Atari XP Physical Releases - Atari Releasing New Atari 2600 Game Cartridges!

[Justin]

12 hours ago, RickR said:

YES! 

It reminds me of people that complain about their favorite business or newspaper or magazine or whatever ceasing to exist.  Did you support it?  No!  Then stop complaining. 

I love this take. ABSOLUTELY. 

 

6 hours ago, TrekMD said:

I agree with that.  But you know how it is with people. 

 

2 hours ago, Sabertooth said:

I pre-ordered it. I dig the modern version and the dev seemed to put a lot into the 2600 version over several years.

Here's a great interview with the dev by Zero Page Homebrew.

 

I love to hear that. I hope Mr. Run and Jump is an absolute work of art.

[Justin]

On 10/28/2022 at 4:14 PM, RickR said:

It's weird, right?  Mail within the same city takes a few days minimum.  But across the entire country...shorter time.  PS - I just mailed my property taxes in.  I'll be poor in a few days 🙂

 

@RickR @TrekMD Incidentally I've been sending letters from South Florida to Portland USPS 1st class mail and it's usually taking 4-5 days. I'd love for it to be overnight! 

[TrekMD]

USPS has become unpredictable with their service.  You'd expect stuff to arrive the next day if within the same city, but that doesn't happen.  Heck, I sent a Priority package to Puerto Rico from Miami (1000 miles), and it took 2 weeks for to arrive!  Good thing it was a Priority package!

[Sabertooth]

8 hours ago, Justin said:

Does Atari have Tim Lapetino involved at all with the cartridge label and box art design? If not I think that would benefit them. I view the Atari XP program as Atari's outreach and reward to our community and I want to see them successful with this. I think there are a few things they could be doing differently that would, in my mind, absolutely justify the price.

It doesn't appear so. They did involve Tim in the creation of the key art for the VR game Pixel Ripped 1978. It would be cool if they used the same approach for the XP line.

I have all of the carts so far and agree that there is a lot they could be doing differently. However, $60 for a boxed cart with a manual is on par with other homebrew. Particularly for Mr.Run & Jump since it's a new game and not an existing ROM slapped on a cart.

[RickR]

9 hours ago, Justin said:

@RickR @TrekMD Incidentally I've been sending letters from South Florida to Portland USPS 1st class mail and it's usually taking 4-5 days. I'd love for it to be overnight! 

Wait...mail to Portland and not to me???  (I'm kidding of course!)

USPS has been pretty good to me.  Ebay sales to almost anywhere in the country arrive in 2 days (Priority Mail).  Maybe I'm just lucky.  Plus I really love how they pick stuff up at my home for free.  I schedule a pickup through the web site and it works like a champ. 

My guess is that it's the local post office that sets the tone for getting stuff delivered quickly.  Because in the tracking, I can see my packages getting processed and sent out of Portland FAST...usually the same day they pick them up. 

 

[Justin]

35 minutes ago, RickR said:

Wait...mail to Portland and not to me???  (I'm kidding of course!)

Haha I don't think you would've enjoyed the card and pack of stickers 😭

 

36 minutes ago, RickR said:

USPS has been pretty good to me.  Ebay sales to almost anywhere in the country arrive in 2 days (Priority Mail).

USPS has been pretty good to me too. Cards and letters mailed from South Florida to downtown Portland (large building adjacent to the Williamette river) takes 4-5 days. USPS Priority packages take 2 days, sometimes 3. It's worked out pretty well!

 

38 minutes ago, RickR said:

My guess is that it's the local post office that sets the tone for getting stuff delivered quickly.

I think so too!

 

38 minutes ago, RickR said:

My guess is that it's the local post office that sets the tone for getting stuff delivered quickly.  Because in the tracking, I can see my packages getting processed and sent out of Portland FAST...usually the same day they pick them up. 

I'll tell you a real problem I ran into. I had four different items that I had purchased from a boutique shop in Naples, FL include "Free Shipping" which turned out to be FedEx Ground. Each of the four packages were processed by the store quickly and out of the state on the back of a FedEx truck within 24 hours. It would arrive in Oregon within 3 days - but every time it got hung up at the FedEx processing location in Troutdale, OR outside of Portland. The packages would spend another 3 days just sitting in Troutdale. I researched it a bit and it turns out FedEx has major issues in their Troutdale facility, including employment issues that are still not entirely resolved. From that point on I paid for USPS shipping and never had another issue.

[RickR]

7 minutes ago, Justin said:

I researched it a bit and it turns out FedEx has major issues in their Troutdale facility

This is true, I've noticed the same thing.  Shipping via Fedex...things move quickly until the last stop in Troutdale.  For whatever reason, they end up staying there for at least a day (as you mentioned).  Hopefully they get their issues fixed soon. 

On the bright side, they do usually show up and the drivers are very nice and polite. 

[Justin]

Just now, RickR said:

On the bright side, they do usually show up and the drivers are very nice and polite. 

YES! All of the packages eventually showed up, always right at 10:45 am and the driver was always very friendly.

[Justin]

On 6/25/2023 at 9:21 AM, Scott Stilphen said:

With Atariage soon to stop selling unlicensed arcade conversions, prototypes, and hacks, everyone can now look forward to more original content like this

I wonder what the chances are that AA has stopped selling unlicensed games because Atari plans to release officially licensed games on cartridge 🙃

[TrekMD]

50 minutes ago, Justin said:

I wonder what the chances are that AA has stopped selling unlicensed games because Atari plans to release officially licensed games on cartridge 🙃

That is a good question.  We know, for sure, that plenty of original stuff will be available at PRGE.  I guess time will tell whether or not Atari will start releasing official games.

[Justin]

1 hour ago, TrekMD said:

That is a good question.

Thank you 

 

1 hour ago, TrekMD said:

We know, for sure, that plenty of original stuff will be available at PRGE.

YESSS!! My approach: Let's do our part to support independent developers for Atari & classic gaming! Buy what you love, and try to provide constructive feedback on the ones you don't. Everybody is doing their best to give us new stuff, 30 years after it became (mostly) commercially unviable.

 

1 hour ago, TrekMD said:

I guess time will tell whether or not Atari will start releasing official games.

Yes! Let's hope there's something to this. There’s nothing stronger than patience and time. All it takes is for Atari to negotiate licensing rights for something like Pac-Man - not global rights to all platforms but limited to let's say the Atari 2600 where Bandai Namco wouldn't be bringing in new money from anyway - and Atari could add Pac-Man to their Atari XP lineup, releasing Kurt Howe / Nukey Shay's Pac-Man 8K on an official cartridge. Or a new E.T. with E.T. and Elliott flying on the bike eating Reese's Pieces over trees and rooftops like Flappy Bird  Or license Galaga and officially release Champ Games' incredible version for the Atari 2600! Or 2600 Xevious. Or develop entirely new versions of classic - and potentially modern games (think HALO 2600 from Ed Fries). 

With companies like Namco it would be possible to negotiate a broad license for the "Namco Classics" games that usually would be included on one cartridge anyway. Some of this may be a stretch, but I'm sure everybody involved would love to see this happen and I wouldn't put it past them to get it done. Pac-Man has been licensed to appear in some editions of the Atari Flashback, so it's possible!

And wouldn't it be interesting if Atari could release some of those Activision games. 

[TrekMD]

I have the Nukey Shay Pac-Man in cartridge.  Got it done as a custom cart on AA.  It would be cool to have Atari release an official version of that particular hack of the game.

[Justin]

1 hour ago, TrekMD said:

I have the Nukey Shay Pac-Man in cartridge.  Got it done as a custom cart on AA.  It would be cool to have Atari release an official version of that particular hack of the game.

Absolutely agree. They'd have to get the credit right right on that one though. It would be a huge tribute to Kurt Howe / Nukey Shay.

[Justin]

On 8/4/2023 at 1:31 AM, Justin said:

Does Atari have Tim Lapetino involved at all with the cartridge label and box art design? If not I think that would benefit them. I view the Atari XP program as Atari's outreach and reward to our community and I want to see them successful with this. I think there are a few things they could be doing differently that would, in my mind, absolutely justify the price.

I really appreciate Atari making the effort to bring back the 1982-1984 Silver Boxes for the 2600. This is what the "Special Edition" of Mr. Run and Jump looks like. Although the "Atari 2600" logo isn't quite right (the 0s were originally circular Os" and the spine font isn't right, but they're close to the real look and feel of what we would want. If they had somebody like Tim Lapetino advising them, even informally, or one of us, or a homebrewer, that would go a long way to getting things just right. Atari is making an effort here and I want to be supportive of that. This feels like the firs time there's been a light on over there since the Jaguar came out and I want to encourage them to keep going.

 

[Justin]

Also - I think this is an important thought - it would be wise of Atari to assign these new games CX numbers and include them at the bottom of the box. For example, Mr. Run and Jump would be CX-26191 or wherever we're at now. There's no reason not to continue the product numbering system if these are going to be official releases.

[Chubbz]

 

[Justin]

On 8/6/2023 at 1:16 AM, Justin said:

Also - I think this is an important thought - it would be wise of Atari to assign these new games CX numbers and include them at the bottom of the box. For example, Mr. Run and Jump would be CX-26191 or wherever we're at now. There's no reason not to continue the product numbering system if these are going to be official releases.

 

I want to point out that Atari is doing this. Cheers to Atari for getting this right! The 4-in-1 Paddle Multicart shows "CX26501", Berzerk Enhanced Edition shows "CX26502" on the box, and Mr. Run and Jump shows "CX26503". 

[TrekMD]

That is cool.  I ordered Berzerk with the 2600 Plus.  Now we have a new color for 2600 games, green!

[Justin]

My guess is they are referencing the original green Berzerk box for the 2600. I have the later release which was red.

[TrekMD]

So, it's a mix of designs.  🙂

[Justin]

What I would most like to see again are the original 1982 Silver Box designs with the large Atari logotype at the top, as seen on E.T., Raiders, and others. The Atari 5200 launched with the blue variant of these boxes. To me they are the best looking.

 

[Sabertooth]

Personally, I would like them to come up with a new uniform box to dermarcate this new era of releases. Something that calls back to the best of the Atari Inc designs, but is easily identifiable as of this era. Maybe a gold box era? 🤔

[TrekMD]

That is a good idea. 

[Sabertooth]

Atari just announced another XP cart. This time it's an Ltd run of Outlaw ($59) with new box and label art by Brazilian pop artist Butcher Billy. He also did their Atari X NFTs (which this is from) and Akka Arrh physical release box art.

This may be where I get off the XP train. Outlaw is just so common boxed and while I like the art, I don't think I like it enough.

I thought the first three XP releases were great and loved the idea of Atari releasing protos through the label. I bought the Atari50 commemorative set even though the games are common, because the set looked cool and were issued as a part of the 50th celebration. I bought the XP edition of Mr. Run & Jump because a standard edition wasn't announced at that time. (Berzerk and the standard MRJ are not XP releases) 

I wish Atari would go back to the original stated intent of the XP line and dig into the catalog for some true rarities and protos.

What do you think?

[Smell Dawg]

Pretty much agree across the board, there.  I picked up the Mr Run and Jump because it was new and different; Berzerk Enhanced for much the same reason - it brought something different to the table.  While I endlessly love this new Outlaw cover art (and Butcher Billy stuff in general), that's not enough to justify purchasing the same game twice.  Seems kind of strange to me that the Atari.com listing for the new Outlaw states "Collectible cartridges for rare and never-released Atari games", since Outlaw is neither.
 
Admittedly, I also wasn't on board with most of the XP line, though.  Even if they all magically came back in stock, I'd still only end up with Aquaventure/Saboteur/Yars' Return - and even then, the standard editions are what I'm after.  It's the new and different part!  (I'll never stop kicking myself for missing out on those the first time, and sincerely hope they come back in stock someday)

Edited September 5, 2023 by Smell Dawg