Atari Classics at Taco Bell

[Fellow Atari Man]

last part...

 

plus that's the only skill level where the asteroids will move quickly too and you're not awarded any extra ship.

 

Once again, stating something that's supposed to be there - i.e. the obvious. There's a reason for "skill levels" and the advanced being the "Arcade" mode.

 

Likewise, because of the skill levels, extra lives were not reproduced in any of the games. That was the trade off they wanted.

 

I don't know what the original criteria was from Atari Interactive and/or Taco Bell, just pointing it out. So it's not necessarily 'obvious' to everyone, like it wasn't obvious that I could be having problems at my end. Why wasn't it obvious? Not everything that's obvious to one person is the same to another.

 

 

Not very faithful in my book, with all of those elements, if you ask me.

 

Certainly entitled to your opinion based on your misunderstanding.

 

No misunderstanding here, just for being tech-ignorant. In all the posts on the other thread, not a single one throughout the first several pages said 'wow, these are awesome, and so very close to the originals!', most of them just were in regards to people commenting on not knowing about them being out, stories of going to Taco Bell, picking them up and not playing them yet, or Taco Bells not having them yet, that was it. With the gameplay being crap (so I thought, now I'm fairly sure it's not true) and not anywhere near the original at my end, and figuring people went off too early on the games and seeing the developers were on the pages, possibly didn't want to say anything bad in the process. An e-mail I got about this also stated that the games' reaction had been 'mixed'. I just put two and two together there.

 

So with the above elements, put yourself in my place: what would a person THINK after all of that? Seriously. I have photographic and video proof at my end and anyone reading this nearby in Houston can drop by and see for themselves in person how it behaves. However I'm pretty sure this can be quickly fixed (someone on here will probably let me know what I need to do at my end for a fix) so if anyone wants to drop by they'd better hurry. But they'll be able to see for their own selves in person.

 

But then nobody asked.

 

Don't be condescending to me with the smiley. I see something wrong, I'm going to post about it so others won't waste their time and/or money with something like this. Anyone's free to post too. I can say just as well that being a programmer you should have been able to spot that I'm having trouble and you have to ask yourself why I would make something up, just like if you're the person on the YouTube post who said 'is Darryl making crap up?' No, I am not. You offered to help other people with problems but not myself. Granted I can see how you can jumped to conclusions though just like I did. Like I said, I'll correct the post if this problem gets fixed.

 

Centipede I haven't played though, can't say for that one, but two out of the three haven't been that faithful, in my opinion.

 

These aren't ROM duplicates,

 

Didn't say they were.

 

Breakout I even worked directly with Al Alcorn on to cover the discrete hardware mechanics.

 

Read that in the other thread already, didn't question it.

 

If you want to trash someone's hard work and claim "not faithful"

 

It was to my understanding. It doesn't matter how hard someone worked or not if they're not faithful. But that could be very well true this time around. If so, congrats on your hard work.

 

When Curt and I took the contract, we set off to put in a hell of a lot of attention to detail and I put in a hell of a lot of passion in to these. And to have that rewarded with BS like this - to have it summarily dismissed by someone who doesn't have a clue that skill levels usually mean altered game play - unbelievable.

 

Not BS, from my standpoint. And yes, I did very well understand different skill levels, that's why I tried them all and noticed differences, bowing out on all the easy games because they were so easy indeed. Intermediate's better suited for myself. And the arcade level on Breakout's hilarious with the way your paddle is turned into a dot about the size of the ball! Too difficult for me on that one!

 

I'm getting an inkling of what HSW went through with his games, and I'm truly feeling sorry for him now.

 

I'm sure Howard didn't foresee his becoming kind of a kind of 'rock star' status for programmers, so to speak. Nothing to feel sorry for in regards to doing a good job, I just didn't see it and still don't. I'll see it once this problem is fixed.

 

I killed myself putting in 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 8 weeks straight,

 

...so if you were driving a car during that time, fell asleep at the wheel and ended up killing someone, how would that go over with the victims' family and friends and the court system and inmates and all if you were convicted of Involuntary Manslaughter? (Or whatever's equivalent in your state...here in Texas we got rid of that charge years ago.)

 

No need to tell me about the demands from Atari and all, I've known how awful the video game business can get due to reading about the horrors of Electronic Arts and all, where programmers would put in 60 or more hours a week, they kept on meeting deadlines for certain parts of a game and wouldn't get a break, EA would just keep on demanding more and more overtime. Maybe this isn't still true nowadays as I read that years ago but I doubt it's much different. Marriages ended and what they did was illegal, yet technically not since there isn't any kind of cap for that kind of thing (i. e. too many hours) since last I heard the entertainment industry doesn't allow or recognize that. Maybe that's changed since the actors strike from several years ago (that's one thing they asked for was shorter hours on the set) but I doubt it.

 

I don't think I've ever worked 60 hours a week, but I have worked under very miserable conditions, for 11 years with a rare illness, whatever it feels like to a 'normal' person it's 20 degrees hotter to me, I'm constantly drenched in sweat, have no a/c for my car (for those who freak going 'you have an air conditioner in your CAR?', yes, it gets that hot here down south we need them), God forbid if it ever rained and I would have to roll up my windows and turn on the defrost (and turning on the heat makes it work better, which is even more horrible), if my thyroid got low enough I could literally have a heart attack, and lets not forget the fatigue where I would have to set the alarm on my watch so I wouldn't fall asleep during my two state-allowed 15 minute breaks...which happened often.

 

So, keeping all that in mind, guess how many jobs I ever got fired from. Think about it a good, long time. Does your answer match mine? ZERO. And I worked a lot of temp jobs for a while too, I could have gotten fired from them. Didn't happen. Yet I had all kinds of shit happen where bosses said 'I can't BELIEVE we have to do that!', I would have to talk them down, and they'd thank me for that. Others said 'wow, I thought MY first job was bad, but yours...', since I've done ugly legal work. Yet I did that for years too.

 

Get used to bad reviews, they'll happen at one point or another, regardless of how good and/or accurate a product is or not compared to the original. Sometimes you can just brush it off to people being idiots, like the very first thing I saw in regards to this was someone saying they had faith until they heard they were Flash programmed. Real brilliant.

 

You can hire more people for your company. Obviously if it's just you and Curt you can say you don't trust anyone else and you've tried others before, but it didn't work out, you can't afford to hire someone else right now, and blah blah.

 

But if something catastrophic were to happen, what would become of Legacy Engineering then? I don't know much about business in general but I know if you lose a parent company you're lost big bucks. Or even if Atari didn't pay you much it seems like you can't afford a loss big or small.

 

Because I'm pretty sure I saw you in a video in regards to gathering support for a portable 2600. Unless I have you mixed up with someone and/or can't recall the exact amount, I think it was stated that well under $100,000 was needed to invest to try to market the thing (I think it was well less than half of that actually). If that's true that's very chump change needed for marketing a product like that.

 

If you were sued for something, even if you weren't found guilty of anything, that could very well wipe you out. Something to keep in mind when you're in the public eye. No one wants bad publicity; sometimes that can work to a person's advantage (a 'bad boy' actor or actress sometimes won't lose any popularity), other times it doesn't seem to make any kind of effect, like Michael Vick still earning the big bucks, but at least many people still have the sense to boo him whenever he enters the field. But not everything can work out that way, can it?

 

Think about it.

 

Anyway, to summarize, if anyone knows what I'm talking about in regards to my display problem, I'll definitely give all this another shot. Sorry for the long-assed posts.

[Fellow Atari Man]

Oh and one last note--don't mean to keep on adding stuff, but for some reason again no Edit button is appearing so I can't edit my first post, unless I'm missing something--to clarify, I couldn't remember if I had said earlier if I had said the small asteroids were either way bigger than on the original or they just didn't exist. Turns out it was the latter. At first glance it just seemed to me that there weren't any. But yeah, they appear to be a lot bigger. So I'll go back and check out that video again after all to see how they look (after all, I don't have to watch all eight minutes of it).

 

If they're porportionally as big as the player's ship like is reflected in my photos, then no big deal. If not then it's probably due to that display problem I'm having, as well as for the reason why it takes so long for new ships to appear once you've lost one and you're waiting for the screen to clear up, yet there's plenty of times that the coast is clear and it isn't happening.

 

EDIT: well sheesh, NOW there's an Edit button at the bottom of this post, but not the other two! What gives?!

Edited March 11, 2010 by Fellow Atari Man

[brojamfootball]

Oh and one last note--don't mean to keep on adding stuff, but for some reason again no Edit button is appearing

You can only edit your post for a limited time.

[Fellow Atari Man]

Oh ok, thanks for the info. Well that sucks a bit. Thought I was losing my mind though!

 

Anyway, I rewatched the video and it looks like the stuff displays the same. So the small asteroids are just a minor cosmetic change and no big deal. Something's still 'off' though with waiting a long time for a new ship to appear once you lose one, but like I said I'm sure this will be fixed soon.

[Murph74]

Found 'em! Taco Bell on Jeffco in Arnold, Mo (just outside St. Louis) has 'em for $.99 each. Grabbed mine yesterday!

[geosteve]

no luck for me

I went to the KFC/Taco Bell store in Worcester they didn't have any advertisement for these and the cashiers didn't even know anything about them The signs had other toys for the Kids meals but nothing about Atari anywhere.

there are other TB stores around so I'll try them soon

[ledzep]

Found all four at a Taco Bell in Sherman Oaks, CA (Ventura Blvd. and Hazeltine). I didn't even need to buy a Kid's Meal, I ordered an Enchirito for old-time's sake (if my stomach had eyebrows they would have been raised at that point) and he charged me for two ($1.98) but gave me all four of them. I love that artwork. Haven't played them yet but I figured I should let people in my area know.

 

Speaking of Atari artwork, these Taco Bell games remind me of the goof Panic, Inc. did with pretending their apps were old Atari 2600 games complete with faked box art. I don't even own a Mac and I want those things so I was certainly willing to ingest an Enchirito to get these new Taco Bell games, haahaa.

[Curt Vendel]

When we started to discuss doing this project - Atari & Taco bell only asked for PC versions, but Marty and I realized that utilizing the AIR delivery and FLASH, we would be able to make these cross-platform and web based too. Since Mac's don't get that same kind of gaming-love that PC's enjoy, this was a great opportunity for Mac owners to have the classics on their systems, which up until now - with releases of all of the Atari Arcade Hits, and many other classic compilations, the Mac's have been overlooked.

 

Making Mac capable versions only required a few days extra of testing and packaging, in fact Albert (Atariage man himself) actually helped us out with the Mac code packaging and installers, so Kudo's goes to him as well.

 

I am hoping that if this is as successful as it appears it is, that Atari can either go back to Taco Bell or may be approached by another firm to have more games done, and hopefully Marty and I can look to doing the Evolved Missile Command we wanted to do, maybe Tempest and we'd love to do an Evolved version of Yars' which I came up with 3 years ago and was working with Gorf on, so maybe that vision of the game can finally come to life in an evolved version.

 

What can help all of us, if jump on your facebook, twitter, myspace (is that even around anymore) and whatever else you use - post up that you love the Taco Bell Atari games, and ask everyone to email Atari: support@atari.com

 

and let them know you'd like to see Legacy Engineering do more games for the PC/Mac platforms, in the end it helps everyone.

 

 

Curt

 

I really love Asteroids. I play it on my Mac and use OSX's built in zooming capability to play in full screen, works awesome. I find the harder skill level to be great because it actually provides me with a challenge. I think the other 3 games are well done, but Lunar Lander and Breakout are just not my thing. I'm more a Arkanoid or Bit.trip.beat kinda guy when it comes to pong games. My only complaint is with Centipede's controls. That said it looks awesome! The packaging is superb and Asteroids alone is worth it!!! I would of loved to see Tempest and maybe Battlezone or Missle Command instead of Lunar Lander/Breakout but you can't please everyone and you did an outstanding job!

 

I will still be playing Asteroids on my mac for years to come!! What better compliment can you get than getting an old gamer to play your version of one of his fav games?

[nathanallan]

I tweeted and posted on facebook, not sure why I didn't think of it myself

 

Way to go, Curt and Marty and Albert.

[geosteve]

still no luck for me I tried both stores in Worcester and the one in Auburn with none having these games. There are no other Taco Bells around so I'm not getting them, oh well

[ledzep]

When we started to discuss doing this project - Atari & Taco bell only asked for PC versions, but Marty and I realized that utilizing the AIR delivery and FLASH, we would be able to make these cross-platform and web based too. Since Mac's don't get that same kind of gaming-love that PC's enjoy, this was a great opportunity for Mac owners to have the classics on their systems, which up until now - with releases of all of the Atari Arcade Hits, and many other classic compilations, the Mac's have been overlooked.

 

Making Mac capable versions only required a few days extra of testing and packaging, in fact Albert (Atariage man himself) actually helped us out with the Mac code packaging and installers, so Kudo's goes to him as well.

 

 

I just played Centipede and Lunar Lander on my brother's Mac a few hours ago. Well done! Just seeing the correct looking graphics and hearing the sounds was like listening to an old vinyl record of "Physical Graffiti", haahaha. Great stuff, I only wish there were more games. I will email Atari.

 

Programming question for you. You mention that the Mac versions needed extra work to get them out. When my brother was (poorly) playing Lunar Lander we saw what might be a glitch? He was playing the classic mode (intermediate) and as the game switched to close-up mode his lander ended up hugging the left side of the screen and going down. The drawing routine for the landscape was adding the ground in little chunks but there were moments when there was just space underneath the lander. Eventually my brother ended up inside the Moon (below ground level)! Very cool/odd. He tried to fly up to get back "outside" and crashed into the ground from below as it the game filled in the next section of land. I'm just curious if that's the way the game was designed (draw in land a chunk at a time vs. continuously) and if it works that way on Windows, too.

 

I will say that I love the Evolved version, having those sound bites from Mission Control is a great touch! An even better touch, for me, is how the marquee is spot-on perfect (I own an arcade Lunar Lander) and also, something that made both my brother and I laugh, how you included the little mission pictures at the bottom complete with the look of an authentic weak bulb lighting one of them up. Fantastic! Congrats on great execution and a great quadrilogy of games. I hope you get the opportunity to do more.

[Curt Vendel]

Its a weird glitch in AIR that Adobe just could'nt answer.

 

When the games were run in standard flash the close up scoring was fine, once the games were packaged into AIR the scoring would change, Marty and I went back and forth and he must've made 5 revisions and each time we thought the problem was solved, once it ran through AIR - bam! It would come back - finally the scoring was fixed and solved - then the damned altitude, speed and fuel went bonkers --- repeated requested from Adobe for assistance met with crickets... this was one of the first commercial deploys using Adobe AIR so I guess Adobe still has some kinks to work out, its a great technology with a LOT of potential, if the glitches can be ironed out.

 

 

Curt

 

When we started to discuss doing this project - Atari & Taco bell only asked for PC versions, but Marty and I realized that utilizing the AIR delivery and FLASH, we would be able to make these cross-platform and web based too. Since Mac's don't get that same kind of gaming-love that PC's enjoy, this was a great opportunity for Mac owners to have the classics on their systems, which up until now - with releases of all of the Atari Arcade Hits, and many other classic compilations, the Mac's have been overlooked.

 

Making Mac capable versions only required a few days extra of testing and packaging, in fact Albert (Atariage man himself) actually helped us out with the Mac code packaging and installers, so Kudo's goes to him as well.

 

 

I just played Centipede and Lunar Lander on my brother's Mac a few hours ago. Well done! Just seeing the correct looking graphics and hearing the sounds was like listening to an old vinyl record of "Physical Graffiti", haahaha. Great stuff, I only wish there were more games. I will email Atari.

 

Programming question for you. You mention that the Mac versions needed extra work to get them out. When my brother was (poorly) playing Lunar Lander we saw what might be a glitch? He was playing the classic mode (intermediate) and as the game switched to close-up mode his lander ended up hugging the left side of the screen and going down. The drawing routine for the landscape was adding the ground in little chunks but there were moments when there was just space underneath the lander. Eventually my brother ended up inside the Moon (below ground level)! Very cool/odd. He tried to fly up to get back "outside" and crashed into the ground from below as it the game filled in the next section of land. I'm just curious if that's the way the game was designed (draw in land a chunk at a time vs. continuously) and if it works that way on Windows, too.

 

I will say that I love the Evolved version, having those sound bites from Mission Control is a great touch! An even better touch, for me, is how the marquee is spot-on perfect (I own an arcade Lunar Lander) and also, something that made both my brother and I laugh, how you included the little mission pictures at the bottom complete with the look of an authentic weak bulb lighting one of them up. Fantastic! Congrats on great execution and a great quadrilogy of games. I hope you get the opportunity to do more.

[DrLove0378]

I bought 3 sets -- one to play and two to leave sealed. Unfortunately my computer won't let me install them -- time to buy a new one anyway (or switch to a Mac!) Even though I can't play them as of yet, I think they're amazing -- I saw all the pictures and videos of the games that have been posted.

 

If Taco Bell was up to it, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a continuation of the series.

 

EDIT: Never mind, just got 'em working. Good stuff!

Edited March 25, 2010 by DrLove0378

[littleman jack]

I really like these! I got a set for my brother, one each for two friends across the Atlantic, and one for myself. Centipede and Asteroids are my favorites. And I really like the updated versions as well. I hope Atari does decide to hire Legacy Engineering to do more. I'll email the support address, and spread the love.

 

Great work Curt and Marty! Thanks!

Edited March 26, 2010 by littleman jack