+Nathan Strum Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 After a very, very long time, I'm pleased to announce some news regarding Stella at 20! In the summer of 1997, AtariAge member Glenn Saunders (mos6507) gathered Atari veterans together to reminisce about the golden age of videogames and to celebrate the 20th birthday of the Atari 2600. Capturing the proceedings on video, he created the two-volume documentary: Stella at 20. Available only on VHS, the documentary has been out-of-print for many years. And while there have been requests over the years for a DVD edition, efforts to re-edit the original footage into an expanded version were ultimately abandoned. In order to preserve this historical footage and share it with the Atari community, Glenn decided to put all of the original, unedited camera tapes online for all to enjoy. Altogether, the tapes comprise nearly 14 hours worth of rare and amazing material. The tapes contain a treasure-trove of history, stories, anecdotes and insights into the golden age of Atari, the creation of the Atari 2600, and the rise and fall of the early days of the videogame industry. As these are unedited (save for in-camera edits made during filming), the material is presented as-is, “warts and all”. This was done for the sake of preserving history, and to give Atari fans a rare opportunity to be a fly on the wall during these once-in-a-lifetime interviews and gatherings. The list of people interviewed is a veritable “who’s who” of the early years of Atari, Activision and Imagic, including: Al Alcorn Nolan Bushnell David Crane Joe Decuir Steve DeFrisco Tod Frye Rob Fulop John Harris Jim Huether Larry Kaplan Dennis Koble Rick Maurer Steve Mayer Al Miller Ron Milner Doug Neubauer Carol Shaw Bob Smith Larry Wagner ...plus rare archival footage of Jay Miner, from 1989. The Stella at 20 camera tapes are available to watch in their entirety at Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/StellaAt20 Enjoy! Stella at 20 was produced and directed by Glenn Saunders. Production funding and support provided by Jim Nitchals. Post-production funding and support provided by Joe Decuir. Digitizing and uploading to Archive.org by Nathan Strum (details here). 38 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lapetino Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Wow that is amazing! Thanks for helping to make this happen, Nathan! What a gift to the community -- can't wait to dig in deeper to all of this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chas10e Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Fantastic, I enjoyed what I was able to watch on youtube , raw footage will be a delight as well although a whole LOT of it was WAY over my head what I drew from the youtube VHS rips was that early Atari was a group of engineers collaborating together to solve "the problem" , that's why there didn't seem to be a need for any one individuals recognition (at the time) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Wow great many many thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEBRO Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Thank you so much for sharing. I'm downloading the entire pack now. Just curious...are these public domain? What stops the current Atari from using these in products in the future without compensating Glenn and others? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Just curious...are these public domain? It appears the material is released under the license Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cd-w Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Excellent - I wasn't sure this would ever see the light of day. I've got a long plane ride coming up and now have my entertainment planned out. You should ask Al to post this up on the front page? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 John Harris: The Atari 800 was the best 8-bit computer that had ever been made. Best quote ever. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted October 18, 2016 Author Share Posted October 18, 2016 You should ask Al to post this up on the front page? He will when he has a spare moment. He's heading off to PRGE this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 John Harris: The Atari 800 was the best 8-bit computer that had ever been made. Best quote ever. And wrong. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 And wrong. As a very proud Atari 800 computer owner back in the day, I would respectfully disagree with you Thomas. Well, let's drop the "respectfully". C64 was good, but Atari 800 had a certain elegance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 The Atari was maybe the best when it was released, but clearly surpassed later (e.g. Armstrad CPC). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 And wrong. NEVER Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 The Atari was maybe the best when it was released, but clearly surpassed later (e.g. Armstrad CPC). Amstrad was like Schneider (who distributed Amstrad in DE), cheap and cheerful stuff of low quality. For the masses (sounds like Commodore). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 You have your opinion and I have mine. Let's not further hijack this thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
accousticguitar Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Fantastic! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 That there's interest in these tapes just proves again and again the VCS is outside of time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Awesome! Downloading now. Plan to drop them into iTunes on my Mac mini DVR so I can watch them on my TV. Is there "cover art" for it? I found this, but it's pretty low res: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Shame the sound from the questions is sometimes so quiet compared to the 'loud' answers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Thank you! Interesting to note that we are now actually approaching "Stella at 40" now... my God how time passes... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 The site might be getting overwhelmed, I came back from lunch and the download had stopped. I'm now downloading them video by video instead of the all-in-one zip file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted October 18, 2016 Author Share Posted October 18, 2016 (edited) Shame the sound from the questions is sometimes so quiet compared to the 'loud' answers. The questions (Glenn is the one asking them) were never intended to be part of the documentary, so he wasn't mic'ed. There are a number of times you can hear Glenn ask people to re-phrase their answers so hearing the questions wouldn't be necessary in the final edit. That said, it's interesting to listen in on the off-camera talk, which can be heard if you turn up the volume. Edited October 18, 2016 by Nathan Strum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted October 18, 2016 Author Share Posted October 18, 2016 Awesome! Downloading now. Plan to drop them into iTunes on my Mac mini DVR so I can watch them on my TV. Is there "cover art" for it? I found this, but it's pretty low res: I can scan a higher-resolution version from the VHS box of volume 1 if you'd like me to post it here. I don't have a copy of volume 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 I can scan a higher-resolution version from the VHS box of volume 1 if you'd like me to post it here. I don't have a copy of volume 2. That'd be awesome! Think it would make sense to put "Behind the scenes", or something along those lines, in the image somewhere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roryjr Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Does anyone know how big the whole thing is? I don't have the fastest internet connection and would like to be able to schedule it around my family's steadily increasing internet habits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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