Dan Kramer & Al Alcorn will speak at the Sunnyvale Atari Party on 6/14/2014

[Lynxpro]

Just a heads-up, Al Alcorn and Dan Kramer will be speaking at this year's "Atari Party" which will be held on Saturday June 14th in Atari's old stomping grounds of Sunnyvale California.

 

Al Alcorn needs no introduction but if you are unfamiliar with Dan Kramer, he created the TrakBalls for both the 2600 and 5200 amongst many other projects back at Atari Inc.

 

Bill Kendrick is also looking for volunteers, especially people willing to bring hardware. The 5200 and the 16/32-bit Atari computers seem to be currently underrepresented.

 

Here's a link to the official website:

 

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/atariparty/2014/

 

So mark your calendars, fellow 5200 fans, especially if you live near the Bay Area or will be in the area on that day!

 

[FND]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll be there, I hope

[joystickjedi]

Yeah, back me up guys, my 5200's were pretty lonely last year!

 

Funny story about Al Alcorn... I took my little brother (maybe 13, 14 at the time) to California Extreme one year and he went to an Atari panel with me. As the Ed Loggs and Jeff Rubins introduced themselves, he commented that they were younger than he expected, and I explained that video games are a fairly recent invention and alot of these guys were college age when they got jobs at Atari... so he points to the old guy at the end and asks "So what did he do, invent the Atari?" and right then Al introduced himself, "Hi, I'm Al Alcorn, I programmen Pong and co-founded Atari." and my little bro was like "OH!" and the room had a chuckle.

[Lynxpro]

Brilliant. Considering how responsible he is for both the video game and personal computer industries, he should be a billionaire. I'm glad his fictional version of himself had the best line in the film "Jobs".

[Big_Mo]

Al gave a good "Goldilocks" talk: not too long and not too short but just right.

 

I'd met him before but got to sit down with him for about 15-20 minutes before the talk and chatted.

 

Also ran into Jerry Jessop. Missed Mike Albaugh, though he was there for a while. Did get to go out for beer with Dan "The Trak-Ball Man" Kramer and a couple of other guys from AtariAge. Dan gave me an LED overlay insert for a 2700 controller which he found when it fell out of one of his notebooks.

 

Funniest moment for me personally is when I chatted with a guy with some STs and I mentioned that I used to wrote for ANALOG and ST-Log and he said "you're the guy with the rat on his shoulder!" since that (my Avatar here) was always alongside my byline. Funny to be recognized after all this time.

 

P.S. He's a Mouse.

[Lynxpro]

Al gave a good "Goldilocks" talk: not too long and not too short but just right.

 

I'd met him before but got to sit down with him for about 15-20 minutes before the talk and chatted.

 

Also ran into Jerry Jessop. Missed Mike Albaugh, though he was there for a while. Did get to go out for beer with Dan "The Trak-Ball Man" Kramer and a couple of other guys from AtariAge. Dan gave me an LED overlay insert for a 2700 controller which he found when it fell out of one of his notebooks.

 

Funniest moment for me personally is when I chatted with a guy with some STs and I mentioned that I used to wrote for ANALOG and ST-Log and he said "you're the guy with the rat on his shoulder!" since that (my Avatar here) was always alongside my byline. Funny to be recognized after all this time.

 

P.S. He's a Mouse.

 

 

I think Mike was the one who was discussing the whole Tetris fiasco during the Atari Games/Tengen era. If so, he was surprised to see Bill's NES with Tengen Tetris being played. Had I been Bill, I would've sweated bullets with having that out on display considering how valuable it is but thankfully no sticky fingers struck. It was interesting to hear from "him" that Atari Games/Midway had an agreement to purchase the rights to "Atari" from Hasbro but then Infogrames swooped in at the last minute and offered more money and Hasbro apparently nixed the previous agreement in a very underhanded fashion. Thus all Atari IP was almost back under the same tent in 2001. Warner would've ultimately ended up with it all - since they acquired Midway's remnants - but that would certainly be preferable to the current situation.

[joystickjedi]

 

 

I think Mike was the one who was discussing the whole Tetris fiasco during the Atari Games/Tengen era. If so, he was surprised to see Bill's NES with Tengen Tetris being played. Had I been Bill, I would've sweated bullets with having that out on display considering how valuable it is but thankfully no sticky fingers struck. It was interesting to hear from "him" that Atari Games/Midway had an agreement to purchase the rights to "Atari" from Hasbro but then Infogrames swooped in at the last minute and offered more money and Hasbro apparently nixed the previous agreement in a very underhanded fashion. Thus all Atari IP was almost back under the same tent in 2001. Warner would've ultimately ended up with it all - since they acquired Midway's remnants - but that would certainly be preferable to the current situation.

Really, Tengen Tetris isn't that expensive, although it is going back up in price, like all NES stuff is. I hope it goes sky high personally, I own 2 copies. =)

[Lynxpro]

Really, Tengen Tetris isn't that expensive, although it is going back up in price, like all NES stuff is. I hope it goes sky high personally, I own 2 copies. =)

 

It generally goes for $80 on eBay. I was quoted that price also by Fair Game here in our town [sacramento]. I think it peaked at $350 right after the recall happened back in 1989/90.

[joystickjedi]

$45 bucks, fairly local, shipped free.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tetris-Tengen-Nintendo-The-Soviet-Mind-Game-/331233633742?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item4d1f1025ce

[billkendrick]

Hope all who attended enjoyed it! And yes, I sweated some bullets over Tetris, but sweated even more when I temporarily misplaced my digital SLR camera!

[Lynxpro]

Hope all who attended enjoyed it! And yes, I sweated some bullets over Tetris, but sweated even more when I temporarily misplaced my digital SLR camera!

 

I was sweating bullets when some of the kids were giving my Neo Geo 5200 controller a severe beating...

[joystickjedi]

I stepped in a few times when I saw people (kids) really manhandling systems and controllers, but honestly they seemed to take the abuse with no issues. Atari's 80's stuff was built to last.

[Lynxpro]

I stepped in a few times when I saw people (kids) really manhandling systems and controllers, but honestly they seemed to take the abuse with no issues. Atari's 80's stuff was built to last.

 

Yes, Atari stuff. Neo Geo modded stuff is a whole different can of worms!

[joystickjedi]

The stick came through okay, right?

[Lynxpro]

The stick came through okay, right?

I'll let you know after this weekend.