Shaggy the Atarian

Awesome! I grabbed WT for the Lynx and really enjoyed it - played through most of it but this announcement reminded me that I was close to the end but didn't finish it. Look forward to seeing this!

I heard about this when it was released the other day but just now got around to it. I don't use a ton of emulators (and haven't tried a Jag Emu before) but I love the interface for this. Played through the full Predator campaign on AvP with 2x RISC/68k cores and didn't notice much of an issue, apart from the collision detection being just slightly off (of course it wasn't perfect to begin with, maybe that was . Tried SuperCross 3D out of curiousity and even with everything cranked up, the game still plays like you're driving underwater I-War seemed to have some issues (ran too fast at defaults, some flicker) but I don't know if that's always the case for that game IS2 froze when I cranked up the cores, so I guess it doesn't like that too much I could never get Phaze Zero to work on my JagGD but works great here. Even more so if you push the speed up, although it does become slightly hard to play when really fast. I tried recording part of my AvP run but can't find the file nor anything in the manual about where it records. Anyone know? Just my experience but really enjoy it - kudos to Rich and hope he's able to beat that cancer back

The exA guys will be showing up to IAAPA 2022 in a few weeks, debuting a new arcade cabinet and a new game, Donut Dodo Do!

The Arkanoid port looks fantastic - although I'm sure that Atari just wouldn't have liked to have seen that on their system back then given it crushed Super Breakout. One thing I think would've been great for the 7800 BITD, that would have been realistic, are more ports of 2600/5200 games, as the OP mentioned. I have played Gremlins and it is good fun, I imagine the 7800 would have done it better justice with the higher colors; Space Dungeon too, had the Tramiels released the Proline joystick coupler that they prototyped. One I'm surprised I rarely see mentioned is Star Raiders. That's the kind of game I would think could work pretty well in one of the 320 modes (or any 1st person space shooter for that matter) Others that I think the 7800 could do great justice and would've been in Atari's wheelhouse to do: -Solaris -Secret Quest -Combat -River Raid -Pitfall II -Adventure (although at this point, it'd be great to see Cafeman do Adventure III for the ProSystem ) -Yars' Revenge -Off The Wall -Enduro Perhaps Raiders of the Lost Ark or Temple of Doom could have made for a CastleVania style game given that it would've been easier for them to get that license than to get Konami on board (but otherwise, yeah, seeing a bunch of NES greats like CV, Metroid, Zelda, SMB, etc. on the system would have been awesome)

Been a while since I updated this thread - I just got my hands on the first SNK release to the system, Samurai Shodown V Perfect, so here's an unboxing and some gameplay. It's not a gigantic difference from the console version that you can get as a part of the Samurai Shodown Collection, however, it is superior - deeper colors, much reduced input lag (Switch is about 4/5 frames; AC is 0.5), improved & corrected translation, full English support, gory deaths all fully restored. Contrary to some belief, this is available worldwide, not just Japan, which is what makes it significant, all thanks to the exA platform.

I'll drop him a line and see if he remembers - he couldn't remember a lot of little details from those days but perhaps this is one that would ring a bell. A red Hydra bezel would've looked awesome.

Are there people out there actively seeking for a console that integrates all this blockchain/NFTs/crypto nonsense and would principally use it for that purpose?

Yes, mine did have the cash box and all that - just not the artwork and that grey/silver bezel. Several bolts are missing from the bezel. From what Dennis Harper said, it and the Toobin were never put out into an arcade but from the looks of it, they were arcade ready. Only other difference mine would have is that Dennis signed them, which was nice of him.

Awesome, thank you!

This depends - you have two types of arcade operators - ones that do what you mention (buying the equipment then installing it inside of a businees where the main thrust is not an arcade) then ops like myself where we own and operate the equipment in our business. Operators have generally been notorious for keeping their earnings secret however, manufacturers would collect anonymous earnings data. Midway was pretty good about that BITD but there's always going to be a lot of cabs you miss (particularly those that were blind shipments). It's likely that the earnings are an averaged estimate based upon how many total game cabinets they sold vs. the average take, so the real number could be off by a few million, but either way it still did well. Midway however only made the money from selling the machine, none of the on-site earnings went back to them, unless they were operating some cabs of their own out in Chicago (which I've never heard of them doing and I've talked with guys like Eugene Jarvis and George Petro many times. They only ever talk about tests or in-dev stories if you ask them about it). After 1995 and you had the likes of the PSX and Saturn making ports arcade perfect or close, it did start to change things - mainly when it came to joystick games. Porting such a game over to a console doesn't really lose much in the experience, apart from the social atmosphere arcades offered; This is why a lot of companies started focusing on things that consoles couldn't do well or at all from a hardware perspective - steering wheels & gas pedals or guns or dance pads. Unfortunately, the siren call of console ports became so strong that it really ended up hurting their arcade sales, which is why so many companies folded their US arcade divisions. Fighting games in particular brought in a "hardcore gamer" type crowd but that segment of the market gravitated towards consoles, so when they left arcades, the industry had to shift towards more casual stuff - or the redemption crap that you mention. Unfortunately in my own experience, ports of joystick games = earnings disaster; Such ports hurt on stuff like driving games too, but to a lesser degree. To toot my own horn, I did discuss this in detail the other day on a livestream On games like Area 51, us arcade ops love games like that because they pay themselves off many times over and that helps keep the doors open, although in my case it's brand new games which get the most play to pay the bills. Retro games, for the most part, are just filler (follow-up on that video here). By what I've gathered from talking with ex-Atari staff and reading other interviews, I think Atari was caught off guard by that too but were happy to finally find a hit. Most Atari Games titles between Gauntlet and A51 were not super sellers. The only game to even crack 5000 sold in that time was the dismal PitFighter. I used to have an A51 but it was in bad condition so I sold it off, but at one of my locations the locals have frequently asked for that game in particular so I wouldn't mind getting a nice one one of these days. I'd also pounce on an A51 4k remaster arcade game (or CarnEvil for that matter - CarnEvil still earns like crazy, when it works). Interestingly enough, Area 51: Site 4 didn't do nearly as well as the original but I think that's because it didn't provide the straightforward rail shooter that it's predecessor did. Had they perhaps focused a little more on games like A51 that just looked better, maybe that would have been enough to keep them going but they placed their bets more on drivers.

That's really cool! I have wondered how many protos for it are out there - can't be many since the production on it was so low. At least the grey shell seems to be one-of-a-kind. I do wish I had the artwork for mine but it's such a rare game I haven't found any repro work on it. Guess I'll just have to come up with it at some point

That's what I've heard about PR although never heard how much was made in licensing MK & NBA Jam out - certainly more on the MK side thanks to stuff like action figures and the film. But as the story has been told, NBA Jam cabs made something crazy like $1B in quarters back then. Not sure how they calculated that exactly but Midway probably only made some nice cash from the ports on the side. Doubt they could have made much otherwise since that'd all go to the NBA and the player's association. PR2 might have been able to build on what PR did for toys but ultimately they had to prove that the arcade game could sell first and it seems that didn't happen. The other issue is that Atari was sold to Midway in April '96, about the time that PR2 was in development and probably getting some testing. It's possible that PR2 was testing well enough for Atari's tastes, but not the new Midway/Williams owners. But apart from that in either company, licensing possibilities would be a secondary consideration at best; The games have to prove themselves out in the real world otherwise no dice. Since Area 51 was selling like crazy and SF Rush was doing well at that time, Atari corporate was likely more thinking about "how do we get more of this?," which is why we got games like Maximum Force and then a bunch of racing games. It also helped that A51 was dirt cheap to produce while it probably cost a ton to be trying out risky fighters. (I do wish that Atari would've tried out some more beat 'em ups than just Guardians of the Hood though. Oh well) You do need that initial release to drive kids crazy and demand a home port but at a certain point in the 90s (I'd say '96 and after) if you weren't Capcom or Namco (SNK in Latin America and Japan), you were mostly ignored. After UMK3, Midway couldn't really find another fighter hit and pretty much everyone else was flailing - which gave us top cringe like Tattoo Assassins at least. Atari realized this, particularly because they had tried other fighters too and nothing was passing tests - Cyber Storm & Vicious Circle. I think after PR2 and Tenth Degree flopped, then Midway was seeing poor sales on War Gods and their game Bio Freaks failed testing, they just figured "eh, lets focus on less risky racers/shooters."

In the arcade biz, it all comes down to the location test. If it can't consistently make good money there, they sack it. Area 51 and SF Rush sold really, really well, becoming markers for what to look for, so if a concept couldn't make close to that, they also killed it. Sometimes a good game does get tested in a crap location (or some distributor does that to kill something they don't like) but as far as I know Atari had good places for testing back then. I've heard it mentioned from Atari staff before that another thing was that they felt the fighter genre was dead in the late 90s; I think that might have just been their way to say that they just couldn't match the output and quality of the Japanese. That said, arcade fighters pretty much went extinct in the US after Tekken 5, something that's only starting to change recently.

We had a Radikal Bikers at the arcade where I worked back in '99/'00. Only had one though (should've had two linked) - and it was always in the bottom 3 earners, vying for last place with Beast Busters 2 and Golden Tee '98. I remember giving it a try a couple of times but I enjoyed Rolling Extreme which they also had.

As best I can tell it's just the hardware - I'm not sure what was the final release of the software for Hydra but there are handwritten labels on the ROMs that have dates on them (all would be 1990). The dates range from the middle of April to the middle of June. Although some ROMs are missing labels so not sure if there are any later. From what I've played, the game seems complete. Here's the tag fixed to the back of the machine:

I recently picked up a couple of games from Dennis Harper, coder & game designer who worked at Atari Games coin-op back in the 80s and 90s. His most famous work was Primal Rage. I was chatting with him a few months back about the E.T. Arcade game which he remembered seeing in development and in the process said he had a couple of games in his garage that he wanted to sell, both were games he designed, so I took him up on that offer. Now, I have one of the few (perhaps only?) Hydra prototype cabs. This game was rare as it is - only 200 units were ever manufactured (201 counting this cab I suppose). If anyone is in Utah, they can stop by my arcade (Arcade Galactic) to give it a try or two (or until you get that high score ) Software wise I haven't checked to see which version of the software was the latest but everything I've played it seems complete. The cabinet itself is different from the production models, being silver instead of white and coming with no artwork. The second game I grabbed from Dennis isn't quite as rare but it's better known - Toobin'. While the cab he had wasn't a proto cab, it does list the serial number as TBN002, making it super early in the production run. I also had Dennis sign both cabinets (on the inside). My big misfortune with this one is the day after it arrived the monitor completely crapped out so I had to spend an extra $200 to get it working again. At least the cool marquee works though...

Given the sales numbers+cultural impact of the 2600, that's no surprise really. It is a bit of a surprise to finally see the Lynx and Jag get some love as I don't think this has ever happened under Atari SA (memory might be fuzzy there). The 5200 & 7800 have had some hat tips here and there at least. Yeah, about 90% of the IP released from mid-84 to '96 by Atari would have to be licensed since most of it was contracted to 3rd parties. There's an IP catalog list on Atari.com where you can see that Atari owns little of the Lynx/Jag libraries. I've wondered why some stuff like Hover Strike aren't on there though, as I thought that one was all done in-house. Or perhaps HS was included with BattleZone to Rebellion? I do wonder how any normal gamer who just knows the 2600 will react to some of these games like Club Drive (or even try them). Sadly, it very well might reinforce the negative perceptions surrounding the Jag, although I get that licensing stuff like AvP, Doom, Wolf 3D would have cost too much. Still, some of this IP is so old and forgotten, it couldn't cost that much to license, would it? Some better showcase stuff like Super Burnout or even license BattleMorph from Carl?

Even though I have an ST sitting on a shelf as a premium dust collector (I really should sell it off), I hadn't been aware of the ST port of Asteroids Deluxe until this thread and.... Saying it's rough is being generous. If you were going to go to the trouble to have any ST content, I'd think you'd want to avoid some of the worst games and put something at least average on there, like Crystal Castles or spend a few bucks and license Dungeon Master. This would definitely be a case of better nothing than something. Again, I get that they don't have the money to license all the stuff everyone wants but this is kind of the case for the 7800/Lynx/Jaguar. Anyone who has never played Club Drive or Basketbrawl sure is in for a "treat." At least there's Ninja Golf, Warbirds and T2k though.

SNK's Samurai Shodown V Perfect is now available for pre-order for the exA-Arcadia system. There's another thread on the forums here about the exA in case you're curious to learn more about that, but quick explanation is that it's the modern Neo Geo MVS. This is the first SNK release for the platform and while some outlets are using language like "releasing to Japan" with the implication that you'll only find this one in Japan, the game is available worldwide. It had better be, since I placed a pre-order for mine and it will be here by the end of the month. In case you are wondering what makes this build different from the home console release a few years ago, I'll quote myself: And here's the trailer:

I did not realize that GGA had this one - make that another I have to play when I visit there one day. I've read about it many times and seen grainy screenshots - it looks rad but yeah, super hard to find.

Such a missed opportunity to not remind the world about Bentley Bear's other game appearance, Magical Math! Other than that, I'm no expert on the ST library but does look like it'd be pretty underwhelming with what they could offer - Crystal Castles, Star Raiders, Whitewater Madness...maybe Atari Grand Prix? Granted, the roster is weak on the 7800/Lynx/Jaguar too, but I get that they'd have to do a lot of licensing to get all of the gems there.

So this sent me on a little hunt over on System16.com. Unfortunately with Japanese companies, the exact date when a game was released isn't always known so it's a little muddy but from what I can see from some searching there, 1980 was the earliest boards with 2 CPUs start to show up. I only found these examples: Taito's Stratovox Data East's DECO Cassette system (a small number of games launched for it in 1980) Caveat - it's possible that the way the hardware was designed used the 2nd CPU for something else other than the game, such as driving a sound chip on Stratovox or tape control on the DECO. One example of a board using 2 CPUs but 1 was for something else was Namco's King & Balloon from 1980, where the 2nd CPU controlled the DAC for speech. Dunno if that counts as multi-threading but again that still puts it all at 1980. I do know that Stratovox came out before King & Balloon at least, so I suppose Stratovox might be the first. For Atari, the first double CPU game I can find is Agent X / Cloak & Dagger. Atari also often used multiple POKEYs to get more sound channels For Midway, their first double CPU game was Blue Print. Sega's earliest I can find is Super Locomotive. Interesting to note that Sega had a 3 CPU game with Komax's Flower in 1986. Taito used 5 CPUs in Big Event Golf in 1986, so that might really count as "multi-threading?" Otherwise, you'd have to find the first PC-based arcade game that used a multi-threading processor, so likely something from Sega/Namco/Raw Thrills (Namco did use the PS2 & PS3 in some configs, I think the PS3 would certainly count, can't recall if PS2 technically did multi-threads though)

I haven't been around here in a while so I missed this. I do want to see more original themes but sadly, they can have a hard time earning depending on how they are setup. I had a Jersey Jack Dialed In for a while - fantastic and innovative game (also designed by Pat Lawlor) but the problem is had is that it's own story and explanation of what was going on was poorly implemented. This turned off normies/casuals but also made it harder for seasoned players to get into, thus it was an expensive machine to buy but it performed the worst out of all my new pins. As an example, when you start up the game it says "here's your new phone!" then suddenly you need to charge up a power station or you start battling mutant monsters for some reason. The story had something to do with your phone being an experimental device that tapped into quantum physics (I think) but that wasn't explained much, if at all, so it just felt like a hodge pdoge of weird stuff thrown together as a pinball machine. I do think that original games means the designer has to be more creative about how they make a game but I think they can let it get out of control if they aren't careful. On the other hand, there is a new Viking-themed game on the market that doesn't have a license - Legends of Valhalla. You're just a Viking warrior battling various creatures/monsters of ancient legend so it's pretty clear what you're supposed to do to get points. That video is 2 hours long so if you just want a few minutes of some non-expert play:

This really looks fantastic. I love seeing these kind of updates/remakes of original 2600 games on the 7800 to show what more could be done. Keep up the good work

Thanks! I did just try it and while it did show the Atari blue loading screen for a second, it still kicked itself into self-test, then after a hard reset, the file has disappeared from the list but it's still on the CF when I check it on my computer (out of curiosity, I did run the tests and nothing came up bad on my ROM or RAM but I wonder if there could be something with the cart). Going to try and find the old RF adapter and see if it works on my 800XL.