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On the other hand, if Albert had not been contacted by Atari, it seems sooner or later he may have shut down AtariAge due to higher costs and labour than he can afford, even with the subscriptions. So in that case, it was either a buy-out or a shutdown. Both may lead to members leaving the forum and start up something else, scattered around the Internet.

🤷‍♂️ Overreacting and drama, why do people always need to "announce" their departure like an Airport? But of course: LAST VISITED 1 hour ago 😝 Really, what is THE WORST that happens if people don't jump ship? Like maybe just wait and see how things play out instead of making assumptions? What exactly is lost by staying in a community one has enjoyed, I assume up to now? Even IF in the end, things turn out exactly as you are guessing and it all crumbles anyways what have you gained by leaving so soon? It's all very weird, I am admittedly a glass-half empty as skeptical-as-hell type of person and even I see these as overreacting, but whatever, do what you feel you have to do......

Updates: 3-18-23: Rough artwork approved for Boom!, Elevator Agent, Turbo Arcade and Zeviouz. 2-25-23: Elevator Agent won Best WIP (2600 Port), in the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards. 2-25-23: Gorf Arcade won Best Music + Sound (2600 Port), in the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards. Congratulations to Bob Decrescenzo, who also won the Lifetime Achievement Award. Well-deserved! 2-15-23: "Historical Documentary" status changed to "Early development"

Whole lotta Updates: 2-11-23: Added new Homebrew project: "Calidac's Revenge" (code name) 2-11-23: Gorf Arcade, Qyx, Galaxian (7800), Pac-Man Collection 40th Anniversary Edition (7800), UniWarS (7800) all moved to Completed Homebrews. 2-11-23: Boom!, Elevator Agent, Turbo Arcade, Zeviouz entries all updated to reflect packaging artwork in "early sketches" phase. 2-3-23: Elevator Agent nominated for Best Work-In-Progress (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards. 2-3-23: Boom! nominated for Best Work-In-Progress (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards. 2-3-23: Gorf Arcade nominated for Best Homebrew, Best Graphics and Best Music + Sound (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards. 2-3-23: Qyx nominated for Best Homebrew, Best Graphics and Best Music + Sound (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards 1-23-23: Gorf Arcade, Qyx, Galaxian (7800), Pac-Man Collection 40th Anniversary Edition (7800), UniWarS (7800) are all now available in the AtariAge store. 1-13-23: Final Gorf Arcade ROM now available for purchase at Champ.Games. 1-13-23: Final Qyx ROM now available for purchase at Champ.Games. 12-31-22: Elevator Agent demo ROM now available for download at Champ.Games.

Well if you have Diabetes and chose NOT to do anything "special" about it then be prepared for a lot of problems in future. With all the issues related to diabetes you risk everything from heart attack from high blood pressure to possible blindness etc. So suck it up, grow up and take charge doing what you need to do, or be tough, suborn, in denial or whatever this nonsense is and accept the inevitable health consequences. Now, I been a diabetic for some years fortunately though through diet changes, medication, lifestyle changes etc, I've kept my numbers excellent and have avoided having to take insulin injections and buddy, believe me, if you can also avoid having to go on insulin you will avoid a whole other level of risks and health issues. So make your choice but be sensible about it or you may end up on insulin sooner or later and you will have only yourself to blame.

Yay! We all know the hobby needs more concentric cylinders.

I experimented a little more with the full color version. This one doesn't just color a rainbow, but also links the coloring to the displayed plasma shape, while slowly changing the base color. So it is a mix of my original coloring and the one based on @SvOlli. 294 bytes, incl. color Plasma_FC_V2.asm Plasma_FC_V2.bin

Least exciting episode of ZPH ever: James (reads comic strip on livestream): "Well, that wasn't very funny." Aerlan: "Dude, you totally missed the juxtapositioning of anthropomorphism with the human condition. It's a biting satire of how people find meaning in pointless emotional attachment to material things. F___ yeah, man!"

Maybe @ZeroPage Homebrew could stream the unboxing.

If you mean not in a box? Yes. Artie will return as a proper 2600. I have one or two left in this series, then we'll start unboxing Artie and some of the rest of the cast. I'm a bit preoccupied with some other projects right now, so there may be a bit of a delay before that happens.

Nope. I decided to revert back to black and white (as Artie originally was) for several reasons: Traditionally, daily newspaper comics are black and white. Since moving back to Seattle, I get a newspaper here (a real printed one). There are some comics in the paper that clearly started out as full-color web comics, and they don't translate to black and white at all. They didn't take into account the limitations of newspaper printing when creating them, and they end up a blurry, illegible mess. I like the clean, simple look of a well-designed black and white comic strip, and wanted to go back to Artie's original inspiration and appearance: a newspaper comic. The color strips (even as copy/paste as they are) are a bit of a pain to produce. I wanted to simplify things so I'd be more inclined to produce new strips. I wanted to change the look of the strip, and try some different approaches to creating the artwork. This is in part because I've moved, therefore Artie's moved, and this represents an opportunity for a clean break between then and now. But also, I'm always looking for new ways to create art, and hopefully come up with techniques and approaches I can use in other projects. I'll get one or two strips out of Artie's meta commentary about how everything is black and white.

The NMI and IRQ vectors are described in any and all documentation about the 6502. These are addresses that are jumped to, when these events occur. The 6507 does not connect the NMI or IRQ lines to anything meaningful, so other than the BRK instruction in code (which generates an IRQ), the NMI and IRQ vectors are meaningless. The only one of any merit on the VCS is RESET, which is the address the 6507 jumps to when the processor is reset. -Thom

THANK-YOU! This release has made my day. It is just wonderful. I never dreamt I'd every be able to play one of my favourite arcade games on Atari (hyperkin) hardware. Bless you.

Some more updates: 1-14-24: New revived project code-named "Zombie Project (does not contain any actual zombies)" added to to-do list. First pass at new graphics complete. 1-14-24: New project code-named "WIP It" added to to-do list. Graphics are in-progress. 1-14-24: "Two-Fer" is on hold. "Historical Documentary" is back to being a stand-alone project for now. 12-31-23: First pass at graphics for "Hoosegow" complete. 12-18-23: First pass at graphics for "Space Mona Lisa" complete.

The heading of your post reminded me about a Swedish sci-fi novel from 1969 by pseudonym Carl Henner, titled "The Future Machine". The story begins in 1997, when some guy named Ken gets to try a time machine that transports him to year 3025. He quickly learns that the year is 993, as the count was reset in 2031 when the World Union was created with London as its capital. In this time, they have a giant computer used to predict the future, and which can print small notes about everyone's future. Ken gets to see the machine, and it gives him a note that says "You will not exist much longer. Within a week you'll be gone." which he and everyone else interpret as if he's about to die, and all sorts of action takes place. Eventually he takes his time machine and returns back to 1997, when the scientist who created the time machine tells him about his newest invention, a computer that can make predictions about the future. They both read the note, and he realizes the machine was correct: he no longer exists (in 3025). Ken attempts to put the blueprints for the computer on fire, but the scientist has kept an extra copy in a safe.

Don't forget, the Inty has 10-bit memory, therefore 4 would be ... well, it'd still be 4. But that 4 is 25% better!

Outstanding!

Artie's index has been updated. I guess I'm making up for lost time - I've posted more strips since September than the previous three years combined!

The "sale" is for a limited time only.

I have to update that I purchased the 2/3 size Arcade1up machine of Defender (with 11 other games). It almost hit the spot. For now I'm going to replace it's control panel with one that more authentically represents the arcade and stick a raspberri pi in it so it is closer to the actual arcade machine in how it works.

Many thanks! I just updated my VecMulti without having to hunt for a PC. You made my work this evening much easier.

The Alfasud had this problem on top, because the government forced Alfa to build it near Neapel. Where they did not find enough educated workforce, which on top was on strike 700 times over the Alfasud's lifetime. The result was a miserable build quality there as well. Which is a shame, because the Alfasud was designed very well. Great engine, great ride and spacious for its size. Three years before VW Golf/Rabbit, it paved the ground for the hot hatchbacks.

Not only Fiat was affected, in the 1970s and 1980s almost all European cars were affected by the cheap Soviet recycled steel. For example, the first VW Golf (Rabbit) had serious problems with rust, as did Mercedes and BMWs. However, the most famous is the Alfasud, a great small car, but it started to rust during production.

Also funny cuz in print, They say things like, there it is in 'black and white'...And my above comment was printed...So... Aren't tiny letters wonderful? Sometimes it's the little things... I crack myself up HAAAaaa

That's true - I forgot about the T-shirt thing. I don't recall the details - I think the T-shirt website itself flagged it as an off-limits IP. But however that was done, Atari is still behind it. And I don't think that instance had anything to do with the Atari logo. The ZPH awards is a little more understandable though, since they weren't actually "Atari" awards, and the logo was the dominant feature of it. It implied they were from Atari, rather than for games for Atari systems. I think they should just be renamed the ZPH awards, and make the award look like the ZPH logo. Then James would be free to do what he wished with them. (They're sort-of that way now, but it's really a ZPH production, and I think it should be identified as such.) It would be nice though if Atari wasn't so immediately dismissive of fan projects. But they're a corporation, and they're protective of their IPs. Not their fans.

That's just silly, I can barely even hear myself think at PRGE. ..Al

Good luck.

Glad you decided to get it checked and taken care of!

It's amazing what one can optimize out of a game if necessary. I spent a lot of RAM tracking enemies through the world map in Dragon Chalice. Eventually I scrapped it all and just gave enemies greater or lesser chances to appear per region. No one noticed the difference

Jesus, so dramatic. MAYBE just wait and do some research. Eat salads for the rest of my life - WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I have a well rounded diet, including all the nice things and even indulgences. Oh I don't sit around all day drinking a 2L bottle of soda in one sitting but hey guess what? I eat pretty much whatever I want within reason. If it turns out you have type 2 diabetes consider yourself lucky because not much will actually change to maintain safe numbers, oh perhaps a single pill of METFORMIN per day and again, just being reasonable with your diet and by that I mean a diet that would benefit anyone, mostly just reasonable cutting back a bit, perhaps getting a little more activity etc. It's hardly a death sentence or changes that will make you miserable (unless you are determined to be) but DAMN you seem to be going for the worst possible outlook and result here when clearly you know little about being diabetic. I drink beer whenever we go out I have a couple pints, we go out weekly, again I eat pretty much whatever I want just reasonable portions for someone my age / weight etc. Maybe just calm down and wait until you see your doctor, discuss what change need to take place to combat whatever turns out to be "wrong" with you and deal with it, who knows? IF you are lucky like me you will find whatever changes you need to make benefit you in other ways, I've slowly lost weight over the years for example improving my blood pressure and stamina as well. Life is what you make and FYI I am the farthest thing from a "positive" person overall but you you seem to be taking a miserable outlook to a whole new level so that has been my only reason for chiming in thus far, stop being so negative, or don't, this is my last reply here either way because if you are determined to come to the worse possible conclusions well then good luck.

You're welcome! The documentation to look at for those 6 bytes is for the 6507 processor. The 6507 is a member of the 6500 family of CPUs, so you can find that at 6502.org. Click on Documents in the top-right corner Click on Books Download mcs6500_family_hardware_manual.pd Download mcs6500_family_programming_manual.pdf The documentation is quite detailed, so I'll try to summarize it. If an external event occurs the CPU needs to be informed about it so the event can be handled. An example would be if you were calling a BBS with a modem. The chip that talks to the modem, known as a UART, had limited resources so after it receives a byte of data it must hand it over to the CPU right away before the next byte comes in. It does this by flagging an interrupt to the CPU. Some chips in the system can have a timer, such as RIOT in the 2600. When the timer runs out an interrupt will be flagged so the CPU knows about it. FFFA-FFFB = NMI vector These 2 bytes point to the routine that handles a Non-Maskable Interrupt. The CPU cannot ignore an NMI, you'd use this for the UART because if the CPU ignored the byte of data it could be lost by being overwritten by the next byte that's received. When an NMI occurs your program is temporarily halted while the CPU runs the NMI routine. FFFC-FFFD = RESET vector These 2 bytes point to the routine that handles a Reset. This occurs when the system is initially powered on because the state of the hardware will be unknown, such as the Accumulator in the CPU will contain a random value between 0-255. The reset routine is used to initialize everything to a known state. The reset can also be triggered on systems that have a dedicated reset button* FFFE-FFFF = IRQ vector These 2 bytes point to the routine that handles Interrupt ReQuest. The CPU can ignore an IRQ, you'd use this for things like the timer as it's not critical that the timer is handled right away because the CPU can check if the timer ran out at any time. When an IRQ occurs your program is temporarily halted while the CPU runs the IRQ routine. This can also be triggered by your program via a BRK instruction. The 6507 is a 6502 that's put into a reduced package, it only has 28 pins instead of 40. This reduces the cost of the CPU. Some of the missing pins include those needed to signal the NMI and the IRQ, so those cannot be triggered on the 2600 by external events. The IRQ can still be triggered by a BRK instruction as that happens inside the CPU. I had that occur on accident in Medieval Mayhem. BRK can be used as a space saving way to call subroutines, though this is an advanced technique. @Thomas Jentzsch explained this in the old Stella mailing list. * the red button on my Mega-Cart is an example of a reset button. After playing a game I can press that button to reset my VIC20. This lets me select a different game to play without having to power cycle my VIC-20.

Well, Bubsy appears to be alright with this.

How does this work, really? Has Microsoft had an active malware filter running on all Windows installations, besides the software you install on your own, and once the operating system goes EOL, they remove the filter to expose the computer to all sorts of port hacking, viruses and trojans? I mean the vast majority of security holes probably have been found and fixed before, and as the number of XP machines connected to the Internet is dwindling, hackers have less and less reason to target their attacks towards newly found security holes in a 20 year old OS, compared to targeting Windows 7+ and even more so 10.

It was a real blast interviewing him. He truly was a purr-fect game developer and gentleman. As a small treat, I've done a couple of pretty catty images in homage to Bubsy's dad. Thank you Mike Berlyn. For everything.

On the 7800 console I had, the metal strip was all scratched and dented too, and even partly detached and bent on one side. I replaced with a piece of "woodgrain effect" adhesive vinyl I had on hand. The bottom half of the case was all cracked (with missing parts too), so keeping the originality of that particular console wasn't really a concern. What about a custom laminated sticker with an "Artie the Atari" strip? Looking forward to seeing the final reassembly. You really gave dignity back to that poor console.

Robot City (2020) got started in 2006, where the 1K version won the Minigame Competition. It is based on an Odyssey 2 prototype. Real life interrupted development for many years until a ZPH show finally motivated me to complete the long planned 4K version. Robot City (2020) (Thomas Jentzsch) (NTSC).bin Robot City (2020) (Thomas Jentzsch) (PAL60).bin

Star Castle Arcade (2014) is the result of a cooperation with Chris Walton (Nathan Strum did the graphics). Chris started the game and I finalized it. Star Castle Arcade (2014) (Chris Walton, Thomas Jentzsch) (NTSC) (Harmony).cu Star Castle Arcade (2014) (Chris Walton, Thomas Jentzsch) (PAL) (Harmony).cu Star Castle Arcade (2014) (Chris Walton, Thomas Jentzsch) (NTSC) (Stella).bin Star Castle Arcade (2014) (Chris Walton, Thomas Jentzsch) (PAL) (Stella).bin

Let's start with my first game, Thrust. There were 3 releases: Thrust (2000) (original release), Thrust+ (2002) (added driving and booster grip controller support, no ROM) Thrust+ Platinum Edition (2004) (added great music and SFX by Paul Slocum) Thrust (2000) (Thomas Jentzsch).bin Thrust+ Platinum (2004) (Thomas Jentzsch).bin

Back in my "collecting days" when I first got back into the 2600, I acquired many carts including both RT and SS so I'll be able to test these (as well as many others) once the system is here. I'll put that Radio Shack switch to good use, that's for sure!

Wow - that picture looks sweet! I'm excited to hook this up to my HD TV with the RetroTink 2 and play some relaxing 2-player RobotWar:2684 with my son Joey - he'll be thrilled! Let's hope that Junior isn't as much of an ordeal as the Frankenstein 7800 I sent you! 👾 Thanks so much Nathan!

Glad you're enjoying it. I hope it's of help to others as well! The final chapter is coming up just about... now!

That's a pretty cool idea. I'd considered going over the rainbow stripe with some iridescent pinstripe tape, but I figured that would've been more in keeping with the obnoxious rainbow LED that had been removed. The "slightly beat-up stock" look will do. Coming soon to a Patreon page near you! (No... it's not. But I should probably get back to the strip someday.) Thanks! I think that's a really nice way of putting it.

Aardvark (2019) is another cooperation. Oscar started the development, recreating an unreleased Anteater prototype. Then I joined development and got Nathan into the project too. Together we greatly improved the game, even over the arcade version. Aardvark (2019) (Oscar Toledo G., Thomas Jentzsch, Nathan Strum) (NTSC).bin Aardvark (2019) (Oscar Toledo G., Thomas Jentzsch, Nathan Strum) (PAL60).bin

Three·s ("3 dots") was also released in 2014. It is based on the awards winning iOS game Threes. I tried to give the game a Mondrian like look. Three.s (2014) (Thomas Jentzsch.bin

In 2012, after almost 10 years of development, Andrew Davie and I released Boulder Dash. The game was licensed by First Star Software for a 250 copies release. Unfortunately we are not allowed to the release the full ROM. So here you can download only a demo version. The good news is, that we are currently working on an unlimited re-release. Stay tuned... Boulder Dash (2012) (Andrew Davie, Thomas Jentzsch) (Demo 2).bin

After SWOOPS! I went a step further and developed RAM-Pong (2009), a fully playable Pong for two players which runs in the 128 bytes RAM of the Atari 2600 console! So after you started the game, you can unplug the cart and continue playing. Unfortunately this game got not released on cart yet. In 2017 I made the menu simpler, so that the ROM fits into 1K. RAM-Pong (2009) (Thomas Jentzsch) (NTSC).bin RAM-Pong (2009) (Thomas Jentzsch) (PAL).bin RAM-Pong (2009) (Thomas Jentzsch) (PAL60).bin RAM-Pong 1K (2017) (Thomas Jentzsch) (NTSC).bin

In 2004, I participated successfully in the annual Minigame Competition. My 1K games became 1st (Cave 1K), 2nd (Splatform 2600) and 7th (Crash'n'Dive). So I decided to put them onto a cart and this became SWOOPS! (2005). SWOOPS! (2005) (Thomas Jentzsch) (NTSC).bin SWOOPS! (2005) (Thomas Jentzsch) (PAL).bin

My second game Jammed (2001), was an experiment in compression. I tried to squeeze as many unique puzzle as possible into the 4K ROM and ended with 600. Jammed (2001) (Thomas Jentzsch).bin