Doctor Octagon

That's awesome No Swear Gamer! Great way to support Atari Day!

This was a really special story Storm Surge

I never realized Pole Position II was released for anything other than the Atari 7800.

That's a great point.

Pat & Ian asked a good question on The Completely Unnecessary Podcast this week: Why isn't there more love for the Sega Master System? Their question is a good one but I think their answers are lacking something. There's always more nostalgic love for what was most popular at the time. Look at the nostalgic movies that get all the love now, most of them were what was popular when we were younger. The same is true in video gaming. The NES dominated that generation, and even the Atari 7800 was outselling the Sega Master System based on price. The Master System was a GREAT console, I think it had the best graphics of the era and some of the best games. You can't go wrong with Phantasy Star, and I disagree with Pat & Ian that people wouldn't have been interested in playing OutRun or Shinobi on the Master System. If you were back in 1986, and the Genesis was a good 3-4 years away before it really got going, those were great titles on a really cool game system. It's growth was stunted because it didn't take off the way the NES did with Mario, etc. but that didn't mean there weren't great reasons to own a Sega Master System, or of course an Atari 7800. I do agree with Pat & Ian that "only 2 kids at every school had a Sega Master System" that sounds about right, and that Sega lost interest in supporting the Master System in America when they were close to releasing the Sega Genesis and knew it would blow the doors off of everything else around. What do you think?

One of the questions I'm wondering about is if the original Atari Jaguar moulds have already been modified/damaged beyond repair to make the Retro VGS shells. It seems like a lot of initial interest came to them from Jaguar owners buying clear shells. I like all of the different VGS shell colors but would LOVE for them to be available for the Jag. It would be a shame if those moulds were ruined.

Still rebuilding my collection after my move into a smaller place: ATARI Atari 2600 (4 Switch) Atari 2600 (New In Box Jr.) Atari 5200 (4 Port) Atari 7800 Atari Lynx (Mk.II) Atari Jaguar Atari Jaguar CD NINTENDO Nintendo NES Super Nintendo Nintendo 64 Nintendo 64 DD Game Boy Advance SP NES Edition SEGA Sega Master System Sega Genesis Sega Game Gear Sega Dreamcast SONY PlayStation 4 MICROSOFT Xbox One CLASSIC GAMING GENERAL Retron 5 Odyssey 2 ARCADE Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga Namco Class of '81

I love that you pointed out the Atari 7800 ProLine Controller's resemblance to a Star Trek phaser! I always thought the same thing and assumed I was the only one

I'm not saying companies don't make the same mistake, I'm saying the majors in the tech industry are far more secretive today because they've learned from industry-crushing mistakes of the past. Smaller companies still do this. You mentioned Blizzard with Titan, that's a great example. The biggest one that comes to mind is the Phantom video game console from Infinium Labs. They announced it in 2003, Wired had it listed as vaporware in 2004, and they milled around through the end of the decade not doing much. What you don't often see are industry leaders, as Atari was at the time, making this mistake over and over and over.

I agree with you on that for sure. These are where the cracks start to show in Atari and the whole industry as it was back then. So much vaporware was announced, touted in catalogs, magazines and at trade shows. How many cool things have we seen with Atari that never came out? Atari 2700 RC VCS, Atari Cosmos, Atari Mindlink, Atari 7800 Keyboard Computer, probably close to 100 games across all the systems, all announced and never released. That was bad show. It disappointed a lot of people and tarnished Atari's reputation. You'd hardly see this today. Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, they're all tight-lipped about what's coming out until it's time to announce something. Tech giants like Apple and Google are notoriously secretive. I'd bet you this tight-lipped tech culture we're in today is to some degree a result of Atari contributing to the collapse of an entire industry because of their slack practices.

This is really cool Tempest 2000 arcade cabinet conversion done by Jeff Mathews at Classic Arcade Restorations, for Eric Clayberg. Eric posts: You can see more photos here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EricClayberg/posts/24S4MoGoCns

What, can't spare an E.T.?

The arcade version of Stunt Cycle was just awesome. Here's a beautiful example. It has that distinct pre-Warner Atari feel to it, like they were still discovering and inventing what an arcade machine actually was.

Was that the game that looked like a pizza with Devil's Tower from Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the middle?

So what you're saying is this:

Wait we're giving away a Jaguar? How about we give it to me. I hate saying the Jaguar "was an epic commercial failure" though I don't fault you for saying it. True, Jaguar barely chinked the armor of Nintendo & Sega in its day, but I wonder how many kids went in to buy a Sega CD, saw the Jag and changed their minds. "Epic commercial failure" is relative when compared to 3DO, TurboDuo, FM Towns Marty, Amiga CD32, LaserActive, PC-FX, Sega CD, 32X, and even the Virtual Boy. (Yeah, Virtual Boy was an epic commercial failure.) Remember, this was the era of alternative systems. We don't see that much anymore, underdog systems providing a gaming alternative to the big 3 manufacturers. As far as underdogs go, I think the Jag did pretty well. $249 bought you a lot of fun when compared with rivals like 3DO selling for $700. 3DO was Time magazine's 1994 product of the year, but Jaguar made it into Kay-Bee Toys and Walmart. Unlike other underdogs, the Jag at least took on the big boys in big retail turf. It lost the fight, but it was a fight against Nintendo and Sega both in their prime. For an underdog I think that's pretty cool. What I love about "The Last True Atari" is that it was like the Klingons. It didn't care that it was the underdog. It marched straight into a hopeless battle and picked a fight with the big boys and fought with honor. It went up against MASSIVE marketing campaigns from Nintendo and Sega, against great products, against more niche systems than ever, and fought that battle in a flooded market. Had Sam Tramiel's Atari developed better relationships with 3rd party publishers maybe the story would've been different. I love the Jaguar for its bravery in Silicon Valley's cold cruel world.

Wow this is a lot to watch. You have great videos MaxmimumRD, thanks for sharing. Subbed.