiring was redone with a connector added in the middle to allow for easier removal of the main board in the future for servicing if needed. A connector was also added to the power modification wiring on the bottom side as well. 

 
A new s-video jack was installed as the original was in pretty bad shape from coming loose over the years and the hot glue just had to go. I used my dremel to rough up the area around the s-video jack and shave off a little bit of shell material so that I could install a new s-video jack and have the back nut actually secure it into place properly. Last to ensure it stays put, some epoxy was added around the s-video jack and securing nut. Audio wiring was redone as well and cleaned up.
Finally a small bit of wire was added on the bottom side of the PCB that attaches the reset line for the system to an unused pin on the cartridge port. The BackBit Pro flash cart is designed to take advantage of this and with this wire in place, I can now use the reset button on the cartridge to take me back to the game selection menu. This is a feature that is sorely missing on the AtariMax carts as they require hard powering the 5200 console to get back to your game menu selection. 

 
At the end, I finally gave the case shells a much needed bath as it had been at least a decade since this 5200 had been cleaned. It was getting pretty dusty in those vent slots and just looking a bit dull. Now this 5200 is working better than before and ready to provide some more 5200 gaming for many more years!

After all the life changes happening as of late I finally managed to sit down and play a video game on real hardware.  I decided to hook up my STe and the game I picked to play was Lotus Turbo Challenge.  Granted I have not seen this game since the Genesis days so it was nice to see it again.  

The first thing I noticed were the graphics. To me they seemed to be better than those on the Genesis but on par with those IBM PCs equipped with EGA graphics adapters.  Those were the good ol' days.  Every screen pays tribute to the exotic Lotus sports car.  Screens detail exterior and interior designs and features, there's a 360 degree rotating render of the car, and power house tech sheets for you car buffs.  At its roots, however, LETC is a basic and simple racing game.
The objective is really simple...place 10th or better to advance to the next race.  Should you cross the finish line in 11th place or higher then the game ends.  Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Lotus on the ST I believe has nine tracks to race on with pit row.  It offers split screen racing for two players to have fun.  The game offers multiple music tracks to listen to while racing or you can simply turn them off.  The beginning of each track has information about that track including lane closures and pit requirements.

The visuals of Lotus are very impressive in my opinion and remind me a lot of how Top Gear on the Super Nintendo looked like.  The controls are simple to use with a couple of control options to choose from and is controlled by a joystick.
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge became an instant hit then and it is easy to see why.  It's a nicely made racing game that is easy to pick up and play for one or two people.  Searching EBay for physical copies turned up very little.  Only a few were available from outside the USA.  Prices ranged from $16 to $115 at the time I did a search.  For STe owners this game got a recent upgrade in graphics and sounds and is available on Atari Mania.  This one is a classic!  So grab a buddy and lay asphalt.
 

I consider my RETRO GAMING CORNER officially complete ! 😎🤟🧐includes 14inch TOSHIBA CRT / ColecoVision w/ AtariMax Flashcart / Retrobit SuperRetroTrio (nes, snes, genesis w/ Everdrives for each) / TG-16 w/Everdrive 😎👍as well, I can hook up the 2600 module to ColecoVision or even play Master System using the Everdrive on the RetroTrio. Happy covering 7 platforms with 3 consoles. Wanted to cover as many platforms with what I already have in the space I am limited to.

 

I consider my RETRO GAMING CORNER officially complete ! 😎🤟🧐includes 14inch TOSHIBA CRT / ColecoVision w/ AtariMax Flashcart / Retrobit SuperRetroTrio (nes, snes, genesis w/ Everdrives for each) / TG-16 w/Everdrive 😎👍as well, I can hook up the 2600 module to ColecoVision or even play Master System using the Everdrive on the RetroTrio. Happy covering 7 platforms with 3 consoles. Wanted to cover as many platforms with what I already have in the space I am limited to.

 

I consider my RETRO GAMING CORNER officially complete ! 😎🤟🧐includes 14inch TOSHIBA CRT / ColecoVision w/ AtariMax Flashcart / Retrobit SuperRetroTrio (nes, snes, genesis w/ Everdrives for each) / TG-16 w/Everdrive 😎👍as well, I can hook up the 2600 module to ColecoVision or even play Master System using the Everdrive on the RetroTrio. Happy covering 7 platforms with 3 consoles. Wanted to cover as many platforms with what I already have in the space I am limited to.

 

I have tried many games.  Some with great success, some with not so great results.  Overall I have come to a conclusion on how I see the ST computers.  Close to the end of the ST production run I was heavy into the 386 computer scene.  Good old' MS-DOS commercial and shareware games kept my time occupied.  I never knew nor heard about Atari making ST computers at all.  Atari simply didn't exist.
In hindsight that was a good thing.  I managed to learn the IBM PC side of computing.  Games I had and would read about were very much hit and miss.  A ton of weird games that made you wonder why you even wasted time on them when you had better games.  Countless nights figuring out the latest SSI release or finding those hidden areas in Wolfenstein 3-D. Breaking into buildings and tapping phones in Covert Action or building the biggest railroad empire in Railroad Tycoon.  Those PC games gave me knowledge I needed when I finally approached the ST. 
That might sound weird to some but the whole reason why I asked for a 386 in the first place was to learn how to program games.  I had QuickBASIC for that.  So to warm up to the ST I wanted to explore what games it got.  I was surprised to see many of those old IBM games I played on the ST.  My research started with five games: Space Station Oblivion, which I have yet to really get into, Super Cycle (beat this one one week after I got it), SimCity, Buggy Boy, and Test Drive.  The first two I bought, the last three are disk images.  The time between playing those until I pulled the ST back out a few days ago is about two years.  I was serious this time.  I was either going to find games I liked or were at least interesting or the ST was simply going to be a collection item.  I don't see the point of owning a system if I'm not going to enjoy it.
I've found at least 30 games I enjoy on the ST, only a few I remember from the 386 days.  I wake up in the mornings and I want to play the ST.  I don't want to go to bed because I have to turn off the ST.  The ST has grown on me fast.  Games like Vroom, Goldrunner, Nitro, Spellbound...all make the ST worth having around.  But just like those old 386 games the ST was also plagued with weird games.  But also like the 386 the early games felt like learning tools with most of them not that great.  It's to be expected since it can take a while to learn a new system and to pull all the tricks out of it.
The ST is a fine system but, unfortunately, was not as well received here in the U.S. as it was in the U.K. and other countries.  I first had to resort to STart magazines to see what all the American ST got.  I ended up resorting to ST Action, a UK-based magazine that reported ST games in great detail.  Once I read a few of those I had a list of games to go find. I quickly became an ST sleuth hunting down what works and what doesn't.
At the end of the day I have a strong connection to my STe now. I also know know what games I want to keep an eye out for in the wild should I ever get that lucky.  The ST turned out to be a nice machine.  Maybe not as well received as the XL/XE line but still a great staple. I love my ST.

Let's cut out the introduction and get right to it.  Be advised that most of these picks are based on images I've transferred back to disks when possible.
Bubble Ghost - a game I once played on GameBoy, this game involves guiding a bubble through single screen mazes filled with obstacles that can burst your bubble.  Pop the bubble and it's game over.  Very colorful and enjoyable.
  Buggy Boy - The ST is the only system I've come across that has this simple little driving game.  Collect flags, gain more time while avoiding rocks, walls, and water.  Lacks the computer controlled vehicles found in the arcade but the real of it is here.
  Spellbound - This side-scrolling adventure game has you solving levels to advance. You can carry only one item at a time and falling from high places can hurt you as well as the enemies in the levels.  And you only have one life. Plan your strategy carefully.
  Atax - A vertical shoot 'em up with a few elements from the likes of Gradius.  Colorful and sounds good.  Everything in the game is a hazard including the environment objects.  
  GODS - This side scrolling adventure is one I owned for a 386 PC.  The ST version looks and sounds really great and takes advantage of the hardware in a good way.  Each level is huge and includes enemies, bonus items, and hidden areas and objects.
  Nitro - A neat top-down racing game that I am not very good at...but I keep coming back to this one.
  Populous - A one on one strategy game where you have to modify the landscape for your people to populate and prosper.  As you people grow the more problems you can create for your enemy from floods to creating a volcano.  Gets a bit sluggish on the ST when too much is going on but still fun.
  Vroom - An impressive F1 racing game with a view from the driver's seat.  Easy to pick up and play. Can be challenging.  Amazing speed!
  F1 World Championship (Domark) - Believe it or not, Vroom has a brother.  This one doesn't track lap times.  Game mechanics and goals are the same. More to come as I discover them.  I have a LOT more to try out.  What's your favorite Atari ST games so far?

I'm making a blog entry for the Famicom games I own.  I'm going to start ranking them based on how much I play the games.  I can't go by like because I simply like all of them.  Alright, here we go!
Salamander - pure and simple shooter with a unique story behind it and an awesome soundtrack. I also like the distinctive transparent blue cartridge. Route 16 Turbo - developed by Sun soft of Blaster Master fame this arcade style maze game is simply hard to put down once you start playing it. It's that addictive.  Parodius - another shooter by Konami but this one is more of a cute em up.  Konami took a bunch of their well known characters and threw them in a large bag...and shook it up.  This was the end result. Very fun to play but can be a bit challenging Family Circuit - despite being in all Japanese this is a fun top-down racing game and the first one I've seen like it where the player can change a lot about their car characteristics.  It even has endurance races that can last a while. Gradius II - the sequel to a popular shooter franchise was very impressive with levels that seem to have no vertical or horizontal limits. Very fun to pick up and play but if you are not familiar with it you won't last ten minutes. I've lasted maybe 12 minutes. Tetris - Famicom's Tetris is different than what Nintendo released on the Western NES.  While not as colorful the game stops between levels to add up bonus points resulting in a break for the player. Something the NES version doesn't do.  The music is also different. Ill be back later to add the others.

I want to start off by saying I love GOSUB on the 7800!  It was a fantastic experience, simple to pick up and a lot of fun to learn.  It's a solid play for an evening or afternoon, and it's a bit cheaper than other games I've purchased off of other websites.  I got it from 2600connection, but I couldn't find it listed anywhere on his Facebook or Website.  I had to send him an email and ask him if he had any left, PayPal him the money, and it came pretty quick.  It's hard to track down unless you really want to find it, and he has a lot of other games and versions of GOSUB for other platforms.  Yes, I love GOSUB for the 7800, but should you go to the trouble of tracking it down for yourself?  Maybe not actually...

The graphics are very simple.  You have the blue background that represents water, along with the deadly seaweed outline that traps your yellow submarine and makes traveling difficult.  Then there's an octopus that will track you relentlessly, and later there are even larger enemies and tiny sharks that are surprisingly detailed!  Each level had a simple key and treasure chest and the last few levels have portals that look just as simple.  Everything  in the game looks uniform with the rest  of the game and the coloring is all fine.  Honestly, it's a boring game graphically.  The title screen looks okay, the ending screen looks okay, and the game over screens look... you guessed it... okay.  Overall the graphics may be a bit too simple really, but they work for this game.

Please Excuse The Screenshots, their not uniform yet.

If you sit at the title screen you will hear the sonar of your submarine beep every few seconds.  It made my wife ask "what is that beeping, it's driving me crazy".  So don't let it sit at the title while you write a review.  But other than that the song that plays is nice and catchy and the sound effects are fine too.  Again, these things are simple and on their own I don't think their anything impressive at all, similar to the graphics.  But when you add them to the gameplay of this game you get something fantastic.  So, although it might be cliche, GOSUB is greater than the sum of it's parts.  Easily.

And the gameplay is really the main thing to talk about here.  It's a maze game where you must push a direction to make your sub move.  It will continue in that direction until you push another direction and it will start to move that way.  So once you start moving, you will always be moving.  It can be difficult not to touch the sides of the seaweed maze sometimes, but the octopus that will chase you relentlessly is what really adds to the challenge.  You can only fire in the direction your moving in and you can only have one bullet on the screen at a time.  So if you shoot at an octopus that's coming at you and miss, then you need to have room to evade until your next shot is ready.  It actually can get pretty intense and fun!
You also have 2 lives per level which is nice for progression.  If you use all your lives on level 5 for instance, than you don't have to worry about having no lives for level 6.  You'll automatically start out with 2 more lives for your attempts of that level.  Later levels you'll encounter an invincible shark that will move randomly and you most avoid, and portals that allow you to get to other ends of the maze.  Not to mention the mid and final boss that requires quite a few shots to get past.  You don't technically kill him, but you do chase him off.  At the end of each maze you'll find a treasure chest that may or may not require a key and that's essentially the game.

Screenshot from WIP

It all plays and works well together, but I do have a complaint.  This game is SHORT!  Too short.  I was able to beat it in about 2 hours of playing.  When I first turned GOSUB on it was too easy because I didn't see any octopus enemies, but the difficulty switches fix that.  So there is a "kids" mode I would say, or one without enemies.  But the 21 levels left me wanting so much more.  I was satisfied with the game, but I don't see myself pulling it down again anytime soon.  The want to replay the same levels just isn't there for me.  I don't think I would get anything more from repeated playthroughs of the game I guess.  I would buy another cart if he doubled the levels though, but that's just me.

GOSUB did provide a fun afternoon for me (well 2 now: one when I got it and one to prepare for this review) but I really don't have the want to continue beating it.  It feels fantastic, and there are bonus levels along with the boss battles to break up the maze based gameplay.  It all works fantastic, its just a shame that it didn't last longer.  I believe I paid 30 dollars, maybe under 35 with shipping for this one from 2600connection (google it, because the website I had led to somewhere else now) and I've spent more on a single evening before.  You could have dinner, see a movie, or play GOSUB and have some good old fashion enjoyment.  Plus the cartridge looks nice.  But if you want something with a little more meat on it, then you may want to look elsewhere.

The Cartridge and Manual Look Nice.  Shame there's no box...

Graphics: 5 out of 10
The graphics aren't really bad, but they are simple.  Given the simplicity of what's needed you could've really went all out with details.  But it works in context of the rest of the game
 
Sound: 6 out of 10
I really like the songs composition and it sounds good.  The only sound effect I didn't care for was that beeping at the title screen, but I guess it's my fault for letting it sit.
 
Gameplay: 7 out of 10
This game plays fantastic.  Don't touch the edges, avoid the enemies, and grab the treasure!  It's simple but it works!
 
Fun: 8 out of 10
I loved it while it lasted.  I felt like we were just getting started with the sharks and portals when I got to the end, so it feels like it finishes abruptly.  But I really liked the experience up until then.
Value: 3 out of 10
I hate to give this such a low score on value, but it only lasts a few hours with little reason to go back to it.  I may play it once every few years and that's it.  This is truly the low point of this game.
Overall: 6 out of 10 GOOD!
I bounced back and forth between a 5 and 6 for this one.  I do recommend it for those that are okay with paying 35 bucks for an evening of fun.  Everybody else should steer clear, but I do want to say that I'm glad I experienced this game and don't regret the purchase.
 

In between my reviews I want to do something a little different. When it comes to retro gaming today, we have more options than ever to play our favorite old school games. The ever present Raspberry Pi.  The "mini" consoles that was all the rage a few years back.  Emulators and roms on our computers or modded consoles.  But there's one way to play retro games that may be more convenient to most people than any of the prior mentions: Handhelds!
With a handheld you aren't tethered to a television or monitor.  You can throw it in your pocket or bag and have your favorite games with you wherever you go. The Evercade is a great example of a legitimate way to do this.  But what if you want something without cartridges, something unofficial and capable of doing more?  Well I have some options for you from the world of Chinese retro handhelds!
These used to be junky, throw away things that you got out of curiosity once in a while but they never lived up to expectations. Not anymore, thanks to brands like Anbernic and Pow Kiddy!  And I've actually tried a lot of these, so I'm going to give you some recommendations now to get you started. So let's start with...
Honorable Mentions
- The Game Chicken, Ali Express

Okay so this is really just a novelty, but c'mon!  It's a game chicken handheld!  Why?  Who knows?  Who cares!  It's extremely small and is not comfortable to play at all, but I think it's intended to be a fun and quirky statement more so than anything. So I recommend it if you want something that you could play for 5 minutes while waiting on a bus or Uber, but are looking for more of a reaction from friends than anything else.
- Games Power Thin Handheld, EBay

If you just want to play essential 8 bit NES and Famicom games, then this affordable and very small handheld is for you!  It plays well and is credit card size, and very thin too!  The screen is nice and colorful and the volume is adjustable to 3 levels via button press. This is another one that is stylish and serves a niche well. 
- Family Pocket FC3000, Multiple sites

There are many Handhelds that look just like this one, but make sure you get the FC3000 model. The other ones are not recommended!  When you first boot this up it looks like another NES handheld emulator. But slide the back off (mine is extremely hard to move) and remove the cartridge and you'll find a menu of NES, mega drive (genesis), Gameboy, pc-engine (TurboGrafx), and more!  Why would they hide the good stuff?  The screen and sound are decent but the games play very well!  I should mention that you can not add and delete roms on any of these that I'm mentioning today to my knowledge!
And finally, the last for today...
-Trimui Model S, Amazon

This little thing is the same style as those Oregon Trail and Tetris credit card size handhelds, except this one does it all!  You can play NES, SNES, master system, genesis (mega drive), TurboGrafx (pc-engine), Gameboy, Gameboy advance, game gear, and playstation(!?). I don't recommend the PS1 emulation but the rest are great. It's the most costly on this list, but it does the most too.
And that's it for today. Our theme for this week was small, pocket sized handhelds that were cheap and covered mostly specific niches. Next time we will look at some of the top tier handhelds that I have tried and recommend. We will get into the weeds on those a little more than I did with these honorable mentions.  None of the handhelds from today could play my beloved 7800, but the next ones will play 7800 and a lot more. And they are usually customizable in roms!  So stay tuned!
Also I welcome any and all feedback!  I'm am going to do 7800 game reviews as my main focus but each week I'll have an off topic article. If you like, or don't like this idea, the let me know!

It's been a year now since I bought my Famicom, Famicom Disk System, and a few games.  I just double checked my purchase history and I bought my Famicom, as JUNK, February 14th, 2021.  It took a week to get here which was impressive. And I'm probably not going to say anything about it people already know but I've got to speak my mind about it.
My Famicom discovery really started when I discovered emulators a few decades ago.  I found a NES emulator and a ton of games.  What I didn't realize at the time was that some of the games were not American releases.  I found one board-like RPG game that I liked but to this day I still can't remember the name of it. I also discovered Gradius II and Salamander.  After playing those I started wishing there was a way to Import a Famicom but places that carried them at the time were very pricey.  
Fast forward to modern times and thanks to EBAY I was finally able to obtain one.  In decent shape but needed work. Same with the disk drive, needed a belt.  The games worked fine...just needed cleaning.  My library is small but is of games I either already knew or found interesting.  Of course Super Mario Bros. is here, Clu Clu Land and Dr. Mario, and I managed to snag up Gradius II and Salamander. Parodius was a recommendation from I believe one of Metal Jesus' YouTube videos. Route 16 Turbo I got because of the car on the label.  I wanted a mystery game.  Might as well do it right. The only FDS game I was after was Metroid.  I wanted to experience the difference on a personal level. And one complete game I found really cheap was Tetris.
So was my investment worth it?  Most definitely! For the price of a cheap modern game I managed to pick up a console.  I had to spend time fixing it but now it's working great.  I especially like the smaller design because it doesn't require a whole lot of shelf space when I have to put it away.  I also never have to worry about losing controllers either.  It's a pleasure to use.
The disk system took more work than I was expecting to fix only because the belt had to be replaced I found so many different ways to do it.  I eventually settled on my own way which is a combination.  It fits perfectly fine under the Famicom. It's batteries have been in it for almost a year and still going strong.  I didn't use a replacement belt for it, I used a hair tie.  Yep...a hair tie.  It works fine.  
The games? Salamander will always be my number one pick when it comes to the Famicom because it was ported over as Life Force for our NES...and that game is my number one NES favorite.  It is interesting to see differences between the two.  In Life Force the title screen is good, the score display works, and you can have two options. In Salamander, however, the title screen has more graphics, the score display is better explained, and you can have 3 options.  Otherwise the game is the same.  Gradius II I wish we would have got but I can see why we didn't.  It's a very difficult game.  Looks and sounds good but I can get through the first level.  And I've beat a lot of NES shooters including Life Force numerous times. Clu Clu Land, SMB, and Dr. Mario are no different than what we got here in the States, nice additions to have around. Tetris is Tetris but this Tetris was different in looks and controls.  It took me a while to get use to it but once I did it was a nice change.  The mystery game surprised me the most.  A simple Venture-style game that is loads of fun to play.  I'd call it a hidden gem.  Parodius I thought was way out in left field.  Everything this has it throws at you.  Neat game and I play this one a lot   And lastly Metroid. I can finally save my game on that one but only after I did.  So if I'm doing really good and need to shut it down I have to kill myself to save my game.  The subtle differences in music and sounds is minimal but does enhance the game play efforts.
The Famicom has left a very positive impression the first year I've owned it. I play this more than I play the NES which has more games. It's a good system and getting to experience things we didn't get has been nothing less than exciting.  And my journey is just starting.  I'm very happy with my investment and I only hope that I can find more games for it soon. If you have been thinking about getting one I would recommend it. Do research first for games that would interest you.  Then go hunting.  Highly recommended.
 

This one was quite tricky and I'm still not 100% convinced this was the full cause. However, grab a snack and a drink cause here we go...
An older 2600 heavy sixer was sent for just a refurbishment and no upgrades. Basically just replacing out the components that come in a standard console5 refurb kit. But I immediately knew someone was off about this console before I even opened it up due the bulging I could see in the front facia switch section near the left side of the cartridge port?

 
Upon opening it up I also found that whomever was inside this previously (and I know someone was), had also applied some very sticky foil tape around the RF modulator housing? I think this was done to improve the picture output as this H6 does have pretty poor RF output compared to most I've worked on.


 
I actually removed this foil tape completely. Took the RF modulator from off the switch board and disassembled it. I then removed and applied new solder to all components on the RF board as much of the solder was looking pretty old and I could see what looked like old joints with some possible hairline cracks starting to form. This along with the refurb kit has improved the RF output a little but not as much as I've seen in the past. I suspect the RF modulator itself has some other issue going on but as it is the 3pin version, they aren't that common for replacements. Also the tuning coil in these appears to be locked in place as this one just didn't want to move and I didn't want to chance cracking the core trying to force it. So it is stuck in the position it was given from the factory around the channel 3 area. Some of my TVs did have issues locking onto this console's signal but of course the CRT downstairs had no problem with it.

 
So what about the power issue that this Blog is titled for? Well, after doing all of this, the console still had a strange issue where sometimes when powered on, I would just get a blinking screen of snow and black...snow....black...snow...black. Something I hadn't seen before. Since you always ASAP electronics issues I first checked the input power which was given me a steady 13.2v on the input side. This would drop to about 12.4v when the console was powered on which, is to be expected for the additional load once the rest of the circuit is active. 
It was when I checked my voltages on the new voltage regulator that was also installed that I found something very odd! I was getting a 12.3v reading on the input pin of the VR which, again is quite normal, but what wasn't normal was that the output pin of the VR was showing 11v ?! It was then, using my meter that I found that somewhere the input and output pins of the VR were shorted. How this console worked in the past is beyond me because 11v off the output pin of the VR would also be getting sent to the mainboard in the metal housing and that can't be good! In looking at the old schemes for these boards the only spot I could see that might cause this was taken up by this rather large guy here:

That is a 2w Allen Bradley style resistor. According to band colors, this is a 68Ω 5% resistor. I took it out of circuit and sure enough the short I was getting between the input and output pins of the VR went away. But the resistor was reading 71 - 72Ω which is within the 5% tolerance spec. But taking a chance I powered on the system without it and it came right up and appeared to be working just fine. I then left the system running moon patrol for about 8 hours yesterday to make sure everything was good. And it was fine. 
My understanding is that this resistor was added to reduce the current on the input going into the VR so it wouldn't get crazy hot. But the VR was replaced and I drilled a hole into the heatsink so I could use a screw and nut to secure the heatsink to the VR vs the clips that were used on these originally along with new thermal paste. That 8hour session of moon patrol did get the heatsink warm but not enough to burn as I could keep my fingers around it without it getting too hot for me to touch. So perhaps the older VRs couldn't dissipate the heat as well and this is why these large resistors are only present on the very early model H6 units. It might even be the first one I've seen that has one as most of the others I've worked on I don't recall seeing it present. 
Anyway, I'm going to power on and test this system again today to be sure it is still working properly but hopefully it is good to go, and ready to go back to its owner.

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  CURRENTLY JUST A PLACEHOLDER AS I GATHER MY THOUGHTS / IDEAS DECIDE HOW I WILL PROGRESS OR NOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to MaximumRD's Amiga Appreciation Hub. For fans of one of the greatest computer line of all time! Including the entire Amiga line from the original A1000 to the blockbuster A500 and even then CDTV and CD32 come join in on the fun relating to all things AMIGA! YES the C64 was awesome but the AMIGA was magic!

Here at the Ivory Tower, I get quite a few requests for console services. It might be an actual repair to get a console working back to full factory function or refurbishment of a working condole to ensure it works for another 40+ years into the future. But by and large most of my requests are to enhance a console in some way. Usually through audio/video upgrades etc. But on more rare occasions, I will be sent a system that has already had work done to it either by the original owner or from another and requested to further enhance. 
Because of just how I am... In such requests I usually undo most of what has been done before when it requires it. Sometimes I will use existing wiring and just trim it up or tighten loose AV jacks that have been installed. But in this particular instance, I had a Sears Intellivision console sent that had been prior upgraded with a composite video output and had an earlier RGB board installed into it. It was requested to give the entire system a once over and correct any wrongs found while also upgrading the current RGB with one of the newer offerings. 
I'm writing this blog because some might feel that with a console already having been prior worked on before and semi working already, that the amount of work required to upgrade what has been done before might be less work than doing it on a console that hasn't been touched or modified in the past. In most cases... this is far from the truth as you will see with this particular Intellivision.
First let me show you some pics of what it looked like inside when I first opened it up. I do not know exactly who did the original work, but it is pretty representative of the kinds of work I find in these systems sent to me to fixed and upgraded further.
This is a picture of the power supply board when I first opened up the system. Nothing horribly an issue here, but it would seem that whomever was in this before did apply new thermal paste on the VRs, but they used too much as you can even see it on the legs of the VRs below. They also didn't replace out the high wattage 12Ω resistor that is the grey tube thing near the center. You can see on the left hand side it is starting to show signs of breaking down as it is starting to flake. To be fair, it might not have been this way when it was last worked on.

This is the original composite video upgrade that was done in the past. My only issue here is that the wires these older kits from the guy in Turkey used, are a bit thin and break easy. The wiring was also not tided up and left long. Likely so the main board could still be removed in the future but some tidying would have been nice to see.

Here are the original RCA jacks that were installed as part of this kit. Again, the wiring is left long and not secured in any way. Also, the RCAs had worked loose and were free spinning. This results in dimming picture output because the ground connection is off those metal tabs. If they jack is free spinning, that means the ground tab isn't very secure and is barely making contact.

This is what I found when I removed the controller tray. That PCB is the older 'Fred' RGB board. It was not attached at all and was loose inside this section of the Intellivision. First, this area is NOT for installing boards like this. This area is empty because it was thought you would store the power cord inside this section when the console wasn't in use. So if someone had done that here, they very likely would have pulled something loose off this RGB board or started to fray the AC cord. Either way... this is NOT acceptable in any situation and should have been installed elsewhere in the system. 

Because of the board laying in here loose, it stands to reason that the RGB output jack is here as well and yes it is. This isn't too much an issue but again not idea. For starters, it is a bad idea to route any AV outputs near power sources and we have that large AC transformer just a few inches away. But mainly bad because as you can see, the wiring is again loose here and would have separated easily over time. The RGB jack was epoxied into place and I do not have any issues with that since that is really the only option you have for these type of panel mount jacks and is something I do myself.

The RGB board gets its signals from the U10 color IC chips, the same way the current RGB boards do. But in this install a separate breakout PCB was used where the original IC was removed and installed into a single wipe socket on the breakout PCB. The PCB was then stuck into the original single wipe socket that the IC chip was originally in. This seems overly complicated since it is just as easy and provides a better connection to just solder to the bottom of the PCB to the pins where this chip is located. My main issue here is the cheap single wipe sockets of the original not being replaced out with higher quality, and the use of single wipe on the PCB breakout board.

 
Now for what I has been corrected and redone... First is the power supply board was recapped and new high wattage 12Ω resistor installed. I also cleaned up the VRs and redid the thermal compound with higher grade stuff.

The older composite only board was completely removed as composite output was being replaced by the new all in one board combo that I installed. This is Crayon King's older v5 RGB board with one of his separate expansion boards on top. This provides not only RGB that is of much better quality and compatibility to the older board, but provides the best composite I've seen from an Intellivision, plus a really excellent s-video output as well! Here is the new RGB board combo installed on the main PCB with all the new wiring in place.

I installed a new AMP brand dual wipe socket for the U10 color IC chip and attached it back onto the mainboard. As a result, the wiring needed for the new RGB now attaches at the bottom of the PCB to the pins that are connected to the U10 color IC chip. The scorching in the lower right is quite normal and is a result of the stupid amount of heat that the two 3906 transistors in that part of the board experience. It gets hot enough to discolor the PCB. I always replace these transistors as part of any Intellivision model 1 refurb because the originals are ticking on their last lives at this point. Can't do anything about the heat, but at least with new ones, they should last as long as the originals have to this point. The other wires from cartridge port are for a power LED that is being added to the console at the owners request. That is actually the exact same method INTV used when they added the power LEDs to the Super Pro System and INTV III consoles.

The RCA jacks were redone using star lock washers to hold them in place more securely. I also added in an additional Red colored RCA for dual mono output so the owner of this console doesn't have to keep using an audio splitter. This also allows for a future stereo upgrade later should a nice kit come along that provides that. You can also see the new s-video panel jack that has been added since that is available, why not add it? A switch was also installed to allow for palette switching on the new RGB board since it comes with 2 different palette options. 

Since the original RGB output jack ended up having bad internal pin connections anyway and was giving video drop outs, I had to crack out the original and replaced it with a new matching type. To help with keeping things more tidy, I used a breakout board for the jack and secured the wiring more.

Here is what the entire rear of the console looks like at this point. Have to keep in mind that the Red RCA, the s-video jack to the right of that, and the RGB on the far right have been replaced. You can see the toggle switch used for the palette change here as well. I have it facing downwards as there is plenty of room for it, it makes it easy to find and flip and doesn't protrude beyond the normal width of the casing. I add colored boots to the switches so they don't seem quite as obvious. 

 
And that is all I have at the moment as I'm still finalizing this console. But everything is tested and as you can see in these pics, I use connectors for all wiring that is attached to the case shell so that it is easier in the future to remove the mainboard for servicing completely from the shells. The point here is that just as much work and maybe more goes into working on a system that has already had work done in the past and it shouldn't be assumed that because some of this stuff was already in place, that it results in less labor being needed to upgrade further.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  CURRENTLY JUST A PLACEHOLDER AS I GATHER MY THOUGHTS / IDEAS DECIDE HOW I WILL PROGRESS OR NOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to MaximumRD's Amiga Appreciation Hub. For fans of one of the greatest computer line of all time! Including the entire Amiga line from the original A1000 to the blockbuster A500 and even then CDTV and CD32 come join in on the fun relating to all things AMIGA! YES the C64 was awesome but the AMIGA was magic!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  CURRENTLY JUST A PLACEHOLDER AS I GATHER MY THOUGHTS / IDEAS DECIDE HOW I WILL PROGRESS OR NOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to MaximumRD's Amiga Appreciation Hub. For fans of one of the greatest computer line of all time! Including the entire Amiga line from the original A1000 to the blockbuster A500 and even then CDTV and CD32 come join in on the fun relating to all things AMIGA! YES the C64 was awesome but the AMIGA was magic!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  CURRENTLY JUST A PLACEHOLDER AS I GATHER MY THOUGHTS / IDEAS DECIDE HOW I WILL PROGRESS OR NOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to MaximumRD's Amiga Appreciation Hub. For fans of one of the greatest computer line of all time! Including the entire Amiga line from the original A1000 to the blockbuster A500 and even then CDTV and CD32 come join in on the fun relating to all things AMIGA! YES the C64 was awesome but the AMIGA was magic!