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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

Tron in HD!

What, you need more than just "Tron in HD!"? Isn't that enough!?   Oh right... "when".   Tomorrow night. Specifically, Wednesday night, on HD Net. 9 PM ET, or 6 PM PT, repeating again 3 hours later at 12 Midnight ET/ 9 PM PT.   This is why it's a good thing to read Tron-Sector from time-to-time.   Otherwise, I would have been seriously tweaked if I'd missed it.   This one is going to be a keeper on the DVR. (At least until the Blu-Ray version comes out.)   Also, the Flynn Lives
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Justice League - Spoiler-free review

Okay. Justice League is finally here. Now, I wasn't a big fan of Man of Steel. Or Batman v Superman. Or The Dark Knight Rises. Or Green Lantern. This isn't a Marvel vs. DC thing. The comic book characters I liked. I grew up with them. This was DC just not understanding how to take those great characters and translate them well to the big screen. The heroes just weren't likable. The villains were forgettable. The films were a dreary chore to sit through. I didn't care about the heroes, or w
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Homebreviews - part 41: Star Castle Showdown

Well, after reviewing nine games in the previous entry, this time I'm just reviewing one... In the arcade version of Star Castle your goal is to destroy a rotating cannon in the center of the screen that's protected by a shield of rotating rings. You have to use your spaceship's guns to blast holes in the rings until you can punch through and destroy the cannon. But as soon as you have a clear shot - so does the cannon. The cannon also releases mines that aggressively chase your ship around the
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Homebreviews - part 39: Hack Attack

After nearly eight years, it's finally time for... RETURN OF THE HOMEBREVIEWS!! (Cue dramatic music sting.) There are so many games I have to catch up on, I'm grouping them into thematic chunks. You'll see what I mean once I get rolling. Actually, I suppose I could just do these one game at a time. But grouping them together sort-of forces me to play some games I wouldn't otherwise be that interested in reviewing. Case in point... Haunted Adventure Trilogy (Atari 2600) Haunted Adven
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Stella at 20, at 20

Okay... that's a bit of a cheat. Technically, it should be Stella at 20, at 19. But that just doesn't sound as cool. Bet you never thought you'd see another post about this project... did ya'? Well, at a certain point, neither did I. Eleven years ago, almost to the week, I received the original camera tapes for the two-volume documentary Stella at 20 from Glenn Saunders, with the intent of re-editing it into an expanded version of the documentary. The goal was to put it out on DVD, since it
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Return of Stupid Game Ideas: Lunar Lander Arcade

Wow... it's been awhile since I posted a Stupid Game Idea (idea... idea... idea... idea...).   They're not so much "stupid" I suppose, as "speculative". But since this blog doesn't have "Speculative" in its name, "Stupid" is what I'm sticking with.   I've got a few of these I've been planning to write up for awhile, and another recent speculative project has given me the incentive to finally dust these off.   So... several years ago (in fact, around the time of the last Stupid Game Idea (i
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Revisionist History (Homebreviews)

Well, I warned you. Hang on... this might get a little bumpy!   I've gone back through all of my homebreviews, and re-scored everything based on a 1/2-point increment scale. The idea behind this is that with the sheer number of homebrews now available, a five-point scale simply isn't fine enough to really distinguish one game from another. The biggest problem is that it resulted in too many games getting a 5/5, which should indicate a perfect or near-perfect game, but on a five point scale al
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

The last PSP game?

Well, despite my hesitancy to be an early adopter, I did go out and buy Tron: Evolution for the PSP. It was an impulse buy, and I feel terribly guilty about it.   Mainly because I bought it at Wal-Mart.   It's not the same Tron: Evolution that's on the PS3 or XBox360, but rather a collection of mini-games. Most are similar to the games on the Tron: Legacy iPhone app, but the PSP version adds a few more. I suppose Disney chose to go this route since they're both portable platforms, and the
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Golf

Seems to me I probably posted something about golf somewhere in this blog. Let me check...   Ah yes. I mentioned getting an Atari golf hat, and made a couple of mentions of golf games for the Wii. Also, I mentioned I picked up Tiger Woods' golf for the iPhone.   Here's the title screen...     Today was the final round in the Masters golf tournament - Tiger's first tournament since he flushed his private life right down the toilet.   And he didn't win. He played alternating holes of
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Inter-Tubing

So many YouTube videos... so little time.   So I thought I'd help sort through a few that are worth watching, to save you the trouble.   First up, animation:   Insane cardboard animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18usd0iV3eI   Insaner bunny animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLUAbkRUvVQ (A making-of video is available .)  Animating with sheep. No, I'm not kidding. This one even features Pong! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw   A sort-of poignant story, fe
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Back to Atari!

Well after getting sidetracked with animation for a few entries, it's back to some more on-topic stuff.Animation!...of Atari 2600 game sprites, that is. ;)I just sent off the first batch of exploding sprites to Manuel for Colony 7. I couldn't make huge, elaborate explosions due to the constraints, but I think what I came up with gets across the idea of stuff blowing apart pretty well.I'll also be working on some sprites for Chris' version of Juno First. This was a cool game I discovered while wr
Guest

Guest

8

2600 music - rockin' the Casbah

(I went back in and edited this blog entry, since I found that the information I was asking for in the first place, was right in front of me the whole time. Serves me right for not doing a little more research before posting this blog entry. )   One of my still-unfinished projects is to create a set of 2600 sound samples for use with Apple's GarageBand.   Thanks to this handy web page, I now know how to do just that.   The trick is, having the 2600 spit out as the correct* notes, so I can
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Holiday Treats

Here's a sneak-peek at a couple of projects I'm working on. They're "mostly done".   First, a label for a new homebrew release. The name has been left off of this picture, although some of you may find the imagery a familiar refrain.   This is a bit of a departure for me. No cartoons. No space ships. Just pure graphic design, meant to convey abstract shapes and rhythm. There's also an intentional division of the label into fourths; and a suggestion of the four directions of the joystick, an
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Unfiltered noise

What are meetings good for?   Sketching, of course!   Some of my favorite drawings have come in the form of spur-of-the-moment little sketches that I've done while waiting for meetings to end.   I'd been thinking about Fred's SuperBug game on the 2600, and started sketching VW bugs. I don't know if he's planning a contest for the label or not, but I hope so. I've loved drawing cars since I was a kid, and the bug is probably the most fun car to draw, from a cartoonist's perspective.   So
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

So... many... Daves...

First things first - Happy New Year!   Yeah, okay, I'm a little late with that.   I've been on vacation for a few weeks, after having wrapped up the projects mentioned in my last entry. The games seem to be reaching the hands of their owners at last (I don't envy the task Albert had in putting all of the orders together), and I hope everyone enjoys them! Being involved with various aspects of some of these games (sprites and other artwork) I generally play them quite a lot before they hit th
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Shut up!

Finally!   After a few very frantic weeks, I've managed to all-but wrap up a bunch of projects.   The semester at work is ending this Friday, and I taught my last class Monday. Of course, when January rolls around, I get to start it all over again.   The manuals for Space Battle, Phantom II/Pirate and the AtariVox are basically finished, and are just going through final proof-reading now.   And yes, since they're already on sale, that's probably a good thing.   The sprites for Toysho
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

To do... or not to do...

Well, I'm buried at work for the next few weeks, so I'm not going to be getting anywhere on any projects for awhile.   But before the sky fell in, I did manage to make some progress on a few things: The MGD manual is about 75% done. I just need to do the back page (assuming Alex approves the overall design... that is). I need to revise the label a little bit to better match the manual, too. Started some additional illustrations for the RPS manual. Also lined up someone to help me design b
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Weekend Warrior

Three-day weekend!   Monday is President's Day, where we combine the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, and use it as an excuse to go shopping.   I mean... reflect on our nation's history.   Okay. Shopping. Or, lazily sit on our butts and enjoy the day off.   Which is what I plan to do. More or less.   Actually, this weekend is a good chance to knock some stuff off my "to-do" list: I'm working on the Juno First sprites, and should have the first pass wrapped up today (I posted a sne
Guest

Guest

8
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