AtariAge + Atari Q&A

[+Fred_M]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I'm pretty sure about 5,000 of them are Boulderdash levels      Also Atarimania has duplicate entries for many games, since there are separate entries when it was releases by different publishers and in different countries, etc.

I think a better source for these kind of numbers is the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative. They count unique commercial software titles and at the moment that number is 6034, but this number includes serious software too. Their number of releases, 9647, include the many re-releases.

 

Personally I think an Atari 8-bit re-release is commercially not viable. Maybe a good alternative would be an Atari console that can emulate all Atari systems, just like the many Chinese handhelds and consoles.

[m.o.terra kaesi]

It finally feels like all the hard core questions have been answered. We are approaching drivel talk. Thanks to Al and TrogbarRobusto for their intense presence.

close topic 😝

[Blinky]

10 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

Ya know,...Some say it's rude to ask for a picture of somebody's dumper

🤣 OMG I'm too affraid to open PMs now 😀

I should  have asked for a copy of the dumpers firmware instead 😄

[Atari_Warlord]

sarcasm on/

 

I won't consider anyone the real Atari until the headquarters are relocated to 1265 Borregas ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.

 

sarcasm off/

 

Unfortunately Google owns the property now and it might be a bit pricey.  At least they commissioned a sculpture to commemorate Atari.  Although it seems like more of a reference to Space Invaders or Laser Blast (maybe the UFO in Asteroids).

[guppy]

53 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

Yup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Ship of Theseus is exactly the philosophical exercise to consider.

 

Normally the problem is posed that when the ship is replaced piece by piece until nothing of the original ship remains part of the current ship, is it the same ship?  People can debate at which point or if the ship ever ceases to be the Ship of Theseus.

 

In the story of Atari, I think there's enough continuity for Atari to still be Atari until some point.  Where exactly you want to draw that point, whether it be the start of the Warner era, the point at which Bushnell left Atari, or the Tramiel era, or some other point, isn't of concern to me.

 

I think the question is to consider might be, if the Ship of Theseus ran aground, broke up, and sank, and its crew all leave the employ of Theseus Shipping Inc, and then later foreigners living on the shores where the shipwreck occurred find the wreck, and exercise salvage rights to claim it, bring up some of the cargo from the ship's hold, and put it together with other stuff that washed ashore, build a new ship, put the salvaged stuff in the ships hold, and name the new ship The Ship of Theseus SA, is it the same ship?

 

I expect there will be varying opinion.

 

I don't know where AtariAge/Homebrew fits into the above narrative; I guess they're kind of like sea life, living on the bottom who found the wreck on the bottom, and began to inhabit the body of the wrecked vessel, and adorned our shells with bits of the cargo.

 

I do love a good tortured metaphor.

[+Karl G]

31 minutes ago, m.o.terra kaesi said:

It finally feels like all the hard core questions have been answered. We are approaching drivel talk. Thanks to Al and TrogbarRobusto for their intense presence.

close topic 😝

Nah; it just needs to be unpinned and renamed to "group therapy". 

[Nall3k]

9 minutes ago, guppy said:

Ship of Theseus is exactly the philosophical exercise to consider.

 

Normally the problem is posed that when the ship is replaced piece by piece until nothing of the original ship remains part of the current ship, is it the same ship?  People can debate at which point or if the ship ever ceases to be the Ship of Theseus.

 

In the story of Atari, I think there's enough continuity for Atari to still be Atari until some point.  Where exactly you want to draw that point, whether it be the start of the Warner era, the point at which Bushnell left Atari, or the Tramiel era, or some other point, isn't of concern to me.

 

I think the question is to consider might be, if the Ship of Theseus ran aground, broke up, and sank, and its crew all leave the employ of Theseus Shipping Inc, and then later foreigners living on the shores where the shipwreck occurred find the wreck, and exercise salvage rights to claim it, bring up some of the cargo from the ship's hold, and put it together with other stuff that washed ashore, build a new ship, put the salvaged stuff in the ships hold, and name the new ship The Ship of Theseus SA, is it the same ship?

 

I expect there will be varying opinion.

 

I don't know where AtariAge/Homebrew fits into the above narrative; I guess they're kind of like sea life, living on the bottom who found the wreck on the bottom, and began to inhabit the body of the wrecked vessel, and adorned our shells with bits of the cargo.

 

I do love a good tortured metaphor.

Of course, the problem with this metaphor is it can be applied to every company. Game companies in general buy and sell IP assets, and employees come and go. Is Sega still the same Sega from 20+ years ago? Most of their original developers have left or passed away, their hardware division is gone, and they merged with Sammy.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

1 hour ago, Albert said:

How large is each level in terms of how much space they take up in the game binary? 

Really small.

 

There is a level definition format, which allows random elements, lines, single elements etc. The size varies, but it is less than 100 bytes/cave on average.

I think the contents of each square can be represented in 4 bits, and there's what 32x32 squares per level?  Maybe less.    Yeah it wouldn't take a whole lot of space.    If they squeeze it to less than 100 bytes , they are probably doing RLE compression or something.

 

1 hour ago, Zoyous said:

Atari Games was knocking out one classic after another for years! I think it would be amazing if Atari could bring those games back into the fold, but they're all mixed in with the Williams and Midway libraries now. There might be some glimmer of hope due to the fact that the current owners don't care or maybe even know about the Atari Games titles as they're too busy flogging the latest Mortal Kombat reboot. I really don't like seeing the Midway logo on Atari Games and Williams releases.

If a theoretical purchase of Atari Games came with Williams and Midway, I wouldn't shed any tears over that    Atari could finally publish the home ports of Defender, Joust and Robotron that many were looking for in Atari 50 for a start.  

 

[Bakasama]

13 minutes ago, Nall3k said:

Of course, the problem with this metaphor is it can be applied to every company. Game companies in general buy and sell IP assets, and employees come and go. Is Sega still the same Sega from 20+ years ago? Most of their original developers have left or passed away, their hardware division is gone, and they merged with Sammy.

You can say the same thing for SNK. It was bought out by a pancinko company. Then the former president of SNK formed a new company named Playmore which then bought all SNK assets and then renamed the company SNK Playmore. This company then got renamed SNK. Then the company got bought by some Chinese investors and is now owned by a Saudi prince.

[+x=usr(1536)]

2 hours ago, guppy said:

However, Atari Homebrew isn't/wasn't the true Atari, either; it's more accurate to describe it as "various independent third-party development" than it is a lineal descendant of "original Atari" (the Company).  Sometimes homebrewers trespassed on Trademarks, yes.  And sometimes those Trademarks were Atari's and sometimes they were the property of still other entities. But the homebrew scene did so with good intent: not commercial piracy or to deprive the trademark holders of anything, but to pay homage or to do "justice" to a game that deserved a better version than the market got from the official version. (But that intent not to harm starts to become muddled once AtariAge got into producing and selling physical cartridge products.)

@guppy: this isn't particularly directed at you - it's just that your response happened to raise the general point, so this seemed like a good time to mention a few things in relation to it as well as a couple I just want to get off of my chest.  This is likely to be more stream-of-consciousness than anything else as a result.

 

One distinction that seems to be missing in discussions of how AA relates to any iteration of Atari is that, from observation, most folks seem to regard it as the spiritual successor to 1996 Atari, not a continuation of the company itself.  There is no doubt in my mind that from that point up to today, the community here has been the main driving force behind keeping these systems fresh and relevant, whether that came from administering the forums, developing new software, selling Atari-related games and peripherals (including upgrades), collecting for the various platforms, or being an enthusiast who just enjoys using them.

 

Because the community has been able to be that driving force for the past 27 years, some incredible things have happened.  Look at the panoply of devices we now have to enhance our systems with: the AtariVox+, QuadTari, UAV, U1MB, FujiNet, and many, many others.  At the same time, software libraries have expanded tremendously across the board.  The 5200 and 7800 were once dead systems; now they both enjoy active development scenes.  Ditto the A8 and ST ranges.

 

Now, all of the things mentioned above are ones that don't necessarily make sense to produce from a corporate standpoint.  There is no mass market for them, but the market that does exist is both enthusiastic and appreciative.  This is why I believe that the community has a solid future: we're the people who will continue to build and do things that simply can't be done effectively in any other environment.  In this regard, the community holds the best position in terms of being able to fulfill the community's niche interests.

 

As this relates to last Thursday's announcement of Atari acquiring AtariAge: what's done is done, and the genie isn't going back into the bottle anytime soon.  Regardless of one's personal feelings regarding either entity, this is how things are going to be.  This does not mean that you should be oblivious to the potential for down-the-road changes, or that you need to like or dislike any of the parties involved.  By all means hold both parties to their word in regard to the promises they've made; they should also be held to the maxim that actions speak louder than words.  But it's absolutely not a reason to decide that the community is somehow permanently and irretrievably tainted or altered.  That hasn't happened, at least not in the last five days, and would take a lot longer to accomplish than that.

 

There's no glossing over the fact that trust is going to have to be rebuilt between the community and Atari.  There's also no glossing over the fact that that trust was minimal to begin with.  Building that trust, however, is a two-way street and both sides need to work at it - what desire or incentive would anyone have to trust someone who doesn't trust them, or considers them to be the enemy?  There's a lot of historical baggage to overcome, and this applies on both sides of the fence.  By no means am I suggesting that any past events which have shaped negative opinion or eroded trust be forgotten or swept under the carpet, but rather that those events should not be the guiding memory behind every interaction.  TL;DR: don't assume bad faith.  By all means hold someone accountable if they fail to keep or act on their word, but not assuming that this will be the default when interacting with them should be the default.

 

A meeting of the minds regarding culture both within the community and within Atari needs to happen.  This doesn't mean that anyone has to change theirs, but rather that both learn how to not do something inadvertently-appalling to the other at the dinner table. We're the high-strung prima donnas; the company consists of faceless suits who don't know the slightest thing about how the sausage is made, let alone appreciate the sausage for its tastiness but they'll certainly stick a price tag on it.  If this is inducing a sense of déjà vu, that's because it should.  It's nothing new, and to one degree or another both sides have engaged in it at various times.

 

And, just to make my own position clear: I have no opinion or expectations one way or the other regarding Atari's acquisition of AtariAge.  It's not something in which I have any sort of business- or administration-related role, so cannot see a point in becoming emotionally-invested in it.  What I do have opinions on, however, are the survival of this community and its continued growth.  Those are very much important to me, and are not things that should be allowed to decline or disappear regardless of internal or external changes or pressures.  For the long run, I will do what I can to prevent that from happening through my participation here, and hope that others will do the same.

[zzip]

45 minutes ago, guppy said:

To me, the Atari that I loved and cared about was primarily the Atari of the Warner era.  I was 5-6 years old in 1980, when the VCS was already 3 years old, and I played Atari 2600 games from 1981 on.  At some point we got a 7800, so that's of the Tramiel era.  And we put both away when Nintendo came out with the NES, when we got one for Christmas 1987.  I was aware of but didn't own or care much about the 8-bit computer line, but of course there's no denying that any of that stuff was "real Atari".  My cousin had a 5200, and I got to play it a few times.  I played many Atari coin-op games in arcades, probably from the era of Asteroids to Star Wars: The Arcade Game. You could also easily include the stuff from the early days:  Computer Space, Pong, and all the rest up through about '84-'86, for me.

The Warner era was my favorite as well.    It was the early 80s heyday of videogames and the company screamed fun (even if they were bleeding cash behind the scenes).   I saw crazy Atari commercials on TV constantly,  I got the colorful AtariAge magazine in the mail.  I went with an Atari computer over a C64 because it at the time it seemed like that's where it was at (that didn't age so well, haha).   I remember reading about the Atari sale.  Suddenly all that stuff evaporated, the commercials, the Atari Club, the AtariAge magazine.  There was a period of uncertainty where nobody was sure what would come next.   8-bit software dried up as publishers were waiting too.   Finally the ST and XE were unveiled and there was a sign of relief...   but there new Atari Corp seemed more frustrating than fun at times.    They'd promise things that would end up coming late and not be quite as good as originally stated "New 3.5" Disk Drive for 8-bit line"   "Well actually we decided to make a new 5.25" drive instead, but at least it's double sided!"   New enhanced STe that probably should have been released a year or two earlier than it was, and still not quite up to the original 1985 Amiga specs.   I stuck with Atari computers into the early 90s, but I have mixed feelings about that era-   like they'd keep dangling something shiny in front of you then beat you repeatedly with a stick, and repeat that process over and over.

 

The current Wade Rosen era seems like they are bringing the enthusiastic fun back.   Maybe not to heights of the Warner era, I don't think that's possible.   But so far it's been more fun the the "BUSINESS IS WAR!!" Tramiel era IMO.  

 

Also the 7800 was a Warner-era console.  It was all set to release in 84, but got delayed because of the sale, and sat in a warehouse until Jack finally agreed to pay GCC.  

1 hour ago, guppy said:

Obviously the Lynx and the Jaguar deserve to be considered "real Atari" as well.  To me, it's really less about what was "real" and "not real" and more about "When did Atari start sucking?"  Atari always had hits and misses, but I guess the point at which Atari lost the market lead and ceased to be dominant.  But even then, they were "real" and doing some things that didn't suck.  It just wasn't enough to save the company.

But if authenticity is about the people involved, then one could argue that Lynx wasn't a true Atari product, since it was developed by Epyx and fell into Atari's lap.  Same with the 7800 developed by GCC.    The Jaguar was also developed by an outside company, but it was at least Atari commissioned it.    Personally I do consider them to be real Atari products as well as the ST (despite its Commodore origins) because I think the brand transcends the people involved.

 

1 hour ago, guppy said:

If an artist named Picasso had owned a painting shop where he sold his paintings, and then went broke, and sold the shop and all the paintings to a new owner, and that new owner sold prints of Atair original paintings, and also tried to create new paintings, attempting to capture the style of Picasso in those new works, no one would call the "new Picassos" painted by the successor Picassos.  Whether they are good paintings or not is what should matter, not whether they're "true Picassos" or not.  But for some purposes it can be important to differentiate which we're talking about:  Picasso the man, Picasso the painting, Picasso the workshop, Picasso the store, and yes, Picasso's the store after Picasso went out of business, sold the store and its merchandise into receivership, it went to auction, and then a new guy came around and bought it all and decided to try to re-open and sell more art, some of which was old copies of Picasso work, and some of which was new works that tried to carry on something of the old Picasso tradition. 

When you have a singular artist creating a notable art style, it's really hard to replace them.   But when a corporation creates a product, it's usually created by a team of faceless people.   For better or worse, corporations want people to be interchangeable like cogs.  Because if your product is dependent on a specific person, then you are in deep trouble should they quit or get hit by a bus.

 

[Emehr]

Lots of discussion about what makes an iteration of Atari "real". People come and go so it can't just be the people who work there so how about this: "Real" Atari produces new hardware. Lynx and Jaguar were the last pieces of original hardware produced by Atari. So I propose that once Atari ships and sells millions of Atari 2600+ units and have enough money in the bank, they either engineer or acquire (as they did with Handy/Lynx) hardware they can call their own. This would end the discussion, right? And Atari will have officially earned its fuji 😀

 

(related note: is the company that makes Playdate for sale? or is willing to license their tech? That's a cool little piece of tech that looks like something Atari would make)

[carlsson]

39 minutes ago, zzip said:

I think the contents of each square can be represented in 4 bits, and there's what 32x32 squares per level?

It looks like each level is 38 x 20, at least in Boulder Dash 1 with 20 levels where each square can contain one of 9 elements?

https://www.boulder-dash.nl/down/maps/PeterLiepa/BoulderDash01.html

 

Unpacked, you would need 16K RAM to hold a level unless you utilize tricks to only unpack parts of the cave. Clearly BD must use some compression, as even packed as nybbles the caverns themselves would take up 7.5 * 20 = 150K RAM unless the game loads them from disk/tape as it goes.

 

Maybe BD2 has bigger caves or more elements, but then again most of the level hacks tend to have been based on BD1.

 

But yeah, while it was mainly meant as a joke, clearly a dedicated device today would have no trouble allocating static storage for caves, even if all data was uncompressed: 16 kilobytes per cave = 64 caves per megabyte. A storage space of 16 MB would have room for 1024 caves.

[guppy]

55 minutes ago, Nall3k said:

Of course, the problem with this metaphor is it can be applied to every company. Game companies in general buy and sell IP assets, and employees come and go. Is Sega still the same Sega from 20+ years ago? Most of their original developers have left or passed away, their hardware division is gone, and they merged with Sammy.

Of course it can be applied to every company, but I don't see that as a problem.  It's useful when discussing the history of the industry in detail.  

[zzip]

58 minutes ago, Nall3k said:

Of course, the problem with this metaphor is it can be applied to every company. Game companies in general buy and sell IP assets, and employees come and go. Is Sega still the same Sega from 20+ years ago? Most of their original developers have left or passed away, their hardware division is gone, and they merged with Sammy.

Yeah if it's about the people,   the PS4, PS5 and PS Vita were all designed by former Atari employee Mark Cerny,  does that make them true Atari products and not Sony products?   I'd say no that's ridiculous.   But on the other hand, a lot of people over the years have used that logic to claim the Amiga is really an Atari machine because of Jay Miner.

[guppy]

10 minutes ago, zzip said:

the 7800 was a Warner-era console.  It was all set to release in 84, but got delayed because of the sale, and sat in a warehouse until Jack finally agreed to pay GCC.  

I'm aware it was a product of the Warner era, but it was released under Tramiel, so... 

 

It's really beside the point, if the point is was it "real Atari" or not; to me, it was.  To someone who thinks the Warner and/or Tramiel eras weren't "real", it might not be.  I'm not here to make that point though.

 

10 minutes ago, zzip said:

But if authenticity is about the people involved, then one could argue that Lynx wasn't a true Atari product, since it was developed by Epyx and fell into Atari's lap.  Same with the 7800 developed by GCC.    The Jaguar was also developed by an outside company, but it was at least Atari commissioned it.    Personally I do consider them to be real Atari products as well as the ST (despite its Commodore origins) because I think the brand transcends the people involved.

Right, but there it's a hair-splitting matter of who did what, and if you want to dissect everything into subcontractors and partners, you can, but I don't see that it's particularly relevant to the discussion at hand; Atari held the rights and owned the console, regardless of who developed it for them or did the engineering, or the manufacturing for that matter.  To me it's not that important whether they did it all in-house.  Those might be relevant facts for other purposes, and I don't dispute any of that.

  

10 minutes ago, zzip said:

When you have a singular artist creating a notable art style, it's really hard to replace them.   But when a corporation creates a product, it's usually created by a team of faceless people.   For better or worse, corporations want people to be interchangeable like cogs.  Because if your product is dependent on a specific person, then you are in deep trouble should they quit or get hit by a bus.

Yeah, I know... it wasn't the perfect metaphor.  There's still a difference between a corporate Art shop with a faceless painting department creating paintings in a house style and selling them, going out of business, having its remaining inventory bought out by a new company that hires entirely different people, who then try to resurrect the business and resume creating new paintings based on the old paintings in one way or another.  You should be able to clearly see that the company that went out of business had an idea and developed new ideas; the new company is just trying out different ways to monetize the old ideas, not necessarily doing anything new/original/innovative.  AtariSA does seem to be doing some original new stuff (QOMP 2, Mr. Run-and-Jump) -- and I don't care too much that they may outsource that to independent studios, the point being that it's not a release of the same binaries that were compiled 40-ish years ago, by the former "real" (as it were) Atari.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

12 minutes ago, carlsson said:

It looks like each level is 38 x 20, at least in Boulder Dash 1 with 20 levels where each square can contain one of 9 elements?

https://www.boulder-dash.nl/down/maps/PeterLiepa/BoulderDash01.html

 

Unpacked, you would need 16K RAM to hold a level unless you utilize tricks to only unpack parts of the cave. Clearly BD must use some compression, as even packed as nybbles the caverns themselves would take up 7.5 * 20 = 150K RAM unless the game loads them from disk/tape as it goes.

 

Maybe BD2 has bigger caves or more elements, but then again most of the level hacks tend to have been based on BD1.

 

But yeah, while it was mainly meant as a joke, clearly a dedicated device today would have no trouble allocating static storage for caves, even if all data was uncompressed: 16 kilobytes per cave = 64 caves per megabyte. A storage space of 16 MB would have room for 1024 caves.

https://www.boulder-dash.nl/bdcff_doc.html

[JPF997]

14 minutes ago, guppy said:

Of course it can be applied to every company, but I don't see that as a problem.  It's useful when discussing the history of the industry in detail.  

Did you know that none of the people that worked at Nintendo in 1889   work there any longer , it's shocking I know, maybe we should start treating Nintendo like we treat Atari because clearly it's not the same company it was before ( at least going by the logic of insufferable Reddit nerd's ).

[zzip]

11 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Unpacked, you would need 16K RAM to hold a level unless you utilize tricks to only unpack parts of the cave. Clearly BD must use some compression, as even packed as nybbles the caverns themselves would take up 7.5 * 20 = 150K RAM unless the game loads them from disk/tape as it goes.

I'm not following your math.   38x20 is 760 squares, and if I'm right that each square could be represented in 4-bits than it's only 380 bytes of memory / disk space (without compression)

[TrogdarRobusto]

1 hour ago, Atari_Warlord said:

sarcasm on/

 

I won't consider anyone the real Atari until the headquarters are relocated to 1265 Borregas ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.

Photos from that Atari office are amazing. So much good design came out of Borregas.

[JPF997]

2 hours ago, guppy said:

My own opinion on this is just my own opinion.

 

To me, the Atari that I loved and cared about was primarily the Atari of the Warner era.  I was 5-6 years old in 1980, when the VCS was already 3 years old, and I played Atari 2600 games from 1981 on.  At some point we got a 7800, so that's of the Tramiel era.  And we put both away when Nintendo came out with the NES, when we got one for Christmas 1987.  I was aware of but didn't own or care much about the 8-bit computer line, but of course there's no denying that any of that stuff was "real Atari".  My cousin had a 5200, and I got to play it a few times.  I played many Atari coin-op games in arcades, probably from the era of Asteroids to Star Wars: The Arcade Game. You could also easily include the stuff from the early days:  Computer Space, Pong, and all the rest up through about '84-'86, for me.

 

Obviously the Lynx and the Jaguar deserve to be considered "real Atari" as well.  To me, it's really less about what was "real" and "not real" and more about "When did Atari start sucking?"  Atari always had hits and misses, but I guess the point at which Atari lost the market lead and ceased to be dominant.  But even then, they were "real" and doing some things that didn't suck.  It just wasn't enough to save the company.

 

All the other Atari stuff that I'm not passionate about, I recognize of course others are, and they're legitimate Atari fans just like I am, and have claim to be part of the community.

 

As to your points:

1) The layoffs aren't the thing that defines the "breakpoint" for me.  It's the cessation of operations, particularly new development of technology and games.  But yes, large scale layoffs can also affect the company culture, identity, and most importantly, the nature and quality of its products.  So they're not irrelevant, either.  Basically, any big, era-defining changes, can be marker points.

2) The company branding is the most visible thing, but the people do matter, whether we know about them or not.  Atari was Atari because of who Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabny, Al Alcorn, and the other early big players at the company were.  Atari became something else during the Ray Kassar years.  But Ray inadvertently proved that the people do matter, when he drove the best of them to found Activision, and Activision turned out to be a worthy company.  I didn't care about Activision because it was a brand; I cared about it because they made great games.  And they made great games because they had talented people.  The people do matter; their capabilities and work matters.

3) Sure, as generations go through their life cycle, the ship-of-theseus that is a company will change over time.  But retirements don't happen all at once; there is continuity of operation.  Corporate culture evolves but a historical thread of it is preserved over time.  When a company ceases operations, is liquidated, and some new owner decides many years later to revive the brand and begin new operations, it's a new beginning, a new chapter, a new company. 

 

If an artist named Picasso had owned a painting shop where he sold his paintings, and then went broke, and sold the shop and all the paintings to a new owner, and that new owner sold prints of Atair original paintings, and also tried to create new paintings, attempting to capture the style of Picasso in those new works, no one would call the "new Picassos" painted by the successor Picassos.  Whether they are good paintings or not is what should matter, not whether they're "true Picassos" or not.  But for some purposes it can be important to differentiate which we're talking about:  Picasso the man, Picasso the painting, Picasso the workshop, Picasso the store, and yes, Picasso's the store after Picasso went out of business, sold the store and its merchandise into receivership, it went to auction, and then a new guy came around and bought it all and decided to try to re-open and sell more art, some of which was old copies of Picasso work, and some of which was new works that tried to carry on something of the old Picasso tradition. 

 

I wasn't aware of APX, and that's really cool that it existed. 

 

I think you're right that AtariAge is positioned to be a spiritual successor to that.  And you're also right that the IP liabilities thing is really not a problem that is caused by the Atari acquisition -- it's always been there.  It's just that the acquisition has triggered the takedown that we all knew could happen at any time someday.  And I can't fault Atari for that; they're bound to follow the law. 

 

I think Albert's decision to join forces with Atari is ultimately best for the site and the community, even if it means that parts of the community will necessarily have to be shed due to IP infringement concerns, or due to people being upset about some aspect of it or other and deciding to go. 

 

It still sucks that those things will have to go, but that's a cause to call for copyleft reforms of IP law, not reasons to be angry with Atari.

So where does that leave young Atari fans like me , the Atari that I grew up with is the modern Atari SA, the Atari games I have nostalgia for are games like roller coaster tycoon 3, Superman shadow of the apokolips, Enter the Matrix, alone in the dark 2008, demolition racer, v rally, test drive, dragon ball Budokai and Tenkaichi,  Driver 3 etc. What I'm just supposed to take it in the chin and go with the narrative that modern Atari is not legitimate, I can tell you right now I have no intention of doing so, Atari SA is the real Atari for me. (also sorry I responded to the wrong person) 

[Nall3k]

3 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

So where does that leave young Atari fans like me , the Atari that I grew up with is the modern Atari SA, the Atari games I have nostalgia for are games like roller coaster tycoon 3, Superman shadow of the apokolips, Enter the Matrix, alone in the dark 2008, demolition racer, v rally, test drive, dragon ball Budokai and Tenkaichi,  Driver 3 etc. What I'm just supposed to take it in the chin and go with the narrative that modern Atari is not legitimate, I can tell you right now I have no intention of doing so, Atari SA is the real Atari for me.

The irony is Atari SA has been "Atari" longer than both Atari Inc. and Atari Corp. That's if you count when Infogrames starting using Atari brand as their publishing label in 2003.

[zzip]

5 minutes ago, guppy said:

Right, but there it's a hair-splitting matter of who did what, and if you want to dissect everything into subcontractors and partners, you can, but I don't see that it's particularly relevant to the discussion at hand; Atari held the rights and owned the console, regardless of who developed it for them or did the engineering, or the manufacturing for that matter.  To me it's not that important whether they did it all in-house.  Those might be relevant facts for other purposes, and I don't dispute any of that.

I guess ultimately it shows that to create a real Atari product, you don't have to be an original employee nor do you have to even work for Atari (not even as a contractor),  and you can create the product without Atari's knowledge.

 

So what makes an Atari product an Atari product seems to come down to the logo and the styling.    Styling is hard to quantify,  but for instance I always had trouble accepting the Atari PC2, 3 4 & 5 as real Atari products because they looked like generic 80's PCs that any clone maker could have cranked out.  On the other hand,  I can accept the new VCS as an Atari product even though it too is essentially a PC because it had a lot of effort put into styling.

 

17 minutes ago, guppy said:

Yeah, I know... it wasn't the perfect metaphor.  There's still a difference between a corporate Art shop with a faceless painting department creating paintings in a house style and selling them, going out of business, having its remaining inventory bought out by a new company that hires entirely different people, who then try to resurrect the business and resume creating new paintings based on the old paintings in one way or another.  You should be able to clearly see that the company that went out of business had an idea and developed new ideas; the new company is just trying out different ways to monetize the old ideas, not necessarily doing anything new/original/innovative.  AtariSA does seem to be doing some original new stuff (QOMP 2, Mr. Run-and-Jump) -- and I don't care too much that they may outsource that to independent studios, the point being that it's not a release of the same binaries that were compiled 40-ish years ago, by the former "real" (as it were) Atari.

Maybe a good example is Star Wars.   Ralph McQuarrie created a lot of the visual designs for the original trilogies that have become iconic.    Disney doesn't have Raplh McQuarrie, so visually the new Star Wars seems to mix and match some of his ideas, but they never seem to quite get it right.   It always looks like a knock off instead of something new, bold and iconic like Ralph would have designed. 

[carlsson]

11 minutes ago, zzip said:

38x20 is 760 squares

Correct. It turned out I multiplied by 20 caves twice, so 16K for all levels... 😳

[+GoldLeader]

1 hour ago, x=usr(1536) said:

@guppy: this isn't particularly directed at you - it's just that your response happened to raise the general point, so this seemed like a good time to mention a few things in relation to it as well as a couple I just want to get off of my chest.  This is likely to be more stream-of-consciousness than anything else as a result.

 

One distinction that seems to be missing in discussions of how AA relates to any iteration of Atari is that, from observation, most folks seem to regard it as the spiritual successor to 1996 Atari, not a continuation of the company itself.  There is no doubt in my mind that from that point up to today, the community here has been the main driving force behind keeping these systems fresh and relevant, whether that came from administering the forums, developing new software, selling Atari-related games and peripherals (including upgrades), collecting for the various platforms, or being an enthusiast who just enjoys using them.

 

Because the community has been able to be that driving force for the past 27 years, some incredible things have happened.  Look at the panoply of devices we now have to enhance our systems with: the AtariVox+, QuadTari, UAV, U1MB, FujiNet, and many, many others.  At the same time, software libraries have expanded tremendously across the board.  The 5200 and 7800 were once dead systems; now they both enjoy active development scenes.  Ditto the A8 and ST ranges.

 

Now, all of the things mentioned above are ones that don't necessarily make sense to produce from a corporate standpoint.  There is no mass market for them, but the market that does exist is both enthusiastic and appreciative.  This is why I believe that the community has a solid future: we're the people who will continue to build and do things that simply can't be done effectively in any other environment.  In this regard, the community holds the best position in terms of being able to fulfill the community's niche interests.

 

As this relates to last Thursday's announcement of Atari acquiring AtariAge: what's done is done, and the genie isn't going back into the bottle anytime soon.  Regardless of one's personal feelings regarding either entity, this is how things are going to be.  This does not mean that you should be oblivious to the potential for down-the-road changes, or that you need to like or dislike any of the parties involved.  By all means hold both parties to their word in regard to the promises they've made; they should also be held to the maxim that actions speak louder than words.  But it's absolutely not a reason to decide that the community is somehow permanently and irretrievably tainted or altered.  That hasn't happened, at least not in the last five days, and would take a lot longer to accomplish than that.

 

There's no glossing over the fact that trust is going to have to be rebuilt between the community and Atari.  There's also no glossing over the fact that that trust was minimal to begin with.  Building that trust, however, is a two-way street and both sides need to work at it - what desire or incentive would anyone have to trust someone who doesn't trust them, or considers them to be the enemy?  There's a lot of historical baggage to overcome, and this applies on both sides of the fence.  By no means am I suggesting that any past events which have shaped negative opinion or eroded trust be forgotten or swept under the carpet, but rather that those events should not be the guiding memory behind every interaction.  TL;DR: don't assume bad faith.  By all means hold someone accountable if they fail to keep or act on their word, but not assuming that this will be the default when interacting with them should be the default.

 

A meeting of the minds regarding culture both within the community and within Atari needs to happen.  This doesn't mean that anyone has to change theirs, but rather that both learn how to not do something inadvertently-appalling to the other at the dinner table. We're the high-strung prima donnas; the company consists of faceless suits who don't know the slightest thing about how the sausage is made, let alone appreciate the sausage for its tastiness but they'll certainly stick a price tag on it.  If this is inducing a sense of déjà vu, that's because it should.  It's nothing new, and to one degree or another both sides have engaged in it at various times.

 

And, just to make my own position clear: I have no opinion or expectations one way or the other regarding Atari's acquisition of AtariAge.  It's not something in which I have any sort of business- or administration-related role, so cannot see a point in becoming emotionally-invested in it.  What I do have opinions on, however, are the survival of this community and its continued growth.  Those are very much important to me, and are not things that should be allowed to decline or disappear regardless of internal or external changes or pressures.  For the long run, I will do what I can to prevent that from happening through my participation here, and hope that others will do the same.

 

Darn it you!

 

I think I agree with everything here.  I was trying to go all day without thinking and you ruined it!

 

_______________________________________________

 

To me what's important and maybe it's just a tangential footnote to others is how a company interacts with their fans.  Maybe for the sake of argument, replace "fans" with "community" if need be.

 

(And for the record,  I'm not saying a company should not protect its IP)

 

***OK Off the cuff ramblings***

 

PONG-Jaguar Atari (some say "Real AtarI", but that definition keeps changing so...) never to my knowledge went after its fans...

 

SEGA Never went after its fans.

 

Nintendo always protected IP,  even if it was perceived as going after its fans,  for better or worse...

 

SONY sometimes acted like SEGA,  sometimes acted like Nintendo.  (Usually benevolent,  but not always).

 

NuColeco went after its fans for sport I think and reveled in just being dicks.

 

I.E. was modeled after NuColeco but did them one better.

 

 

Different industry, but worth noting and one I personally admire would be Lucas-Era Star Wars.  Lucas nor 20th Century FOX went after fans,  but rather embraced them (as long as they weren't selling inferior bootleg products or pretending to be the real Lucas...) and by doing so they built up a huge fan base that exists to this day.

 

 

(That's all for now,  read between the lines if you want...Please realize I'd rather this version of Atari model themselves after SEGA, not their "just previous" version)...