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Sort of...with the Mindlink controller. They were supposed to come out with biofeedback software for this device but the project was canceled. Ah, those were the days...

You can thank Nintendo for that one. A company called Tengen tried to make a game (Tetris I believe) using a cloned unlicensed cartridge. The result? Nintendo sued, and won. As a matter of fact, the Tengen Tetris is a collector's item. Sega won't pursue that with the DC.

The Tengen Tetris case you're referring to was not about Tengen publishing unlicensed titles, but about who had the rights to publish Tetris. It was a big convoluted mess, in part because the Tetris creator (Sergei Kosmansomethingorother) kinda screwed up and gave rights to several people without nailing down just exactly what they can do (A can publish in Japan on PC, but not on any other platform, B can publish on anything in Europe, but not Japan and America, etc). Tengen's Tetris (aside from having a really cool two-player mode, making it more fun than Nintendo's version) is a collector because it turns out Tengen/Atari didn't have the rights to publish Tetris.

However, there was another case, Atari v. Nintendo, where Atari (Tengen) lost because they copied large portions of Nintendo's protection code without license. On the flip side, Accolade won the Sega v. Accolade case because Accolade properly reverse engineered Sega's protection code. So, the moral of the story is that if you do things correctly, you can publish your own games just fine. But screw up even slightly and you're screwed. There were lots of unlicensed developers making games and peripherals for the NES, and only Tengen/Atari got smacked down hard by Nintendo.

Back in the late 80s, there was a wonderful licensing battle for IP in the form of Tetris. The story is a long read but it's a good example.

SoftwareToGo reminds me of the Nintendo Disk Writer systems or the "Game Kiosk" idea for the SNES and GameBoy. (If only in terms of overall concept. I also seem to have this misconception that I was able to reuse old cartridges in the DiskWriter system . . . )

I thought it was a good idea then, and I still think it's a good idea now. Now if we can only get movies and music this way :-)

What a lot of people don't remember however was that they came out with a bizarre press release wherein they announced all the stuff they'd done, how successful it had been (*snicker*) and, most amazingly, their plans for the Action Game Master, which would be a portable handheld system (and a gigantic one at that) that would play - get this - NES, SNES, Genesis and "CDROM" games, plus have a TV Tuner adapter card. Of course it never existed in any form other than a 3D Studio render (and a poor one at that). Does any of this sound familiar?

So what we really need to know is this - who is this Infitium (sp?) company? Are they really a legit company or two guys in a basement? Really they sound like Indrema but with less credibility (and remember, Indrema didn't have too much credibility).

What a lot of people don't remember however was that they came out with a bizarre press release wherein they announced all the stuff they'd done, how successful it had been (*snicker*) and, most amazingly, their plans for the Action Game Master, which would be a portable handheld system (and a gigantic one at that) that would play - get this - NES, SNES, Genesis and "CDROM" games, plus have a TV Tuner adapter card. Of course it never existed in any form other than a 3D Studio render (and a poor one at that). Does any of this sound familiar?

So what we really need to know is this - who is this Infitium (sp?) company? Are they really a legit company or two guys in a basement? Really they sound like Indrema but with less credibility (and remember, Indrema didn't have too much credibility).

What a lot of people don't remember however was that they came out with a bizarre press release wherein they announced all the stuff they'd done, how successful it had been (*snicker*) and, most amazingly, their plans for the Action Game Master, which would be a portable handheld system (and a gigantic one at that) that would play - get this - NES, SNES, Genesis and "CDROM" games, plus have a TV Tuner adapter card. Of course it never existed in any form other than a 3D Studio render (and a poor one at that). Does any of this sound familiar?

So what we really need to know is this - who is this Infitium (sp?) company? Are they really a legit company or two guys in a basement? Really they sound like Indrema but with less credibility (and remember, Indrema didn't have too much credibility).

What a lot of people don't remember however was that they came out with a bizarre press release wherein they announced all the stuff they'd done, how successful it had been (*snicker*) and, most amazingly, their plans for the Action Game Master, which would be a portable handheld system (and a gigantic one at that) that would play - get this - NES, SNES, Genesis and "CDROM" games, plus have a TV Tuner adapter card. Of course it never existed in any form other than a 3D Studio render (and a poor one at that). Does any of this sound familiar?

So what we really need to know is this - who is this Infitium (sp?) company? Are they really a legit company or two guys in a basement? Really they sound like Indrema but with less credibility (and remember, Indrema didn't have too much credibility).

Perhaps its like those Asian pirate carts you can get a million games but they're all randomly generated hacks of Contra.

and nearly any game produced in 5 weeks certainly qualify no matter how young the industry is.

Good games can be written in five weeks, even today. The key is to concentrate on gameplay, and keep it simple.

I've seen the ROM. Unfortunatly, the actual cart had a set of dip switches on it (here's a better pic, too) which were used for setting the time limit on the game.

If you're interested perhaps you might find it online somewhere. Though don't ask me where. ( :

If you do find it, be sure to read the documentation in the zip file explaining the dip switch hack. You'll need a good emulator too. NESticle, while good in it's day, won't cut it with this.

I'm surprised this article doesn't mention Tengen's Tetris.

This game represents the legal battles Nintendo fought with Atari, and it's better than Nintendo's version. "Game Over" by David Scheff explains it in depth, but basically, Atari thought they got the rights to make Tetris for the NES, but Nintendo actually got it, so although Atari's version (published under the Tengen label) was superior (various two player modes, better difficulty curve), Nintendo's version was legal. Before the court decision, Atari managed to sell about 100,000 copies. Afterwards, they had to recall the other several hundred thousand and destroy them.

About the same time, Nintendo and Atari were also fighting over the legality of the NES's "lockout chip", which let Nintendo create artificial regions, fee and censor 3rd parties. Atari stole Nintendo's "10NES" (lockout chip) patent from the patent office and made their own unlicensed NES games that circumvented it. Nintendo sued and I believe won, not because Atari was making unlicensed games but because they stole a patent to do it. Other companies, such as Camerica and Color Dreams made games with reverse engineered lockout disablers.

I'm surprised this article doesn't mention Tengen's Tetris.

This game represents the legal battles Nintendo fought with Atari, and it's better than Nintendo's version. "Game Over" by David Scheff explains it in depth, but basically, Atari thought they got the rights to make Tetris for the NES, but Nintendo actually got it, so although Atari's version (published under the Tengen label) was superior (various two player modes, better difficulty curve), Nintendo's version was legal. Before the court decision, Atari managed to sell about 100,000 copies. Afterwards, they had to recall the other several hundred thousand and destroy them.

About the same time, Nintendo and Atari were also fighting over the legality of the NES's "lockout chip", which let Nintendo create artificial regions, fee and censor 3rd parties. Atari stole Nintendo's "10NES" (lockout chip) patent from the patent office and made their own unlicensed NES games that circumvented it. Nintendo sued and I believe won, not because Atari was making unlicensed games but because they stole a patent to do it. Other companies, such as Camerica and Color Dreams made games with reverse engineered lockout disablers.

There was this company called Active Enterprises. It basically amounted to a guy in his garage making games. They had a cart called Action 52 for the NES which had 52 games on it. Of course to call these things "games" was a stretch - most were like quick coding excercises. The idea was that they would make up for in quantity what they lacked in quantity. At an asking price of $199.99 its unclear if his target audience was Blockbuster (which is used to getting hosed with rental pricing) or parents who figured that 52 games at the price of four was a deal.

One of the games on Action 52 was The Cheetahmen. Apparently Active Enterprises also wrote a game called Cheetahmen II . I say apparently because Active never released it. It appears that what happened was Active ordered 1,000 copies of Cheetahmen II and then couldn't pay the manufacturer for the carts, so after a year or two the manufacturer just sold them to people (which is legal).

So, Cheetahmen II is probably one of the rarest cartridges ever made.

There was this company called Active Enterprises. It basically amounted to a guy in his garage making games. They had a cart called Action 52 for the NES which had 52 games on it. Of course to call these things "games" was a stretch - most were like quick coding excercises. The idea was that they would make up for in quantity what they lacked in quantity. At an asking price of $199.99 its unclear if his target audience was Blockbuster (which is used to getting hosed with rental pricing) or parents who figured that 52 games at the price of four was a deal.

One of the games on Action 52 was The Cheetahmen. Apparently Active Enterprises also wrote a game called Cheetahmen II . I say apparently because Active never released it. It appears that what happened was Active ordered 1,000 copies of Cheetahmen II and then couldn't pay the manufacturer for the carts, so after a year or two the manufacturer just sold them to people (which is legal).

So, Cheetahmen II is probably one of the rarest cartridges ever made.

There was this company called Active Enterprises. It basically amounted to a guy in his garage making games. They had a cart called Action 52 for the NES which had 52 games on it. Of course to call these things "games" was a stretch - most were like quick coding excercises. The idea was that they would make up for in quantity what they lacked in quantity. At an asking price of $199.99 its unclear if his target audience was Blockbuster (which is used to getting hosed with rental pricing) or parents who figured that 52 games at the price of four was a deal.

One of the games on Action 52 was The Cheetahmen. Apparently Active Enterprises also wrote a game called Cheetahmen II . I say apparently because Active never released it. It appears that what happened was Active ordered 1,000 copies of Cheetahmen II and then couldn't pay the manufacturer for the carts, so after a year or two the manufacturer just sold them to people (which is legal).

So, Cheetahmen II is probably one of the rarest cartridges ever made.

...but in a slightly different form. Back when the Famicom Disk System was popular in Japan (basically an NES with a disk drive) there used to be machines where you would pop in a disk, pay a fee, and it would write, and out comes Zelda II or whatever your heart desires. Only thing is, it was pretty hard to copy these games in comparison to the CD-Rs that are used today.

After a little additional research, I found a link from tsr's NES archive (a completely awesome site) that has a brief blurb about the state of piracy in brazil. It seems like Sega actually granted them some leway to do game hacks:
http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/nes/brazil/brazil.html

After a little additional research, I found a link from tsr's NES archive (a completely awesome site) that has a brief blurb about the state of piracy in brazil. It seems like Sega actually granted them some leway to do game hacks:
http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/nes/brazil/brazil.html

> > Actually, it was made from "The Castle of Cagliostro"
> Right. That's what I meant. What was that game called?

The game was Cliff Hanger (The guy in the game was referred to as "Cliff"). The great thing about it compared to Dragon's Lair was that you had a "hand action" button and a "foot action" button, and that whenever you died, some text appeared at the bottom that said "You should have gone left" or "You should have pressed hand". It was much longer than DL and you didn't have to spend so much money on it to finish.

I only ever saw it at one arcade, which incidentally had another laserdisk game I never saw anywhere else Star Rider- a racing game with sprite racecars superimposed over laserdisk background. It was ingenious - the laserdisk simply played at a rate according to the speed of your racer, and the tracks you raced on were surreal and impressive. They had names like Crystalopolis & Cubitania.

-BbT

> > Actually, it was made from "The Castle of Cagliostro"
> Right. That's what I meant. What was that game called?

The game was Cliff Hanger (The guy in the game was referred to as "Cliff"). The great thing about it compared to Dragon's Lair was that you had a "hand action" button and a "foot action" button, and that whenever you died, some text appeared at the bottom that said "You should have gone left" or "You should have pressed hand". It was much longer than DL and you didn't have to spend so much money on it to finish.

I only ever saw it at one arcade, which incidentally had another laserdisk game I never saw anywhere else Star Rider- a racing game with sprite racecars superimposed over laserdisk background. It was ingenious - the laserdisk simply played at a rate according to the speed of your racer, and the tracks you raced on were surreal and impressive. They had names like Crystalopolis & Cubitania.

-BbT

(And yes, I work in the game industry so I know these things. At Activision, the difference between Battlezone running in software at 30 fps versus Battlezone running with hardware acceleration at 60+ fps was astonishing.)

Eureka!

I have found The Zelda commercial in question. And I must say, it's much, much, much worse than I remember! Sorry, Windows Media Format only.

Also some other sites talking about the commercial.

This reminds me of an episode of Dallas in which one could see the Barnes playing "Yar's Revenge" on an Atari VCS system... wasn't this some kind of advertising ?

Yea, nostalgia is great isn't it? We all remember our first video game, our first great job, and of course, the first time we saw this.

I heard about this news on Jaguar Interactive several days ago, and I am truly saddened by this.

I already have the video games on this "new Atari system" on my original 2600 system! Why would I want to buy a "new Atari" video gaming system when I can just get the games from my bookcase and dust off my original 2600?

Infogrames are not doing anything to actively resurrect the Atari name as they constantly say that they are doing. Let's see what they have released so far...

-Atari Water Bottles during (I think...) the 2001 E3 show.
-Atari Anniversary Edition on Dreamcast and PC (released on Atari's 29th Anniversary?)
-Three or four Infogrames titles for XBox with the Atari Logo slapped all over it
-This little Atari 2600 thing

To whom is Infogrames trying to sell Atari products to? Classic gaming fans can get these games on Emulators or play them on their own 2600s. New gamers would not pay money to play 20 year old games on their TV sets. Infogrames is basically doing this to call attention to itself as the current owner of Atari- and they want to make a quick buck off the games that started it all. It drives me to the point of nausea to see Atari being whored around like this. :(

Infogrames is not Atari and will never be Atari. THey should just sell the Atari rights and properties to a company that can actually do something constructive with the name- not just trot out 30 year old remakes.

But that's just my opinion.

But hey, you have my personal permission (not that it has any legal standing) to play all the Wall Ball you want.

Try here -- it's a good starting point. There are schematics as well as links to other helpful pages.

No, Linux versions of games from commercial developers will be nearly exclusively x86. Non-x86 Linux is too small a niche, niche of a niche actually, to consider.

Non-x86 Linux may be, but if you have a good SDK, and the SDK is ported to the major PDA operating systems (Palm OS and Pocket PC), you can recompile for free.

PDAs will also lack the horsepower/memory/etc for nearly all commercial games.

Commercial games != commercial first-person shooters. Not all commercial games are 3D. Tetris, in particular, continues to sell well, even though it's been cloned on a 1.2 MHz machine with 128 bytes of RAM. If 16.8 MHz and 384 KB of RAM is powerful enough for the Game Boy Advance, then games should have no problem running on PDAs. (Or by "memory" do you mean "storage"?)

• Duck Hunt is only fun for shooting at the person next to you. What's fun is if you've got a particularly wanky gun, you can set a high score this way.

• Zelda 2 wasn't a bad game. Underrated, really. It just... wasn't Zelda. Kinda like how SMB2 wasn't Mario. And New Coke wasn't Coke. And South Park with Butters...
• FFIII (VI for elitists), well, hell it was a 16-bit benchmark. End of discussion.

Are you sure you didn't get ripped off? I think you got burned by someone who relabeled Barnstorming as Airwolf.

And you're gravely mistaken with your quote about Zelda. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was a decent game, but it was *not* Link's Awakening, as you said. Many, many people will argue that Link's Awakening was one of the best, if not the best in the series (I would disagree personally).

And as some people have mentioned in other posts, it's General Leo that everyone wants to be able to revive, not Cid.

As the article says, the controllers are NOT USB, which is a really bad thing.
I wonder how long would it take for fellow electrical geeks to hack up an XBOX2USB adapter...
But to the point, I find the standard controller to be not big at all, if you forget how ugly it is (I know, I have BIG hands =) )
The Thrustmaster, OTOH, is maybe a little bit small, but it's ergonomically (and aesthetically) much nicer!

I think I'll have to wait for the ultimate controller to be released (the Coleco dual controllers ([pic here] ruled, you could put your hand INTO the controller and use all your fingers and your palms too... but those were the days).

I would probably say that the Atari 2600 "Adventure Dot" was one of the first documented eggs. It was created by Warren Robinett. I think that eggs and cheat codes are for the hacker types who like to understand and take apart what they are working with. What fun would it be finding codes if they "just tell you what they are?" That is why you buy a game in the first place. Eggs and codes can show up in the most interesting places, the fun is finding them.

This is definatly something unique in the Console gaming market.

some kind of direct neural interface

Yes, Apple needs to revive this project

This reminds me of the Broderbund's U-Force controller.

This has been done for quite awhile. The ROM's have been poked, prodded, and mapped and you can "make" an actual cartridge, but it's a bit difficult to do. Here is some info regarding Classic nes.

Are these cartridges compatible with PAL Atari consoles?

Sure !! Only colors will vary ... according to the ANCIEN ATARI PAL*DIVISON ...
or go directly to The PAL vs NTSC FAQ
Well, they also say that your TV-set could cause trouble.
I'm afraid you have to try - I will !!

Are these cartridges compatible with PAL Atari consoles?

Sure !! Only colors will vary ... according to the ANCIEN ATARI PAL*DIVISON ...
or go directly to The PAL vs NTSC FAQ
Well, they also say that your TV-set could cause trouble.
I'm afraid you have to try - I will !!

Hrm... It doesn't sound like Adventure. If there is a game like this, I've never seen it. However, it almost sounds like you're getting Adventure and Swordquest confused...

In Adventure, you were a dot. There were three dragons, and a bad. Objects included keys, a sword, a bridge, a magnet, and the holy grai... err... the enchanted chalice.

The Swordquest series (the ones I played) didn't have enemies. You were a little man. There were many rooms with "traps," and lots of odd things to collect.

Also, for those who care, here's a wal-thru to get the easter egg in Adventure. :)

Can someone please make some new games for my Atari 2600, too? ;)

Yes, they can. Development software is here.

Alternatively, type "Atari 2600 VCS Development" into Google. Ah, bless that Web!

According to this Wired article: "Tetris significantly raises cerebral glucose metabolic rates (GMRs), meaning brain energy consumption soars. Yet, after four to eight weeks of daily doses, GMRs sink to normal, while performance increases seven-fold, on average."

Not only that, it's been ported darn near everywhere, for example the Atari 2600!

http://www.atarihq.com/coinop s/l aser/timetrav.html

-------------
The following sentence is true.

What's funny is that sega had a video game that did this about 8 years ago. I played it at disney land. Very cheesy game, but same basic tech. Can't remember the name....
Google to the rescue - it was called Hologram Time Traveler.

Here's a related link

The 6507 is in fact a 6502 that can only address 4KB of memory. The 6510 is a 6502 with an extra 8-bit I/O register.

My source: http://www.atarihq.com/danb/6502page.htm

Yeah... 6502, 6503; whatever it takes...

steveha

Considering how Hasbro has been stingy with their circumstantial intellectual property not to mention unhelpful to hobbyist programmers, I'd say they aren't the real "Stella" either!

Rumors of Alexey Pajitnov's death have been greatly over-stated.
(It wasn't him, it was a business associate.)

Pushed past the brink: Business pressures led Palo Alto exec to kill wife, son and self

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ex aminer/archive/1998/09/24/NEWS7742.dtl

WHILE HE WRESTLED with the financial difficulties of his San Francisco-based software company, Vladimir Pokhilko watched from the sidelines as business associates and friends readied the lucrative relaunch of Tetris, the world's most popular video game.

Apparently pushed to the edge, Pokhilko - president of AnimaTek, a San Francisco-based software design company - brutally murdered his 39-year-old wife, Elena Fedotova, and their 12-year-old son, Peter Pokhilko, before killing himself, police said Wednesday.

A business associate said Pokhilko had been wrestling with company problems brought on, in part, by the economic upheaval in Russia, where 70 of AnimaTek's 82 employees work.

Adding to those pressures, said Henk Rogers, who helped found AnimaTek in 1988, was a push to get more financing to create software that would yield "Hollywood-type" computer effects.

"We were in the middle of raising money," said Rogers. "It was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that we couldn't see past the end of."

But sometime Monday night, in the family's home on the 400 block of Ferne Avenue in southern Palo Alto, Pokhilko killed his family and then himself, police believe. Pokhilko hit Fedotova, a popular yoga instructor, and Peter, a seventh-grader, with a hammer, and repeatedly stabbed them with a hunting knife, apparently as they lay sleeping.

Then he stabbed himself once in the throat with the knife, police said.

"It's unfathomable that someone would do this to themselves and a child," said Palo Alto police spokeswoman Tami Gage.

A close family friend called police at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, after he arrived at the family home, having failed in repeated attempts to reach the family by phone.

The pajama-clad bodies of Fedotova and Peter were found in their beds by police. There was no sign of a struggle, indicating they may have been sleeping when they were attacked.

Pokhilko's body was found in Peter's room, with the hunting knife in his hand, police said.

Along with the knife, police recovered the hammer believed to have been used in the attacks, and they found a note. Investigators would not release its contents.

"Not a suicide note'

"It is not a suicide note," Gage said. "We don't even know who wrote the note or how significant it might be."

Wednesday, the community was reeling from the horrific incident.

Flags at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, where Peter was a student, flew at half-staff. And during the day, about 40 of his classmates placed a makeshift memorial of poster board in front of the family house. The poster board carried messages such as "In loving memory of Peter" and was covered with signatures of classmates and teachers.

Meanwhile, more was learned about Pokhilko, 43, whose firm, AnimaTek, emerged from a partnership formed in Moscow more than a decade ago with Rogers and Russian computer scientist Alexey Pajitnov, who invented the video game Tetris in 1985.

Pajitnov based Tetris, which entails lining up stacks of blocks as they drop to the bottom of a computer screen, on an ancient Roman puzzle called Pentamino.

Pokhilko, a Russian clinical psychologist and a longtime friend of Pajitnov's, had been experimenting with using puzzles as psychological tests when Pajitnov first showed him his invention, said Rogers.

Mass appeal of puzzle

Pokhilko immediately saw the mass appeal of the puzzle and convinced Pajitnov it would make a great computer game. But in 1986, before the game was published, Soviet authorities demanded that Pajitnov sign over all rights to the game.

Later, Pokhilko and Pajitnov teamed to create other digital diversions, including El-Fish, a virtual aquarium.

In a 1996 Examiner interview, Pajitnov said he had acquiesced to the Soviet demand to sign over the rights of Tetris because he feared reprisals.

"I would have been in prison for sure had I gone directly to Nintendo," Pajitnov said. "I would have had to be a dissident and possibly be cheated for everything anyway. So it wasn't worth it."

During the 10 years the Soviet government brokered deals with Nintendo, Atari and other video-game makers, Pajitnov lost an estimated $40million in royalties.

One of those who brokered the largest license agreement was Rogers, whose Japan-based Bullet Proof Software locked in the rights to sell Tetris to its largest market, the hand-held gaming-device industry.

"That was the biggest market for Tetris," Rogers said. "That's what made the game huge."

Rights revert to inventor

In 1996, the Soviet restrictions expired and Tetris rights reverted to inventor Pajitnov, who, at Roger's urging, had immigrated to the United States five years earlier with Pokhilko.

Rogers had helped the pair open AnimaTek International Inc., a software development company creating computer-generated terrains and characters for the gaming industry. Pokhilko became president of the company. Rogers was the chairman and largest stockholder.

But two years ago, when the Soviet rights to Tetris expired, Rogers said, he formed the Tetris Co., which bought the rights to the game from Pajitnov, leaving Pokhilko out of the loop.

Rogers also launched Blue Planet Software, which he said was to publish the next-generation Tetris computer games, including versions that would allow players to conduct Tetris matches over the Internet.

The new version is expected to be a big hit.

"There's a lot of anticipation around (the new Tetris)," said Cindy Blair, publisher of the San Francisco-based Game Developer magazine. "It's huge. It's one of the biggest games, ever."


Btw, you can download the original tetris.exe.

For more some background read The Tetris saga.

//// Hasbro Frees Jaguar! Beverly, MA (May 14,1999) - Leading entertainment software publisher Hasbro Interactive announced today it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar.

Hasbro Interactive acquired rights to many Atari properties, including the legendary Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong games, in a March 1998 acquisition from JTS Corporation.

This announcement will allow software developers to create and publish software for the Jaguar system without having to obtain a licensing agreement with Hasbro Interactive for such platform development. Hasbro Interactive cautioned, however, that the developers should not use the Atari trademark or logo in connection with their games or present the games as authorized or approved by Hasbro Interactive.

"Hasbro Interactive is strictly focused on developing and publishing entertainment software for the PC and the next generation game consoles," said Richard Cleveland, Head of Marketing for Hasbro Interactive's Atari Business Unit. "We realize there is a passionate audience of diehard Atari fans who want to keep the Jaguar system alive, and we don't want to prevent them from doing that. We will not interfere with the efforts of software developers to create software for the Jaguar system."

//// Hasbro Frees Jaguar! Beverly, MA (May 14,1999) - Leading entertainment software publisher Hasbro Interactive announced today it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar.

Hasbro Interactive acquired rights to many Atari properties, including the legendary Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong games, in a March 1998 acquisition from JTS Corporation.

This announcement will allow software developers to create and publish software for the Jaguar system without having to obtain a licensing agreement with Hasbro Interactive for such platform development. Hasbro Interactive cautioned, however, that the developers should not use the Atari trademark or logo in connection with their games or present the games as authorized or approved by Hasbro Interactive.

"Hasbro Interactive is strictly focused on developing and publishing entertainment software for the PC and the next generation game consoles," said Richard Cleveland, Head of Marketing for Hasbro Interactive's Atari Business Unit. "We realize there is a passionate audience of diehard Atari fans who want to keep the Jaguar system alive, and we don't want to prevent them from doing that. We will not interfere with the efforts of software developers to create software for the Jaguar system."

guru meditation n.

Amiga equivalent of `panic' in Unix (sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the system crashes, a cryptic message of the form "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Sometimes a guru event must be followed by a Vulcan nerve pinch.

This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the Amiga. An earlier product of the Amiga corporation was a device called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto a joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine. It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep the board in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed fairly early on (but there's a well-known patch to restore it in more recent versions).

To me guru meditation always looked like blinking BSOD (a.k.a black screen of death :)

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