Atari Nerd Inter-Web Mashup- Nov 19, 2008
What’s new (and old) in the world of Atari – Press releases, blogs, messages boards sites and more…
This week we have new game announcements from the current Atari; a revenue announcement from them too; The Legacy Engineering Atari 2600 USB Stick; some great retrospectives and review of 2600, ST, 800, and 5200 games; A video game documentary on Showtime; Some 1991 Atari ST coding practices; Atari ST 16 color art; 2600 Adventure on the iPhone; Portal on the 2600; Atari computer finds in the wild and much more.
Announcements from the Current Atari
– Neverwinter Nights(TM) 2: Storm of Zehir‘ (PC Windows) launches as an expansion pack. It is a 20-30 hour campaign with classes, spells and creatures. Read the official press release.
– Atari announced a sequel to their horse care / equestrian title with ‘My Horse & Me: Riding for Gold‘ (DS/Wii). Read the official press release.
– Softpedia is announcing that that Atari had a 45% revenue increase in the first 1/2 of 2008. They say this is mainly because of Alone In The Dark, Dragon Ball Z, and Back Yard Baseball titles.
Blogs/Sites/Discussions
– PC World has an announcement for the Legacy Engineering Atari USB Stick for Mac and Windows machines. Visit the story and Buzz It Up to help sell units. That way, there *might* be a Flash Back 3.
– The CoxSoft Art News Blog has a new entry called Atari ST Graphics, where he shows one of his 16 color masterpieces.
– The great Joy Of Sticks Atari ST game blog has added reviews of : Ace Invaders, Lamatron (Zarjazz included), as well as a First Impressions post on Another World.
– Lemmings Ports has posted some beautiful screen shots and box art from the Lemmings 2 Atari ST version.
– The Cowboy Programming Blog has a cool article where Mick West shows off his coding practices doc from his Parasol Stars Atari ST programming effort for Ocean in 1991.
– Gameplay.ca has a video is level one of the Bitmap Bros Xenon (Atari ST Version) playing on the Steem emulator).
– I doubt this is legal, and if not, Shame on Apple for allowing, it, but congrats to Peter Hirschberg for creating Atari 2600 Adventure for the iPhone and getting it into the App store. Watch out for Atari if they ever get their act together and start protecting their IP though.
– Play Atari 2600 Portal (via emulation), if you dare! Calling these types of ports DMAKES was a righteous move.=)
– The Nekochan.net blog has a cool little entry about a full Atari 800 system found “in the wild” for $25.00.
– Below Zero Gaming has a review of Atari 2600 Pole Position.
– The 52 Hunter is a site dedicated to collecting Atari 5200 games with a lot of content and reviews, etc. It’s a great read. Also check out The 26 Hunter for a similar site dedicated to the 2600 console.
– Loops of Zen and Maxwell Manner, Skull of Doom has been added to the Atari Mania Atari 800 games section.
– Side Scrolling Shooter UN Squadron (Atari ST) is a featured game on Atari Legend today.
– Speaking of Zarjazz, Revenge of the Mutant Camels (Atari ST) is the featured game on the Little Green Desktop today.
– Chasing Ghosts, a Retro Documentary will be shown on Showtime in December.
– Check out a retrospective on the excellent Atari 800 game, Agent USA on the Classicgaming.com site.