Atari 2600 Lord of the Rings Discovered

TheAlchemist writes "Eighteen years ago a Lord of the Rings game appeared in a Parker Brothers catalog for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, the game was never released, along with several other titles that appeared alongside it. Just in time for the first Lord of the Rings movie release next week, AtariAge.com has discovered a long lost prototype of this game, probably one of the most sought after 2600 vaporware titles. You can look at screenshots, a picture of the prototype box, the prototype cartridge, and download the binary image that you can then run in one of several Atari 2600 emulators. More information about the game can be gleaned here."

Comments

atari emulator

[nocent]

try z26, an open source atari 2600 emulator for dos/win95.

Re:atari emulator

[CoolVibe]

Better yet, try Stella which emulates it for your platforms (dos/w32) _and_ all the others...

Why?

[Jobe_br]

I am curious as to why this game wasn't released. Why did it remain vaporware? Its interesting, though, that apparently the binary image can be posted w/o fear of copyright infringement. Are all 2600 games 'free' now? I recall that for SNES games and the like the ROMs are still considered warez or bootlegged.

At what age does a game enter the public domain? If it was never released, is it automagically in the public domain if you can get your hands on it? I'll have to wait a few hours!

I haven't personally checked out this site, though I'd like to, apparently its already suffered the ill effects of /., too bad.

Re:Why?

[The Cat]

At what age does a game enter the public domain?


HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

oh, I can't stand it... ahem.. sorry..

heheheheheeeeee....

Re:Why?

[The Cat]

I am curious as to why this game wasn't released. Why did it remain vaporware?

Some game company management committee, who probably couldn't find their own a** with a both hands, a search party and a helicopter, bet against Lord of the Rings and lost, huge.

It's nothing new.

Re:Why?

[OmegaDan]

In the world of atari the development costs were almost 0, so the only real risk was manufacturing cartridges that wouldn't sell -- thus it was somewhat common for games to be made but unreleased.

From what I know, usually 1 person was contracted to write the game, usually for a few thousand dollars ... Remember there was no art to be done, no music to be written ... just 4k of code :)

There was also lots of money to be made for a good game. Rick Mauer, was paid 11,000$ to make Space Invaders for the 2600. The game grossed over 100 million dollars! (source: despair 2000 calander:)

Re:Why?

[screwballicus]

Yeah, the age of a given product seems to have little to do with whether the company still protects its copyright. It seems to have more to do with the direness of that particular company's copyright-obsessed neuroses. For example, things that I have, in pursuit of nostalgic computing, found seem still to be considered "warez" include

- Game ROMs for the TI 99/4A
- Some (not all) Apple II games by MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation). For example, Odell Lake.
- Windows 1.x, 2.x, etc.

Of course, most of these can still be located here or there on the web with a little work, but their copyrighted status is, nevertheless, ludicrous.

Re:Why?

[Torville]

* cough * sputter *

You said that with a straight face? Yes, art, yes, music, and yes, 4K of code, which constitues art in and of itself!

I =have= done 8-bit wide sprite animation, and it's not for sissies, bucko...

Re:Why?

[OmegaDan]

Ehh I've been programming in assembley for, 11 years now, so I think Im quite familiar with what it would take to implement space invaders on a 4 bit cpu, infact, I've *designed* 4 bit cpus...

So let me clarify my statement for every space monkey that thinks his perl scripts should be in the louvre:

Atari 2600 games don't have any art in them, by art I mean pictures/animations/full screen videos/detailed characters. No art direction, no concept art (save for the box). I would wager *most* of the sprites were made with the time honored method of drawing them on graph paper and then translating the shaded in boxes into bit maps.

By no music, I mean, The thing didn't make anything more then bleeps -- no sound designers were ever hired to make an atari2600 game, no composers, no studio ever recorded music for a 2600 game... (Unless you count those awfull atari music records :)

My point was and is that designing a 2600 game was attaniable by one industrious person. And this is why *development costs* were low.

Re:great (Slightly offtopic, but...)

[gunne]

About serving web pages from an atari, I've been planning to do just that, setting up a webserver on my old Atari 1040 STe.
Does anyone here know of any good places to get a network card for an old atari (preferably with ethernet), and/or any good s/w to get net connectivity in an atari?

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[Cloud 9]

Slashdot needs to provide a local cache of pages it links to, for all non-major league sites.

This is a no-no. Read the portion of the FAQ regarding caching.

HAND.

Re:Yay!

[dmaxwell]

A 2600 controller is nothing more than 5 switches wired across various pins of the DB-9 connector. I've repurposed NES controllers into 2600 connectors by replacing the NES joystick cable with a 2600 cable and a little tracecutting with some soldering. You might be able to use a DB-9 serial connector as a substitute for the Atari connector.

Another site

[the_radix]

This is another site with a screenshot and box cover (and is not /.ed yet).

Re:Another site

[Orycterope]

From the site :

A former Parker Brothers employee says this about the game: "You spent a lot of time roaming through similar-looking screens, and then the damn Nazgul would jump out and you'd run around like crazy. I forget most of the details. It was a competent but not stellar game I think."

Sure sounds dull... Not stellar? I hope this former employee isn't a developer. Last time a programmer told me his code was "competent but not stellar"... ouch!

Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[yerricde]

Its interesting, though, that apparently the binary image can be posted w/o fear of copyright infringement.

Wrong. Much abandonware falls under the "no suitor, no judge" rule. For example, it's OK to distribute the "Zero Wing" ROM because Toaplan, its publisher, no longer exists and therefore can't sue. However, in this case, both Hasbro (Parker Bros parent) and Tolkien's estate (licensor of LotR franchise) still exist and still maintain legal departments.

Are all 2600 games 'free' now?

Copyright on corporate-authored works lasts ninety-five years plus the rest of the calendar year. Blame Sonny Bono and Di$ney for such a counterproductively long copyprivilege term.

I recall that for SNES games and the like the ROMs are still considered warez or bootlegged.

You're probably thinking of mask work copyright, which Nintendo claims prohibits even fair-use backups of software that happens to be stored on a semiconductor ROM chip. (A careful reading may show that it prohibits only burning the data back onto a ROM chip; however, this depends on how the courts interpret "reproduction" of a mask work and whether or not ROM is a "commonplace design" that goes unprotected.) Such copyright lasts only ten years plus December 31.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[cperciva]

Much abandonware falls under the "no suitor, no judge" rule.

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex". Which translates roughly as "where there is no policeman, there is no speed limit".

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[RoninM]

...for such a counterproductively long copyprivilege term.

Copyprivilege? Fuck that. You're going to claim that it's somehow your right to take someone else's work? You're going to claim that it's all in the name of fighting corporate greed, when it's pretty damn certain that your motive is personal greed. You want to take without giving anything back. And then you'll complain about the quality of the system. How does this make you different from the plethora of twinks that complain about some hobbyist's open sourced software without ever contributing back so much as a meaningful bug report? And then you have the audacity to come out and claim it's somehow not the right of those who create to hold some sliver of protection over their creations?

We'll both agree: there are some huge problems with the copyright system. Frankly, I don't believe that corporations should be able to hold copyrights at all. But when you start to make the case that you somehow have the right to indiscriminately take and benefit from another man's work, you lose me and, I hope, the vast majority of other people on /. and in the world, at large.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[iabervon]

On the other hand, it's possible that this ROM isn't covered by copyright, because the publisher may not have actually gotten it in the first place. In order to get the copyright, you can register it with the library of congress, but that only really works for published works, or you can do the cheap thing and keep a copy with proof that you had it at the time (i.e., mail it to yourself). If they never published it, and AtariAge ended up with the original ROM, they may now entirely lack proof that they have the rights to it.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[cduffy]

Whoa, there -- "copyprivilige" isn't necessarily so wrong a term. All "true" human rights have been recognized a long, long time; the "right" to have the government prevent anyone else from creating an object because you made one first (which is basically what copyright and patent law come down to) isn't so elemental.

That's not to say that copyright isn't a good thing, so long as it acts in the public interest. Remember, the original goal is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The purpose is not establishing some new kind of property or permitting those who produce creative works to get rich, but rather the promotion of public good. Extending copyright or patent law beyond the minimum necessary to encourage authors and inventors to create and distribute or publish their works is not only wrong, but arguably unconstitutional.

I do believe that corporations should be able to hold copyright as much as individuals, but that the duration of this privilege should be sharply limited; most creative works which pay off at all do so within seven years of publishing, almost all within twenty. Extending copyright beyond this point is thus unnecessary and contrary to the public good -- even if an auther (or his or her estate) may receieve income from copyright after twenty years, that is rarely if ever a consideration in determining to write and publish.

Consider: You are presently (I'll wager) taking advantage of innovations known as the the "lightbulb", "alternating current", "plastic", &c. The patents on all these items have expired, leaving them in the public domain. Those who wish intellectual property rights to be as eternal and basic as the rights to physical property need to ask themselves where they'd be were they paying the creators of all the basic technologies surrounding them for the privilege of their use. The world would be far poorer.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[WasterDave]

in this case, both Hasbro (Parker Bros parent) and Tolkien's estate (licensor of LotR franchise) still exist and still maintain legal departments.

And in the case of the Tolkien estate, I imagine they currently have a big stack of lawyers liberally spread across the globe to (attempt to) stop the production of fake LOTR merchandise.

Mind you, they've got much better and more profitable things to do than kick up a fuss about a half finished, unmarketable video game for a console that doesn't exist any more.

Dave

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[Lemmy Caution]

Create something. Work hard for years to create something truly original and unique. Then answer this question: is being the only one allowed to decide the use and dispensation of your creation a right, or a privilege?

Does this mean that I'm entitled to sell off my children and do whatever I want with them?

As far as I'm concerned (and I have, not a prodigious, but a real creative output) the main right a creator has is to be recognized as the creator. I don't abide plaigarism, but I don't abide grasping at the mind's children after they've left home.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[sjames]

But when you start to make the case that you somehow have the right to indiscriminately take and benefit from another man's work, you lose me and, I hope, the vast majority of other people on /. and in the world, at large.

Indiscriminatly? no. Abandonware is another matter. Like any other property that is abandoned, it should go to the public trust. Leave your car at the side of the road for a few years and just see if it doesn't get auctioned off.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[RoninM]

Whoa, there -- "copyprivilege" isn't necessarily so wrong a term. All "true" human rights have been recognized a long, long time.

The right of the creator to the created is long-established and clear. The modern concept and, hence, privilege, is the access of others to this work beyond the author's control. This does not mean that I consider these modern privileges wrong. This is clearly not a binary issue and the vast middleground is a quagmire of partial solutions and bigger problems. The fact remains that "copyprivilege" demeans all copyright holders, including those who have legitimate claims to works.

As I said before, there are clearly problems with the copyright system as it stands. My pet solution--which undoubtedly creates as many or more problems that it solves--is to simply disallow corporations from holding copyrights at all, as they are feasibly eternal and often end up with rights that you could barely make a case for them owning even in the system as it stands. The issue I had was clearly not with whether there are copyright abuses or problems with the system or if some things that have been done are downright un-Constitutional. I admit all of these things and will disagree with anyone that tauts the system as flawless just as strongly as I have disagreed on this matter. But I will continue to hold those who begrudge all creators their rights in scorn because I cannot see the logic, the truth, or the value in claiming it is the right of the vultures to scavenge the kill of the lion, whilst the lion goes hungry.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[RoninM]

Abandonware is another matter.

As with the example of the car, there is a predefined timelimit for when the property moves into the public trust. It is quite often, in this digital age, too long. That is an issue that begs a special case for resolution and not a general denigration of copyright or devaluation of creators.

I think that very many people assume a work is abandoned merely because it's no longer marketed or mass produced. I cannot find any legal or moral support for this view. It seems more a rationalization than a reason. If I park my car in my drive-way for many years, and do not drive it, does it then become part of the public trust? Of course not; it remains my car. That I once drove it around is moot. It remains my property until the law intercedes. In the case of copyright, this (ideally) happens after a set time or certain conditions are met. It is not reasonable to assume that failure to produce or distribute is one of these conditions.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[cduffy]

Corporations, though they live eternally, have a fixed limit on how long copyright lasts (well, they would, if Congress would stop extending it). I can agree with having copyrights last for the life of the creator in the case of a person, or a (very) limited amount of time in the case of a corporation -- at least, I can agree with it more easily than I can agree with the present system.

Preventing corporate ownership has serious issues. Consider: You publish books. If publishing a book written by an author about to die means were less profitable than a book written by a fellow who is young and in good health (as the government would prevent others from publishing the same work for a longer period of time in the second case than the first), authors in questionable health could have trouble being published. I hardly think either of us wants that situation. If you allow this to be circumvented by way of allowing contracts which delegate copyright to a corporation to survive the author, then the present situation is reinstated.

As for the right of the creator to the created -- that's certainly the case for physical property. For intellectual "property", the mere 200 years or so it has been recognized is far less convincing as to its innate value than physical property rights, which have been recognized (barring the occasional experiment) throughout recorded history.

In any event, you sidestep my point: A harshly limited term of copyright (copyprivilege, whatever; no less than seven years, no more than twenty) will not cause creators to go hungry (at least, not those who continually produce), but it will do much to promote the public good. By looking out only for the interests of the creators and not the society of a whole (which certainly does benefit from giving the creators some level of privilege!), you ignore the concepts which were instrumental in copyright's foundation.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[jms]

A couple of points.

First off, Sonny Bono had nothing to do with the act that bears his name. His named was tacked on to the bill shortly after he died in a skiing accident, as part of the propaganda compaign to ram copyright extension through congress. Whatever musical sins he committed during his lifetime, it's unfair to blame the law on him.

It is important to understand that "copyright" is a government granted privilege, not a natural or human right. The Constitution doesn't recognize monopoly rights as natural or human rights -- the authors found monopolies to be offensive and dangerous. Instead, the Constitution authorizes (but does not require) Congress to grant limited monopolies under certain circumstances:

The Congress shall have power to ... promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Copyright is actually the right to exclude others from repeating and building upon your speech. The framers of the Constitution knew how dangerous it was to grant such a right, and they tried to place congressional limits on the copyright power -- the Constitution says that copyright must be for a limited time, and may only be granted to the author of the work. However, over time, those limits have been eroded to the point that the original purpose of copyright has slipped into the shadows.

The purpose of copyright is not to reward authors and inventors -- the purpose of copyright is to create a public benefit by creating an incentive for authors and inventors to publish their works and inventions.

The modern concept and, hence, privilege, is the access of others to this work beyond the author's control

One of the main purposes of copyright is to remove from the author the right to control access of others to their work. This was evident in our country's first Copyright, in 1790. Originally, copyright was restricted to books, maps, and charts.

Why maps and charts? The problem was navigation. Because there was no copyright law, mapmakers were faced with a dilemma. Making accurate maps was a difficult and expensive process involving ships and expeditions. However, copying a map was as easy as tracing it on thin paper.

Because mapmakers had no protection for their maps, they resorted to strict licensing agreements with ship captains very similar to modern software licenses. Ship captains had to license maps from mapmakers.

The problem was that very little progress was being made in establish accurate maps. Navigators and mapmakers were not able to compare various maps against each other, and correct mistakes. The result was lost ships and lives. The theory behind copyright on maps was that mapmakers would be given protection against piracy, in exchange for open publication of their work. Copyright was invented to replace the mess of private map licensing contracts.

Interestingly, we now find ourselves in the same situation with software -- except that instead of using copyright for its original purpose -- to replace the mess of private licensing contracts -- we are increasingly seeing companies abandon copyright in favor of private licensing contracts -- an admission by deed that modern copyright law has failed.

I'm not sure that the term "copyprivilege" improves on the term "copyright" in a meaningful way. Copyright is not the "right to copy". It is the "right to exclude others from copying." However, it is a privilege. Copyright is granted by, and can be revoked by Congress. There is actually a "misuse of copyright" doctrine, rarely used, that allows for copyrights to be invalidated if used against the public interest.

The word "copyright" is a misfortunate word -- it is misleading in that the word appears to identify a right, instead of a government-created monopoly, which is what a copyright really is.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[foobar104]

That's okay. If I don't get modded "flamebait" at least from time to time, I'm not doing my job right.

Re:Sonny Bono says it's still illegal

[iabervon]

You still have to have proof that you created it, which translates to being able to prove that you had it before anyone else can prove they had it. Even if my works are copyrighted when they're created, that doesn't help if somebody else shows up and claims that I didn't create it. That's why mailing a copy to yourself works, without any interaction with a copyright-related part of the government. If you've got a postmarked sealed envelope containing the item, you can open it in court and demonstrate that you had it at that date, before anyone else can prove they had it.

Of course, submitting an item to the LoC is somewhat firmer proof that you have it at a certain time, since it is not all that hard to forge the envelope thing. If Parker Bros. has lost all copies of the game, and never got proof that they had it, it's copyrighted, but not provably copyright anyone in particular.

Direct link...

[edgrale]

Direct link to the ROM:
LOTR and the emulators:
Stella & z26


Note that in order to get it working: "Because this is a new release, you will have to do a little extra work in order to get the ROM to work in either emulator, although the emulators will probably be updated shortly to support them natively." taken from http://www.atariage.com/features/lotr/

Re:Direct link...

[edgrale]

doh! darn cut&paste, it should have read

Note that in order to get it working: "Because this is a new release, you will have to do a little extra work in order to get the ROM to work in either emulator, although the emulators will probably be updated shortly to support them natively. In z26, you will need to pass the -g3 parameter (8K Parker Brothers mode). In order to play Lord of the Rings with Stella, you'll first need to download the latest Stella Profile from Voch's Stella Profile Page. Then you'll want to append the contents of this file to the end of the Stella.pro file you downloaded. This will allow Stella to properly recognize this prototype. " taken from http://www.atariage.com/features/lotr/

Dumb game (+ mirror)

[plumpy]

I realize it's only an Atari 2600 game, but it really sucks. What the fuck are you supposed to do?

Here are the files, since people are complaining that the site is /.ed:
http://skylab.org/~plumpy/lotr/

The other LOTR game

[c=sixty4]

There was a computer game version of Lord of the Rings actually published. It was made as a computer game on other platforms, the Commodore 64 among others. It was an Infocom-style adventure (except with some static pictures) which quickly became infamous. This was not just because the games were not exactly faithful to the books, but because they came on floppy disks and the game appeared to grind through the entire disk whenever a command was entered. Never before did the 1541 strike more fear into the hearts of men. You can find more information about the game here.

I didn't notice a (C) in the sshots

[shepd]

I think back then if you didn't put a (c) in your work it was by default in the public domain.

Nowadays everything is copyrighted unless the author decrees otherwise.

No suitor, no judge, realistic?

[swb]

The rule makes sense, but how many gaming companies truly stopped business, settled their debts with cash or assets other than their intellectual property?

It seems to me that the most common scenario would involve a company going bust and their most valuable asset, their intellectual property, being sold off to debtors. Second most common would be the company getting bought out, including IP, by some other company.

The least likely event is that the company just gave up and stopped. Even in that case, there was somebody who can claim ownership of the company's assets.

It would seem to me that there would *always* be someone who owned the IP, although it might not be the original company. Awareness of ownership and desire to enforce copyright are probably in question, but ownership?

No words more horrifying to a hosting company

[The Cat]

"Someone posted a Slashdot article about some Lord of the Rings game on one of our sites.. and the movie premieres in four days..."

The great thing about the slashdot effect....

[moniker_21]

is that you get to find out that so many websites are running the open-source database MySQL. It's nice to see, but of course ironically we only get to see the MySQL error messages when it's broken.

More on topic, I wonder why this game was never released? If they got as far as the prototype I'd think that the game was somewhere near completion. I guess I'll just have to wait for the site to come back up again, or for a karma whore to post a mirror or a cache. ;-)

Now we know why it was never released.

[ivan256]

You can play through the entire game in 7 minutes!

Re:Yay!

[RazzleFrog]

I was able to plug my Sega Genesis controllers in and they played much better than the old joysticks. If I remember correctly I don't think it worked for paddle games though.

But nobody set up PlanetTribes the bomb

[yerricde]

It would seem to me that there would *always* be someone who owned the IP, although it might not be the original company. Awareness of ownership and desire to enforce copyright are probably in question, but ownership?

Good point, but how can a company sue over something it doesn't know it owns? What practical difference is there between not knowing you own something and not owning it? If a company knew it owned the Zero Wing franchise, you can bet that at least some of the AYBABTU sites would have received nasty letters months ago.

----------

To all Slashdot readers: If you know who represents the corporation that currently owns the IP of the late Toaplan Co., please click 'Reply to This' below and give more information.

Re:But nobody set up PlanetTribes the bomb

[swb]

What practical difference is there between not knowing you own something and not owning it?

If I steal your car when you're on vacation for a month, is there a practical difference between not having a car and not knowing it was stolen?

My guess is that the major gaming companies (EA, Activision, etc) have huge IP portfolios from the early gaming days, including IP that was second and third generation to the companies they bought. They may not have accurate records, know they own it, or, more importantly, someone wisely has determined that the money necessary to chase after a few hundred people around the world using ROMs for some dead gaming system dramatically outweighs the financial return they'd ever get from that IP.

Re:But nobody set up PlanetTribes the bomb

[iabervon]

If I steal your car while you're on vacation for a month, and you get amnesia while you're gone, and your registration expires and the title got lost, I'll probably get away with it. But physical objects are different anyway, because stealing them is a criminal, not civil, offense. So they could still catch me for having a car I don't have the documents for.

Re:But nobody set up PlanetTribes the bomb

[tap]

Actually, infringing on a copyright is now a criminal offense too. It used to be civil, but that meant when someone didn't gain anything from their infringement and the holder didn't suffer any damages, they couldn't recover any damages (read: no money). Though in some cases they could get punitive damages. It also meant that if they wanted to enforce their copyright, they had to pay to take someone to court. Taking some 13 year old to court because he copied a 18 year old rom from an obsolete game system isn't going to happen.

But, thanks to Sonny Bono and Disney, copyright infringement is now a criminal offense. That means the taxpayers get to pay millions of dollars for the FBI to converge the houses of twenty-six 13 year olds. It also means you can go to jail for longer than you would get for killing someone (if you use a car), even if you made no many and caused the company no damages.

Re:great (Slightly offtopic, but...)

[CoolVibe]

Someone seems to already have done it. And it was on slashdot as well.

Other LOTR games: 1979 to 2000

[mccalli]

Go here for a look.

The first Tolkien game I played would be The Hobbit. The next? Shadowfax, on the Spectrum. Great animation for its day.

Cheers,

Ian

Re:Direct Links to the Pictures and Pictures

[Evil Grinn]

Woops, missed one. Here's the link to the page in the Parker Brothers catalog with the blurb about the Lord of the Rings game:

I think you mean:


http://www.atariage.com/catalogs/ParkerBrothers/ Pa rkerBrothers_12.jpg

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[drinkypoo]

"I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?"

Let's see, do I want to wait six hours for a story, or do I want the site to be down so I cannot actually get the details of the story? Hmm, this sure is a hard decision!

Mirror Available

[man_ls]

A mirror of the ROM image is available on my web site:

http://gamanen.tripod.com/

Please sign the guestbook while you are there.

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[Debillitatus]

To not do so is irresponsible

Calm down there, my man... That's some pretty harsh language.

Driving drunk is irresponsible.

Shooting guns into the air on New Year's Eve is irresponsible.

This, on the other hand, isn't that big a fucking deal at all.

128 colors? Try 8

[mgkimsal2]

I think the 2600 had about 8 or maybe 16 colors. you can't really "dither" all that much at that resolution either.

These guys need to learn a bit about security...

[SCHecklerX]

Well, the site is slashdotted...

And I get to see all the CGI errors, right there on my browser. Very nice.

The first thing you do on a production server is KILL THE ABILITY TO DISPLAY ERROR MESSAGES FROM YOUR SCRIPT ON THE END USER'S DISPLAY!

I know you can do this with Embedded perl. Not sure what these guys are using, but seems like the same behavior HTML::Embperl exhibits before configuring it not to.

It's neither PHP nor MySQL - it's pconnect

[mgkimsal2]

Actually, I think that one has a lot to do with PHP, leave MySQL out of it.

Actually, it *probably* has neither to do with PHP nor MySQL specifically, but most like the admin is using "pconnect". Each Apache child keeps a connection handle open to MySQL, so if your MySQL is set to max out at 100 simultaneous connections (the default, which most people leave set for some reason) and your Apache is set to have more than that (200?) you'll get this. The solution is to either NOT use pconnect or to implement some type of pooling system. Yeah, pooling mechanisms aren't native, but there are sql connection pooling projects out there to use. Also, pconnect v connect on a decent machine with mysql local isn't THAT much of a difference. It'd be nicer to have a slower site that was UP rather than a site that delivers error messages FAST.

Re:It's neither PHP nor MySQL - it's pconnect

[SCHecklerX]

Out of curiosity, does Apache::DBI suffer from this as well? I use Apache::DBI for my persistent database connections, and believe that it simply uses the number of sessions apache is configured for (ie, one persistent db connection per apache process), and the server itself will block people when that limit is set.

Re:It's neither PHP nor MySQL - it's pconnect

[TheAlchemist]

Yes, we are using "pconnect". And yes, we were using the default MySQL configuration of 100 connections. This has certainly been a great learning experience and is the first PHP/MySQL driven site I've ever written. It's also not a commercial site (we lose money hosting it!), just something we put up because we're big fans of classic gaming systems. Not that we should be excused for the errors, mind you, but until now the site has never been stressed. I've already suppressed the PHP errors (learn something new every day!), but will have to investigate the proper way to handle MySQL/Apache getting swamped. Thanks for your suggestions. :)

Re:These guys need to learn a bit about security..

[SCHecklerX]

Ok, so I didn't read the error messages :) They need to configure PHP not to display errors on the end user's browser.

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[nomadic]

Never really was convinced by this. Look at google, they do the same thing, has anyone ever complained to them? Best thing would be to try it, and if people start getting litigious, take it down. What's the harm?

Re:Atari Age has been overrun by Nazgul!

[Cylix]

HA!

Not even Sauron could withstand the power that is Slashdot.

We would sink his ass in a matter of minutes.

The age of machine and steel is upon us ;)

Classic Atari problem

[BinBoy]

Some thoughts on Atari 2600...

The cool cover art on Atari games always made the crappy game graphics look even worse in comparison.

In the game Combat when you ran your tanks together they looked like they were having sex.

The game Adventure had a secret area.

The manual for Pitfall implied that there was a secret area at the end of the game. My friend and I spent many all nighters trying to get to the end and never found it.

There's a reasonably good documentary about the insanity inside Atari at scottw.com

Look!

[/dev/trash]

Unreleased LoTR's underRoo's have just been discovered at http://www.FreeADvertisingForAMarginallyGoodBookTu rnedIntoAMovie.com

Re:These guys need to learn a bit about security..

[alecto]

For every critic, there are probably a thousand happy readers of atariage.com. Keep up the good work!

Re:A faithful rendition of the book.

[andkaha]

But, the book itself was monochrome, and its primary interface was text-- not even color text at that.

Ah, you didn't buy the one with the cognital interface? The version of the books that I read had a very nice interface which enabled me to somehow view the scenes from the book within my head while reading it.

I was quite amazed and I still haven't figured out how they did it...

IDSA owns ESRB so avoid ESRB rated games

[yerricde]

Here here! Where is a list of their affiliated companies so I can avoid them?

Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Sega, anybody else who rates games E, T, or M. Those ratings are trademarks of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, a division of IDSA. I can't even check the ESRB's web site because it's severely broken: every single page on the site redirects me to a 404 page.

Re:Direct Links to the Pictures and Pictures

[NutscrapeSucks]

Man, I can't wait to find a ROM of the McDonald's game.

Yeah, I wonder if McDonald's has "the subject of speculation for many years by Atari collectors" and "one of the most sought-after Atari 2600 prototypes". The sad thing is that it probably is.

(Actually, I collect old 2600 games, and 90% of them are crap, which is sorta the fun part. McDonalds would have no doubt supass other Atari spam classics like Chase The Chuckwagon, Kool-Aid Man, and Tooth Protectors.)

Re:A faithful rendition of the book.

[peteshaw]

I think I played this game before.

Join frodo (reprsented by a small white sqare) while he tries to return home. Thrill to his narrow escapes while he attempts to recapure the one ring (represented by a single pixel), which has been stolen by a black bat, and is now guarded by three color coded dragons who reside in their corresponding castles.

how about a tandy 102?

[hawk]

It has almost the same processing power. I stubled across a bbs for 100's and 102's in '88 or '89 in San Diego, which ran on one . . . the 300 baud internal modem and 24k of memory . . .

hawk

Re:how about a tandy 102?

[thelexx]

"how about a tandy 102? It has almost the same processing power...300 baud internal modem and 24k of memory..."

1040 had a megabyte of RAM. Especially if the Atari's processor outclasses the Tandy's by a similar degree, I would hardly call that 'almost the same'.

LEXX

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[Crixus]

Calm down there, my man... That's some pretty harsh language. Driving drunk is irresponsible. Shooting guns into the air on New Year's Eve is irresponsible. This, on the other hand, isn't that big a fucking deal at all.

Isn't it? Bringing down a website from what is essentially a DOS isn't a big thing?

I thought that 1.5 years ago during the big DOS attacks we learned from the national media that even ONE MOMENT of downtime for a site costs them BILLIONS!!!

Rich...

Re:Direct Links to the Pictures and Pictures

[shogun]

It doesn't matter the description of Star Wars: Return of The Jedi: Ewok Adventure still made it all worthwhile,

You take the role of an EWOK in this thrilling game based on scenes from RETURN OF THE JEDI. Now a member of the Rebel cause, you must hang glide over dangerous territory in order to reach the imperial shield generator. Your mission: to blow it apart! But as you swoop through the forest, IMPERIAL STORMTROOPERS, AT-ST's amd BIKER SCOUTS will try to shoot you down. Hurl rocks at the enemy as you avoid their fire and close in on the shield generator. 1 or 2 players.

And if that wasn't enough go visit the correct link and take a look at the McDonalds game on the opposite side of the page.

Oh my God!

[Ethelred Unraed]

I actually still have this game:

Cover Art
Description

It's "The Fellowship of the Ring", a.k.a. "The Lord of the Rings: Game One" for MS-DOS, from 1985. It was actually just sort of a text-based adventure with occasional illustrations, and as I remember I always got hopelessly stuck somewhere before getting to Bree (before which I got hopelessly stuck in Michel Delving -- the plot of the game is rather different from the book). It had amazing CGA graphics (wow! four colors!) and ran on two 5.25" floppy drives (our computer didn't even have a hard drive at that point).

The funny thing is, I was just thinking about that game a day or so ago. It's buried in a box of my stuff at my parents' place...*sigh*

I also was pretty amazed at how UGLY the Atari 2600 game looks. I was addicted to the 2600 in the late 70s/early 80s (and the 5200 was awesome), though I didn't have one of my own. But I never remembered the graphics being THAT bad. Just a sign how far we've progressed, I suppose...

Ah well, Memory Lane. *sigh* I feel old...

cya

Ethelred

Re:A faithful rendition of the book.

[Tackhead]

> Ah, you didn't buy the one with the cognital interface? The version of the books that I read had a very nice interface which enabled me to somehow view the scenes from the book within my head while reading it.
>
> I was quite amazed and I still haven't figured out how they did it...

I think the cognitive interface used code from the old Infocom games... (Old Infocom ad from Byte magazine: "We stick our graphics where the sun doesn't shine", accompanied by an illustration of a human brain...)

Re:A faithful rendition of the book.

[stripes]

Wow, nothing captures the grandeur and rich detail of a 1000+ page epic like 128 colors, 160x200 resolution rendered by a graphics chip running at 1.19 MHz.

Graphics chip? I doubt there was a whole chip dedicated to the graphics (or looking at it another way -- only one). The 2600 didn't have hardware acceleration, or even a bitmapped display. It had one register that you loaded the value to feed to the color guns! Want blue for 8 pixels? Load 0b001100 into the color guns and loop for 8 pixel durations. Oh? You wanted to do some work while the screen is drawing? Well then, you are in for a whole world of hurt...

Wow

[ZoneGray]

I've seen /. sigs that have better graphics.

Re:Copyright should expire

[RoninM]

After a reasonable amount of time, ...

This is a limitation on copyright and your privilege, not the other way around. The nonce "copyprivilege" is a slap in the face of every legitimate author and creator. To imply that it is not their right, but somehow a privilege afforded them and stomached by the unwashed masses is a ridiculous and offensive notion. You're right. There are serious abuses of the copyright system in existence. This does not justify positing that control of a creation is a privilege of the creator, and that you are, by logical extension, more entitled to the work than the author.

No, I'm upset at Disney for taking and not giving back. Disney released movies such as Pinnochio and The Jungle Book...

Disney, as the creator of these works, gave us them to begin with. They gave that much back. By the then-rules, you're absolutely correct: the movies should have become public domain. The rules changed. This does not make it your right to receive their work or a privilege that they retain ownership. It's a problem, yes. It runs counter to the idea of copyright in the United States, even. None of this changes the simple fact that Disney did give something back to the system and continues to put out work. The corporate greed creates issues and Congress's buyability compounds them.

I do submit meaningful bug reports, ...

Err, I must not have made my point clear, since you missed it. I was merely attempting to ground the discussion in more familiar territory. I was saying that, IMO, your attitude re copyright (or what I could get of it from your message) was analogous to the attitude of those people that take open source software and disparage the hobbyists that maintain it, without ever providing constructive input into the system, or seeing what it's like to be a creator of work when some guy comes up and claims that he has more right to your creation than you do.

Re:Yay!

[Gordonjcp]

Plain vanilla 9-volt PSU. IIRC it's a 3.5mm jack plug, positive to tip, negative to sleeve.

As long as it's smoothed dc (a car battery charger will *not* work) anything around 7.5v-12v will do nicely...

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[Skip666Kent]

Relax. It's a temporary phenomena, and a small price to pay for finding out about something that would have slipped by you otherwise.

If you already knew about it, you'd have already checked it out and wouldn't care if it was /.'ed.

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[eries]

Don't need any help from Slashdot to maket his happen. Read all about it at http://wfw.sourceforge.net/

Re:Disney didn't create those stories

[RoninM]

No. DisneyCo gave us derivative works of these stories.

Now you've confused me even more. Neither Disney work is in the public domain, nor would it be under old copyright duration (contrary to what I previously said, oops). The source material whence the Disney productions came is under public domain; the full text of both Kipling's The Jungle Book and Lorenzini's Pinocchio can be obtained online with a minimum of fuss. Disney's Pinocchio, being published in 1940, prior to the copyright extension, would have become public domain in 2015. Disney's The Jungle Book, being published some two decades later, would not appear until at least 2035. Under the newer rules, these dates are pushed back 20 years. Which, like I said, I don't agree with any more than I agree with your egregious claim that it is a privilege of the author to control his work. However, all this has little to do with Abandonware.

And there's no way to fix the bugs I find ...

Forget it. I'm either failing to make the analogy clear or analogues are lost on you. Either way, I meant to draw a parallel, and you're envisioning a substantial intersection.

So solving this buyability will solve ...

No, I said the problems with the copyright system are compounded by Congress's buyability, not caused by it. I made no mention of patents, which are a separate issue.

Re:When Consoles Become Free Reign

[jms]

I think that the reason Nintendo goes after these people is because with a trademark or copyright, you have to enforce your trademark/copyright or else you face some sort of danger of losing the right to defend it.

This is only true of trademarks, not copyrights. Trademarks are completely different from copyrights -- the purpose of a trademark is to associate products with manufacturers.

If a trademark is abandoned, someone else can adopt and use that trademark. This is why trademarks must be defended. If other people start using your trademark, and you don't defend your trademark by suing them, then you can lose your trademark completely. Examples of lost trademarks are "Linoleum," "Escalator," and "Nylon." This is why companies like Xerox fire off letters when people refer to photocopiers generically as "xerox machines." They have to, or they can lose their trademarks. Companies also have to be very careful about how they use their trademarks, or they can lose them. For instance, here is an interesting page on the DuPont web site about proper use of their "Tactel" trademark. that summarizes the general rules of using trademarks.

On the other hand, copyright holders are free to allow or disallow the copying of their works, and this has no effect on the validity of the copyright, or their ability to enforce it in the future. For example, rock bands like The Grateful Dead and Phish explicitly permit the non-commercial copying of concert performances by their fans. They would not do this if doing so would result in the loss of their copyrights on either the songs or the performances.

oh, *those* "atari"'s . . .

[hawk]

gee, I'd assumed it was a real atari, like the 2600 of this discussion, or an 8000. I missed the model number showing that it was one of *those* . . .

:)

hawk