The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!

[m.o.terra kaesi]

14 minutes ago, leech said:

The problem with all modern gaming is the 'online factor'.  Not that every game is online, but that since it is available you continuously have patches, updates with new features that potentially break your game, etc.  Or your operating system needs to be updated before you can play.

 

Or even worse these days is your damn TV needs an update... I just want to insert a game and play the damn thing!  That is the reason the old game systems are still superior.  Ever since the cd-rom based systems released, the load times of games have as well.  Sometimes a quick game of Dig Dug or Asteroids is preferable to hours long sessions of a modern game.

At the end of the day, this is a senseless discussion. It's comparing apples and oranges.

I for myself am a big Atari 2600 homebrew lover, because I am fascinated by the results a (mostly single) programmer person can achieve out of a 50 year old hardware, especially with its hardcore technical and gameplay limitations. This makes me love games like Galagon, Thrust+, Medieval Mayhem or Tower of Rubble even more! There's no way I could make a next-gen enthusiast catch fire for this. And it's totally understandable, too.

[alex_79]

4 hours ago, alex_79 said:

I have zero attachment to the Atari brand itself, or any company that owns that brand (or any past company that owned it), and whether this product is a success or a failure doesn't affect me in any way.

I'm interested in this community that shares knowledge and creates new games and hardware for an old console I had as a kid.

I didn't imagine it a few hours ago, but I guess it's a bit ironic that I posted that on this particular day...😶

[Thomas Jentzsch]

17 minutes ago, alex_79 said:

I didn't imagine it a few hours ago, but I guess it's a bit ironic that I posted that on this particular day...😶

Like I said some weeks ago when the store got purged: The end of an era.

[zzip]

11 hours ago, Giles N said:

Do we know, can we guess which 7800-emulator it uses…?

The VCS uses a7800,  I would imagine they'd stick with that to simplify things unless there's some reason they can't?

 

2 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Some people just like to hear themselves talk and never get tired of it. Those people are annoying as hell.

Especially when you get stuck in meetings with them and they dominate the entire meeting with some minor point and you can't get through the agenda,    There's always one

 

[alex_79]

3 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Like I said some weeks ago when the store got purged: The end of an era.

It really is.

[Nall3k]

12 hours ago, Spriggy said:

Chill the f#&k out.  Just giving my opinion. 

 

I did not mean to give off a scolding vibe, and my apologizes if it came off so. I just feel people are blowing things out of proportion. At the end of the day, it's a product and no one has to buy anything. 

[r_chase]

I hate rumors, but I kinda assumed the 2600+ was cancelled for some reason. It's really weird to me.
I still hope that the 2600+ will be better than the earlier RetroN 77 and stuff.

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, r_chase said:

I hate rumors, but I kinda assumed the 2600+ was cancelled for some reason. It's really weird to me.
I still hope that the 2600+ will be better than the earlier RetroN 77 and stuff.

I'm not sure where you heard those rumors, but it's certainly not being canceled.

 

 ..Al

[r_chase]

Just now, Albert said:

I'm not sure where you heard those rumors, but it's certainly not being canceled.

 

 ..Al

I'm not sure either, but thanks for answering. Really. ❤️

[Albert]

Just now, r_chase said:

I'm not sure either, but thanks for answering. Really. ❤️

You're welcome! 

[leech]

29 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Like I said some weeks ago when the store got purged: The end of an era.

Which store got purged?  Did I miss something?

[Trinity]

26 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Like I said some weeks ago when the store got purged: The end of an era.

Why did the store get purged? I was wondering about that.

 

 I should have bought Galagon, Qix and a few others when I had the chance.

 

Any chance of those games coming back someday?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

2 minutes ago, Trinity said:

Why did the store get purged? I was wondering about that.

Because the games were not licensed. And Atari cannot sell unlicensed games, even on low quantities.

2 minutes ago, Trinity said:

Any chance of those games coming back someday?

Nope.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

5 minutes ago, leech said:

Which store got purged?  Did I miss something?

You missed that ~100 games got removed from the AA store some weeks ago?

[Albert]

7 minutes ago, Trinity said:

I should have bought Galagon, Qix and a few others when I had the chance.

 

Any chance of those games coming back someday?

It's likely John will be selling his games directly via his website.

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

8 minutes ago, Trinity said:

Any chance of those games coming back someday?

As Atari acquires more IP, I do hope to add some of these games back to the store.

 

 ..Al

[zzip]

53 minutes ago, leech said:

The problem with all modern gaming is the 'online factor'.  Not that every game is online, but that since it is available you continuously have patches, updates with new features that potentially break your game, etc.  Or your operating system needs to be updated before you can play.

 

Or even worse these days is your damn TV needs an update... I just want to insert a game and play the damn thing!  That is the reason the old game systems are still superior.  Ever since the cd-rom based systems released, the load times of games have as well.  Sometimes a quick game of Dig Dug or Asteroids is preferable to hours long sessions of a modern game.

In the 8-bit days, your OS might be 16K,  your game might be 8K-32K.    That's not a whole lot of code,  one person could have written the entire thing, know it inside out and squashed all the bugs.   Even still bugs sometimes got through.   You had the revision A and B BASIC bugs on the Atari 8-bit,  and the ST's TOS 1.0 OS was full of bugs.   There was no easy way to fix these without replacing the ROM chips, which likely cost you extra money to obtain.   Maybe you could load in patches from disk to workaround these issues.

 

But as systems became more powerful, the code sizes grew,  larger and ever more complex.   You might have hundreds of thousands lines of code or even more than a million.   Your bugtracker might list hundred or thousands of bugs, and those are just the known ones.   It's virtually impossible to ship bug-free code, so the ability to update after the fact is a must.   In addition to bugs, there's security vulnerabilities which are discovered all the time.   If you don't want your consoles to be compromised by hackers, you're going to have to patch the vulnerabilities too.

 

So the ability to have online updates is a good thing, not a bad thing.    Of course some developers abuse it and seem to update their games every week.    But other times you get much appreciated fixes and even new features.

[Trinity]

.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Trinity

[zzip]

 

17 minutes ago, Albert said:

As Atari acquires more IP, I do hope to add some of these games back to the store.

 

So the store will remain selling carts that have no IP issues?    Kind of like the APX of old?

[leech]

3 minutes ago, zzip said:

In the 8-bit days, your OS might be 16K,  your game might be 8K-32K.    That's not a whole lot of code,  one person could have written the entire thing, know it inside out and squashed all the bugs.   Even still bugs sometimes got through.   You had the revision A and B BASIC bugs on the Atari 8-bit,  and the ST's TOS 1.0 OS was full of bugs.   There was no easy way to fix these without replacing the ROM chips, which likely cost you extra money to obtain.   Maybe you could load in patches from disk to workaround these issues.

 

But as systems became more powerful, the code sizes grew,  larger and ever more complex.   You might have hundreds of thousands lines of code or even more than a million.   Your bugtracker might list hundred or thousands of bugs, and those are just the known ones.   It's virtually impossible to ship bug-free code, so the ability to update after the fact is a must.   In addition to bugs, there's security vulnerabilities which are discovered all the time.   If you don't want your consoles to be compromised by hackers, you're going to have to patch the vulnerabilities too.

 

So the ability to have online updates is a good thing, not a bad thing.    Of course some developers abuse it and seem to update their games every week.    But other times you get much appreciated fixes and even new features.

Right, I was pointing out that the draw of the old cart based systems are indeed that you can just plug it in and turn it on and have a play, then turn it off and wander away.  Whereas these days, I'll go to play something like the Playstation or Steam or whatever... Boot up the system, get prompted there is an update, get prompted for an update for my TV, then get prompted for an update for the game itself... 30m later, maybe I can start playing the game I wanted to play for 10 minutes...  It's even worse for computers if the game is new enough that you need new video card drivers, etc. 

 

ROM Based operating systems were for sure a pain, though at least they attempted to fix the bugs after TOS 1.0, a few were still around but they were usually easy to patch with things in the AUTO folder  

 

There is definitely a draw toward the simpler times of gaming, that's all I was saying.  Also the general trend now of developers (due to crappy publishers) is to release a game in a terribly broken state and then just patch it over the next years (if they even bother, if it didn't sell well, they'll typically just drop it).  I think No Man's Sky is one of the few that shipped in a 'working' state, but was far from what they claimed it would be, but they spent years fixing it and making it much better, and now I'm seeing people say it's still better than Starfield (I was supposed to get a free code for that with my GPU upgrade, but never got it, and since it's MS owned, I won't be buying it.  )

[Albert]

8 minutes ago, zzip said:

So the store will remain selling carts that have no IP issues?    Kind of like the APX of old?

Correct, I will continue to publish original games and those for which we can acquire a license or the IP.  I have over 20 new games already lined up for this year's PRGE. 

 

 ..Al

[zzip]

6 minutes ago, Albert said:

Correct, I will continue to publish original games and those for which we can acquire a license or the IP.  I have over 20 new games already lined up for this year's PRGE. 

If it's a well-known game that you obtain the IP for,  it would still be sold under the AtariAge label, and not say Atari XP?    Would Atari's marketing start promoting AtariAge games then?

[Albert]

Just now, zzip said:

If it's a well-known game that you obtain the IP for,  it would still be sold under the AtariAge label, and not say Atari XP?    Would Atari's marketing start promoting AtariAge games then?

That's not something I can answer at this time, probably depends if an existing homebrew game already exists, what games Atari wants to publish under the XP label (and I will have input on that), and what the individual authors would like to do with their games.  And, yes, Atari will promote AtariAge games, bringing many new eyes to the amazing games people have developed over the years.

 

 ..Al

[zzip]

16 minutes ago, leech said:

Right, I was pointing out that the draw of the old cart based systems are indeed that you can just plug it in and turn it on and have a play, then turn it off and wander away.  Whereas these days, I'll go to play something like the Playstation or Steam or whatever... Boot up the system, get prompted there is an update, get prompted for an update for my TV, then get prompted for an update for the game itself... 30m later, maybe I can start playing the game I wanted to play for 10 minutes...  It's even worse for computers if the game is new enough that you need new video card drivers, etc. 

Yeah Steam is the worst in this regard,   I just want to play a game,  and then wait for Steam update, then wait for the game to update.    Lately it doesn't seem as bad as it used to be though

I do like the way Playstation does it,  it will download updates while in rest mode so when you turn the console on, updates are ready and quick to install.

 

20 minutes ago, leech said:

There is definitely a draw toward the simpler times of gaming, that's all I was saying.  Also the general trend now of developers (due to crappy publishers) is to release a game in a terribly broken state and then just patch it over the next years (if they even bother, if it didn't sell well, they'll typically just drop it)

I don't think anybody intends to release things in broken states.   I work in software development so I understand why this happens.   On one hand you have marketing who chooses a release date based on either a time when there's no real competition  (like you don't really want your game to release the same week as Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring, as the Horizon series keeps doing-- the bigger game gets the most attention)   or you release in the fall in time for the holidays.   Picking the wrong release date can really hurt your sales.    Sometimes the publisher will grant a delay,  but delays cost money and may lead to a worse release date.

Then on the other hand you have project management that tries to plan out how the development will go so that the release date can be met,  but in development not everything goes according to plan,  sometimes you encounter worse bugs and other issues than you planned for and that causes work to slip.   Release day comes and there's more serious bugs than you planned for,  but not enough to warrant a delay.   They start scrambling to put together a day-one patch to fix as many as they can, but it's a race against time, and of course users will discover bugs that never came up in testing.   Some project managers are better than others.  Some may make more realistic plans and others make plans that are too optimistic.   Some are better at getting the right people in the room to work through an issue when things go awry. 

 

36 minutes ago, leech said:

I think No Man's Sky is one of the few that shipped in a 'working' state, but was far from what they claimed it would be, but they spent years fixing it and making it much better, and now I'm seeing people say it's still better than Starfield

No Man's Sky had a community that would overhype itself imagining all sorts of things that might be in the game, and you had Sean Murray, the games lead developer who went into interviews with no filter.  So he'd be asked "will you be able to do X in the game?"  and he's respond "yeah, there's a chance you might see that".    And every time he'd tentatively talk about a feature, the community took it as confirmed and so the hype grew.    He did at one point say that "not everything will be possible at launch", but he didn't say that often enough.   

 

Then the reality of the release date hit,  and at that point the game was basically "fly to different planets and take beautiful photos, discover alien creatures and give them names" and not much else.  all that off-the-charts hyped turned into off-the-charts anger.   They did promise more features via update, but at that point nobody believed them,  the community thought they took the money and ran.

 

But one by one the updates came and they eventually turned it around.  But even with all the amazing features they add to updates, that team has trouble mitigating bugs.   Every new release comes with serious bugs, some that might even corrupt your save, then they start issuing sometimes daily patches to address the bugs.   I won't play the game for at least a week after an update comes out just to be safe.

[+jgkspsx]

5 hours ago, leech said:

Sometimes a quick game of Dig Dug or Asteroids is preferable to hours long sessions of a modern game.

I don’t disagree but most normal people find it strange that I have a bunch of CRTs sitting around.