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A pimple? The DPRK is the culmination of the works of the great generalissimos, whose legacy is continued by the great commander and military strategist Kim Jong-un. Although he has never openly participated in any kind of military action, his performance in our most advanced military simulation exercises obviously has Obama shaken.

http://www.atarihq.com/reviews/2600/combat.html

While we work for peace, the brigandish United States and her cronies viciously hurl themselves headlong in to a worker fashioned cauldron of glorious nuclear justice, like stray cats in to a righteous furnace of repudiation.*

* This Is What North Koreans Actually Believe

Don't you mean the people who bought the name/rights after the real Atari quietly disbanded and had its "brains" scatted among silicon valley, to be absorbed into the gray corporate goo? ( http://www.atarihq.com/othersec/dthomas/100496.html )

This is just another investment firm trying to profit off the past of others. Just say no.

Ya, i'm still resentful, even after all these years.

If I recall, early on when Tetris was licensed for use in the USA. Tengen (an Atari company), Spectrum Holobyte and others all claimed Tetris as their IP and all made commercial versions of it. There was an arcade version, a Nintendo Entertainment System version, then a Gameboy version that Nintendo released. They all fought over who had the rights to Tetris. Here is a history of Tetris and as you can see many people and companies made versions of it, but please note that each version was a closed commercial license not an open source license.

Seriously, WTF?

Done!.

Disclaimer: Doesn't actually come with a thought-controlled interface, but what did you expect from 1982's technology?

They must have hired ex-atari engineers to get his higly advanced 1970's tech

http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/mindlink.html

What is really ironic is the controller shown for this post is the first system to have such as device.

The atari 2600 had it way back when...see link below.

http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/mindlink.html

It was eventually broken though - when someone found an ex-Atari hard drive with the encryption keys and tools on it...

More details here: http://www.cgexpo.com/encrypt/atari7800.htm
Source code here: http://www.atarihq.com/danb/a7800.shtml#encryption
And details on the Lynx and Jaguar crypto too (which IIRC was plain RSA and a proprietary message-digest algorithm) here: http://www.cgexpo.com/encrypt/

And finally, what on earth is "1990 Nintendo World Championships"?

I for one would rather have:

this -> http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/graduate.html
GSG

Readers also voted in the game they are most looking forward to...

1. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
2. Final Fantasy XIII
3. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
4. Super Smash Bros. X
5. Dragon Quest Sword
6. Super Mario Galaxy
7. Final Fantasy III
8. Monster Hunter 3
9. Biohazard (Wii)
10. Halo 3

19. Play reports of Zelda on Wii

http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/mindlink.html

I seem to recall (someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I trust) the same issue with the Atari 5200 way back in the day. When it was released, it was quite a powerful console -- but the games available for it were marginal.

I'm not a big gamer, but I think the "form over function" model will usually fail. A (re)playable library of games will support a system with weaker specs over a high-powered system with weak games.

Maybe I'm the only one who owned a U-Force for the NES but I can honestly say that it took the cake for bad controllers. It looked like a laptop and supposedly read your hand movements. Except that it never worked properly, was expensive, made games impossible to play, and was so horrible that passing level 1 of Super Mario Bros. or even knocking out Glass Joe was laughable at best.

Thank Jeebus I was able to return it back in the day. The commercial for it was quite possibly the biggest example of outright fraud ever. The kid in the commercial is "playing" the cinematic from Top Gun!?! What a load of crap. Here's a site with some pics: http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/ad/2/uforce.html

That magazine used to be top-notch, partially because Nintendo basically was the console-game industry. More than that, though, it used to not be the propaganda machine it is today, as the blurb points out. I dunno exactly what the state of the book is now, but I stopped reading around the time they hyped up the execrable Donkey Kong Country because it had awesome graphics (and, of course, because it was a Nintendo first-party). Before that, NP really was as honest as it could be about the quality of the games, and it also had a lot of other great stuff like Counselor's Corner and the big maps for selected games. There were also a lot of great feature articles. I remember one in particular about interesting games that didn't make it to America; one of them was Mother, before Earthbound made that franchise popular over here.

For the record, I was also one of those people that got a subscription as a Christmas (or maybe birthday?) gift because it came with Dragon Warrior, though I'd been reading the mag occasionally when I could beg my mom to buy it off of the newsstand. I'd read it religiously from that point up to the time I mentioned up there, which I think covered at least 40 issues or so, and I didn't completely give up on it and allow my subscription to lapse until the end of 1996. It's one of only two video-game magazines I miss, the other being VideoGames & Computer Entertainment.

Rob

I can purchase another part of my childhood.

Now all that's missing is Video Power and Captain N.

Do not forget there was the Atari 5200 Supersystem (and the 7800 later on). The 5200 was basically an Atari 800 system, with some decent graphics ability, inside a big slab of shiny black acrylic!

(Awful game controllers though...)

Interesting comparison of Colecovision and Atari 5200.

The Power Glove actually did have 3D position tracking (and roll too IIRC) when used in its raw data mode, but there was only a single game that used it. This game, Super Glove Ball, was closer to a fancy tech demo than a full-fledged game. So even the potential that the Power Glove had was barely exploited at all. I'm sure they'll do a better job with the Revolution; at least, I hope so. Incidentally, the Power Glove did gain some popularity in homebrew VR applications due to its low price (compared to about $10,000 for professional VR data gloves at the time).

Actually, SEGA had a game called Time Traveler that used holographic technology. It used a parabolic mirror to display images in mid-air; unfortunately the games sucked.

I do wonder how much R&D went into Tetris. :-)

There are dozens of these kinds of sites, maybe of them hosted by Classic Gaming. I've seen several for Zelda, a few for Mario, one for Blaster Master, one for Shmups in general, one for the Guardian Legend, etc, etc.

Still my favorite, although it's been officially dead for five years now, is |tsr's NES Archive. Oh |tsr, where have you gone?

Interestingly, the ill-fated Atari Jaguar CD addon actually had this feature built into its hardware. It basically projected a fancy looking light show from the drive while audio CDs were playing.
Obviously wasn't appealing enough that people actually decided to buy it though.


Actually, many people HAVE bought it, just for this feature. But back in the day? Consider that to use the JagCD, you had to already own the Jaguar. And if you didn't own one, you were talking about a $250 investment in hardware ($100 for Jag, $150 for Jag CD) just to see pretty pictures on your TV while listening to music. These days, a Jag + JagCD would probably still set you back $75 to $100, still a lot of money for a gimmick (albeit a very cool one).

BTW, I'm surprised nobody has brought up the ORIGINAL light synth, the Atari Video Music.

Did anybody ever have a look at the old Atari patents (which already expired a while ago.)

That should cover quite enough i would say..
http://www.atarihq.com/othersec/patents.html

I just wonder, does an expired patent which overlaps a new patent application override the latter?

Wisdom Tree

where do you think Sims (SimCity) and Tetris came from?

SimCity? First released in 1987 on Commodore 64 (first demo in 1985!). Re-released in 1989 simultaneously on PC and Mac. Also released in 1989 for Amiga, Spectrum/Timex-Sinclair, Amstrad, and Atari ST.

Tetris? First implemented on Electronica 60 (PDP-11 clone!) in 1985. Ported to IBM PC during 1986 and circulated. Ported to Apple II and Commodore 64 in 1986. Spectrum Holobyte commercial re-release on IBM PC in 1986.

The story is indeed a fake, that was so short lived that no one even seem to have a mirror of the original page around.

Yet it got published on slashdot, apparently deemed worthy of it based only on a weblog entry by some random guy, and a few guy backing his assertions.
Even with a defective bullshit detector, the absence of any picture attempting to proving that it indeed worked should have been enough to warrant at least a little wait for some kind of proof before slashdotting this.

Now for a mandatory tetris history nitpick:
The gameboy tetris wasn't the "original" one by any stretch of the imagination, as can be verified there.

I remember playing it on amiga quite some time before everyone started raving about the gameboy version.

The only Star Force I'll tolerate on games is this one.

Look ma, no hands! With Atari's new Mindlink controller, your hands are free to eat, knit, file your nails or whatever, while you play computer games. The infrared sensors wrap around your forehead with Velcro straps and plug into the MindLink transmitter, which plugs into the Atari Computer, VCS or 7800 game system. It doesn't really read your mind, but it does detect muscle impulses when you move your eyebrows. The $100 device was to play games like Breakout, and Atari claimed that software would be available on ESP, thought games, memory and biofeedback.

Where is the Hall of Shame at? So I can nominate Nintendo's ROB (Robotic Operated Buddy). :)

Photo of Rob, innocent at play

Josh

Copied from AtariHQ.com:

In brief, Atari was split-up in 1984 following the market crash. Time Warner kept the company's coin-op (arcade) division while selling off its home console and computer divisions to Jack Tramiel (former head of Commodore). Time Warner-owned Atari became Atari Games Corp. while the Tramiel-owned Atari became Atari Corp. Atari Games was sold to arcade giant Williams/Midway the early 90's, while Atari Corp. failed with its Jaguar and Lynx machines and merged in 1996 with JTS, a hard disk manufacturer. Finally, Hasbro came along in 1998 and purchased Atari Corp. for a mere $5 million, and and released a slew of revamped classic Atari hits for contemporary game machines and PCs. Hasbro fell on hard times and sold off its entire interactive group (including Atari) to French-owned Infogrames Entertainment. Similarly, Midway was affected by the downturn in the coin-op market and has exited from the arcade business -- which spelled the end of the Atari and Bally brand names in the arcades. Don't expect Infogrames-owned Atari to bring out a videogame machine anytime soon -- if not forever. With multinational conglomerates such as Sony and Microsoft vying for console supremacy, it's highly doubtful that there will be room for another contender...

The Atari 2800 existed, in Japan, looked like the 7800
You can find info about it on the net, i found some on http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/2800.html
They also say it was sold in the USA by Sears...

Hopefully this doesn't look anything like the last Nintendo headset I owned. Otherwise I doubt that I "won't look ridiculous."

Cliffhanger was interesting - I learned later that it actually was a Japanese anime film called Lupin (one of several films, I seem to remember... it was so long ago) that got converted into a game. I remember seeing the film at an (anime) party in the early 90s.

I liked Space Ace better than Dragon's Lair myself (c'mon - the infanto ray that turns people into helpless babies - classic). Did some googling, and here's more info on Cliff Hanger (oh yeah, it was 2 words :)

Hmm...console as computer or terminal eh? Well the "geeky allure" certainly has nothing to do with novelty, as the concept is far from new. Witness the following:

1. The Bally Astrocade console of 1978 was the first to explore the concept commercially, as one of it's "game" carts was the BASIC programming language and cassette interface.

2. Later in 1978 Magnavox (the producer of the first ever home console called Odyssey) introduced the successor Odyssey^2. Marketed head-to-head with the Atari 2600 as a console, it actually had an integrated keyboard. It wasn't really a computer (The Sinclair ZX81 came standard with EIGHT TIMES the memory of the O^2!) the idea was that adventure/strategy games could better use a keyboard than a joystick, and that expanding it to a computer would simply involve adding a RAM expansion pack.

3. It seems Mattel had intentions from the start to give the Intellivision a computer expansion option, and touted those intentions from the console's intro in 1979. However, they were late in delivering on their promises, and were eventually forced by the FTC to bring out the computer expansion or pay huge fines. They did comply--barely--by selling a few hundred in test markets, then pulled out. Eventually the introduced a newer, quite different design to a wider market, however the result was a major disappointment.

4. Atari beat both Bally and Magnavox to the colour console market with the 2600, but it was a bit later in exploting the computer expansion option. This was probably because they figured the entry-level micro market was served adequately by its Atari 400 offering. In the end the "Graduate" keyboard was never released.

5. Coleco was probably had the most success at turning their Colecovision console into a computer in terms of units produced (300K to 500K, although much of that stock never sold) and time on the market (nearly 1.5 years starting in 1983). This was probably more to do with Coleco selling the ADAM as a self contained computer alongside the "expansion module 3" that attached to an existing Colecovision--which sold in lower numbers. The ADAM in fact simply contained a slightly modified Colecovision and the logic board of the Expansion Module 3 in one case.

And that only covers until 1983. Nintendo Famicom and the Sony PS2 could also be made into a computer (with the manufacturer's blessing and products). There certainly is some appeal in being able to "tinker" and have the flexibility of a full-fledged computer, so why did none of these ideas really take off?

I'd have to say that both price and features had a great deal to do with it--the same reason the whole market crashed in 1984. With the exception of the Coleco products (which failed because of poor marketing/late delivery and poor quality control of its initial run) all these expanded consoles were lousy computers, and the combined cost of the console and expander was the same or more than a better entry-level micro. Why would you purchase an Atari 2600 and graduate if the Atari 400 by itself was a way better system that had great games already? Why buy an intellivision that you MIGHT be able to expand to a computer when you could get a VIC or a 400 or a Speccy that was already a computer for the same price? Not only that, but these computers all came with great games to boot.

I also find the "geeky allure" appealing, but I think the market is limited--in fact I think the drive to "tinker" with some of these devices is because the were commercial failures. Hardcore fans feel like they are abandoned by the company and band together for support and to get the most out of the system. Because the supply of orphaned sys

Owing to the collapse of East Germany, there does not appear to be any copyright holder for this software.

I'm not certain the MAME guys should be so sure of that though. Had it had any commercial value whatsoever, you can bet someone would've claimed it.

There have been cases of rights disputes over Soviet creations, not to mention the big fuss over Tetris back in the day.

Though I agree with you (Nintendo was ruthless company that had *very* heavy-handed tactics), I don't think the 3rd party licensing thing is accurate. The standard 3rd party licensing barred you from making the same title on another console, but I don't think that the licensees were able to get out of this -- the larger 3rd parties were able to negotionate less harsh contracts though.

Also, the Atari/Tengen lawsuit was over console licensing of Tetris, which Tengen *lost*.

What I think you're referring to is the lawsuit that the retailers brought against Nintendo. Back in the day, Nintendo wouldn't give you promotional materials, kiosks, and sometimes not even sell you games if you sold a competing console. Imagine coke not letting you sell pepsi at your grocery store.

That small point aside, you're right. Nintendo was every bit as evil as Microsoft. In fact, I think part of the reason that they faltered in the 90's was particarly because of the practices they used to such success in the 80's. Retailers, publishers, and developers were all pissed at Nintendo. As soon as a viable competitor came along, everyone jumped ship. Yeah, the cartridge-only thing was a dumb idea, too.

Is Nintendo still evil? Well, I don't think that they can afford to be (you can be an asshole when you have a monopoly, but not when you are 3rd in the US market). However, I think that Nintendo has always been a strong developer/publisher, and has always pushed gameplay over technology.

A very good book on the subject is Game Over. Definitely sheds a light on the tactics of Nintendo (and atari and sega) during the 2nd video game boom.

Now, what is a joystick, really? It's two potentiometers: one for horizontal (x-axis), and one for vertical (y-axis.) Atari 2600 joysticks aren't built like this, instead having on/off contacts only. But joysticks aren't the only controllers available for the 2600: there are also the paddles (and the keypads and the driving controller, but I digress.) And what is a Paddle? It's a potentiometer. And the Atari paddles are only available in PAIRS, which share a common connector to the 2600. This makes it possible to have four-player games like "Warlords" or "Video Olympics" by using two sets of paddles. Why did no one ever build the two potentiometers from the paddles into a single joystick? All of the necessary functionality is present on the 2600 side for analog 2D controls, so why not? (I'll grant that writing analog-control software on such a limited platform would be taxing, to say the least, but surely it's POSSIBLE.)

Heck, I've even soldered together a pair of capacitors into an adaptor-plug that lets you use PC joysticks on an Atari 5200 (using plans from the online Atari 5200 FAQ and an old Texas-Instruments calculator with the clicky keys for my keypad), surely such a project for the 2600 wouldn't be any harder?

So THERE's a challenge for the modern 2600 hacker: build a game that uses an analog joystick! (for a REAL challenge, make it two-player!) Heck, I'd even be willing to build a joystick adapter for the programmer who did it! (and gave me a ROM cart of it.) (OK, that's setting myself up, I know.)

Any takers?

Wisdom Tree's NES games.

Did you know Sunday Funday was just a graphics hack of Menace Beach?

Also see: Bible Adventures.

"GOOD WORK! BUT YOU FORGOT BABY MOSES!".

Yeah, I'm sure the passion of the christ will make for a great game, with the player controlling Jesus, and.. getting beat up and stuff?

Now, if you could switch to Robot Jesus, Ninja Jesus, or Hyper Jesus, then we'd have something...

I simply interfaced to my VCS.

I wonder how many you can talk to simultaneously if they're all in a pile. What's the RAM footprint for the D.Net RSA core?

Ah, remember this thing? Does anyone know what it actually did anyway?

Tetris is still the best in its original form for the Gameboy

That wasn't the original version! Tetris has a long and complicated commercial history, but Nintendo's version arrived four years later than the original conception, and two years after "official" ports to just about every plaform in existance at the time.

Apparently this article is part of the return of tsr, which rocks. tsr did tsr's NES Archive until he put it on hiatus in January 2000. He hasn't touched it since and it looks like this site is like the second coming. Very cool.

And I don't really see the 'vanishing forever' argument. There are plenty of restoration organizations, that watch and pay for older non working games to fix up.

Bitrot..

Not as good as that "Cock'em", I'll admit. That's downright creepy.

While I wouldn't say it was hideous, this definitely seems to be the time to bring up the original box art for Wizards and Warriors 2: Ironsword, for the NES.

Why? Well, for no other reason than that that is, in fact, the one and only Fabio, in silly costume, portraying the main character.

i remember metalstorm, it was a pretty good nes game. your weapon was the m308 gunner, however, and had nothing to do with gauss guns (it did have and antigravity unit, though).

here is a graphic of the original box:
http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/nes/metalstorm-b.jpg

here is the story line, right from the manual:

STORY

The year is 2501, and the dawning of a new century has brought mankind to the
brink of disaster. The powerful LaserGun on the planet Pluto's battle station
"Cyberg" is wreaking havoc. It was originally designed to protect Earth from
hostile aliens, but, due to a computer malfunction, is systematically
destroying all the planets in the Solar System! Most recently the Earth Nation
watched helplessly as Neptune exploded.

The system's self-destruct device could stop the LaserGun, but it has
mysteriously jammed and is aimed at Earth. Even if the device can be manually
activated, there is still only a slim chance that Earth can be saved. Your
mission is to enter Cyberg using the most sophisticated weaponry available, the
M-308 Gunner, and unlock that self-destruct device!

(Picture of the M-308 Gunner)
M-308 Gunner
Height: 9 feet
Weight: 2100 lbs.
Material: Geopolyum Alloy
Generator Power: 1300 KW
Special Function: Gravity Flip

They were definitely not the first

Atari 2600 Gameline

does the publisher ever see any money from used game sales?

I guess I was really alluding to the fact that most people like having lots of old carts, the systems for nostalgia, and the fact that you never have to worry about the quality of the emulator if you have the "real thing"

Plus, I never have to blow on a ROM to get it to work.

i'm pretty sure what you are describing is nintendo's fds, which is different than the 'console' that allowed you to pirate snes games to real 3.5" floppy disks. the fds was released in japan only, but many gamers and collectors have them in the usa today.

the snes copier is obviously much more illegal.

Not sure why no one has mentioned this yet, but X-Entertainment, an excellent and funny source of 80s and 90s pop culture (among other things) did a review of this movie 10 days ago, including video clips of various scenes (including the "I love the Power Glove" quote). Tons of pictures, and funny comments throughout (just ignore the constant overexagerations - Matt seems to like using them).

Anyway, an excellent review of a movie I thoroughly loved as a kid. I watched it a few weeks ago on a local TV station, and was happy to remember how utterly engrossed I was when this originally came out. Sure, I had already played Super Mario Brothers 3 before seeing the film (which made me almost angry when I had already played the big secret game in the movie), but it didn't matter - just hearing and seeing references to games I loved (TMNT, SMB, Double Dragon, etc.) was more than enough to make me happy. I only wish I could watch a movie in the same way today.

Califfooorrnia! (I still quote that kid to this day, for some gods-aweful reason)

(P.S. I found this in my google search for a sound file of the above mentioned kid - which I never did find. It's about the Nintendo World Championships in 1990... An odd look back in the past).