RickR

As an Atari collector, I like the idea of variation between game systems. I have the A2600 and A7800 versions of Xenophobe, and I want to get the XE and Lynx versions as well. No one would want to get the game if it was exactly the same on all the systems. There are things that could be improved in the A2600 and A7800 versions. But, the XE version really shines, and the Lynx version has differences from the arcade, which I frown on sometimes. But, the Lynx version, with its enhancements, is the best in my opinion. Great games, and the differences in them make each version unique and worth collecting.

hi everyone,
 
i think the xe version is better. no reason for it, except a proper sized 7800 board was not used
 
7800 version, its colorful, but seems a bit baron, and doors are a little  bit sluggish. overall though, still a good version.
 
thanks,
lance
www.atarisales.com
 
 

hi everyone,
now here is where the 7800 really shines. the programmer knew his/her stuff, and most likely the choplifter is a double sprite. music good to.
 
now the xe version, i will include the original 16k apple port also. it will show you why this one is so bad and choppy. the apple port is a port of apple basic with machine code, its why its pink. the 1988 atari version just updated the lousy apple port. its obvious its not a complete rewrite in atari machine code.
16k apple port. choplifter was released originally as a 16k game on  cart., 48k disk. by broderbund.
 
thanks,
 
lance
www.atarisales.com
 
 

Sounds like they are doing their best to keep people safe.  I'm glad you had fun!
 

This weekend I went to Orlando with my family. It was a great! On Saturday I went to Universal & Islands of Adventure. Currently it is required you wear a mask unless eating or drinking while in the parks. Before you exit the parking garage your temperature is taken. The park felt crowded and very busy but wait times were low as compared to a typical Saturday. I think the longest I waited for a ride was 30 minutes at most.
Each ride required social distancing, so for each car, or whatever the ride has, it would be one family/group of people at a time. I got front row on every ride I went on because of this! That was cool. Lines required social distancing as well. Stickers on the floor indicated where to stand. Before your turn on a ride an employee gives you hand sanitizer.
Wearing a mask all day in FL summer heat was difficult, and I don’t plan on doing it again. I would love to return to Universal hopefully not too long from now but not until it is safe to no longer wear masks. I have never felt so hot ever! The water rides had the longest wait times, it had to be at least 98 degrees out. 🥵
Overall, it was a fun trip! I liked Universal better than Islands of Adventure btw 😄

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Happy Canada Day EH! To all my Canadian brothers and sisters ! 🍁🍻

 

Thank you for posting this!  It looks like a lot of fun, and I hope to try it soon.

I haven't had a chance to really play this game to properly participate.  So, here is the only score I was able to get in the few minutes I was able to play.  

https://github.com/peteym5/CC65_Mind_Field
I have completed my first game in C Programming Language. I am doing this for my own learning experience and sharing what I learn with others.
The game is simple as with the Pascal Version. The difference here is that I added an additional ML call to scan the screen around the character you control. The minds highlight in Blue.
This is one of my reserved games and this version is being kept as open source. I have considerations of a more enhanced version that will have a vertical scrolling screen with obstacles, shells,moving tanks, and bunkers with enemies shooting from them. It will be sort off a mini "Ikiri Warriors" type game.

Arkanoid Airhead is easy and relaxing to play, but still challenging.
This is the most recent version:
ARKANOID_AIRHEAD_FINDS_AIRHEAD_20200627.bin
And there is also a version for the Flashback Portable that will change depending upon what console you play it on:
ARKANOID_AIRHEAD_FLASHBACK_EMU_ANOMALY_20200627.bin 
The Flashback version plays in white on the Atari Portable, but plays in black on classic consoles via the Harmony or Uno cart.
And it's multi-colored if you play it on the Retron-77 console which may be the closest to how it would look on a real CBS RAM cartridge, the format the AFP is using to get the colors.
To find out for sure and how close someone would have to create a real CBS RAM cart with the binary and compare it on a classic console.
I don't think anyone has succeeded in reproducing an authentic CBS RAM cart today; it shouldn't be that difficult for a retro hardware pro since Sara carts have been reloaded.
 

I didn't yet have a video game system at all when Pac-Man came out for the 2600, but one of my neighbors had it. I was surprised when I saw it (I was seven years old) because of how different it looked and how weird it sounded. But even at that young age, I figured that the developers at Atari were working with what they had on hand and could only do so much. I've always been a massive Pac-Man fan, so I nearly passed out when my brother and I got a 4-switcher for Christmas in 1982...and my parents also bought Pac-Man and stuck it in the box, so I was quite happy! I knew very well that it was virtually nothing like the arcade version, but I didn't care: I had a way to play Pac-Man at home, and I spent hours on end playing it. (And I always thought it looked great when you flip the TV TYPE switch to BW.)

I received this for my 9th birthday in May, 1982. It was the one gift I REALLY wanted & I was so pumped to get it.
I didn't have a lot of arcades around and I didn't spend a lot of time at the ones near me. I played more arcade games at pizza places and bowling alleys.
I had played Pac Man & loved it and was completely engrossed in Pac Mania.
I was only 9 but I obviously realized it was not going to be arcade-accurate representation. I loved (& still do!) my Atari but I knew that it wasn't capable or giving a 100% authentic arcade experience. That didn't bother me. I loved the games that I played on it & Pac Man was no exception.

Well I've pretty much lived in the same place my entire life. But in that time I've seen a few different chains of grocery stores come and go. 
When I was very young, we had a store called Sipes and my mother seemed to favor that store. It closed up and was turned into a May's Drugstore or something by the late 80s. But we also had a number of Safeway's. We also had Skagg's Alpha Beta along with GIANT and likely a few independants. 
Then in the 90s, this all began to change drastically! It started with all the Safeway's basically shuttering overnight. In their place opened up Homeland. I later found when working at Homeland, that it was in fact...Safeway but they changed their name as they felt Homeland fit this part of the world better or something. I just know my paychecks were on Safeway letterhead with the Safeway corporate offices listed on them. Skagg's changed their name to Skagg's Albertson, and then eventually to just Albertson's. 
GIANT and IGA disappeared completely from here and only existed in rural towns at that point. In their place we had the rise of Price Mart, Buy 4 Less, and the one independent in the area that was starting to expand a bunch...known as Reasor's Foods.
Then by the late 90s and into the 2000s, all the Albertson's closed down and for a brief time became Food Pyramids. Reasor's eventually bought out and acquired all the Price Marts converting their stores into Reasor's and doubling their empire pretty much over night. Homeland which used to have about 40 stores in the area...completely disappeared and their buildings either being raised for different structures, or converted into Wal-Greens which was now on a huge rise. 
Today, we pretty much only have Reasor's (Still has the most grocery stores in the area), Wal-Mart super centers and their neighborhood markets, Super Targets, and... that is pretty much it. I'm sure we might have some smaller independents but they don't exist in the main city with the exception of Reasor's. My wife gets most of our stuff from the closest Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market but we try and get our meat from one of the local butchers. I've heard of Kroger, Publix, and others but those stores never existed that I can remember where I live and they certainly don't exist here currently. 
I was forgetting that we do have a few Aldi's that have sprung up but we don't personally shop them. We also have two Wholesale Food Markets but they are in the hipster part of the city so again...not our bag. We also have an independant that alongside Reasor's has been here a long time and used to have quite a few stores. They were called Warehouse Market and had been around since the 60s but as the last family member of the company decided it was time to move on, they were bought out and now known as Cox Savers. But most of them are on the other side of town and not near where I live so again for us it mainly the choice of the Super Target, Wal-Mart, or Reasor's. Reasor's is the nicest of the bunch but they are priced to match so we rarely go into the one just a mile up the road unless there is something we need and they are the only ones to carry it. 
 

I grew up in the Chicago area. The first grocery store I remember was called Eagle -- not related to the Giant Eagle chain, btw. I think that chain closed up in the early 2000s...shame because the carried Hershey's raspberry chocolate chips -- those things are amazing...can't get those any more. 😞 When I was a wee tot my mom's grocery shopping was always done on a Wednesday. We'd go to the local Eagle store, and then next door to Econo Drugs. Sometimes we'd go to a very tiny A&P. (My last memory of that A&P was playing a game of Pac-Man there circa 1982.)
Eventually a Kroger opened up in town. My biggest memories of that store involved video games -- they always had two arcade cabs up front by the entrance. I'd plead with my parents for a quarter (a few times it actually worked!). But I would hang out in front and watch other people play. I think their first cabs were Crazy Kong (yup, Crazy Kong -- in the US!) and a Deep Scan / Head On II twofer. They eventually got a Pac-Man cabinet that I'm pretty sure was counterfeit -- wasn't the Bally/Midway cabinet but a custom cabinet with a hand-painted sign that didn't resemble the actual marquis. I seem to remember they also would eventually have Popeye, Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, and Pac-Man Plus, rotated in and out over the following year or two. Kroger also had a video rental service, and I think for a time records. We moved away from that place in 1986. Weird thing is I was back there in 2006 visiting a friend, and I wanted to stop in at Kroger to get a drink or something...and I swear to God, it looked EXACTLY the same as I last saw it, minus the arcade games and video rentals. NOTHING had changed. It was a weird time capsule.
There used to be a chain called Dominick's in the Chicago area. They closed down a few years ago. I think when they first opened they had an Italian focus, but the eventually became just another grocery store. Safeway bought them out. What's cool though is because of that, when I visit California I can actually use my old Dominick's loyalty card at Safeway. 🙂
 

23170 on IG live again. 

My fifth book (four in the "volume" series and a holiday book) was just released yesterday and is available thru Amazon!
To purchase the $13.99 paperback book in the USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BDT993Q  It is also available in 7 other countries, just PM me for other countries links.
To purchase the $3.99 e-book/Kindle version in the USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BLR45DR  It is also available in 12 other countries, just PM me for those countries links too.
All previous books are still available at: https://www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne
 
Retro Game Network covered the progress of this book here:
http://www.retrogamenetwork.com/2020/06/24/the-atari-2600-homebrew-companion-volume-4-now-available-with-paperback-and-kindle-editions/
http://www.retrogamenetwork.com/2020/06/05/the-atari-2600-homebrew-companion-volume-4-aiming-for-physical-digital-release-this-month/
 
Huge Thanks go out to my readers and fellow gamers, and the Atari Homebrew programmers for making this series a success!!!
Brian Matherne
https://www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne

The UNO Cart - from The Brewing Academy. 
 
What is it?
A simple, inexpensive SD multi-cart for the Atari 8-bit computers.  Load XEX/ATR/CAR/ROM image files onto a micro-sd, and load them on real hardware using a menu.
 
More info and pricing:  http://www.thebrewingacademy.com/
Also available on ebay (search for "Atari UNO")
 
RickR Review:
Pros:
The menu works well.  I love the "Find" feature, which makes it very easy to quickly find and load the game you want. ATR files load FAST.  ATR files are essentially floppy disk images.  Inexpensive.  Very good support via AtariAge or directly from the maker.  Comes with an excellent paper manual.  Nice cartridge shell included.  Cons:
No joystick support in menu.  It's kind of cumbersome to use the arrow keys to find stuff.  Use the "Find" feature instead. Only for XL/XE computers.  Won't work on 400/800. Remember to hold down "Option" key when loading ATR files (to disable Basic).  Summary:
If you have an XL or XE computer, GET THIS!  It is excellent.  A very inexpensive way to have almost every piece of software available for the 8-bit computers. It works well.  A+. 

The Uno Cart will work on Atari 400's that are upgraded to 48k. I tested this on 4 of these machines.

I will tell you, this was the case for me.  I had an 800XL, and Food Fight was such a disappointment.  Keep in mind that the 8-bit ports of various arcade games had always been excellent.  Most consider the 8-bit version of Donkey Kong to be the best home version, for example.  Food Fight was a stinker, and I disliked it.  Way too choppy and not very fun.  I didn't play it much at all. 

Oh man, I never realized that Food Fight in the arcade was rare.  I remember playing it and loving it.  I never understood why no one made a home version (other than the really bad 8-bit Atari version).  I may have mentioned before that I never even knew the 7800 existed until I started collecting as an adult.
In my mind, Food Fight is the premier game for the 7800.  I also think Asteroids is right up there with it.  Food Fight is very close to the arcade version (except for the smaller screen area).  The 7800 version handles all that frenetic movement perfectly. 
Asteroids on 7800 is a really nice upgrade to a tired classic.  I love the animation of the rocks, and the addition of 2-player co-op mode is astounding. 
 
 
 
 

I know how to start my car, put gas in it & wash it. That's it. 😀

I found a neat car video series to watch on YouTube.  I loved tinkering with cars in the past when I had the "freedom" to do so because it was interesting to find a $100 car that was crap and get it going enough to drive around town.  It's how I found a Mazda 323 coupe with moon roof that was a lot of fun to drive.  $50 for the car, replaced windshield, bondo the hole in the hood, replace the tires all the way around.  I got 40,000 miles out of it before the computer went out in it.  5 speed, too.  It was a fun little car.  I think I miss that car more than any other I had.  It was suppose to be totaled but it ran fine...just needed some TLC.  I still remember my Grandmother getting on to me for buying it.  Then when it died all I head was "ahhh...that was such a good lil' car."  Yeah...exactly what I thought LOL.
Anyway, here's one of this channel's videos for you guys to check out.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Kinda makes me want to go and try to find some old barns or junkyards to go through. Enjoy!