In 6th Grade I Wrote My Own Atari Strategy Guide. Here it is:

[Justin]

 

 

 

 

 

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

[TrekMD]

That is cool!  Thanks for sharing it!

[Justin]

1 minute ago, TrekMD said:

That is cool!  Thanks for sharing it!

THANKS EUGENIO! 

[Gianna]

This is so cute Justin 🥰

I love your little drawings and it's so well put together 😭☺️

[Atari 5200 Guy]

This is cool!  No matter how short it is the love for what you were trying to do is present on every page...and it carried over to Atari I/O we all know today.  You know...the magazine COULD turn into a newsletter type thing for Atari I/O members 😉 

[Atari Creep]

Dude, this is so fantastic. The fact that it still exist is really cool. You put a ton of love into that thing and it shows. Love it.

[RickR]

Very elaborate!  Isn't it cool how passionate we were as kids?  You did a great job, and such neat handwriting too 🙂 

[DegasElite]

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

[GRay Defender]

Really amazing work Justin!  Why have you been holding out on this?  Ha ha... I would love to see a video of you talking about the guide, page by page and what it meant to you, then as well as now... Any how thanks for sharing with us here!

[Justin]

On 4/9/2020 at 7:14 PM, Gianna said:

This is so cute Justin 🥰

I love your little drawings and it's so well put together 😭☺️

THANK YOU @Gianna!

 

On 4/9/2020 at 7:38 PM, kamakazi20012 said:

This is cool!  No matter how short it is the love for what you were trying to do is present on every page...and it carried over to Atari I/O we all know today.  You know...the magazine COULD turn into a newsletter type thing for Atari I/O members 😉 

That's very true!

 

On 4/9/2020 at 7:38 PM, kamakazi20012 said:

You know...the magazine COULD turn into a newsletter type thing for Atari I/O members 😉 

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.

 

On 4/9/2020 at 7:50 PM, Atari Creep said:

Dude, this is so fantastic. The fact that it still exist is really cool. You put a ton of love into that thing and it shows. Love it.

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.

 

On 4/9/2020 at 10:08 PM, RickR said:

Very elaborate!  Isn't it cool how passionate we were as kids?  You did a great job, and such neat handwriting too 🙂 

Haha thanks Rick! Teachers used to scold me constantly about how sloppy my handwriting was.

 

On 4/10/2020 at 12:02 PM, BlackCatz40 said:

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

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.

 

On 4/10/2020 at 1:18 PM, GRay Defender said:

Really amazing work Justin!  Why have you been holding out on this?  Ha ha...

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!

 

On 4/10/2020 at 1:18 PM, GRay Defender said:

Ha ha... I would love to see a video of you talking about the guide, page by page and what it meant to you, then as well as now... Any how thanks for sharing with us here!

Great idea! I'll put that on my "To Do" List.

[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. 🙂

[greenween]

This is awesome!! Thanks for sharing Justin.

[TrekMD]

It is now uploaded to my Google Books and available to read on all my devices.  😁

[btbfilms76]

This an amazing piece of YOUR history.  Something to be said about those kids who worked in the summer cutting grass, painting houses, and washing cars just to get a little cash in order to get a game here and there.  I love being able to look back and remember what back breaking job i did in order to gat a game.  This is a cool reminder of who you were back then and what you’re doing now.  Thanks for sharing this Justin. 

[PlastikCogLiquid]

I made a couple of these too, back in the early 90's  😀   I made one for Alf and another one for Spellcaster, both SMS games.

[Clint Thompson]

Oh my God.... there is so much awesome in this for so many reasons, what a great treasure for you to still have but also generously share with everyone else!

Reading through the pages just naturally brings a smile to your face. Love the drawn consoles and headers of the games for each game. Appreciate the price list inclusion at the end. Super bad ass for just 11 years old man! You had it in you at an early age and it shows.

As a side note (does this make it a PS?), Fatal Run was originally targeted for the Atari Lynx? Or is that what Road Blasters turned into? *maybe no relation*

Another side side note (PPS) I used to have a loose copy of Fatal Run on the 7800 and just looking on eBay, only one copy appears (PAL) with a crunchy box for $199.

Crazy

[DegasElite]

I always thought Fatal Run was RoadBlasters renamed for the A7800. The similarities are there. RoadBlasters was for the arcades first, wasn't it?

[Justin]

On 1/23/2022 at 7:41 PM, DegasElite said:

I always thought Fatal Run was RoadBlasters renamed for the A7800. The similarities are there. RoadBlasters was for the arcades first, wasn't it?

@DegasElite I was about to say I've never heard that before, but apparently I have -- it's what I wrote down in my Fatal Run write-up in my Strategy Guide in 6th Grade. (If you download the PDF it's at the top of Pg. 5). I wrote "Fatal Run is one of the last 7800 games = originally designed for the Lynx." I'm not sure that's true, in fact I would suspect it's not, but I wouldn't have written that in my Strategy Guide if I hadn't heard it somewhere and believed it to be true. Maybe @Video 61 knew something about it at the time and had told me.

RoadBlasters absolutely should have been on the Atari 7800. It should've been a best-selling title. Right along with Marble Madness, Tetris and Paperboy. Atari Corp. (Jack Tramiel / Home Consumer Div.) should've had an exclusive agreement with Atari Games (Warner Communications / Coin-Op Arcade) to have exclusive rights to all of the Atari arcade games for Atari systems and computers.

Instead they formed Tengen and found ways to put everything on Nintendo.

 

On 1/23/2022 at 7:05 PM, Clint Thompson said:

Oh my God.... there is so much awesome in this for so many reasons, what a great treasure for you to still have but also generously share with everyone else!

Reading through the pages just naturally brings a smile to your face. Love the drawn consoles and headers of the games for each game. Appreciate the price list inclusion at the end. Super bad ass for just 11 years old man! You had it in you at an early age and it shows.

THANK YOU @Clint Thompson that means a lot! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I wish I had done more at the time so I would have more to share with everybody today. I had always wanted it to be a website. I had to settle for paper at the time but a few years later we got started on what would grow into what you see today. I think it's really cool that you also remember the mail order forms and lists from Atari from the early 1990s, I haven't met too many people who were ordering from Atari at that time or recall the forms and catalogs they would send in the mail. I'm glad I was able to include those in the Strategy Guide to share with everybody.

The Strategy Guide has gotten a good response. I'm thinking about creating a modern version of it - a free downloadable PDF laid out like an old "Nintendo Power" Strategy Guide, complete with tips & tricks for all the best Atari games, with some "personality" mixed in, in the form of annotations and quotes from Atari I/O members & staff. That would be a lot of work but could be a fun project.

[7800 Pro Gamer]

It's so cool that you kept those.  They were a fun read and I'd be interested in an updated version.

I've writing reviews for my old 7800 games and planned on making a website around them myself although I don't I'll ever actually do it. But if you need contributors I'd be glad to submit bits and pieces 🙂

[Justin]

On 2/19/2022 at 11:21 AM, Silver Back said:

It's so cool that you kept those.  They were a fun read and I'd be interested in an updated version.

Thank you @Silver Back! I'm glad I still have it after so many years. Wish I had covered more games back in the day. It's a nice glimpse into my life as a classic gamer when there was no internet and I thought I was the only person on earth doing this.

 

On 2/19/2022 at 11:21 AM, Silver Back said:

I've writing reviews for my old 7800 games and planned on making a website around them myself although I don't I'll ever actually do it. But if you need contributors I'd be glad to submit bits and pieces 🙂

Absolutely! GREAT idea!! 

[Atari 5200 Guy]

You mention how it is sad that Jack's Atari didn't give us nicer things.  By the time I got my 7800 I had already owned an NES and SMS for a couple of years at least and had acquired a substantial amount of games for each.  In was probably on my 2nd year subscription to NP magazine so I wouldn't miss anything.

So, yea, I had all 3 at the same time during my teenage years.  And, no, I'm not trying to brag...I'm just expressing where I'm coming from.  If not for that one trip to find something I would like for Christmas from my dear grandmother I would have never known about the 7800. She bought me most of my game consoles but the 7800 I remember the best.  I'm glad we went because my grandmother and me were not going to go originally.  Neither one of us was feeling too good.

Atari Jack might not have done something's right but the 7800 really didn't need anything other than a stronger presentation on the market.  The NES, unfortunately, had pretty much cornered the market.  The SMS nor the 7800 stood a chance.  

In its defense, however, the 7800 is a remarkable console and I have fond memories of it when I owned all 3 systems.  Just like my SMS the 7800 fed a need the NES simply could not satisfy...arcade entertainment.  I turned to 5he SMS for some good Sega Arcade enjoyment.  Likewise the 7800 filled in the arcade games that were not Sega games.  Asteroids and Ms. Pac-Man were easy targets, Ballblazer always blew my mind, mom liked Centipede.  

The 7800, even then, filled a gap that was much needed and it continues to hold that spot proudly.  The 7800 maintained the Atari feel that may only be understood by those who lived through it.  It was not a disappointment.  What games both the NES and 7800 got just seem better on the 7800.  That's my opinion of it.

 

 

[Jinroh]

Very cool guide @Justin. 🙂 Thank you for sharing it!

I did not have a 7800, we upgraded from the 2600 to an NES at Christmas in 1988, so it was fun to see your reactions to the games on the 7800 ground floor at the time. 🙂

 

[Atari 5200 Guy]

On 1/26/2022 at 5:52 PM, Justin said:

RoadBlasters absolutely should have been on the Atari 7800. It should've been a best-selling title. Right along with Marble Madness, Tetris and Paperboy. Atari Corp. (Jack Tramiel / Home Consumer Div.) should've had an exclusive agreement with Atari Games (Warner Communications / Coin-Op Arcade) to have exclusive rights to all of the Atari arcade games for Atari systems and computers.

I could honestly see Marble Madness being on the 7800.  There's very little sound effects in the game.  It's mostly music. Roadblaster could have been on it.  If it could handle Pole Position then it could handle Roadblaster.  Tetris, though?  That game had so much controversy during those years I'm amazed it made it to any kind of game console.  If it wasn't for Nintendo putting money where their mouth was and going on a secret trip to the Soviet Union we might not have seen Tetris at all.  But I would have liked to see the game on the 7800.