pacman000

Some of their older, static pages are still online. Went to Archive.org. Copied AtariHQ's main menu into a word document. Using that to get the URLs to their hosted sites, which should still be online. http:/www.ataribook.com/ - An up-to-date book on Atari History http:/www.atarihq.com/pal-division/ - "The Ancient Atari PAL Division" European 2600? http:/www.atarihq.com/danb/ - Technical information on old computer, arcade, and game systems. http:/www.atarihq.com/jeo/ - Jaguar Info http:/www.atarihq.com/rgvc/ - "the official IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel of the rec.games.video.classic newsgroup" http:/www.atarihq.com/vectrex/ - Spike's Vectrex Page http:/www.atarihq.com/tsr/ - TSR's NES Archive I know I've missed a few; using Google's "site:" operator may bring up some of the pages I missed.

Pitfall Harry makes a Tarzan yell in Pitfall! There was an official Tarzan game for the Colecovision. Review: http://videogamecritic.com/colecosz.htm?e=35034#rev764 Other than those two I don't know of any classic ERB games. (I'm not counting the games based on Disney's Tarzan movie.)

Hello Mr. Fry; I enjoyed your game.

" And we're not even talking about what Jerry Jessop and Tod Frye cooked up in response to GCC as a means of getting Warner convinced Atari itself could produce a worthy 5200 successor... " Wait Atari was working on their own 5200 successor? How far did that get?

I too enjoy Miniature Golf and Starship from time to time. And I've had fun with Pacman. I also like Apollo's Shark Attack. It has problems, but it's kinda neat to see how the programmer tried to work around the VCS's limits.

I thought the Atari History Museum had a Graduate. They have pics both inside and out. http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/a3000.html

I think that was the concept of BOMB!'s Wall Defender, tho I've never played it. Thank you for making this. Bosconian is one of my favorite classic games, and it's sorely overlooked.

Often I already have an idea of what the game is about before I buy it. If I don't know, and it looks interesting/is cheap I'll take out my cell phone and search for info on it. Or just ask to play it.

Problem: How much oversight did Atari's programmers have on their games? If it's about trusting your delvs, shouldn't Atari 2600 Pac-Man have turned out well?

http://www.atarihq.com/mainsite/ Gives this Error: Error establishing a database connectionAnyone know what's wrong?

Hmmm... I thought Phoenix: the fall & rise of videogames said it cost 10 to produce. I could be wrong tho. Maybe that was the wholesale cost? I'll have to check.

"The big issue for me was quality vs. cost. The quality was terrible and the cost was huge. Atari took a game that should have sold for $10 and sold it for $30-$40. They charged top dollar for a lousy game. If I had paid $10 for it I probably would have liked it just fine, but at $30 (the same price I paid for Asteroids) it was a rip off." Bit of perspective: Most Atari carts cost 10 to manufacture. They marked it up 10, then the retailer marked it up 10-20. Most VCS games were made by one person in six months. Pacman cost Atari just as much to produce as any other game. (In fact it may have cost them more, for the license fee and Tod Fry's royalty.)

" Also when looking at retro-game history articles, there is a tendency to gloss over anything that came before NES, unless it's to talk about how ET "destroyed" the videogame industry. So I don't think these older consoles get on younger collectors radar screens as much as they deserve to. " True. Funny, older articles blame the rise of home computers for the crash instead of bad games. A lot of the articles you see on major game sites aren't really history articles; they're nostalgia articles. I'd love to see what Google would've brought up for the keywords "classic games" in 2001, but I don't have a time machine handy, and Google blocked Archive.org from crawling their search results. Maybe I should try Altavista.,,

My 1st experience with a video game was with the arcade version. My 2nd experience was with the 2600 version. I liked them both. Then again I was 5 and couldn't tell the difference.