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I know the feeling !

http://www.atarimania.com/util...

Or at least, it should be. http://www.atarimania.com/docu...

Letter Perfect for the Atari 800 was an 8K ROM cartridge.

Image: http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-letter-perfect_13691.html

Documentation (100 page PDF): http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/files/letter_perfect.pdf

Letter Perfect for the Atari 800 was an 8K ROM cartridge.

Image: http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-letter-perfect_13691.html

Documentation (100 page PDF): http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/files/letter_perfect.pdf

Sorry, but for all your knowledge, you are wrong.

Some consoles in those days used what's known as artifacting in order to gain colors or other effects. What this means is that they rely on the fact that some pixels will fall between colors on the screen to get more colors out of hi-res images. When you "improve the fidelity with better connections", it does in fact become "too good".

As an extreme example, look at this image: http://www.atarimania.com/8bit... and this image: https://www.google.com/search?...

One is monochrome and one is color you say? No. They are both the same image. The first is on a "good, accurate" monitor over a very strong connection. But the second relied on the fact that certain pixels fall between the phosphors on the screen, picking up color where it didn't exist. Some NES, SNES and Genesis games were designed to rely on this process in order to look "right" and will actually not look right in HDMI. Now SNES and Genesis, being composite instead of TV switch box like Atari and NES, rely on it more for subtle effects such as brightness bleed and shadow. Particular colors are chosen because they know these effects will result on most composite TV sets.

it's not nostalgia, it's a design consideration. One that relies on the imperfection of TV switch boxes on channel 3 or on the bleed effect of composite video. Perfection eliminates this design consideration, making the game less than it was.

When I was very young I discovered some way to manipulate the computer opponent in Mail Order Monsters into making stupid decisions, so I trivially chalked up a 252-0 win-loss record, which was saved to floppy. At the time, my legitimate enjoyment of the game's aesthetics was confused with the thrill of making that number higher, and I was frustrated by the higher difficulty options in the game, so I kept beating the crap out of a training dummy. I kept doing this until my brother loaded up my game one afternoon and sabotaged my record by losing intentionally.

Now at 252-1, I was furious for a while and then realized how silly the record was in the first place. I don't think this realization is inevitable for everyone, nor that you only need to realize it once.

I can't recall a time in which it refered to anything else. Here's another example from 1985: the original Atari at service manual. http://www.atarimania.com/docu...

So it has been in use for at least 30 years. Not exactly "new". If you can find another reference before that in which it talks about resolution being described in pixel density (which would be hard I imagine as screens didn't have pixels back then). You might be able to find a reference to a tv (which isn't the same field) describing resolution in terms of lines, but again, lines isn't density either.

OIDS — for the Atari ST, and the Mac OSX (powerPC) — combines the best elements of Defender, Lunar Lander, Asteroids, Gravitar and Thrust, with its inertia based movement, and level editor. one of the best early games. :-D

Mac OSX version by David Hewit: http://www.xavagus.com/

Atari ST ROM by David Hewit: http://www.atarimania.com/game...

More info on 850 boot process here http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-is-the-atari-850-interface-module_38.htmlSpecifically, if no response from drive 1, the 850 responds as if it was a disk drive.

Utterly brilliant ad -- "We stick our graphics where the sun don't shine" -- http://www.atarimania.com/pubs/hi_res/pub_infocom.jpg

You know, it amazes me that whomever ended up owning Sierra Online's IP never officially resurrected their "VGA-era" remakes for iPhone and Android (if not Palm). I personally experienced "Day of the Tentacle" for the first time running under ScummVM on a Treo (we were having a hurricane, I knew we were going to lose power, and loaded it up in preparation so I'd have something to play when the lights went out), and it ran fairly well. If Sierra had any foresight (and whomever ended up inheriting them had any brain), they probably digitized everything at 640x480 & downsampled them from that point anyway (or still have the original art ready to re-digitize at 480x848), and with just a few tweaks, they'd sell like crazy (even people who know they can rip and run them with ScummVM would probably just say 'screw it' and pay a buck or two to save the trouble).

...so which of the two is a remake of the 1984 Atari 8-bit game The Scrolls of Abadon? Darn confusing titles! Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Miami Vice vs. CSI Miami... there should be a law against that!

It's a black day indeed when Warcraft 3 can't run at full resolution on a laptop produced only a year ago.

Yes it can! I have the screenshots to prove it!

(Had to turn the detail down slightly though...)

There was an RTS on the Atari 800

(yes, REALTIME not turn based)

http://www.atarimania.com/zoom_frame.php?TYPE_IMG=D7&ID=1143&MENU=8&NUM_IMAGE=1

Do you know the release date for Virtual Dishwasher? Or Yard work Simulator?

Oh, there's already a game based around mowing the lawn.

Whereas in the 8-bit days games were cheap

Although I was fortunate in that by the time I got my 8-bit Atari 800XL there was a healthy budget games market (UK £1.99-2.99) and most games were cheap, I understand that this wasn't always true earlier on, particularly with the Atari. Some of the early Atari home computer games were apparently very expensive, and AFAIK 8-bit console games- whether for the early Atari VCS or the later NES- were *never* that cheap. In fact, taking inflation into account a lot of those games were just as expensive.

The cover scan of this early 1980s Atari game has an (I assume) contemporary price tag of $29.99 (US I assume, again) on it, and I don't believe that this was out of the ordinary.

Vanguard on the Atari 800XL

I think I drove my parents insane with that square-wave theme song when I was 4.

What a highly addictive game! Some infos about the original Agent USA game here: http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?MENU=8&V ERSION_ID=138 and there's a fan made remake for the Windows PC too: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3699