JasperAK

EDIOT: ?

So at 550+ and possibly slowing, is it safe to say that they will sell about the same or a little more than the best sellers here? If they sell more or even significantly more over time, where would those sales coming from? What market are they hitting that Atari Age isn't? I mentioned it in an earlier post that I thought they might be trying to grow the market. Any thoughts on how they may be doing it? Or are they selling to the same crowd but getting more sales because they are rock stars? Does Circus Convoy look like such a superior game to the homebrews we have now to explain greater sales? I'd really like to know if they can get 1000+ sales, how could they possibly do it? Who are they selling to that Atari Age is not? I wish them all the best; these questions I think of are not meant to disparage anyone. I just see this as a Sales and Marketing exercise. A little bit of SWOT and Market Analysis.

I'm not the one who mentioned that one of them might have had a condescending attitude. I am not trying to stir up drama. I am saying that I don't appreciate anyone coming here and crapping on this community and the hard work that these people do. If they weren't jerks then awesome, I'm looking forward to what they produce. I'm looking forward to what they add to the community. I love this place, and I started getting strong negative vibes from some of the posts in this thread and posts in other recent threads. I can understand that stuff happens in the TACO and Amico threads, but there seems to be spill over now. I've never said that I thought they were boo-boo to the community. If it isn't clear, I have not seen the video so I do not have an opinion of any of their behavior. That's why I assumed that if multiple people had concerns, then there was probably something there. I reacted to other people's concerns and not anything I had direct contact with. That is my bad and even though I threw an IF in my original comments, I see how my comments could be taken the way you and others had. Again, not trying to be part of the problem, just trying to stand up for the community I like to call myself part of. I'm sorry if I've cause any strife in the community.

I'm guilty of reading these posts and feeling a very strong negative vibe from people. I'm a passionate person and as you can see from my posts in this thread I love this place. Others are mentioning concerns and I am stepping up running my mouth when maybe I don't have a place to. I do not intend to start crap, but am being proactive in defending the community if some person or group wants to imply the people here are not as good as them. I did not accuse anyone or anything, I just registered my displeasure with them if they ever did. You know, because what people earlier in the thread were either saying or implying. Again not trying to start anything, but anyone that doesn't respect what we have would lose my support and business, and I don't think I am alone in that. We have a small community and we need to stick together even if we have different ideas on how to maintain our community or in the case as I suspect with Audacity, grow our community.

And then you have a bunch of people trying to get Albert to sell the roms on the store so people can pay the developers (and distributor) for their work. Not everyone wants a $50 box, manual, and cart, but some people want to reward the people that make our scene possible. Now I don't follow the homebrew or programming threads nearly as much as the general so I can't speak for people being bitches or special snowflakes during the development of these games. The only hostility I ever see is in the Taco and Amico threads, and with careful moderation even that has died down. EDIOT: Now I read the programming threads when I find a game that interests me, and maybe it's because I haven't been here very long, but for the most part I don't see negative. One of the threads I have been following is Andrew Davie's Chess thread. That looks like a thread where Andrew shows us the development as it occurs and where the community offers input and questions. The progress that has been made in that thread is amazing. That's what I see.

I was going to draw a cupcake analogy but I like beer just as much. I can go into my local Grocery store in Virginia and buy the same beer that someone can buy in California. I can also buy local brew in the same store or the bar down the road but its local only. I can't get it in California, or Pennsylvania for that matter. Brews like Sam Adams started as 'homebrews' and grew to cover the country and possibly beyond by this point. And then there are the local brews that can only be bought in one bar. I have one of those type of bars three minutes away. To me, that last one is Atari Age. Galagon could very easily be sold in any local retro game store. It's professional from start to finish. But it's boutique. As far as I know it's sold in one location and no one makes a profit on it. Atari Age is for the love of the game. Is Galagon or Atari Age really a commercial enterprise? I think that's the difference. Intention. I don't think anyone here is using the profit motive to drive their production. Games are not developed using a production schedule. Albert makes the physical product when he can, not to a distribution schedule. As far as I know, you can't buy any Atari Age games at retail. I get the impression that Audacity is looking at our market (and other retro game markets?) in a completely different manner. That's what will make them different, not necessarily successful, but different. But I'll say it now. EDIOT [Poo-poo] to them if they ever denigrate Atari Age or the people that make our niche possible. I'd like to think we are happy with the community we have, and if they try to come around and bully us with any holier-than-thou attitude they can just piss off. We didn't need that attitude before and we don't need that nonsense now. All we need are fantastic games to buy from people that respect their market. Atari Age is that right now. I love this place.

You know I missed that split second of the front of the truck the first time through. It makes total sense now, jumping from moving trucks that are in a convoy that belongs to a circus. Yes sir, I get it now. I feel so stupid. My confusion could be due to the gold rush train game they are releasing soon.

This looks like a love letter to so many games from Activision's past 2600 games. That snake was amazing. EDIOT: I hate how it looks like the train is on a highway instead of train tracks; I think the gold lines are the worst choice here, but otherwise super awesome.

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with this thread you reference. Could you tell me who defined those qualifications or link to the aforementioned thread.

Agree 100% donjn. Joystick with single button like at the arcade or controller that kinda looked like that bastard from Atari's Star Raiders; yeah, Atari wins that one. On a slight tangent, I wonder if I took my Atari Flashback and Intellivision flashback into work, which one would people gravitate towards? Imagine letting both machines run and play random attract screens; what would happen? I think the Intellivision has clean consistent graphics, but the 2600 has some amazing looking games like Battlezone. No doubt Atari also has shit looking games like Pac-Man, Defender, and Donkey Kong. But in any case, picking up a controller, anyone can dive right in. With the Intellivision, on the other hand, there's a little bit of a learning curve, but I think especially with the sports games, most would have a much more rewarding experience. Oh, and Intellivision has B-17, so for a simulation type game, Intellivision is the only one that could do that type of game. Wow, sorry for the big tangent.

I was also surprised to not see the color differences between the lines that showed up in the emulator screenshots. Is it possible to have the colors customizable?

I went back and put the binaries on my harmony and holy crap did that make a difference. The three lines under the Red and gold band hurt my eyes because they look like they are vibrating. The JFK- through uvwxyz-lines are the most readable color wise. If I could change my vote I'd knock Small caps out and put Tri-12 in. Small caps had too many vertical lines. The roundness of the Captain was by far the most readable to me.

I voted for Captain Morgan Spice and Small Caps. Small Caps looked cleanest in the original screen shots, and I'm always going to vote for the Captain.

So do they

I am buying two Amicos. One for the family room, and one for my game room. For game systems it really comes down do they have games I want to play. I don't have any Playstations after 2 nor Xboxes after 360 because I am happy with the games I have for those systems. I have a Switch but don't play more than Minecraft on it. Now my daughter and I play Warlords on my Vader 2600, and both of my children play NES games like Jackel and Heavy Barrel with each other. So we don't care so much about graphics, the question is are the games fun to play with as a group. I am chomping at the bit waiting for Amico.

That is so amazing. Thank You. There is something about that color scheme that gets me.

Don't get me wrong, I love your work on project. I was just struck by how the last pics looked like something I would have had on my original 286.

Yes they are, but the effect looks more like an Apple 2e.

I love the CGA look. Now if only white, black, magenta, and cyan...

I remember reading this thread last year and had meant to post my thoughts, thank you Mr. Necro. So here we go with story time. I was very young when we first got a Woodgrain 2600 and I sucked on it. Badly. I stunk at some of my favorite games: Asteroids, Frogger, and Pac-Man. Try as I might, I could never come close in score to anyone else. I was never good with the arcade action and too young to learn how to play well. Didn't stop me from trying though. But one game got me hooked on video games forever. Haunted House. For two reasons: unlike the games above, you could take your time because the only penalty to dicking around was burning matches, and it was scary as fuck to a kid just starting elementary school. You could take your time and look around for the pieces of the urn, but you couldn't take too long because of that damn ghost. I never liked scary shows or movies as a kid, but Haunted House had me hook, line, and sinker. I don't think I ever beat it as a kid but have since gone back to it recently--we'll see this game pop up again later. Another special game for the 2600 was Yars' Revenge. Now I did much better with this one and it's for one reason alone. While all of the rest of the games didn't allow one to stop and plan while in game, Yars' had a shield that you could stay in while planning your attack. It was the first game where I learned to plan and strategize. Eventually I got my own 2600 Jr. for my room. It was really the first time that gaming became more of a solitary pastime for me. The only game from that period that meant anything to me was Solaris. I worked at building maps and trying to figure out where to go, but the combat was just too much. I still stunk. Not long after that I got a Nintendo. The Nintendo had me hooked with a few styles of games that were quite frankly garbage on the 2600. I started sports with MLB and always had Baltimore's #8 batting clean up but after a 101-x game I moved on to others. I eventually found Bases Loaded which was everything that MLB, Home Run, and Real Sports Baseball weren't. I played half a season after school with DC before getting distracted with other games like Baseball Simulator 1.000. And Tecmo Bowl for football, nuff said. These games were fun but they didn't take the place of actually going outside and playing tackle football out in the neighborhood. The games that kept me inside were more like Yars' Revenge and Haunted House. The one that stands out is, yes you guessed it, Silent Service--with a NES Advantage. The strategy and tactics involved in this game blew my mind. Yes, I was the kid that would follow a convoy for a hour--in real time--to set up an attack that would last all of a few minutes. I drew up sheet of concentric circles and used copies of it to plot the ships, their routes, and the best angles of attack. Good times. Other fantastic strategy games that stole my time were Desert Commander, Conflict, and Fucking Genghis Khan. For Desert Commander, I had a set of maps that I drew on graph paper. I plotted strategies by moving little wooden blocks around to count spaces to find how far I could move and still not be attacked. that game was all about first attacks. I had started maps for Conflict, but those boards were over too fast to make it worth while. And yes, M48s wrecked the Soviet Migs that they would waste time sending after you. I eventually got bored with it and moved on to Genghis Khan. I used to mark on my TV the borders of my empire with dry erase markers. I played some games so fucking long that the marker kinda stained the TV. I generally played as Richard and fucking hated Phillip (who I always captured and learned very quickly to marry off or he'd revolt.) and loved Flandre. And yes, I was always pissed that the German prince was in France and Flandre in the Holy Roman Empire. I never drew that map for Genghis Khan because my empire's borders never stayed the same for long--it was easier to just wipe a border off and redraw it, and I was never smart enough to draw a paper one and put it in a plastic sheet protector. Of course like everyone else, I liked The Legend of Zelda, though I preferred Adventure of Link--I hated needing the map from Nintendo Power to find everything for Zelda. But for those special adventure and Rpg games, those were Final Fantasy and Ultima 4. While both were similar, they scratched completely different itches. Final Fantasy is the one game that I think I have for every system that it was released on in the States. I bought a Game Boy Micro just to play the remake Dawn of Souls. For some reason it's that one game I just have to play every year or so. Sometimes I play with similar parties and others, well, two red mages, one white mage, and one black mage was challenging. Ultima 4 was an interesting one because I remember wandering around aimlessly for a lot of the time. I rarely went into dungeons. I never beat it, but I probably had all the regents maxed out. Amazingly enough you know what games I originally hated and sucked at? Like amazingly sucked at no matter how much I played? Castlevania, Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Contra. I'm the guy that would need 12 lives to beat the first board in Contra. Yes, that bad. But to round out this list with a similar game, the last one I want to mention that had a profound effect on me, one of the only action games that I had any chance at playing (and beating), yep you guessed it again, Metal Gear. Now back then, most everyone I knew had nearly direct access to Nintendo Power. And I swear that I only needed the hints for the two forest mazes (I can't imagine anyone would have ever figured out those) and strategies for beating one of the bosses. I forget who the boss was, but it was the one where you had to use the rocket launcher for something. I had so much trouble with that one. The stealth and keycard hunting was amazing for me at the time, so much so that once I got a PS2, I had to have Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. I still regret not beating that one. And then there was the Genesis. Master of Monsters is the most amazing tactical strategy game I have ever played in my life. I made an mp3 CD that has all six background tracks repeating for like an hour. To hell with Final Fantasy Tactics and Suikoden. I don't want role-playing in my war games (says the guy who has a Nintendo 64 and loves Ogre Battle 64). Remember how I mentioned Tecmo Bowl for the NES earlier. Yep Madden '94 is my all time favorite football game. I do best with three fucking buttons. And truth-be-told, if I had NHL '94 or '95 they would have been my favorite hockey games. Back then it was absolutely Blades of Steel for the NES. I never owned the SNES back then, but borrowed one on many occasions. Top Gear 2 and Super Baseball Simulator are the only real standouts for that system. You know, except for A Link to the Past, my personal favorite Zelda game of all time. That's another one I go back to about once a year. Both Super Conflict and Super Genghis Khan sucked major monkey d--k. I played Final Fantasy 3, but it just didn't do it for me. I really ended up not getting too far into RPGs on the consoles. By this time I was getting tired of consoles. I'll tell you why. Now sometime around the beginning of the NES era, I finally got access to a computer. Might & Magic 2 and Europe Ablaze on an Apple 2e, AD&D Pool of Radiance on a Commodore 64, and SimCity on a CGA 286 were the first major experiences I had, and any one of them would have had me hooked. But by the time I had all but Europe Ablaze on my own first computer, a Tandy 1000, I started moving over. By the time I had Eye of the Beholder and Civilization though, I was basically done with the consoles as my primary gaming platforms. I had about 25 3.5 floppies with saved games for Civilization. I couldn't stop playing this game, and I played the crap out of 2 and 3. I got off the train at 4. Even though you stuck around so far, I will not bore you with any further play-by-play of my computer gaming, but I will mention that it wasn't so much playing all of these games that took up the time, it was learning how to use Soft-Ice 2.62 (2.82 never worked well for me), learning to use UGE and then trying to crack it by making a KEY file to get rid of the annoying shareware screen, and reading everything on the BBSs written by ORC+. I ran my own BBS for awhile. My DOS computer ran on menus using batch files. In TrueBasic, I wrote a AD&D 2.5 Edition Character Generator that eventually broke when I tried to add kits. And then I went into the Army and fell off the grid for the next four years. Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3.

All it takes is Hardwork.

Atari finally found its market: the 10,000 people that aren't happy with the Switch or Do-it-all-yourself machines. They found that ignored middle ground. I'd also love to hear from a Netflix mom.

What's amazing is that he announced a three-year development period. I almost believe he was being realistic about some of his capabilities. The introduction of his team on the other hand made me realize that he had rapidly gone off the rails. You know, it seems like rapidly because I read the entirety of the thread over the course of few hours, but it seriously has gone on for almost 20 years! How much time passed before people started realizing how this would likely end; it's been a twenty-year train wreck. Oh if only I could have enjoyed this thread like an 18-year old scotch.

He went to work for Fauxtari. You know, programming is Hardwork. I think neither programming nor English are his primary languages.

Got me in 2021. I let my guard down for only a decade to finally succumb. I am never gonna give up on this thread.