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E. King

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    Help for UK owners please?

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    On 7/13/2023 at 11:45 AM, grant74 said:

    Thank you for the help so far guys. I'm hoping this problem will eventually be sorted and go away! I will keep trying things. What a shame that Atari seem to have turned their backs on UK based customers. I think there is still a market for them over here (albeit a small one compared to the heydays of the 80s). Who knows, maybe one day they'll listen. Great products, crap service.

     

    The VCS will never be offered by Atari to ship to the UK. It is only sold by Atari to ship within the USA.

    The various VCS game store problems have been ongoing nagging issue for a very long time and there is no reason to expect Atari will ever get things straight.

    Atari has so many other priorities that come before the VCS.

    • Like 1

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, zzip said:

    I think people in the Atari community are happy to pay for games, but when it's only available to a small part of the community for arbitrary reasons, the temptation to just distribute it might be too much for some people to resist.

    True but either way the game should first be offered for the specific console it was made for.  Developers can obviously do what they want with their creations to whatever they see as being the best for them but I do think there is a certain level of responsibility to the Atari 2600 community to somehow offer the game for the original console it is designed to be played on first and foremost. If the way of offering it for the 2600 happens to be through the VCS store that is fine and could encourage others to buy a VCS for that reason.

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    2 hours ago, zzip said:

    The issue was around that Alien Abduction game which is a new 2600 title from the creator of HERO, and it's exclusive to the VCS for the time being.   That means the incentive to pirate the game to allow non-VCS owners to play is huge,  and Atari seemed to go into a panic about it,  They are likely planning to put it on cart at some point and don't want to see those sales torpedoed.  

    Regarding Alien Abduction which is a great game:

    In my opinion there should never be any 2600 games that are "exclusive" only to Stella emulation on the new VCS as I see it as absurd to make a 2600 game and not release it first in some way to 2600 players on the console the game was designed for.

     

    The creator of the game seemed to think that Atari had no intentions of ever putting it on a cart which is likely why they released it as a digital rom which was a very cool thing for VCS owners especially those of us who have Harmony carts to play it on our 2600 console which is awesome.  I think if we could all just see how cool it is for us old school 2600 players to be able to buy a 2600 rom on the VCS store and play it on our Harmony carts then we just might get an influx of old schoolers to adopt to the new VCS who have been previously avoiding the platform.  There currently is not many legitimate places to purchase a digital Atari 2600 rom so I see this as a potentially big thing that the VCS could offer the old school Atari players who want to obtain new 2600 roms legitimately and pay money for it.  There are tons of us out there who want to pay for new good quality 2600 game digital roms.

     

    Any new 2600 game that is made in an attempt to make actual profits by a planned cartridge release should be released on a 2600 cartridge long before releasing it on digital rom. So I tend to side with the creator of the game who said Atari seemed to not be interested in making a cartridge which makes the entire point of some "future loss in sales" seem irrelevant.  Why would they release it digitally if they had plans of making a cartridge later on as that seems to be backwards.  The more people who buy it digitally on the VCS means less cartridge sales.  If they would have released it on cartridge first, I would have bought the cartridge but now that I paid $9 for the digital I will not buy the cartridge since I have already played and beaten the game several times over.

     

    Ideally the game would have been offered as a full boxed cartridge long before the rom was sold but that did not happen. Seems like Atari is learning from this and doing it correctly with Mr Run and Jump 2600 which will first come out on cartridge form before a digital release. Let just hope it does not take Atari a year or more to fulfill the preorders.

     

    Also if somebody really wanted to "pirate" a rom from a new 2600 cartridge and share it with others, they can easily do it with a cartridge too. It is not that big of a deal to dump a 2600 cartridge.

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    20 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

    I would definitely prefer DRM-free, but if the alternative is no developer being willing to publish on your platform due to piracy, maybe you have to do what you have to do...

    I get you are not the only one with that viewpoint and I could give a long list why I see it as incorrect but the main reason that argument does not hold water is the fact that Atari themselves very wisely puts the majority of their current games on GOG which is 100% DRM free so they obviously support the consumer's right to digital game ownership.

     

    If Atari promoted the VCS as DRM free then sure you could get a few devs that may shy away but the smart ones will just put their games on as many platforms as they can since pretty much any game on any platform worth a darn these days is ripped and posted somewhere from what I've been told. Heck I hear there is even a PS5 emulator in the works, lol.

     

    I think if the DRM free nature of the VCS was more widely known then it could mean a huge boost in active user base and overall game sales which could very well attract loads of new devs to bring games to the VCS platform.

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, zzip said:

    Unlike GoG, I don't think Atari ever advertised the platform to be DRM-free,  on the other hand they know it will likely be bad PR to suddenly switch

    I also don't think anybody expects Atari to support the Atari Store forever so it would be good to know we could still play the games that we purchased.

     

    So those are good arguments to keep it DRM-free.

    You are correct it was never advertised that way, but if they did advertise it that way from the beginning, the active user base/game sales would be much higher and the platform would have likely grown way larger than what it currently is.

     

    The biggest reason it has to stay the way it is now is because the games have to be able to be played outside of Atari OS or we could potentially lose them all once the servers go down. If the servers go down then there could be a situation where we may no longer be able to log in our VCS using our VCS account logins so you may not be able to access your games if that happened.  If you forgot your password or logged yourself out or had to factory reset your VCS or if your VCS broke and you had to get a different one to replace it. There are times where you could need the online servers to login to the VCS account to gain access to your game library.  Since the VCS games inside Atari OS are tied to the VCS account, there are a couple scenarios were we could potentially lose access to our games if we were totally reliant on the VCS Atari OS and it's online servers.

     

    For these reasons, everyone should be backing up their VCS games on USB and also in an external Linux OS folder.  

     

    Also, regarding the Alien Abduction thing, there was never really any piracy concern as this was just some dude making a backup of the game rom and playing it outside of Atari OS which is 100% legit. There were just a few people, myself included, who blew it way out of proportion on both sides.

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    4 hours ago, zzip said:

    I've tried that as well.   Works great!   Biggest issue is that some games don't have "Exit" fuctions, and you have to brute force them to stop under vanilla Linux

     

    But I have to wonder with the recent concern around piracy + the Alien Abduction game if they aren't going to implement something to prevent this.

    Either the VCS was specifically designed to allow the majority of games to be DRM free and played on Linux PC, which makes perfect sense due the games being Linux PC games and the VCS is a Linux PC, or if this was not their intention then the design was somehow flawed by severe incompetency. Either way it should not be changed now nearly 3 years after release since many of us only adopted to the platform for the reason of digital game ownerships being DRM free.  You can't all of a sudden 3 years later start implementing DRM restrictions on a platform that was designed without those restrictions.  If they do then I would like full refunds for all the games I purchased if they would stupidly decide to take ownership away. I think the current Atari is smart enough to not go to such extreme measures for almost no reason at all. 

     

    DRM free digital games is a great thing for the consumer. Just look at GOG and all the big names that put their games on that store all DRM free. Many big names including Bethesda, Konami, Midway, SNK and yes Atari even.

     

    It is completely absurd at this point to even consider changing the DRM free nature of the VCS platform nearly 3 years after it's launch.  Also, being able to buy a digital 2600 rom on the VCS store and play it on a Harmony cart on an original 2600 console should be seen as a major positive and great contribution to the old school Atari community. People who twist that into a negative should take a strong look at their logic.

    • Like 1

    2600 Games Tower Of Rubble and Ameboa Jump - (in VCS Store)

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Dionoid said:

    Actually, the latest update of Tower of Rubble on the AtariVCS (introducing 2-player mode) doesn't support high score saving anymore. But high score saving was already broken because of the way Atari 2600 games are ended/killed on the AtariVCS - unless you plug in a keyboard and press the Escape key to exit the game, that is.

    ok so the high score save feature was removed in Tower of Rubble to add a 2 player mode?

     

    I assume the Escape key high score save still works in Amoeba Jump since that is 1 player only?

     

    thank you

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, leech said:

    Are they?  I don't think they're tied to the VCS account at all.  Unless the games being DRM Free enough that I can pluck them out and run them on a generic Linux desktop, or can even play them from the Linux distribution that is installed along with AtariOS.  But you're suggesting that if I take a USB stick with these installed, and plug it into another AtariVCS, they won't work if I set up a different account on it?

     

    That AtariOS is the only one that bothers to call home?

    Yes I am saying that in Atari OS they are tied to the VCS account and as far as I know the VCS games will not work inside Atari OS unless you are signed into that account. 

    Putting the entire AtariOS Library on a USB Stick

    in Atari VCS

    Posted

    2 hours ago, leech said:

    Pretty sure you can even plug them into a Linux box and play them.  I have done that with a few.

    Yes you are correct and that is where the real backing up can happen. Having them on a USB drive is a good start though and everyone should do it. The only issue there is that if that is all people do then they are still fully relying on Atari servers since the games are tied to the VCS account. If the servers eventually go down for good and if for some reason someone is unable to sign in to their VCS account (which happens a lot now actually when people get stuck on updates) then the game would no longer be playable in Atari OS unless someone finds a way eventually to unlock things. So because the games are tied to the VCS account there is only one real way to backup and keep the games safe and it takes more than just putting them on a USB.

     

    For this reason, it is good to have that option you mentioned and I am thankful to Atari for designing it the way they did to give us that other option.

    Amoeba Jump

    in Homebrew Discussion

    Posted

    Been playing Amoeba Jump recently and it is a very fun game. It plays great on the 2600 or 7800 and it looks cool on a CRT tv. I was able to manage 12k points last time I played and just thinking about now make me want to play it again. 

     

    Thank you Dionoid.

     

    I will very likely pick it up again when the rom is sold through the VCS store depending on the price.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
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