RickR

From the great nosweargamer...Thin Ice and Bumper Bash.

Sword of Saros

Please explain what the cabinet is?

Oh man. Plutos and Sirius look really good! Missing in Action looks pretty bad IMO. So choppy and those limp sounds! Chuck Norris wouldn't need all those kicks and punches to defeat those lame dudes. Everyone (but Atari) knew that! Pit Fighter and Toki would have been awesome additions to the library of games.

Not a thrift store, but my local library has a "book sale" area. I found two PS2 games (Madden 2003 and Tomy Clancy's Splinter Cell, both complete) for 50 cents each!

"Marble Madness" is another game that would have been incredible on 7800. Especially if they offered a track-ball version. Or 5200 even, which had the excellent track-ball controller readily available. In fact, why no 5200 Crystal Castles??? Damn it, Atari! There's one great feature of the 5200 and that's how many games it had that supported the track-ball correctly. Space Invaders with TB is such a trip, for example. Even clunker games like Super Breakout become something special with that controller.

PS - looking forward to your review. That game doesn't get the coverage or credit it deserves.

It's always been a difficult game to get right IMO. The arcade version used a track ball. Home versions used joystick and are very difficult to control precisely. What would be really cool is if the 2600 or 8-bit version had an analog track-ball mode. But alas, no. A 7800 version would have been very cool indeed.

I would guess that was the case. If it was free, he was all for it.

And it looks like they finally did make a cartridge release based on the 1984 version in 1988 for the XEGS: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-crystal-castles_6045.html There are a few of these carts on ebay, but they are very pricey. It is rare I'd say.

According to Atarimania, Atari created a version in 1984, but did not release it. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-crystal-castles_6045.html That being said, I remember having a version on disk back then. Probably downloaded from a BBS.

Wow, so cool. Thank you for sharing.

Wait...how do you use S-Video? Some kind of mod to your systems? I just use the old yellow/white/red composite.

I think mine is a "Funai", which is tremendously fun to say. "Foo-Nigh". I do love the flat panel TV's for their light weight and space saving. I keep that one CRT mostly to be able to play light gun games.

I think that's your best video yet! I laughed, I cried, I marveled at the production values..... I've kept one CRT. A 13 inch beauty with a VCR built in.

I can't wait for the NSG review of Supercharger Frogger. That game is pretty much perfection IMO. The best arcade port on the system.

RIP.

Very true...hindsight is 20/20.

CoolCV is the best one.

Ray Kassar, president of Atari from Feb 1978 through July 1983 passed away on Dec 10.2017. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=187558023 I know many Atari fans have mixed feelings about the man, but he did oversee the golden age of Atari. And sadly, it's demise as well. It's fair to say he had good and bad leadership qualities. On the good side, he streamlined Atari and it's manufacturing processes. He added much-needed discipline and formality to the company culture. He kicked off the arcade port craze with the licensing of Space Invaders for 2600. Atari saw astronomical growth under his early leadership. On the negative side, he didn't seem to value the programmers that created Atari's games. If he'd given in to programmer demands for a little recognition and profit-sharing, it could have prevented the third party software craze that drove the crash of 1983. He was a prima donna, with long commutes with a driver to Atari HQ. I dismantled Atari's renowned R&D machine. He valued milking the 2600 for all it was worth rather than developing a better and more innovative gaming system. RIP Ray Kassar.

I'm in! I'll try to get a score in soon. I've got my CV out and functioning!

Here's my "Survival Island" story: I bought the game (mail order) after the crash. It came with no artwork and a tiny pamphlet manual. Once I had all the Supercharger games in WAV format on an MP3 player, I decided to sell this game. It was too valuable and too fragile for me to keep. So it sold for quite a bit of cash, and no regrets here.

WOW! Well, glad to have you here. Pretty cool.

More questions: What other games have you worked on? Thanks