Atari Nerd Inter-Web Mashup- Nov 12, 2008

What’s new (and old) in the world of Atari – Press releases, blogs, messages boards sites and more…

This week we have some new announced 2009 games from Atari; A 2600/5200 Mario Bros commercial and comic; An Atari 800 arcade shooter being released for charity;The Atari 2600 in the Toy Hall Of Fame;A new Atari 800 emulator; A download of all of the Atari 2600 synth sounds in wav and mp3 formats; Kick Off 2 is still going strong; The Great Atari ST Games Survey; Game reviews; 8bitrocket Save Atari Week, and a lot more.

Announcements from the Current Atari (I don’t really consider them ATARI cannon, but they are all we have right now).
– The current French company that uses the name Atari has made some announcements this week. They purchased the world-wide rights to two franchises, Ghostbusters’: The Video Game and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. You can read the official press release here. It looks like Ghost Busters will hit DS, Wii, PC, XBOX 360, and PS3, while Riddick will take it’s place in the line-up for PC, XBOX and PS3 only. Both titles should be finished for 2009.

Blogs/Sites/Discussions
– Nathan at The Dork Dimension as a cool little posting of the Comic Book and TV Commercial for Atari 2600 and 5200 Mario Brothers.To answer Nathan’s question, the Sears Video Arcade was the Atari 2600, sold only at Sears with a different name.

– Sector Wars (http://www.sectorwars.co.uk/) was an unreleased Atari 800 English Software title from 1985. The original author is going to release it into the wild as a free emulator rom download as soon as he has received enough donations to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Now, that’s a really cool idea. The game looks AWESOME. It appears to be a combination of Phoenix and Santa’s Hallow.

-The Atari 2600 was inducted into the (ROCHESTER, N.Y) National Toy Hall of Fame this week. Along with the “stick” (just a plain old stick), and Mr. Potato Head. Did you know that the “cardboard box” was inducted in 2005? Now, That’s pretty cool.

– Virtual Dub.org released their very own Atari 800 computer emulator, called Altirra. It was originally created as a way to emulate the Last Star Fighter (Star Raiders II for you pirates, and you now who you are). Since that game includes so many advanced features (bank switched rom, DLI interrupts, etc), Altirra will also emulate most other games as well. It has one other very interesting feature: it can boot protected disk images and preserve the original copy protection.

– Little Scale (Sebastian Tomczak) has a brilliant set of samples recorded directly from an PAL Atari 2600. Called The Atari 2600 Sample Pack, it includes 1344 individual samples organized by wave form and envelope type with 32 pitches for each. Retro game programmers can use this Creative Common’s licensed set of sounds for non-commercial uses only.

– The Joy Of Sticks (an awesome blog dedicated to Atari ST Gaming) has add a review of Archer Maclean’s classic, IK+. Did you know that there is an entire association of people dedicated to Dino Dini’s AWESOME Kick Off series? The Kick Off Association has message boards, tournaments, re-makes, emulators. roms and more. Also, if you have not seen it, the Great Atari ST Games Survey Results have been posted. It includes 50 reviews and pictures of the BEST ST games. It is very very well done.

– Atari Mania.com is attempting to create the definitive database of Atari ST software (much like their incredible Atari 800 database). They need your help in doing so.

– Even though Rich over at Little Green Desktop has not had time to update the site in a while, it is still the Premier Atari ST Gaming Resource on the web. The featured game today was a favorite of mine called Uridium.

– Game Player’s Complete History Of Atari (by Andrew P Street).

– Recycled gaming has new features on Circus Atari (2600 version) and Pitfall II (2600) (awesome game, along with Hero).

– Here at 8bitrocket, we had an entire week dedicated to saving Atari:
1. Save Atari Week Starts
2. Top 10 2600 Games That Could Have Been Franchises
3. 10 Lesser Known Atari Coin-Ops That Would Make Kick-Ass Casual Games
4. Atari 7800/Lynx/Jaguar Games That Should Be Remade In The 21st Century
5. Remake And Download Quality Atari 8 And 16-bit Computer Games
6. A Modest Proposal: The VGS-8200