What would you want to be able to buy from Atari…

[Cebus Capucinis]

Software that automatically converts every A8 game to work on the 5200!!!!!!

[+GoldLeader]

19 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Software that automatically converts every A8 game to work on the 5200!!!!!!

 

Ray,   Now I've told you:  Don't hack into other people's computers, or put the word sexy into your console descriptions!

[zzip]

12 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

Ray,   Now I've told you:  Don't hack into other people's computers, or put the word sexy into your console descriptions!

Atari should release a new sexy console!

Or a new toilet-shaped console

 

Some may say toilet-shaped consoles are sexy, who am I to judge?

[Giles N]

On 3/15/2023 at 9:32 PM, zzip said:

Atari should release a new sexy console!

Or a new toilet-shaped console

 

Some may say toilet-shaped consoles are sexy, who am I to judge?

Are these words to be the finality of this thread?

 

Atari ‘ardware into the toilette…?

 

Is this then the last word on what Atari-official should, could or would make and release, just all  and everything then into the flushings-downs of our ever-expanding entertainment-toilettes…?

 

Will no-one make the strange case for (lets be honest here) this - as to date - Atari-Universal-retro-hardware piece, since… who here… really … cares ‘bout whom Atari deal with in backstreet-alleys to deliver the goods… as long as its actual up ‘n working chip-built-gaming-hardware which will reward both ol’time collectors, recent retro-game-collectors and future retro-collectors alike, while making it compatible with modern gaming…?

 

Why couldn’t Atari just team up with retro-consoles firms which 

a) does everything by legal, transparent licences,

b) produces efficiently to read and play all atari-carts, cards, cds etc, from 2600 - Jaguar (give or take some categories), - to be plugged into any modern-type TV (displaying device etc), to play 1:1 with what old and new retro gamers have spent decades on assimilating…?

Why not indulge us - who bought the old the stuff?

Why not have all the hardware ready to read and play Atari collections from 2014-2022…?

 

Why not,

        Why not…?

 

Why go endless busniness-rounds with advertising the value the Atari-logo…, 

… logo …

if whats released make’s no difference to old-,  inbetween-, or new-school retro-game-collectors…?

 

(Atari can hardly claim any 

      s p e c i a l 

position in gaming-history, if they don’t reward those who appreciate all their innovative projects… at their highest points).

 

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by Giles N

[Giles N]

Which hardware-companies have Atari worked with in past…?

 

They teamed up with Arcade1 to make the re-run of the  Star Wars cabinet, didn’t they…?

 

What about all the mini’s? Who does them…? 
 

What about the exclusive retro-cart reruns…?

 

Their own hardware-manufacturing branch…?

 

Who would it be conceivable or realistic for Atari to team up with as to produce something like a RetroN for Atari-games…?

 

Is the RetronN still running…?

 

Could Atari co-operate with them to make an extra deck - something beautiful like the MegaCD, Sega32X, - no I’m kidding, - something spectacular and stylish that invokes the feelings of 5 decades of gaming (and rewarding some collectors out there, and even making exlusive re-runs of Atari-held titles in future meaningful to obtain also for pure gaming…)?

[bratboy]

I'm actually writing to Atari about this, I want a 7800 Mini that actually uses 7800 on a chip, not Nintendo on a chip. With Pokey sound, extra memory for homebrews, and Wi-Fi so that homebrews can actually connect with other players around the world. The last part sounds crazy but it's not that big of an ask. All those games we couldn't play as kids like combat and Warlords because nobody else was around, could now be played!

[Giles N]

11 hours ago, bratboy said:

Wi-Fi so that homebrews can actually connect with other players around the world.

 

Agreed; not too much to ask, but ratger elementary… everything is online these days … 

 

- - -  

 

But why not an Atari Retro Universal…? (Playing anything from the past 2600-Jag), 

 

The hardware necessary wouldn’t need be much more in power and total cost than an Evercade or Evercade VS…,

Edited April 2, 2023 by Giles N

[Giles N]

11 hours ago, bratboy said:

 

I'm actually writing to Atari about this, I want a 7800 Mini that

 

Awesome…!

[christo930]

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Atari is dead. It doesn't exist and hasn't existed in many decades.  Even if you accept the Tramiel period a true "Atari," that came to end decades ago.

 

The Atari of 2023 is a font and logo and nothing more.  I would not give them a nickel for anything other than what stands up on its own outside of the Atari name plastered on it.

[Keatah]

55 minutes ago, christo930 said:

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Atari is dead. It doesn't exist and hasn't existed in many decades.  Even if you accept the Tramiel period a true "Atari," that came to end decades ago.

I thought the Tramiel era as a dumbing down I think. A time of cost-cutting. Either way, it was still "just enough" Atari to be Atari. Not like the shit they got going on today.

 

55 minutes ago, christo930 said:

The Atari of 2023 is a font and logo and nothing more.  I would not give them a nickel for anything other than what stands up on its own outside of the Atari name plastered on it.

Absolutely right. And my emulator miniPC with Altirra and MAME and Stella is far more "Atari" than anything being spit out of a shell in-name-only company.

[zzip]

On 4/22/2023 at 4:35 PM, Keatah said:

I thought the Tramiel era as a dumbing down I think. A time of cost-cutting. Either way, it was still "just enough" Atari to be Atari. Not like the shit they got going on today.

Tramiel was a complete shift in how the company operated.   It was like night and day.   Warner Atari was a video-game company that happened to sell Computers too.    Tramiel Atari was a computer company that happened to also sell videogames.  They didn't even keep the arcade division, and the laid off the vast majority of Atari employees.

 

They had aspirations to make Atari a respectable business brand, and there was a shift in marketing and branding to that end.  Under Warner, Atari TV ads were ubiquitous and many emphasized fun.   There was the Atari Club,  The AtariAge magazine,  everything flashy, bright colors,  screamed fun and excitement 

 

Under Tramiel the Marketing and branding became more button-down, business-like.  Even the packaging for games on ST came in these bland blue-and-grey boxes that looked more suited for productivity or business apps than games.

 

On the gamiing side, they had none of the gaming marketing expertise that Warner had,  at first they just dumped existing console inventory and existing (outdated) games on the market for cheap prices.  Eventually they started creating new games, and finally started creating new console hardware not based on old designs, but by that time they went from market leader in '84 to way behind the competition.

 

So the idea that the current Atari is illegitimate because it changed hands, or there's different people working there or it's scummy-   All of that fits the Tramiel era too!   I don't understand how people can claim the current iteration isn't real Atari, but Tramiel was.   At least the current iteration under Wade Rosen is more focused on the Atari fan community than I've seen out of the company in a long time.

[Keatah]

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

Tramiel was a complete shift in how the company operated.   It was like night and day.   Warner Atari was a video-game company that happened to sell Computers too.    Tramiel Atari was a computer company that happened to also sell videogames.  They didn't even keep the arcade division, and the laid off the vast majority of Atari employees.

I think as the Tramiel epoch got underway there was some retail buffering still happening. Took some time for us infantile, newly-minted, teens to really notice. When we did notice..

 

 

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

They had aspirations to make Atari a respectable business brand, and there was a shift in marketing and branding to that end.  Under Warner, Atari TV ads were ubiquitous and many emphasized fun.   There was the Atari Club,  The AtariAge magazine,  everything flashy, bright colors,  screamed fun and excitement 

The Atari Club! I remember signing up for it for $1.00 and I believe I still have my membership card. Would be a hoot for modern-day nutari to honor it in some fashion.

 

But yes I remember (and fondly miss) the brightly colored boxes and ads. It was so geared toward making stuff happy and idyllic. I thoroughly miss the fronts marketing departments put on the whole videogame craze. The "invented inside my head" myths and bubbles bursting when I when behind the scenes at some arcades to see the maintenance rooms, shit and PCBs and monitors and half-completed cabs strewn everywhere. OMG! This was worse than any TV repair shop I'd been in. An TV repair shops were still popular in 1982. But they were scary places. All the exposed high voltage on the benches. The shelves full of CRT assemblies or half taken-apart sets awaiting further work. I wouldn't go back there because I thought the tubes would explode or gas me out.

 

The news broadcasts, when covering the craze, would show clips of the development labs and the factory floors. And more of my illusions were dissolved. Later on I would fully understand it was just industry and moneymaking. All about raking in the dough. And factories and industries were propelling fantasy lands of electronic worlds and facades at my local arcade.

 

But I wouldn't appreciate and comprehend those perspectives until many years later. As kids all we saw was a brave new frontier full of adventure and color and good times.

 

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

Under Tramiel the Marketing and branding became more button-down, business-like.  Even the packaging for games on ST came in these bland blue-and-grey boxes that looked more suited for productivity or business apps than games.

Because of that I had to look more closely at the packaging. With Commodore's packaging I couldn't tell a game from a business proggie. I had to read the box. No instant identification. No immediate visual cues. And that strained my brain.

 

I clearly remember those generic boxes with cutouts/windows, where they relied on showing parts of the manual's cover art/text to identify what was inside. TRS-80 Pocket Computer did this, a generic cardboard sleeve showing the manual. Apple II did this with generic plastic baggies allowing the manual to be the box art.

 

Gone were the beautiful dedicated glossy gatefolds of 1977/1978.

 

The more this "genericization" of packaging happened, the less interested I was in adventuring to a department stores. And that meant one less sale. Besides there was just too much stuff out there. Overload!

 

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

On the gamiing side, they had none of the gaming marketing expertise that Warner had,  at first they just dumped existing console inventory and existing (outdated) games on the market for cheap prices.  Eventually they started creating new games, and finally started creating new console hardware not based on old designs, but by that time they went from market leader in '84 to way behind the competition.

This I sort of noticed. And my response was to cut back on how much attention I payed. It just wasn't exciting enough to warrant tons of my attention anymore.

 

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

So the idea that the current Atari is illegitimate because it changed hands, or there's different people working there or it's scummy-   All of that fits the Tramiel era too!   I don't understand how people can claim the current iteration isn't real Atari, but Tramiel was.   At least the current iteration under Wade Rosen is more focused on the Atari fan community than I've seen out of the company in a long time.

I don't think I'd say nutari is illegitimate or that "bad". And I believe the perception it is those things comes from the radically modernized present-day styling.

 

And regardless of what WadeRosen is doing (or not), I don't think any of it is true retro. It's formulaic retro. It's forced. It's sterile. It's something taught in business school. Was he there sitting in gramma's basement in 1977 playing Surround or Combat or Basic Math?

 

There was so much more spontaneity in original Atari. Today IP is over-emphasized and there is no sense of being on the frontier. No sense of exploration and discovery.

 

And any new game that comes out (from the oldsters) is way way overhyped and glorified. Almost like a religion. Don't like that.

[zzip]

46 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I think as the Tramiel epoch got underway there was some retail buffering still happening. Took some time for us infantile, newly-minted, teens to really notice. When we did notice..

I noticed it right off the bat.   My XL was in the shop for a keyboard repair right after the buyout,  and the Atari Authorized Repair Center I had taken it to couldn't repair it, because he couldn't even get anyone in Sunnyvale to answer the phones since the company was in such upheaval at the time.   He told us they were going through bankruptcy, which wasn't true.  But they weren't optimistic.    Warner Atari made a big deal about their extensive Authorized Repair network, and that's one of the things that seemed to disappear under Jack.     Also soon after that, we saw 800XLs in stores greatly price-reduced which reinforced the "Atari is going out of business" idea.   

 

This was also the time when the game industry was really circling the drain from the crash,  retailers were eliminating videogames or vastly reducing their selection, arcades were shuttering, game magazines were folding or focusing on computer gaming only.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

The Atari Club! I remember signing up for it for $1.00 and I believe I still have my membership card. Would be a hoot for modern-day nutari to honor it in some fashion.

The idea of a club just seems like a relic from another age.  Kids!  Join our club!  get your secret decoder ring from Ovaltine!   Allow 4-8 weeks for delivery!   I guess the equivalent today is "download our app and get special deals"

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Because of that I had to look more closely at the packaging. With Commodore's packaging I couldn't tell a game from a business proggie. I had to read the box. No instant identification. No immediate visual cues. And that strained my brain.

Exactly, and it seemed like that philosophy followed Jack to Atari.   All the packaging was the same with same fonts whether it be game or app,  only difference is gray/blue for ST and gray/red for XE.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

I don't think I'd say nutari is illegitimate or that "bad". And I believe the perception it is those things comes from the radically modernized present-day styling.

I think the styling has shifted to more retro.  Infrogrames altered the Atari Fuji logo in the early 2000s to be fatter at the ends, and sometime around 2012 it reverted the the classic logo.   They use the old fonts as well and 70s-inspired stripes.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

And regardless of what WadeRosen is doing (or not), I don't think any of it is true retro. It's formulaic retro. It's forced. It's sterile. It's something taught in business school. Was he there sitting in gramma's basement in 1977 playing Surround or Combat or Basic Math?

Well no because he wasn't even born yet.

 

But what is true retro vs formulaic retro?   You said yourself all the excitement and fun the first time around was all an illusion created by marketing and you didn't like seeing the curtain peeled back.  How can retro-inspired stuff be more authentic?

 

It's kind of like following a band that has been around for many years. 

In the early years, they may have a string of hits.  After that they decide they need to "stay current" reinvent themselves.  It doesn't work, maybe they fall on hard times.   Eventually they come around and fully embrace their classic era.  Any new music they put out sounds like the old stuff rather than trying to sound different.   The fans come to see the old stuff and almost none of the new stuff becomes classics, it will probably be off the playlist by next tour.   Atari's in that stage.    Just like the Rolling Stones aren't going to knock Lizzo off the chart,  Atari isn't going to knock Nintendo out, so why try?  Just serve your existing niche.

[MrTrust]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

But what is true retro vs formulaic retro?

 

Can't speak for Keatah, and this is not a perfect example, but it's a game I know you like: Donut Dodo.

 

It's a really good game.  Aesthetically, it's "off".  The graphics are trying really hard to look like an arcade game from 1982, but they're too busy.  The backgrounds are too detailed.  The music is what you would hear on an early 90s NES game.  It has one of those stupid CRT fuzz filters on it.  I kind of wish they would give the whole thing a facelift with different graphics/music and.

 

But they nailed the level design in terms of recreating a 1982 arcade game: the slight asymmetry that forces you to disrupt your continuous pattern, that one pain-in-the-ass jump that you need to hit just as the guy's back foot hits the edge of the platform, and that you psych yourself out about missing for the whole lebel leading up to it, the one, relentless, insurmountable enemy.  You have that, and you have the Bomb Jack mechanic of grabbing the next flashing donut to keep your score multiplier going so you can't run a prerehearsed pattern of you want to score max.

 

So, sure, much of the aesthetics are nostalgia bait, and the design is totally derivative, but they really did get it WRT the fundamental design elements of those old games and what makes them good.  It does play like an old game, but the physics and controls are a little more modern, the levels are just a little bit beyond what would have been possible in '82, which makes it worthwhile in its own right rather than jusy playing Donkey Kong.

 

Contrast that with Atari Mania which, in my view, is the biggest dud they've perpetrated in the Rosen era.  The aesthetics don't just miss the bulls eye; they don't even hit the board.  Everything has that weird look of those 90s DOS clones of 80s arcade games.  Too pixelated to be properly representative, but not enough to have the simplistic charm of those old sprites.  Nobody wants to see the square from Adventure rendered as a lanky elf made out of old Legos that everyone calls "Robin" (haha, get it?).  They somehow made the old 2600 sprites look even more generic this way.

 

The micro games themselves were clearly designed by people who just do not "get" these old games.  The challenge of Breakout is accuracy: you have to be able to place the paddle so the right quadrant contacts the ball so you can get the angle you want.  Circus Atari, while superficially similar, was more of a raw reflex test.  The clown's trajectory is going to be so disrupted when he collides with the balloons that only Rain Main can anticipate how he will bounce.  It's more about how fast can you plot his descent and how quickly can you react to it; it's juggling.  Subtle difference, but the games do play quite differently.  Not in Mania.  Few if any of the Breakout-based challenges actually test your shot accuracy, they're just how well you can juggle the ball.  The Circus ones are the same, but with the same floaty physics as Breakout.  Too many of the games that should have random enemy behavior do not.  The ship and tank controls are wrong, which makes putting them in a maze context a trivial challenge.  I can go on.

 

There are technical problems with the game, and certain inexcusable omissions for a design of this type, but the main issue is these remixes versions - which could yield a really good game - were made based off of a superficial understanding of the original games.  It's like when you see renderings of the 80s where people think every single piece of furniture and clothing was designed by the Memphis Group.

 

It's phony.  Donut Dodo is not phony.  I think that Nu Atari have been mostly doing a good job producing "true" retro stuff in the last 10 years.  I'm very skeptical of Rosen, but I'm with you; I don't see how this is any worse than what we saw happen to Atari in the late 80s.

[zzip]

16 hours ago, MrTrust said:

18 hours ago, zzip said:

But what is true retro vs formulaic retro?

 

Can't speak for Keatah, and this is not a perfect example, but it's a game I know you like: Donut Dodo.

 

It's a really good game.  Aesthetically, it's "off".  The graphics are trying really hard to look like an arcade game from 1982, but they're too busy.  The backgrounds are too detailed.  The music is what you would hear on an early 90s NES game.  It has one of those stupid CRT fuzz filters on it.  I kind of wish they would give the whole thing a facelift with different graphics/music and.

 

I wasn't sure if Keatah was referring to games or hardware/company branding

 

Donut Dodo does a really good job of capturing the aesthetic of games of that era.   I'm not sure you can ever be 100% period correct unless you are programming on the original hardware though

When I compare the music of Donut Dodo to 82/83 games like Roc 'n Rope and Mappy,  it doesn't seem that far off.   I think the music has a cleaner sound than the arcade soundchips in those games though.

 

The CRT filter can be turned off.   I personally prefer it on though

 

It also keeps getting updates.   I'm not sure always for the better.   I see it now has an artwork overlay to make it look more like an arcade machine, I suppose,  but that makes the screen even busier.

 

16 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Contrast that with Atari Mania which, in my view, is the biggest dud they've perpetrated in the Rosen era.  The aesthetics don't just miss the bulls eye; they don't even hit the board.  Everything has that weird look of those 90s DOS clones of 80s arcade games.  Too pixelated to be properly representative, but not enough to have the simplistic charm of those old sprites.  Nobody wants to see the square from Adventure rendered as a lanky elf made out of old Legos that everyone calls "Robin" (haha, get it?).  They somehow made the old 2600 sprites look even more generic this way.

 

The micro games themselves were clearly designed by people who just do not "get" these old games.  The challenge of Breakout is accuracy: you have to be able to place the paddle so the right quadrant contacts the ball so you can get the angle you want.  Circus Atari, while superficially similar, was more of a raw reflex test.  The clown's trajectory is going to be so disrupted when he collides with the balloons that only Rain Main can anticipate how he will bounce.  It's more about how fast can you plot his descent and how quickly can you react to it; it's juggling.  Subtle difference, but the games do play quite differently.  Not in Mania.  Few if any of the Breakout-based challenges actually test your shot accuracy, they're just how well you can juggle the ball.  The Circus ones are the same, but with the same floaty physics as Breakout.  Too many of the games that should have random enemy behavior do not.  The ship and tank controls are wrong, which makes putting them in a maze context a trivial challenge.  I can go on.

 

There are technical problems with the game, and certain inexcusable omissions for a design of this type, but the main issue is these remixes versions - which could yield a really good game - were made based off of a superficial understanding of the original games.  It's like when you see renderings of the 80s where people think every single piece of furniture and clothing was designed by the Memphis Group.

Main problem with Atari Mania is it's set in the Atari offices BITD,   yet we don't see a single employee sitting in a hot tub smoking a joint,  totally unrealistic! 

 

I don't think Atari Mania was meant to be anything more than a goofy nostalgia trip to mark the 50th Anniversary,  kind of like a videogame equivalent of Adam Sandler's 'Pixels'.  The story is just as ridiculous.   The minigames are there to evoke memories of old games, not be accurate representations.  You're meant to finish them as quick as possible, not perfect your shot.   A lot of those games have Recharged equivalents for people looking for a more serious take.

 

I could see casual Atari fans buy this when it pops up in their Steam or Console store recommendations, and the "modern retro 8-bit pixelart" style will appeal to their kids.   I think it accomplishes what it set out to do, and shouldn't be taken any more seriously than that.   My main complaint is the mini-games are too repetitive. 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by zzip

[zzip]

16 hours ago, MrTrust said:

I'm very skeptical of Rosen, but I'm with you; I don't see how this is any worse than what we saw happen to Atari in the late 80s.

I don't know if he can pull off what he's trying to do,   but it's the most promising thing we've seen in a long time.    Post Tramiel we had JTS which did nothing with the name,  Hasbro which was short-lived.   Early Infrogrames which became Atari in name only (just a publisher, like EA that was nothing like the EA of old),  then after the bankrupcy they floundered awhile.   Finally we see Atari trying to be Atari again even if it's on a much smaller scale.

[MrMaddog]

To me, at least Rosen is trying to make Atari a legitimate gaming company again and not the zombie brand it's been the last decade.

 

IMHO, the Recharged series is what Atari would have made had it been a current small indie studio using current technology.  I agree about Mania being off-putting but figured it's targeting younger retrogamers who like Warioware-style games anyway.

 

And even if I don't own a VCS, so what?  I still have new Atari games to look forward to on Steam so I'm happy with just that for now.

 

Yes I also appricate the Tramiel era of XE & ST computers but let's be honest... Jack and his sons wanted to make Atari into Commodore 2.0 with video games as an afterthought.  The consoles were only sold to the low end of the market as oppose to being premium price product like the NES and just lost a lot of money in the long term by being "cheap".

[MrTrust]

8 hours ago, zzip said:

I'm not sure you can ever be 100% period correct unless you are programming on the original hardware though

When I compare the music of Donut Dodo to 82/83 games like Roc 'n Rope and Mappy,  it doesn't seem that far off.   I think the music has a cleaner sound than the arcade soundchips in those games though.

 

If you played a lot of NES games at the time, there's no mistaking it.  That's an NES Konami soundtrack.  I don't know why, but you could often tell which company made an NES game just by hearing the soundtrack.  That's a very distinct sound if you grew up with that.  I imagine people who grew up with a C64 can't not hear the SID chip when something uses those same waveforms.

 

I'm not literate enough to understand it, but I can hear it.  Now, you look at something like Shovel Knight, which I guess is not technically possible on the NES, not even the soundtrack.  If I didn't know any better, though, I would buy that it was a new homebrew for the system that has a really big ROM and some on-board RAM.  It looks and sounds legit, and it plays that way also.  There are many modern flourishes (or concessions, depending on your disposition), but the design is fundamentally a 90s action platformer just recontextualized and made a little more contemporary.

 

I don't know if Swordquest: Airworld was written in 6502 and runs on Stella in A50.  I assume it does not, but if you told me otherwise, I could buy that.  There's nothing that sticks out as wrong to me.  For better or worse, that is a real SQ game.

 

It's not that it needs to be 100%, but if it's going to be obviously wrong, why bother?  I need games coming out that try to ape the old cga blue/pink/white color pallette.  If you then have a soundtrack that doesn't sound like hideous PC speaker bleeps and bloops, you've broken the illusion, and therefore, what is the point of this aesthetic choice?  It was grotesque to behold even in its time.  Just make good graphics.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

I don't think Atari Mania was meant to be anything more than a goofy nostalgia trip to mark the 50th Anniversary,  kind of like a videogame equivalent of Adam Sandler's 'Pixels'.

 

Okay, so do that and just have it not be insulting and shitty.  Same for the movie.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

I could see casual Atari fans buy this when it pops up in their Steam or Console store recommendations, and the "modern retro 8-bit pixelart" style will appeal to their kids.   I think it accomplishes what it set out to do...

 

Yeah, it bilks those people out of money by trading in cutesy-poo 'memberberry nostalgia bullshit.

 

You're meant to do the games fast?  Who cares?  The game doesn't even keep track of your times, or your scores, or what minigames you've beaten.  There are no leaderboards, no play variation, no hint at what games you need to beat to get 100%, no reason to come back to the thing at all.  Buggy.  Ridiculous load times, etc.

 

This game isn't $10 like the actual good ones they put out.  $25 is a chunk of money today with A) inflation out of control, and B) every other day a Steam or Switch sale offering great games for under $5.

 

$25 is an ask, and I bought because of the good will they'd built up with the Recharged stuff, and I got a chunky, junky product in return.  I don't like being suckered, and they suckered me with phony retro marketing.  That's the distinction.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

A lot of those games have Recharged equivalents for people looking for a more serious take.

 

Yeah, and I sing the praises of the Recharged series all the time.  It's a great series and, for the most part, the games are free of technical problems.  The designs have so far done a really good job of sticking to the original gameplay where appropriate and doing something different but in the same spirit where the old game doesn't translate.

 

My 8 year-old plays those games with me all the time.  No cutesy-poo nostalgia bait necessary.  The games hold up on their own.  That's the kind of thing that can make this retro stuff relevant.

 

Vctr Sctr on A50 is another very good one.  They should release that on its own.  That can be enjoyed without any attachment to the old vector arcade games.

 

So, it's not like I'm being a grumpy curmudgeon about it, but I do not believe they should be given any latitude to charge a premium price for a game of that type and deliver half-assed dud because "don't take it seriously".  That's bullshit.  Use the nostalgia if you must, but provide a good product behind it that can stand on its own merits.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

I wasn't sure if Keatah was referring to games or hardware/company branding

 

I'm not either, and he can speak for himself, but these examples cover what I believe the distinction is.  If we were going to use a musical analogy, it's like when The White Stripes got a lot of buzz around the turn of the century, and all of a sudden, there was a flood of old time-y garage rock bands called The (Nouns) with these desaturated music videos where they're all smoking cigarettes and dressing in 70s-looking clothes and playing second-rate Stooges rip-off tunes.

 

It was an obviously contrived thing and the labels were peddling low-rent trash because David Fricke and all these other old dorks at Rolling Stone could still be tastemakers at the time, and they were getting misty eyed for their youth.

 

That:s not to say no good music came out of that time, or that garage rock can't be relevant today outside of nostalgic pandering, but there's something particularly off-putting and shysterish about the way these old things are presented as chic.

[zzip]

12 hours ago, MrTrust said:

If you played a lot of NES games at the time, there's no mistaking it.  That's an NES Konami soundtrack.  I don't know why, but you could often tell which company made an NES game just by hearing the soundtrack.  That's a very distinct sound if you grew up with that.  I imagine people who grew up with a C64 can't not hear the SID chip when something uses those same waveforms.

The NES soundchip was used in a couple of arcade games.   I don't know that Donut Dodo was trying to mimic a specific arcade platform or just trying to look like game that could have existed in 83

 

12 hours ago, MrTrust said:

I'm not literate enough to understand it, but I can hear it.  Now, you look at something like Shovel Knight, which I guess is not technically possible on the NES, not even the soundtrack.  If I didn't know any better, though, I would buy that it was a new homebrew for the system that has a really big ROM and some on-board RAM.  It looks and sounds legit, and it plays that way also.  There are many modern flourishes (or concessions, depending on your disposition), but the design is fundamentally a 90s action platformer just recontextualized and made a little more contemporary.

 

I don't know if Swordquest: Airworld was written in 6502 and runs on Stella in A50.  I assume it does not, but if you told me otherwise, I could buy that.  There's nothing that sticks out as wrong to me.  For better or worse, that is a real SQ game.

 

It's not that it needs to be 100%, but if it's going to be obviously wrong, why bother?  I need games coming out that try to ape the old cga blue/pink/white color pallette.  If you then have a soundtrack that doesn't sound like hideous PC speaker bleeps and bloops, you've broken the illusion, and therefore, what is the point of this aesthetic choice?  It was grotesque to behold even in its time.  Just make good graphics.

I think the consensus is that Swordquest Airworld is a modern game designed to mimic the other Swordquest games.   In doing so Atari is missing an opportunity to produce overpriced Airworld carts-- I think collectors would have gone crazy over that!    But it probably comes down to whether Digital Eclipse had anyone with the expertise to develop it as a 2600 game.

 

Retro-styled games could be a whole other discussion.   If someone produced a CGA-accurate game, I wouldn't buy it even if it had period accurate speaker beeps.   It would just remind me of the worst of PC.   But I think what interests me is when a certain aesthetic-style develops within the hardware constraints, and a modern game comes along that perfects that style-   like your Shovel Knight example might fit.   Donut Dodo kind of perfects the 8-bit arcade platform style.   In the 16-bit era, Bitmap Bros had an awesome  graphics style, so if someone produced a modern game that mimicked that, I'd probably be interested.

 

But then there's a whole bunch of games with pixelated graphics that broadly call themselves "8-bit",  but it's clear that no 8-bit system would ever be able to run them.   They are unconstrained by color placement, sprite limitations,  storage or memory.    But my kids like some of them.   So that's probably the target of such games and not us.

 

13 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Yeah, it bilks those people out of money by trading in cutesy-poo 'memberberry nostalgia bullshit.

 

You're meant to do the games fast?  Who cares?  The game doesn't even keep track of your times, or your scores, or what minigames you've beaten.  There are no leaderboards, no play variation, no hint at what games you need to beat to get 100%, no reason to come back to the thing at all.  Buggy.  Ridiculous load times, etc.

 

This game isn't $10 like the actual good ones they put out.  $25 is a chunk of money today with A) inflation out of control, and B) every other day a Steam or Switch sale offering great games for under $5.

Looking at the Steam reviews, Atari Mania is a love it or hate it kind of game.

 

I do agree the price is high compared to most Atari recent games. 

 

13 hours ago, MrTrust said:

It was an obviously contrived thing and the labels were peddling low-rent trash because David Fricke and all these other old dorks at Rolling Stone could still be tastemakers at the time, and they were getting misty eyed for their youth.

 

That:s not to say no good music came out of that time, or that garage rock can't be relevant today outside of nostalgic pandering, but there's something particularly off-putting and shysterish about the way these old things are presented as chic.

I don't know exactly how tastemaking works in music, but it's clear they drove rock music off the rails starting in the 90s.   I don't think there was ever a proper counter-reaction to grunge, and instead the music just started getting darker and less mainstream to the point where it's barely a cultural force anymore.  So if Rolling Stone is responsible for that..   One more reason to hate Rolling Stone I guess

 

[christo930]

On 4/24/2023 at 1:46 PM, zzip said:

So the idea that the current Atari is illegitimate because it changed hands, or there's different people working there or it's scummy-   All of that fits the Tramiel era too! 

I'm not saying "it's scummy.....  therefore...." I'm saying "the modern Atari is not Atari in any meaningful way"  Atari under Tramiel, was arguably also not "Atari" but certainly has a much more legitimate claim to being Atari than the modern incarnation.  I really don't even understand how anyone could say modern Atari corporation is the same entity. 

 

It's like these importers today slapping logos of past American manufacturers on modern Chinese equipment, like radios or phonographs (like Crosley) or Westinghouse etc.  Crosley no longer exists.  Westinghouse does exist, but doesn't make radios and hasn't in many decades.  RCA is another one.

 

Maybe they are doing more than I know about, but everything I hear about what Atari is doing today is all based on nostalgia.

[christo930]

On 4/24/2023 at 7:21 PM, MrTrust said:

It's a really good game.  Aesthetically, it's "off".  The graphics are trying really hard to look like an arcade game from 1982, but they're too busy.  The backgrounds are too detailed.  The music is what you would hear on an early 90s NES game.  It has one of those stupid CRT fuzz filters on it.  I kind of wish they would give the whole thing a facelift with different graphics/music and

I really don't know what's up with the Donut Dodo hate.  While I haven't played it, it looks to me like a modern retro game done right. Annalynn is another example of a modern retro game done right.

 

I like the fact that these games ditch the limitations of 1982 hardware while retaining the arcade feel.  It would even be cool to have 32 bit color.  I don't think it adds anything to apply 1982 "limits" to a game, be it color based, sound based, sprite limits etc.  I very much enjoy the 80s arcade style of game, going by the game mechanics, not necessarily the technology.

[zzip]

43 minutes ago, christo930 said:

I'm not saying "it's scummy.....  therefore...." I'm saying "the modern Atari is not Atari in any meaningful way"  Atari under Tramiel, was arguably also not "Atari" but certainly has a much more legitimate claim to being Atari than the modern incarnation.  I really don't even understand how anyone could say modern Atari corporation is the same entity. 

Maybe you didn't make the argument, but there was a number of people who pointed to a pay dispute and argued that it proved current Atari was a scam company.  Ignoring that Tramiel and other iterations of Atari have done worse things

 

I don't really see how Tramiel Atari is more legit, as they fired most of the workers, changed the company focus towards computers and a completely new product line (ST),  lost the video game marketing muscle that Warner had,  didn't acquire the arcade division-  It was a very different Atari than existed under Warner.   If we had to pick a date when Atari stopped being Atari, I'd pick 1984 for these reasons.

58 minutes ago, christo930 said:

It's like these importers today slapping logos of past American manufacturers on modern Chinese equipment, like radios or phonographs (like Crosley) or Westinghouse etc.  Crosley no longer exists.  Westinghouse does exist, but doesn't make radios and hasn't in many decades.  RCA is another one.

 

The thing is, it's not the 80s anymore.   The technology has been more or less perfected and cost reduced.   You're not going to design a turntable or cassette player from scratch that can do everything the Chinese stuff can for the same price point.   That's why those products exist.

 

Likewise, Atari couldn't put a modern console together from proprietary chips that can outdo what nVidia or AMD chips can do.   The proprietary system would cost more, be less powerful  and it would have trouble attracting developers.   Using an integrated system from AMD makes sense.  Even Sony and MS do this now.

[Lord Mushroom]

On 4/24/2023 at 9:04 PM, Keatah said:

Was he there sitting in gramma's basement in 1977 playing Surround or Combat or Basic Math?

No, he is too young. He played consoles like Super Nintendo. But he played 2600-games in a PC-bundle.

[christo930]

23 minutes ago, zzip said:

Ignoring that Tramiel and other iterations of Atari have done worse things

That's not the argument I'm making, though it is a fair point.  The main reason I am saying the Tramiel era is more legit (though more is not entirely) is there was a direct move from Warner to Trameil and no down time in between.

Frankly, I agree with you that since Tramiel took Atari in a different direction, that it probably doesn't meet the "Atari" status. I just think it's a weaker argument.

 

The "Atari" of today has absolutely zero connection to 1982 Atari.

 

25 minutes ago, zzip said:

The thing is, it's not the 80s anymore.   The technology has been more or less perfected and cost reduced.   You're not going to design a turntable or cassette player from scratch that can do everything the Chinese stuff can for the same price point.   That's why those products exist.

 

Crosley was gone long before the 80s. This is mostly true of the other companies as well. Also, this trend started in the 80s. Thompson put out fake cathedral radios with AM/FM cassette and sometimes CD, sometimes with a brand name from the 40s or 30s. When this trend first started, that I can tell, was in the 1960s with transistor radios.  But at least it was the REAL RCA or Zenith slapping their names on products they had ZERO involvement in making.

 

You can say it's not worth their effort to try and make a radio, but that's not the point.  Everyone has good excuses for not doing something.  My point is these appliances are NOT the label on them.  There is ZERO connection between Crosley and the modern stuff with that logo slapped on them.  Whatever importing company who owns the Crosley name is no more Crosley than Atari is Atari.

 

 

The US empire is in the end stage which has been characterized by financialization.  This re-branding of crap is just another way of trying to suck every bit of value from anything that ever meant anything in the US in the business world.  Atari is no exception.  As long as people keep buying their crap, they're going to keep shoveling it out there.

 

 

 

30 minutes ago, zzip said:

 

=

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

I really don't even understand how anyone could say modern Atari corporation is the same entity. 

Because it technically is.