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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

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Spoiler-free review

10:52 PM   Sitting in a theater with just two other people (two more went to get snacks) waiting for the 11:00 PM show to start. I'd planned to go to the 10:00, but didn't get out of work in time. So stay tuned for the review - coming later tonight! Looking forward to the film. The reviews have been really positive. I guess I'll know in just over two hours.   Hey - two more people! We've got a crowd! Time to post this, then shut 'er down.     8 movie trailers and two-plus hours later…  
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

10

Iron Man 3 - Spoiler-free review

When Iron Man 2 came out, for whatever reason, I just didn't have any interest in seeing it in the theater. Turns out, when I did watch it on Blu-ray, I liked it well enough to wish I'd gone and seen it on the big screen.   So with Iron Man 3, I decided to go see it in the theater. Some movies, you just gotta. Especially after The Avengers. And the trailers for Iron Man 3 looked pretty good.   I rarely go opening night to blockbusters, since the theaters are usually stupid-crazy-crowded. But
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Atari predicts... the future!

This is a pretty cool blog entry.   Alan Kay and Bob Stein were working for Atari back in '82, and were asked to come up with some concepts for an "Intelligent Encyclopedia". They hired recent-ex-Disney artist Glenn Keane to illustrate them, and what they came up with was, well, basically what we're doing with iPads, the internet, and all that sort of stuff now.
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4

Homebreviews - part 27

Many months ago, I teased: Up next: It takes two to tango This was my intention to finish off the last of the games that I had yet to review for the AtariAge store: Two-Player-Only Games. The trick was, finding that second player. Most of the people I know who are inclined to play videogames don't live in the area. So that meant going out of town, and hauling an Atari, controllers and carts with me. This past weekend, I finally got around to doing just that. I went down to my friend Jeff's pl
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6
Comic Strips

Christmas Special rerun

Well, if it works for Charlie Brown and the Grinch...   I figured since Stay Frosty 2 and the AtariVox+ are now in the AtariAge store, this would be a good time to rerun this strip. All I'm missing are the commercials for Dolly Madison.     And in case you're wondering, yes - Artie has been modded so he can run Stay Frosty 2.   Merry Christmas!   rerun < PreviousIndexNext >
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum in Comic Strips

2

May I suggest a new holiday?

How about, "Buyers' Remorse Day"?   This would follow Black Friday, where people would look back at a day wasted chasing bargains at stores, having spent more than they ever intended to (or having not found anything they wanted), and realize they could have just bought everything online instead.   To wit, the Playstation 3 Bundle.   Wal-Mart (plus Target, Sears and possibly others) is offering up a PS3 bundle. This includes a PS3, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One, and Little Big Planet 2, all f
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

5

Rock, No Paper, Scissors

The whole point of doing this blog, is to have some sort of work-in-progress place for Atari-related projects I'm working on. This will include stuff like my Video Mods Comparison Project (which is need of an update), the Stella at 20 DVD, and artwork for homebrew games.   So this weekend, it's all about the artwork.   The homebrew scene is something very exciting to me. I'd always wanted to make my own games back-in-the-day, but never learned to program. I made the attempt at it, but discov
Guest

Guest

3

The Good Dinosaur - Spoiler-free movie review

Because there apparently aren't enough animated dinosaur movies out there already, and because Disney didn't learn their lesson from the last one of these that they made, we have Pixar's The Good Dinosaur. We had a screening of it at work the other week, and while none of the creative team were there to present it, the reps from Disney and Pixar who were there, felt under some obligation to tell us how "close to the heart" this film was for all of them, and how this movie was all about the "powe
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

And the loser is... XBox 360!

So, it's time to tackle the latest console wars.Get comfortable... this is going to take awhile. Sony vs. MicrosoftThe XBox 360 is going to sell a lot of units, and eventually make money for Microsoft. But they're going to be second place to Sony, even before the PlayStation 3 is launched.The reasons for this have to do in part with the technical specs of the systems, the games available at or after launch, and brand loyalty. And while those are all going to be contributing factors, none of thos
Guest

Guest

20

Streaking!

Well, since I've had a number of people* tell me that they really liked my 15th entry in the Lead contest, I thought I'd post a blog entry about it.   *That number would be "three".   This was by far the easier of the two illustrations. No 3D here. Just drawing. As always, it started out with some rough sketches. The idea I wanted to convey was a sense of speed, as the player's ship hurtled past the energy walls, and fired away at oncoming ships. So I wanted lots of streaks and blurring to g
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4

Straight Outta Newhall

So, I've been waiting for this CD for awhile...     Was it worth the wait?   Well - yes! Although I have to admit I was more than a little worried about it, since Weird Al's last album - Poodle Hat - was, I thought, his weakest effort to date. Maybe that's because the album before that - Running With Scissors - was (and still is) his best.   But this is a return to good form for Weird Al, and both his parodies and originals are excellent. I don't really keep up on current music anymore,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6

Homebreviews - part 13

I'm finally catching up on the rest of my Homebrew Reviews. There's a bunch of them this time, and they're all transplants of one sort or another. But first... I'm now up to 199 unique 2600 games! (Update - that number has since gone up.) Isn't it purty? Fun game, too! I've been looking for a CIB Threshold, and now I have it, thanks to Atarimania75, who is selling off parts of his collection here, here, here and here. He's got some good stuff in there, including some nice rarities, so che
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12

Money, money, money... but where's the love?

I rarely blog about my job since hey, it's a job. But this post isn't so much about my job, but rather my alma mater. Both of which just happen to be the same place. CalArts.   Y'see, the LA Times posted a little article today about how films that have been directed by CalArts animation alumni have collectively grossed over $26 billion dollars worldwide. Billion. With a "B". Like Carl Sagan would say: "Billllyuhn." There's a handy little "infographic" about it on CalArts' website.   I happen
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

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

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 4 - X-Men: First Class

Sheesh... I'm up to part 4 already. I guess I'm committed to this for the long haul, now.   I went and saw X-Men: First Class at a late Friday night showing. Usually, I'll wait a week or so to go see a film to avoid lines or crowds, but well... I was bored. So I decided to go see it.   The first two X-Men films were okay, but I never felt that they got all of the characters quite right. (Anna Paquin?? Gimme a break.) It felt like they took random bits and pieces of characters and stories,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2

CarZzzz...

Despite the blog title, Cars isn't really a boring film.   Unless you're a little kid. Say, under 5. Maybe 7. Not having kids, it's a little hard for me to judge at what point stuff becomes boring for them (and it's been a lonnng time since I was 7). But based on kids in the audience (one of whom repeatedly kept asking "is it over yet"?), I don't think bringing really little kids to this film is a good idea.   I went to see Cars last week, and I have to admit, it's a much better film than I
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

eBay splurge

With Pong being prominently mentioned in a couple of forum threads recently, I just had to pick up a Pong console off eBay... I wanted one of the Sears Tele-Games models, because those were the first ones sold (I have no idea of this one's actual manufacturing date however). This one is in amazing condition, especially considering its age. It works perfectly fine, there's almost no wear to speak of, and it just needed a little TLC with some Windex and a toothbrush to clean it up. The left po
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Homebreviews - part 4

The last ones! (At least until I pick up some more games from the AA store.)   Thrust+ 5/5   Thrust+ is one of the best games ever programmed for the 2600. It's a little more expensive than other homebrews, but it's worth every penny. The graphics are incredible, and the gameplay is absolutely flawless. Thrust+ is certainly a challenging game, but not unfairly so. The gravity and momentum that affects your ship feels just right, and even as the heavy Klystron pods you have to rescue cause yo
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12

Homebreviews - part 3

Only "three" reviews this time - but that last one is a doozy!   Ultra SCSIcide 4/5   Okay, it's time to dust off the paddles and spray a little contact cleaner in there. Fast-paced doesn't even begin to describe Ultra SCSIcide once it gets going. The game takes place in a hard drive, and it's your job to catch (or "read") colored data bits in the correct order as they go speeding by. Read the wrong ones or wait too long to read the right ones, and the hard drive will crash! It's pretty easy
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9

Making Labels - Part 4

Part 4 - Shading   I'm going to split shading into a couple of categories: Shading and Highlighting. They're actually both part of the rendering process, but the way I approach them in Photoshop is as separate steps.   The reason for this is flexibility. This goes back to the whole thing about splitting the Photoshop document up into layers. I can experiment a lot more by keeping them on different layers, and adjust them as needed.   First though, I'm going to sidetrack a little bit.    
Guest

Guest

2

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

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