DegasElite

I also downloaded it in the past week. Really well thought out. To think that this became the framework for Atari.io is very interesting. Thanks for the data, Justin. Appreciated. 🙂

THANK YOU @Gianna!
 
That's very true!
 
You can plan on it! That's an idea @RickR had that we'll hopefully be working on later this year. A nice little newsletter to keep people up to date.
 
Thanks @Atari Creep! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I thought it'd be cool to share with you guys who've been here a while and have gotten to know me. The Strategy Guide really is the beginning of "me writing stuff about Atari" and a starting point for Atari I/O. It's also something I made during that time where I thought I was the only person on earth with this interest. When people would ask me what my hobby was I'd tell them I liked "Classic Gaming" and I thought that was a term I had made up myself. It's cool to see what I was doing before I got plugged in with the rest of the world.
 
Haha thanks Rick! Teachers used to scold me constantly about how sloppy my handwriting was.
 
Thanks @BlackCatz40! I had fun working on it back then. My time probably would've been better put to learning how to program 6502 assembly code though.
 
Thank you @GRay Defender! I was holding out because I thought it would be a beast to scan and put together. Set it aside and forgot about it for a while. The Strategy Guide, and things like it, came up in convos this week and I went to scan a page to send to @btbfilms76 to use in one of his episodes. Then I thought "why not just scan the whole thing tonight" and about an hour later I had it all put together with a table of contents etc. Easy!
 
Great idea! I'll put that on my "To Do" List.

It looks like it is well thought out and took a lot of devotion to produce. Cool! Thanks, Justin, for sharing. 🙂

I’d like to share something very special with you guys. This is an Atari Strategy Guide I began writing in 6th Grade. It's all true. Atari I/O started on paper! 
I was 11 years old when I made this. If you flip through the pages of the Strategy Guide and squint hard enough, you’ll recognize similarities with our Atari I/O Blog posts, particularly the game reviews that I do with BTB.
I thought you guys might think this is cool to see. I’ve been talking with @btbfilms76, @Atari Creep and @Gianna about my days collecting Atari games in the early '90s, how some of the most interesting stuff in my collection are documents from Atari, and what it was like trying to do all this before the internet. My conversations with them inspired me to share this as a PDF for all of you to enjoy. It’s more of a sentimental curiosity than anything really useful, but if you read closely you’ll find a helpful tip or two in there.
It's also a bit of an artifact from a pre-internet Justin who way back then was just as fascinated and enthralled with the World of Atari as I am today. This little Strategy Guide was absolutely the beginning of what would become my Atari website and would evolve in time to become Atari I/O. It really did start on paper.
I scanned the original documents and compiled them in a PDF file as a digital recreation of the real thing. I also added a Table of Contents to help you find your way around, and a Preface which you see above.
I didn't get very far with the guide, but the games covered include these 7800 titles:
FATAL RUN JINKS ACE OF ACES SCRAPYARD DOG CENTIPEDE The Strategy Guide also contains 2600/7800 cartridge price lists and customer service ordering forms from Atari Corp. from 1993.
If you manage to make out my sloppy 6th Grade handwriting, you'll notice that I get some details wrong. I began writing this Strategy Guide before the internet was available to me. Digging up historical info on Atari, we had to get resourceful. Whatever I knew I learned from my own experience of piecing together historical details from Atari catalogs and game boxes, checking out books from the school library, talking with @Video 61 for hours at a time, or calling Atari directly and speaking with Geraldine at the front desk. "Hi, is Jack there?"
In a way it’s sad that Jack Tramiel’s Atari didn’t give us nice things like expansive Strategy Guides, big beautiful fold-out maps, a magazine as cool as Nintendo Power, or the type of immersive games that would’ve created a huge demand for things like this. Little 6th Grade me took it upon myself to make this, because what else was I supposed to do? I was still excited about Atari, I wanted to share Atari with as many people as I could. I don’t know who I was writing this for at the time, friends I guess, but apparently I was writing it for you guys. It just had to sit in a time capsule first.
⬇️ The PDF is attached below. ⬇️ I hope you guys enjoy this glimpse into the beginning of Atari I/O!
 

 
Atari 7800 6th Grade Strategy Guide.pdf

Yes, that would be awesome! I have Super Breakout on my ipad (😆), which I enjoy playing occasionally. Of course that's not the original or anywhere as great though!  

I’m Gianna, I’m new to the forums and wanted to introduce myself to everybody. I’ve been reading the forums for about a year.    I love Breakout on 2600, as well as 7800 Ms. Pac-Man and Food Fight. 🍦 I live in South Florida close to Justin, currently I’ve been very into playing my Nintendo Switch (mainly Pokémon!), and I have a dachshund named Sally. 🐾   It’s great to be here joining in things and I hope to get to know all of you a little better soon.   😊

Yeah. Welcome to the forum, Gianna. Happy to have ya here. 🙂

Yeah. Welcome to the forum, Gianna. Happy to have ya here. 🙂

I know what can save Atari. Competent management. They don't have it! Frederic Chesnais clearly does not know what he is doing. I think that he is very far removed from reality.

You're welcome but I won't be teaching programming this time around.  What I'm after is those interested in making video games to have the basic knowledge and understanding of what it takes to make a game.  I'm also going to be expressing what making a game should be all about.  I don't want people coming in full force and making games just to make money.  Money should never be the reason behind making games.  Those that do that don't and never will care about the video game community and we don't want that.  I want people that want to make a game because of their passion for video games and the machines whether it be one or many.  
If people coming here because they want to make a game but they haven't got a clue on where to begin then I hope this guide will point them in the right direction to having all of their ducks in a row.  It is soo much easier to come to the programming stage after spending time putting together everything conceptual on paper from the story to character designs to world appearances that are to be put in the game.  There is a reason to my madness for doing it this way that will all come together in the end.  

I'm getting material gathered up for the next segment.  It's taking me a bit to get everything together.

Interesting stuff. I will keep checking in here. Thanks. 🙂

Jennifer Connelly is also in the movie "Phenomena." It is like a horror-suspense movie.

Jennifer Connelly is also in the movie "Phenomena." It is like a horror-suspense movie.

My three favorite all-time Atari arcade games are:
1. Crystal Castles (first and foremost)
2. Marble Madness (a close second)
3. Food Fight (still very good and harder with the arcade controller)
I always loved Crystal Castles because it is different. It is like 3D Pac-Man, only with competition. It has a mascot (Bentley Bear), and it is challenging. I never beat the game, but came close a couple of times to Level 10 (THE END). I always wanted to beat that game. It's really fun.

When I lived in Saint Paul, MN, we shopped at a chain called Country Club. It lasted only until the 1980s or 1990s. Then, they folded. There was another chain called Applebaum. It later became Rainbow Foods. Then, Robert Mariano got a hold of it and ran it to the ground. He owned Roundy's in Wisconsin. They used to double and quadruple the amount of coupons you had to get even better deals on sales. Actually, when Mariano closed Rainbow, it was still profitable. Imagine that. Stupid financial move, IMHO.

When I lived in Indiana for two years, we went to Tysen's (a local IGA), Jewel, and Meijer. We even went to Sam's Club for a while. My girlfriend's parents had a membership there, and we were guests. That was around 2004-06. But, I am glad I am back in Minnesota. It has better fishing up here.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
Stranger Things
Mindhunter
Dracula
Castlevania
To name a few… All on Netflix. I do not have Hulu or Amazon Video. Thanks.

Right-click where it says 499 Items on the PDF option on the web page. You will be able to download all as a ZIP, or right-click on PDF on Firefox. It should give you the option to download as a ZIP as well. Be warned: it is 1.3 GB in size. If you have a fast Internet connection, and I assume that you do, it will download in 10-20 minutes. Thanks.

Right-click where it says 499 Items on the PDF option on the web page. You will be able to download all as a ZIP, or right-click on PDF on Firefox. It should give you the option to download as a ZIP as well. Be warned: it is 1.3 GB in size. If you have a fast Internet connection, and I assume that you do, it will download in 10-20 minutes. Thanks.

It looks like Seaquest to me. It is definitely an ActiVision game. That's for sure.

I would say Tron, because I heard that the 1982 movie was created with the help of Atari 8-bit computers. That would be a feat, though, considering how big the render farm would have to be.

I have heard that on different TV shows, including cartoons.

Wise man once said, "He who sits on thumbtack suddenly rises."

In Minnesota, right in my neck of the woods, it is currently clear and 14ºF. It is supposed to get colder as the days trudge on. It feels like 4ºF. It could get to -3ºF in temperature. Since we do not utilize the metric system much in the US, I do not know the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius off-hand. We are so used to the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measurement here, as you all know. Thanks.