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Tempest 5200 - 30 Copies Available!


Albert

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I'm willing to sell my copy to the highest bidder. The starting price is $500. Note that I am no longer using Kotex boxes for shipping. I've upgraded to Frosted Flakes boxes! As always, I will be using one genuine Atari 400/800 power brick as packing material to ensure your purchase arrives in the condition you deserve. No refunds or exchanges!

 

Just kidding, of course. My copy's not for sale at any price. :)

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It's okay that I missed out thus far as Albert assured me there are plenty of boxes for this release many moons ago. I am looking forward to playing this in my kiosk and on flash cart eventually should that rom be available down the road. I'm just happy that one of my favorite games is finally going to be available, a little while longer is okay :) so long as I get one ;) couldn't afford it today anyways.

 

P.S. a shout out to ckirkman for selling me his spare kiosk. I've almost got it just how I want it. The bezel turned out great. The wood repair and t-molding is done... new bulbs and starters are in (BRIGHT!) and just need to fix up the marquee and add a new door. (thinking of lighting it and making it like a little display in there maybe but that will be $$$ down the road)

 

5200-kiosk1.jpg

5200-kiosk2.jpg

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Any idea when you might know if there are going to be any additional copies from those that might have backed out?

 

All 30 copies were paid for within 12 hours. I was able to ship all but three of them yesterday. The last three payments arrived after I went to the post office, so those will go out Monday.

 

I'm working on making more copies of Tempest so they are ready when the new store comes online.

 

..Al

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All 30 copies were paid for within 12 hours. I was able to ship all but three of them yesterday. The last three payments arrived after I went to the post office, so those will go out Monday.

 

I'm working on making more copies of Tempest so they are ready when the new store comes online.

 

..Al

 

How are you on 5200 donor carts? Need anything? I have a few up for sale right now (2 or 3) and was planning to mail a few of the 1986 - 88 non-dust 2600 carts as well.

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I got mine today, too! My initial impressions: I've only played a few rounds so far, but I'm very impressed! The 5200 shares the original arcade's POKEY sound, so the sound effects are perfectly reproduced, and the graphics are a surprisingly fast and smooth translation of the original arcade's vector graphics. I haven't tried it with the Trak-Ball yet, but it makes very good use of the 5200 joystick; I found the variable speed to be easy to control. Excellent job on the manual and box, too: they're both very authentic, and the offset printing is of exceptional quality. I love it when the developers take the time to share something of the history of these projects, so I enjoyed that aspect, too.

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Pretty much the same impressions as jaybird3rd. I had to tear apart my little-used 5200 controller though, and clean the buttons contacts. Now its working great. The analog control is extremely sensitive yet easy to adjust to, you can crawl along or zip quickly. The game has coin-op challenge to it; my strategy is to craw along back-n-forth over enemy tubes and alernate holding in the fire button with tap-tap-tapping it for greater shot accuracy and that usually blasts 'em all.

 

My trak-balls are not in good shap. One won't work at all. The other one doesn't work well with this game - the game keeps thinking I'm rolling the trak-ball to the right slowly, and that messes up the control. I believe it is not the game but my actual 5200 system's internal potentiometer setting however, because I've noticed joystick games sometimes tend to favor right too, with different sticks too. But this effect doesn't happen with Centipede or Missile Command - perhaps Tempest is more sensitive to the lower number values of the analog control.

 

After playing around with Tempest 5200 for about 2 hours, I'd conclude by saying this is a real "Cadillac" of a product, well worth the wait and price. We'd have LOVED this back in the 80's!

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Looks like a great conversion - Question for the programmer, is there anything that was done for this that was unknown at the time Atari wanted this produced, ie, could this easily have been released in this manner back in '84 or whenever it was supposed to come out?

 

I only ask cause this is a real good conversion of the Arcade and baffles me that Atari wouldnt finish this?

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As a 5200 programmer myself, I was curious how Keithen would handle the zooming tubes, and I'm very satisfied with end result. 5200 Tempest is a bit more claustrophobic compared to the coin-op, due to the lower resolution & TV aspect ratio of course, but it doesn't take long to adjust. I can clearly see the little dots of enemies waiting to enter a tube and the enemies climbing up the tubes. The animation is perfect, the attention to detail is very satisfying. I really dig the animation of your claw/crab shooter, wrapping its legs around the tubes. It shows just how exciting the 5200 was to us as gamers back in the early 80's - this game would have BLOWN US AWAY, had it actually been released.

 

I have to look into fixing my trak-balls so I can enjoy them too.

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I have the day off today so I will be playing Tempest until 4:00 PM and post some comments throughout the day.

 

Tempest is NOT an easy game. Not in a bad way. You have to get used to the controls a bit but once you do it's great. I tried the trackball and the 5200 controller. I think I prefer the joystick. You can move a lot quicker around the field. In fact you move so fast you have to get used to it. You tend to move right past where you want to shoot so it takes a bit to get used to. This is a good thing in the long run because you need that type of response. Even on easy it gets pretty fast in a short time. I just got 75,000 on the easy level.

 

Allan

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this game would have BLOWN US AWAY, had it actually been released.

 

Quoted for Truf.

 

We're so spoiled today by the more-or less unlimited graphics that can be displayed on-screen. But something like this in the early 80's would have been completely and totally exciting & mind blowing. I would have been reeling for months. :lol:

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