Atari Party 2014 in Sunnyvale: Who's reppin' the 5200?

[joystickjedi]

 

Other systems will be there. I know for sure there will be an NES there playing TENGEN games. And since Tengen was the Atari Games Corp, that counts as it being "Atari". Past events have had Commodore 64s playing AtariSoft titles and there's been Colecovisions and Intellivisions there with their 2600 adapters. And there's been a PS2 playing the "Atari Anthology" release in past years too.

 

There will also be PCs there emulating the classic consoles. There might be modern consoles there too from what Bill has said.

I've seen the Colecos and Intellivisions, Atari Flashbacks, NES systems playing Tengen/Namco games and even PS2 ECT playing the Atari collections, but I've never seen a PC with emulators at Atari Party, so maybe that's a new thing this year? I kind of hope not tho... for me, it's really the classic hardware that makes the show. Still, maybe a MAME that has a "nothing but Atari" playlist loaded up would be appropriate and cool.

[Big_Mo]

Well, I'll be there at the event. Might bring a friend of mine who used to work on the Coin side in the 90s. Atari veteran Mike Albaugh might pop in as well.

[joystickjedi]

That's the cool thing about doing this in Sunnyvale!

[joystickjedi]

Atari Party 2014 is in the bag! Thanks to LynxPro, Dan Kramer (the legend) and myself we had a good rep for the 5200 and people were playing them ALL day without any issues. Also of course a big BIG thanks to Bill Kendrick for putting it all together, the Sunnyvale Public Library, the Digital Game Museum, of course the BOSSES Al Alcorn, Dan Kramer and the other Atari alums who showed up and made it extra cool, all the guests and all the volunteers who brought consoles and game for making this my favorite Atari Party so far!

[Lynxpro]

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I won't!

 

I didn't think to check that proto - Xari whatever - Dan brought to see if it was the same version available on Atariprotos. That game was mental!

[atarian1]

I agree. What kind of took me by surprise was the crowd. I think the chairs made it feel tighter than it felt. It was standing room only for Dan Kramer's talk.

 

I wonder if there was an official attendance number. The Mercury News says "over 100". I think it was something like 130 last year, but it didn't feel crowded last year. No raffle this year so we can't use raffle tickets as a counter. I wonder why there wasn't a raffle this year.

[Big_Mo]

It was a good time and I got to meet a few of you guys.

[Lynxpro]

I agree. What kind of took me by surprise was the crowd. I think the chairs made it feel tighter than it felt. It was standing room only for Dan Kramer's talk.

 

I wonder if there was an official attendance number. The Mercury News says "over 100". I think it was something like 130 last year, but it didn't feel crowded last year. No raffle this year so we can't use raffle tickets as a counter. I wonder why there wasn't a raffle this year.

 

There were WAY MORE than 100 people - and that's not counting the general library patrons that dropped their kids off there for free babysitting - there at any given time. It got incredibly hot in that room when Dan spoke. And the same thing happened in the Fiction area when Al Alcorn spoke.

 

I can't speak for Bill but perhaps the library itself nixed the raffle or the Digital Games Museum. Raffles were common at the Davis Atari Parties. It could also be that maybe Bill was too busy to get raffle contributors this time.

[joystickjedi]

Oh yeah, I didn't even think about the raffle.

 

Xari Arena is the proto. It was a very strange and cool game.

[billkendrick]

The librarian who invited me to run the party said they thought about 500 people were there. That seems a little high, but honestly not much. 11am (1hr into the show) the Program Room (where all the consoles & computers were set up) was standing-room only (as mentioned in this thread).

 

If the room had power down the center (like we have at the Davis library), we could have spread the games up a little more, but then there'd have been less space for Dan. (Apparently Al was so super-important that the library supervisors okayed using the Fiction area for his talk, which is pretty unheard of. That's why Dan had to do his talk in the Program Room, but that was good since he had all his amazing goodies to hold up while he talked).

 

Thanks to all the great folks who brought systems -- a bunch of you from AtariAge, and most of whom I've never met before! And of course the fine folks at Digital Game Museum were extremely helpful (I didn't want to do an event 100miles away from home w/o their presence!), as were the library volunteers who helped everyone's equipment back & forth.

 

People seemed to REALLY have fun, and I wish I could have talked more with more people. I had fun chatting with a few, especially fellow from Atari Games who worked on Gauntlet Legends (which I saw being developed when I went in for an interview -- I had the chance to work on SF Rush 2049, but chose love of a woman over love of Atari )

 

I also blew the mind of Mark from California Extreme, who awesomely brought 3 of his own arcade games, and a friend's. I showed him Asteroids Emulator running on my 800XL. I got an awesome photo of him frowning right as he lost a ship. (Before that, he was kinda bug-eyed and grinning, heheheh)

 

Anyway, gotta run! Go check out some of my photos, and share yours, too! http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/atariparty/2014/photos/