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I need to paint that in my office, I love that photo. ..Al

I updated the forum software recently, which I believe fixed the problem. I have never pressured anyone to subscribe, and I never put any important functionality behind the subscriptions, as I hate when sites do that. I wanted people to be able to use the site for free, without advertising on the site, and if you subscribe, then you get some nice bonuses (such as a much larger PM inbox, although the default size is pretty reasonable), but nothing you really need. And that will continue (the site being free and without ads). ..Al

Hi all, I'm please to announce that the Atari 8-bit port of my game Tenebra is ready! Get it from https://h4plo.itch.io/tenebra It has been quite successful on other platforms and has won multiple awards. I hope you will enjoy playing version too. Tenebra is an atmospheric ad minimalist puzzle game with rogue-like aesthetics. Guide the hapless protagonist to the exit. Poor guy is afraid of darkness and refuses to walk in the dark areas. Move torches around, push lights on rails, find keys to doors, light up cold braziers, pass through archways that collapse behind you, find oil barrels to make your torches brighter, squeeze through cracks in broken walls, fix broken rails with a hammer, illuminate the sensors to open the exits... do whatever it takes to get out of there! The game contains 31 levels and works on both PAL and NTSC machines. This port was a lot of fun, I ended up learning quite a lot about the Atari 8-bit machines. I hope you will enjoy it!

I for one welcome our new corporate overlords. 😁 seriously, I'm sure @Albert thought this through long and hard. Running a website this large is this is a lot of work. I mean he could have just said f' it walked away and let the site die (as so many other sites I've seen do). I was one of the 1st that transitioned from the old Yahoo! TI99 (remember that) site to here and have never regretted it. I think it was a good call.

@Reaperman @retrorussell @Tanooki @Madwindoman @Stage_1_Boss @GoldLeader @wolfy62 @Punisher5.0 @SlidellMan @roots.genoa @M-S @INTVCruise @joeatari1 @Songbird @doctorclu @DJ Clae @eightbit @128Kgames @Franjo @NeoPancho @NeonPeon @neogeo1982 @Mikebloke @electricmastro @Atarian7 @SoundGammon @Kiwi @bent_pin @SpicedUp! @MarkoCG77 @Cobra Strike Down @Corby @Darrin9999 Hi Guys, @ColecoGamer is proud to announce his latest project to be posted here on AtariAge and directly towards the Neo-Geo thread. It's currently in the works and it will be available to be played on the Neo-Geo MVS, AES, and CD. He hopes that the game will be to everyone's liking and if you have any inquirers, please contact Mike at anytime. He will assist you as best he can. The Mountain King Genre: D&D Cyberpunk Beat ‘em up (think Capcom’s AD&D Tower of Doom, etc) System: Neo-Geo MVS, Neo-Geo AES and Neo-Geo CD Concept: The vicious Mountain King has awakened from his thousand year slumber to conquer the lands of many kings. His dark and evil minions ransacked towns and villages, destroying homes, businesses and innocent people. The kings of the land have called upon their best warriors to thwart this menace and defeat the Mountain King for good. As one of five warriors (along with a friend), your mission is to travel through the war-torn landscape, and dispatch the Mountain King’s demonic soldiers and leaders. Along the way, the player will gain experience points from defeating enemies. The player’s character will level up, gaining more damage to inflict on enemies and skills that include Team Healing, Ice Storms and the like. Gold coins can be found randomly in treasure chests; food can be found randomly to heal wounds; and potions can be found randomly to heal, increase the player’s speed, and other special abilities. Mounts: Similar to Sega’s Golden Axe, there are mounts or ‘rides’ that can be used by the player. One is a Dinosaur-like raptor, which can attack enemies by bitting. Boss Fights: At the end of each level is a boss fight, which has different monsters - dragons, ogres, giants and the like. Control Scheme: A-Button: Sword/Melee Attack B-Button: Block attacks C-Button: Jump D-Button: Use Spells/Potions Breakable items like tables, barrels and posts NPC vendors to purchase items from Choose your path - At certain points in the game, the player can choose his own path. Free villagers that are captured inside cages or tied up Anthony...

I apologize if this has been brought up before the 30th page of this post. One thing that might help bridge this merge would be an opportunity for input on future products. I know that there would probably have to be Non Disclosure Agreements needed, but I feel this would help demonstrate Atari was actively listening to the passionate gamers, collectors, and enthusiasts of this site. I think that this gesture could really help build community input and be an action that showed that Atari was serious about making the best product possible and listening to an audience that would want them to succeed. I am aware that this may not apply to everything offered, but too many times I see something released and say "If they asked for my input, I could've made that product better".

This iteration of Atari is not a giant corporation. They are a newer much much smaller version of Atari trying to rebuild a dead brand for the people they are supposed to be appealing to. Atari hasn't gotten enough props for all of their latest efforts IMHO. What I see here with Atari purchasing AtariAge is them again trying to connect with it's community and keep the brand alive, refreshing and new Just as Albert has done over the past 20 years with the AA store, what I'm seeing in the Q&A is a lot of push back from the community on every single thing that they can think of to try and hold over Atari. It's not fair. The long running gag of the VCS being a taco box was a stupid unfunny joke that went on for far too long. It was a contributing factor to the group minded disinterest in the console and the wide spread disinformation that the console was just an Android device (its not) or a Retro pi. I'm seeing the same trend with the 2600+ people trash talking it before it is even in peoples hands. The reason the VCS was dead on arrival is because it was never even given a chance by the very people who it was targeted for. Half of you still have no idea what exactly it is or what it even does. There is also some blame on Ataris part due to lack of marketing, slow distribution and non existent international sales but that's a whole other story. If you have the mind set that this is some sort of evil corporate takeover and that Atari is the devil then you aren't even giving Atari a chance. My girlfriends mom is convinced that the government is watching in on her through her laptop camera and they are evil. I told my girlfriend "Honey the government doesn't want to see your mom naked, nobody wants to see that." Guys Atari doesn't want to see you naked either. Stop looking for a hidden evil when all Atari has done up to this point is tried to rebuild and RECHARGE the brand that you supposedly love! Some of these people at Atari have been going through pure hell just to try and do a good job with such low numbers of staff and resources and here we are a community (A LARGE COMMUNITY) of talented individuals, coders, tinkerers and Atari fans who can now CONTRIBUTE to Ataris mission and help them become the Atari you want them to be. Lets not waste that opportunity, let's support Atari and give them a fighting chance instead of being closed minded and shunning them away as if they were some sort of evil entity. Lets give them new ideas and tell them what it is we are wanting or expecting. Let's put all of our many talents together and help Atari integrate into the community that was made for Atari. Let's not repeat what happened with the VCS. Look at all of the games that have been distributed though the AA store, look at all of the funky controller and console mods you have all shared and in some cases even produced and sold over the years. The pictures of your collections you show off in threads. This is what Atari is here for. Don't be closed minded and slam the door in their face before they even have a chance to say hello. I saw one user who posted that they would be leaving the forums for good because Al sold his soul to the devil. Really the devil? How exactly are these people who go to work everyday to try and rebuild the brand you come here everyday to discuss the devil? It's just silly. Be nice guys and give this whole thing a shot. The ball is in the communities court of how you want things to go from here, Keep an open mind and help Atari. Don't be a negative or toxic force towards Atari as how many times has your favorite brand been destroyed over the years before? Nobody wants that anymore. In closing I will just say one more thing. I found the long running taco box jokes about as lame as why did the chicken cross the road, it was never really funny, just lame. And a bit disrespectful to ask an Atari employee trying his best to do his job about tacos as its a direct reference to said negativity. But with all of that said I hope some of you can consider changing your mindset as embracing Atari with open arms is the only thing that makes any real sense.

As a member of the Stella team, I am less than thrilled by this news. Atari is using Stella to power the 2600+, and they certainly ain't paying for it, and they aren't exactly upfront about what emulator is powering their product either. Now, I am not saying this because I want to complain, I licensed my code as GPL when I contributed it to Stella, they have every right to do so, but the point is that this is a company. They have a business plan, their goal is earning money, they won't give away anything for free if it can be monetarized and if they need resources they will try to get them as cheaply as possible. That's how companies have to work as part of our economic system, and I am fine with it. However, I absolutely don't like it when people try to whitewash this as idealism. Up to now I have been thinking about a community driven place that was about preservation, enthusiasm and passion. If I invest time I do it for myself and for the community. Now AtariAge is owned by Atari, and while I am happy for Al for this opportunity, the mere fact changes the game. Now, if I invest time I am at least partially giving it a company without getting anything back in compensation. While I wish this place all the best, I am almost sure that, sooner or later, the need for return-of-invest will seep through and change it.

Respectfully I have to disagree with this. We (yourself included) have been using the logo freely for 24-years now without a single nudge from whatever iteration of Atari. That’s because we’ve all been adhering to the standard “Hasbro has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar” as very explicitly stated in English, there is no misinterpreting that and the logo is inclusive, as demonstrated by its use for the past two decades. The point is not at all moot if Atari is going to suddenly legally disallow the use of the logos on homebrew releases, which goes back to again why clarification is needed by Atari. I don’t see that being the case but it has yet to be declared publicly by Atari their intent, now with its filing for the platform logos again, and to whatever extent that may be. Ball is in Atari’s court on how they’ll proceed to handle it but it’s clearly an issue of concern which is why it’s being brought up to begin with. Press release or not, it came directly from “whatever iteration” of Atari before the 20 others up until this point and has been the gold standard that no other Atari iteration has attempted to push back on. Is it going to start now?

I've never really wrote any code for the Atari 400/800 computers, so this is my first look into the hardware and software by using Pharaoh's Curse as a learning example. 6502 I knew via the C64, etc, but I knew almost nothing about the graphics and sound capabilities. Documented source code for Pharaoh's Curse for the Atari 400/800 computers. Requires the CA65 assembler to compile. I am using a Macintosh, but it should work on other operating systems as well or with trivial changes. I also wrote some Python scripts to extract the artwork, etc. If you like to have a look into the earlier development of games, this seems to be fun. https://github.com/sarnau/PharaohsCurse Interesting "cheat": press Control-Shift-9 to immediately "win" the game… It shows the end of game animations. I also attach all 16 levels as an image. That was generated by one of my scripts.

You wouldn't be the first to be surprised by that. They start on scratch, then python, then assembly before moving on to micro controllers and C++. It helps them understand binary as switches and really opens up their minds when it comes to just-in-time programming, management of limited resources, and computer architecture. Also, when you tell them that they are going to program games they work a lot harder. Most of my students eventually go into engineering programs at schools like Purdue, Stanford, and UC Berkeley to name a few.

If they make changes to the Stella source to power their product, then they need to share those changes under the same license. I don't think they are literally hiding the fact that they are using Stella, just not explicitly advertising it. Now, Atari contributing to the Stella project if their products rely upon Stella would be a nice gesture of goodwill, mind you.

I have 4 students learning 2600 ASM twice a week right now. Working on expanding that.

I do believe this needs to be recreated. It just screams, "I'll be in the hot tub until 4PM so hold my calls."

We have replaced the file compression with one giving a much better ratio. It's bigger on the inside.

Greetings! I have an important announcement to make to the AtariAge community, and I'll cut right to the chase: AtariAge has agreed to be acquired by Atari, and I have come on as a full-time employee at Atari. This won't be a surprise to some of you, given the speculation I've seen over the past month. The first thing I'd like to say is that this is not a decision I made lightly! If you asked me 20 years ago if I would have considered working for Atari (much less selling AtariAge to Atari), I would have said no. But fast forward to the present, and this is the first version of Atari I've seen since the 1980s that is taking many positive steps to restore the magic that we all associated with the original company, the Atari that left so many of us with enduring memories of experiencing the Atari 2600 for the first time, learning how to program on an Atari 800, or pumping quarters into the amazing arcade games produced by Atari in the heyday of arcades. Atari is now taking its retro-related IP seriously and is creating a wide array of hardware and software based on that IP, while also creating new, original content. It is very exciting to see Atari release the 2600+, a new 2600 you can feed actual cartridges, and without giving anything specific away, this is just the beginning of what we're going to see from Atari going forward. Atari, for the first time in years, is targeting and embracing enthusiasts like ourselves, while also making products that appeal to those who grew up with Atari and have a fond nostalgia of the brand, but aren't steeped in retro gaming as we are. I am very excited to be working for Atari, and with Atari's resources I will be able to make significant improvements to AtariAge over time. This also opens up many new opportunities for homebrew developers, where original games created by the amazingly talented community at AtariAge will have a much broader audience. My role at Atari will be multifaceted, but my primary tasks, especially early on, will be to operate AtariAge as I have been doing for the past two decades. This includes managing the forums and the AtariAge Store. Longer term, I will have more time to significantly update the games database, something I've wanted to do for some time, but simply have not had the bandwidth for. And I will be moving the store early in the new year to a new ecommerce platform, something I’ve wanted to accomplish for a while now. Since AtariAge’s modest beginnings in April, 2001, AtariAge has grown significantly. The early version of the site only contained the games database and forum, with the store coming later with a handful of titles. Fast forward to 2023, and I've published hundreds of games for a variety of consoles, and that shows no signs of slowing down. There is an incredible community of talented developers, consisting of programmers, pixel artists, musicians, sound engineers, artists and designers all weaving their magic to create amazing games with stunning packaging. It is remarkable the talent that is involved in creating these new games, as well as new hardware, and I am honored that so many have allowed me to publish their games in physical form in the AtariAge Store over the years. And the store has allowed AtariAge to exist without placing advertising on the site, and we intend to maintain that ad-free policy going forward. While I have greatly enjoyed running AtariAge and the amazing community that has evolved throughout this journey over the past two decades, it's taken an increasingly large amount of my time to manage. I had come to a point where I needed to make some sort of change, and I began scheming on ideas that would help reduce the amount of time it takes me to build and ship games. And I really have not been happy that the games database has languished over the years, as that was always an enjoyable area of the site for me to work on. Early last year, Atari approached me about the possibility of working more closely together. Talks were slow at first, but they accelerated at the beginning of this year, and after months of going back and forth, we finally worked out a deal that benefits both parties. What does this mean? Short-term, nothing is going to change. I will continue running the entire AtariAge website, including the forums and the store. Nothing is going to be neutered in the forums, and Atari will not have access to personal conversations, private forums and clubs, and so forth. No content is going to be removed from the forum, and those posting content will be liable for anything they post (which was already the case). I will also be running the store, building games, shipping games, and publishing new games for the store. In fact, I am currently working on releasing over 20 new games on a variety of platforms for the upcoming Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Over time, and with Atari’s help, I will be able to more efficiently produce and ship these games, without sacrificing quality (which is very important to me). This will free up more of my time to make improvements to other areas of AtariAge, as well as embark on new and exciting projects. Working with Atari was one of several possible solutions to bring some sanity back to my life. Other possibilities included shutting the site down and walking away, taking the store down and leaving the forum and games database, or some combination of the above. Or I could have just sold the site to some entity, whether it be Atari or another company or individual, without further involvement from me. However, it was very important to me to find a solution that allowed me to keep the forums and store running with my involvement. Working with Atari was the best way to do so while working towards the goal of reducing the hours I am working every week, while opening up new and interesting ways for Atari and AtariAge to work together that weren’t available previously. AtariAge will still have a large, 45' x 30' booth at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year, which is 50% larger than any booth we've had in the past. And I expect this to continue each year going forward, with the possibility of attending additional events during the year rather than just PRGE each year. One fun thing we're going to do this year with this extra space is have several Atari 2600+ consoles on display, complete with a large assortment of games to play on them, including homebrew games. As I mentioned above, this does open up some new avenues for homebrew authors. For instance, Atari is interested in bringing more content to their VCS platform, and a few homebrew authors have already been working with Atari to sell their games on the VCS (such as with Amoeba Jump and Tower of Rubble). And such arrangements don’t affect the AtariAge Store. I still plan on offering digital downloads in the store once I get the store moved to new software, which will be a primary focus of mine once I get through several other major tasks (such as surviving this year's PRGE). There's also the possibility of original homebrew games being released in physical form under the Atari label if they do well in the AtariAge Store. With the new 2600+ console, Atari is certainly interested in compelling, original content to augment that platform, and of course the XP line will continue along as well. And I anticipate many other interesting possibilities over time as well. I feel this will greatly benefit the homebrew community, homebrew authors, and everyone who loves seeing new games for the Atari 2600 and other classic systems. I want to thank all the homebrew developers who have allowed me to publish their games in the AtariAge Store over the years. You are a very important reason why AtariAge still exists and has thrived, and why AtariAge remains a free and ad-free website. It’s very rewarding to help authors realize their games in physical form with beautiful packaging, and your creations have helped keep the Atari 2600 and many other classic consoles and computers fresh in our minds. I look forward to working with all of you to further expand the library of amazing games for our favorite classic consoles and computers. I also want to express my extreme gratitude to the moderators who have helped maintain some semblance of sanity over the forums all this time, especially the global moderators who have purview over the entire forum. I greatly appreciate the time you have put into the forum, as it's impossible for me to see everything that is posted. Without you, the AtariAge forums would likely not still exist! Here’s to another 20 years of discussing a wide variety of retrogaming topics on AtariAge! Thank you for reading and take care, ..Al

https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test26.zip https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test26-src.7z Added screen reader support for reading out foreground/background colors (Windows+F or NVDA+F). Added 835 modem full emulation. Performance Analyzer can now load monitor execution traces from Atari800WinPLus 4.0 (TRON/TROFF). This is a bit of a grab bag, so going down the list in more detail: The UIAutomation code now supports text formatting attributes, so it can report foreground/background colors. Interestingly, NVDA seems somewhat better at naming colors than Windows Narrator, as Narrator will report "teal" and "maroon" for colors that NVDA reports more accurately as "blue" and "red". The 835 modem emulation is based on the 1030 emulation, with adjustments for the 835 hardware. It requires the 835 firmware as there is currently no high-level emulation; the 835 hardware and firmware are so close to the 1030 that this was a relatively quick adjustment. Unlike the 1030, the 835 has no boot support and no tone dialing support, but interestingly it does support playing phone audio, which the 1030 doesn't. So the 835 shipped with phone audio but no tone dialing, the 1030 shipped with tone dialing and autobooting but no phone audio, and then finally the XM301 had both phone audio and tone dialing but no autobooting. As far as I can tell the 835 doesn't seem to have shipped with a T: handler at all, so pretty much the only thing that officially could drive it was TeleLink II. The Performance Analyzer can now import a monitor trace generated by Atari800WinPLus 4.0's TRON/TROFF commands, which is essentially a big text file with one line per instruction. This requires some hokey tricks to re-assemble the instructions back to opcodes and guessing at a bunch of missing information, but it's enough to get some usable traces. For instance, the importer reconstructs an approximation of SIO traffic based on POKEY register accesses, so here's a trace of the SuperDOS 5.1 issue in Atari800WinPLus, where SuperDOS tries to do a high-speed Status command and A8WP responds with Error instead of NAK: The importer does have to fill in quite a bit of missing information. There is no indirect effective address (EA) information, no halted/unhalted cycle accounting, and it has to guess when interrupts occur and what type. The serial traffic timing is approximated since the trace only shows when the CPU read SERIN or wrote SEROUT, and not when the shifters actually ran. The instruction trace can also have the wrong opcodes for some undocumented instructions, since the importer actually has to run an assembler to recover the opcodes. But it actually works better than I thought it would. Note that Altirra's binary trace format is more compact than this text format. The raw TRON trace above, which is just under 4 seconds, generated a 116MB raw text file. It compresses to 5.9MB with .zip and 1.1MB with .7z, but is 349K when resaved to .attrace format. Text trace with instruction logging is of course easy to implement, but it doesn't scale too well to four minute long traces. As for why the importer only supports output from the older Atari800WinPLus 4.0, it's just because newer versions of Atari800 don't seem to have the monitor trace functionality compiled into the official Windows releases -- they're built with the TRACE command disabled.

Conversely, while releasing copyrighted intellectual property into the public domain is irreversible, abandoning a trademark is not. All you have to do is start using it again and then reregister it. And Atari has now done that, first with the word mark “Atari Jaguar” in 2021 (which was granted) and now with the actual logo in 2022 (which hasn’t even been taken up yet). Thanks to Atari 50 and thanks to the Jaguar games published by AtariAge, they are now unquestionably using the trademark for commerce, which is all you need to justify a trademark. Anybody selling Jaguar stuff in the interim could have registered for the trademark and Atari would have had to either buy it or license it, but nobody did. At least no trademark troll did like the one that grabbed the Commodore trademark. Anybody currently using the Jaguar logo could file an objection with the USPTO that it is already in use and does not signify Atari 2021 specifically, but that means making legal filings and potentially going up against higher powered lawyers than an individual can afford. Which doesn’t mean you’ll lose but does mean you’re at a disadvantage. IMO the path with the least likelihood of causing hard feelings and unfortunate consequences for all concerned would be for Atari to launch a creator program where people can register for a limited license to use the official names and logos for small-scale hobbyist projects without fear of cease and desists etc. That way Atari is protected from a major competitor grabbing the trademark and doing something to hurt them. Which seems like a far-fetched scenario but as far as I know Rebellion still don’t like Atari and they still sell Jaguar games too.

This is where we will rapidly start having some "pain points". The Jag homebrew scene has been very active for 20 years now. It was an open platform. All of a sudden - patent trolls come in and start gobbling up stuff. When someone like Carl who has been supporting the Lynx and Jag since the current CEO of Atari was barely out of diapers has to all of a sudden stop using a logo, rebrand his catalog, and ask for donations to offset the cost. How in god's name are we supposed to believe that this buyout is a good thing that won't affect how business is conducted? Surely you have to see it from this point if view.

I’d prefer a free bottle in front of me to a prefrontal lobotomy.

Quicker question, after 3 or 4 does it matter?

This is a great summary for those just joining us.

Actually, now that I reread it, I am not sure. This is a press release and may not be legally binding. I don’t know if there was any other legal paperwork related to this. However, Atari is currently filing for the trademark on the Jaguar name and the Jaguar logo. So regardless of what Hasbro did if that trademark is granted then Atari will own the logo again and may be obliged legally to protect the trademark or risk losing it again. I suspect that a very easy solution would be to have a low-friction licensing system in place that would allow homebrew developers to legitimately use the Jaguar logo for small scale physical releases. I hope @TrogdarRobusto and company think about this sort of thing going forward. I know relabeling all of @Songbird’s games is costing Carl quite a bit of money, because he said so: And Songbird is one of the more successful homebrew publishers out there. It would go a long way to build trust with the community to not make small-scale hobbyists rework everything, as that won’t make Atari any money anyway.

Not a FAQ but here's a quick summary (not necessarily in chronological order) to help people catch up... Congrats Al! I hate Atari, I'm out of here Can we still talk about Intellivision? This good for Al and us Corporate greed will takeover, I'm out of here Can we still talk about Colecovision? Yay! Good news Corporate bastards will wreck everything, I'm out of here Can we still talk about the TI-99? Congrats Al Terrible day, just as I predicted. I'm out of here Can we still talk about Vectrex? What tacos do you like?

Apparently some fans of other consoles see my 7800 "101 sprites demo", and conclude that a large number of sprites is only possible when the background is black/solid. It's the same old shared-bus cycle-stealing rhetoric from people that haven't coded anything for the 7800. They look at a single 7800 wiki page, stay at a Holiday Inn Express, and all of a sudden they're 7800 gurus who "know" it's impossible that the console has any useful strengths. As a response I put together this Sixty-Nine Eighty-Six Sprite tech demo, which has 86 animated sprites, a detailed background, rmt music playing, and a scroller. Enjoy! Play it live in your browser thanks to JS7800! (if it doesn't play music, hit the reset button - some browsers mute sound until you interact) Or download it to play in your favourite emulator or flashcart... EightySix.a78 [rom update 1 - changed one of the sprite palettes] [rom update 2 - fixed the spelling of Gollum. Whoops!] [rom update 3 - updated from 69 to 86 sprites] [rom update 4 - minor typo]

Technically this iteration of Atari has existed for a while, but in many ways it is a pretty new organization. Some of the team members have been around for six or seven years, but the majority have joined within the last three after Wade become CEO. The energy within the company is pretty amazing. Maybe it is best described as a very new chapter?

We have a talented C programmer in the team who knows 68000 and Z80 programming. This guy is the REAL deal. I will give Anthony updates when they happen, to inform all of you. Neo-Geo forever!

There's been a change of plans, folks. The 2600+ will no longer support 7800, it will support 5200 carts instead. Using the same cart slot. Yes, this is real and yes it's clearly a marketing mistake, but a big one IMO.

This is absolutely something we've spoken about, and using the Clubs functionality in the forum to do so. ..Al

I doubt that... We already have a million ways to "play" these old atari games very cheaply. Not many, if any, people are tracking down an original Quadrun for $300+ because they want to play it... Its because they collect vintage atari games. I'm not saying people won't collect these re releases of old games officially made by atari. They could be quite popular if the right games are made. I am saying there is no way they will change the price of an original. Reproductions has shown us that. The only way it might have an impact is if they made them identical to originals, but I imagine a lot of people would have a problem with that... Anyways, was kind of off topic but I just figured the new overlords could benefit from hearing it.

Good question. I do not completely understand the relationship between the AtariAge store and Atari at this point. I still think a full physical release of Buttplug Simulator is a moral imperative. it's a moral imperative.mp4

Personally, on this occasion, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe your explanation, I can understand you using the sounds as placeholders for now. I am curious though, what happened to you agreeing with everyone on Page 4 that the rotating backgrounds look awful? You said they would be changed to static…yet they are still here…looking just as, well, awful… Can I ask a genuine question though?. You are clearly still frequenting the forums regularly, why are you choosing to stay completely mute on the threads where people talk about not receiving games they have paid you for?, or the realisation that you appear to be selling games that are not yours to sell? I get that this is your thread about your ‘game’ so of course you will comment, but maybe you should also provide some constructive input on the other topics involving yourself.

@Albert has expressed his interest in doing games production for the TI.

What irritates me: I can't see the consistency with the Atari2600+. Atari wants to reach the homebrew market, but at the same time is launching a console that will not be 100% compatible with it🙄

First of all I like to thank @Albert for hosting our TI-99/4a forum for so many years now. Heck, I remember when I asked Al if we could be part here. He said sure, but you do have to find a few others TI-99’ers to join. 😁 Look how big the place has become. It’s just amazing. Working for a corporate company for many years myself, I can understand the concerns and to be honest I’m also a little biased. But in the end it boils down to trust. Perhaps some things will change in the long run. Some for the better, some for the worse. No one can predict the future, but honestly my take on it is to stay cool and not to panic. Even if Al would not have done this move, who can guarantee you that Atariage would keep on to exist? Myself I am not in favour of moving to another forum, this will just cause more fragmentation. In the end it’s where the community hangs out, that’s what matters. I feel this is the next step in our communities’ journey and am looking forward seeing how it further develops. Looking from the positive side of things, perhaps good things will come out of this. Myself I would love to see more TI-99/4a homebrew cartridge games with nice packaging and artwork like our colecovision friends have. And not only for games, perhaps as part of community efforts we can get more new hardware to tinker with. Just my 2 cents. retroclouds

I already explained it and they keep going,that's proof enough for me,have a good look who is smiling at their posts bro. My post earlier: Many devs use place holders even for pixel art,the artist might be busy with another project but know the dimensions of the sprites so while waiting a dev will use place holders to continue dev.Being able to write the game play(handling,logic,collision) while waiting on your artist.

Nah. But let's thank and blame alcohol for all this.

I've been a subscriber since I first learned to post here--and I pay the renewal notice more quickly then I process my other bills!

Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in to today's discussion on ZPH about Atari and AtariAge's announcement. I want to thank the developers who sent me their thoughts about what is happening so I could read them on the show. For those of you who missed the stream or would like to read them at your leisure I've posted them below. Developer Reactions to Atari Aquiring AtariAge:

This is a lot, I'll give it a shot and hopefully I don't sound defensive or flippant because I appreciate your passion for Atari and what you want it to be (what we all want it to be). -- we are making games again, which the community wants and we want. Game development is a big part of what made the Atari brand what it is, and in order to sustain the brand and keep it relevant for another 50 years we need to return to our roots in gaming. So no argument there. We released around 20 games in the last 30 months. Some of them are smaller Recharged games, which I think are really solid and also were a perfect place for us to start (smaller games we knew we could do well). Now the games are getting bigger. Lunar Lander: Beyond, Haunted House and Days of Doom are really interesting, really good games. Mr Run and Jump (just released) is rocking an 81 in opencritic and metacritic. We are working with Jeff Minter again (Akka Arrh released in February and a new title coming next year). And they all go through QA, and the reviews tend to be good to very good. And we play them, a lot, I promise you. Maybe your software QA comment relates to the VCS? -- I can't litigate the VCS launch after the fact. There were a lot of issues with the OS rollouts. It was a small team, they did their best. So much energy went into dealing the supply chain nightmare during that period and I know it robbed time from software development. You can bang on about that all you want, we can't change the past. And while that project preceded the current management team, we learned a lot from it, I can assure you. -- We haven't abandoned the VCS, the community that formed around that platform is super passionate and always hungry for more content. If you want to advocate for specific compatibility, I'd do it in the VCS Discord. Not everything we are asked to do make sense for us, but every suggestion made in good faith is considered. The product is what it is. It can only be stretched so far into other use cases. There are a lot of people who wanted the VCS to be the next Switch or PS5, that was not the goal, nor was it a realistic goal. Doesn't mean it cannot find its niche and live on like so many other Atari platforms do. -- I appreciate that the hard core community wants some new Jaguar hardware. Maybe (not my role in Atari). But hardware projects take time and money and you don't take them on lightly. There is no quick win in hardware development. Our attitude is anything worth doing is worth doing well, so we are going to take a thoughtful approach to these projects and not just fire them out. To your point, do you want a mini-Jaguar or do you want a Jaguar Flashback? I bet I know the answer. We have a roadmap of projects that are going to be done in an order the team thinks makes the most sense, and probably is tied to the relative commercial prospects of each. -- You aren't going to like everything we do. Some of the things we do you would have done differently. We are going to make the decisions we make, and see how it plays out. Right now, the Atari 2600+ is looking like a hit based on preorder volume. Does it have everything you want it to? No. Will we modify it in the future? Maybe. Will we make something else that does have the functionality you want? Maybe. We will discuss it with you and the rest of the community. And that represents positive change I hope. -- Our licensing team is very, very focused on quality. You referenced some strong partners like Retrocade. The new Atari 50 Arcade1Up is solid, we had it at PAX, and it is selling really well. Lego. Cariuma. Quality is the north star here, so keep an eye on this space because things have changed. -- We are in dialogue with the community, you can expect that only to increase. We know it is important. -- We do respect this community. Without this community the brand probably would not have made it through the dark periods in such good shape. So, we owe a debt to the fan and developer community. --

Thank you so much! I do have to say whenever this is brought up, that if it weren't for @Kurt_Woloch doing the entire pinball movement and physics, this probably would not have been completed. He is incredibly smart! Bob P.s... I had finally acquired the actual arcade cabinet not long after the game was completed. It needed a lot of work, but I got it up and running 😀

That hot tub ? (Softporn adventure for the A8, the one on the right should be Roberta Williams.)

Let me get back to you on that in a couple of hours. Conducting research.

The statement Hasbro released doesn't explicitly say anything about the Jaguar or Lynx logos, so it's definitely not clear based on that statement. Just because it wasn't mentioned doesn't mean it was released into the public domain. I'm guessing at the time that Hasbro really didn't put a great deal of thought into the details of this statement, except to explicitly call out the Atari logo, as obviously they didn't want anyone using that. It's a moot point now, though, if Atari has successfully trademarked those logos. ..Al

That was the previous CEO and a very different company. The current company are the people who are publishing awesome new Jeff Minter games on every platform imaginable and he seems pretty excited about working with them.

At this point, both @Albert and @TrogdarRobusto have given assurances about the future of the non-Atari forums. Check out the Q&A thread. @FarmerPotato has posted our concerns there, as well, as have others (ColecoVision, &c.)

Seriously? Do you really believe that a corporate sponsorship - or shall we say ownership - makes no difference in such situations? Do you really think that a harsh critique of Atari products, such as the Taco Thread, would be even remotely possible? Tbh this is just an extreme example, off top of my head, because I'm a little bit shocked - I only learned about it right now, as I don't frequent this site as often as before, and when I saw a thread about it yesterday I really thought it's a joke. So I didn't really have time to think about thoroughly, but I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of other downsides (haven't there already been roms/creators withdrawn?) I'm sorry, I did read Albert's statement on the matter and while it is full of reassurances - and its author is a respectable and believable person - I've been around for too long to not know that in the long run this will not turn out well. It's a pity, because AA is (was?) the biggest and best still existing independent forum dedicated to old computers and consoles. This is why I ended up being a poster here, not because I'm a nostalgic Atari fan. I simply cannot fathom how it being taken over by a corporate operator, especially one of such terrible pedigree, doesn't ring more alarm bells in people.

Nobody is going to be censored for criticizing Atari or products that Atari produces. There's already plenty of content on AtariAge that does just this, heck, all the original threads bashing the Atari VCS are still on the site, and you have a current Atari employee addressing criticism in the Q&A thread that was linked above. I will continue to be the admin on the forum, and the existing Global Moderators are remaining. We spent a lot of time discussing the forum before I agreed to anything, and it's not something I did lightly. As for "childish crying", if someone is being disruptive in a thread and not contributing to the discussion in a positive way, there's always the chance that person will be booted from the thread. This wouldn't be handled any differently in a thread that was discussing Atari or Atari-related products. ..Al