Category: Atari Nerd Chronicles
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Into the vertical blank: Generation Atari: Season 2, Episode 9 DragonStomper
In the episode, Steve and Jeff take a deep look at the Atari 2600 game Dragon Stomper, what it meant to them in the grand scheme of gaming, and also how it had an effect on early 80’s video and computer games as a whole. AtariProtos.com Dragon Stomper Page http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/dragonstomper/dragonstomper.htm…
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Commercial Off-The-Shelf, Dad : Why My Dad Never Joined The Computer Revolution
(Feeling melancholy about my dad’s birthday today. Here’s an old (slightly reworked) story about his aversion to technology. First published October 13th, 2012,) My brother Jeff and I loved computers as kids, and my dad supported that love as well as he possibly could. He bought us a our first…
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Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari S1:E6 – Interfaces are where two worlds collide
Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari S1:E6 – Interfaces are where to worlds collide The only thing from the 80’s that could rival our love for Atari was our love for punk rock and new wave, and especially, our favorite band: The Alarm. In 1987 those two things combined in…
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Atari Play field – Atari ST games #1 : Michtron.
Note: (This article was originally written by me – Jeff Fulton – in 2009 for the Retrogaming Times online magazine. The article does not show up anywhere in their archives anymore, so to make sure it is not lost forever, i am putting it here again. It might lead to…
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Toys R Us at (up to) 40% Liquidation – treasure hunt
Steve and I took on a field trip to record part of the Into the Vertical Blank: Growing Up Atari podcast, so say goof bye to Toys R Us, and explain what role it played in being an Atari fan in the last 80’st It was a pretty disappointing sale,…
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Fultonbot Atari VCS Quest: Memories Of The Proper Vintage
Not too long ago I had a sudden realization. I don’t just need the games I had with my Atari VCS from 1981-1984. I need the console too. I’ve written about my brother and my quest for VCS before (1981 Atari VCS Christmas). The story is long and involved,…
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Fultonbot’s Atari VCS Quest: Transmissions From AtariSpot
Soon after I made my first post about my VCS Quest, I got a tweet from another Atari fan named AtariSpot. He noticed my list and wanted to know if I would like to see his list of available games. We communicated on Twitter a bit, and noticed that…
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Ballad Of Atari: 1982-1984
Ballad Of Atari: 1982 E.T. And Pac-Man Not The Worst, Yet Not The Best The Gamers Notice Ballad Of Atari: 1983 800XL Flag Ship. Work Horse. All That Jazz. Cliches Of Awesome Ballad Of Atari: 1984 GCC designs The 7800 Last ditch hope for…
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Ballad Of Atari: 1981
Ballad Of Atari: 1981 (part 1) Never Ending Walls Fall Down To My Bouncing Ball In Super Breakout Ballad Of Atari: 1981(part 2) Ugly Garden Gnome Hides Within The Mushroom Field Shoots Gross Insects Dead
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Ballad Of Atari: 1980
Ballad Of Atari: 1980 (part 1) VCS Breaks Through Sales Sky Rocket With Space Invaders Cartridge Ballad Of Atari: 1980 (part 2) Atari Is The Fastest Growing Company Ever Recorded
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Ballad Of Atari: 1979
Ballad Of Atari: 1979 (part 1) Rocks Floating In Space Insert Coin To Shoot. Collects Quarters By The Ton Ballad Of Atari: 1979 (part 1) The Four Horseman Of David, Larry Bob, Alan Form Activision Competition Sows The Seeds Of Apocalypse For Atari Inc.
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Ballad Of Atari: 1977-1978
Ballad Of Atari: 1977 TIA, RIOT and 6507. VCS Changes Everything Ballad Of Atari: 1978 A Board Room Showdown Bushnell Booted By Gerard Welcome Ray Kassar
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Ballad Of Atari: 1975-1976
Ballad Of Atari: 1975 LSI Home Pong A Chip Off The Coin-Op Block Sporting Goods For Nerds Ballad Of Atari: 1976 Warner Buys Into VCS promise. Bushnell Starts Thinking: “Pizza?”
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Ballad Of Atari: 1973-1974
Ballad Of Atari: 1973 Fight Pong Copycats With Innovative Leisure: Space Race, Pong Doubles Ballad Of Atari: 1974 The Kee To Success Is Fake Competition And A Game Named “Tank!”
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Ballad Of Atari: 1971-1972
The Ballad Of Atari: 1971 Slick Computer Space Machines all ready to dance But few know the steps The Ballad Of Atari: 1972 Avoid Missing Ball For High Score. Easy to learn But hard to master
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Atari Haiku: Star Ship & Air Sea Battle
CX2603 : Star Ship In 1980 Atari yanked this game From it’s catalog Amazing box art Bait and switch for this bizarre Unplayable mess E.T. and Pac-Man Don’t even chart next to Star Ship The worst game ever CX2602 : Air Sea Battle Ships battling planes As anti-aircraft guns fire…
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Atari 2600 Donkey Kong leaves doubts about Neuroscience Experiments
Atari 2600 Donkey Kong leaves doubts about Neuroscience (Image courtesy of Atariage) Neuroscience experiments, using a reverse engineering technique, to dig into the the the 6502 code used to create the Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong have left some scientists scratching their heads. Even though they know what the…
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Atari 7800 Haiku
CX7805: Galaga 7800 Lovely Galaga Woke up early to play you Every morning Be damned high school For my passion awaits me On a ROM cartridge An “A” in “twin ships” A “D” in “Geometry” I’m summer school bound CX7804 : Food Fight 7800 Four crazy-ass chefs Throwing food…
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Atari Haiku : Out Of Control
The Atari VCS was released with a slew of different controllers: The classic red-button joystick, the paddle controllers, the driving controllers, and the keypads just to name a few. The CX40 (Joystick) The CX40 One binary way to press The red button The CX40 Eight digital ways to push The…
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The Wild Gunman (1976)
“A gun is never empty” my dad told me. He was looking straight at me. He was looking into my eyes. He had never done that before. That I could recall any way. “A gun is always loaded” he repeated, changing the words slightly but not the meaning. It…
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Big Mouse And Little Mouse
Note: A story about ‘play’. Before LEGO, before Star Wars, before video games, there was just ‘Little Mouse’ and ‘Big Mouse’, the names my twin brother and I used to refer to one another while we played together. The origin of those chosen names is lost forever, but the memory…
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Atari Pong Developer Challenge Diary: What The Radio Shack “TV Scoreboard” Taught Me About Game Design.
One day, back in 1978 my dad came home with this: [iframe width=”480″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/6quqAff5fO8″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen][/iframe] A Radio Shack, TV Scoreboard console. We had been begging my dad to let us play the Atari 2600 console in the TV department at Fedmart on every visit, so he knew…
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A Nerd Is Born: Star Wars In-Person At Toys ‘R Us September 1977 (updated)
I’m been a consumer of nerd-laden toys and video games for most of my life. There is not a January that goes by that does not see me searching through the After-Christmas red-tag bins at Target, looking for mark-downs on video games and toys that I others would shudder at…
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Atari Poetry: Snack Time Is Over
Snack Time Is Over “Hey, that’s cool! ColecoVision looks radical!” Alex said. I held the magazine with both hands, scanning every word on the pages Greg and Alex looked over my shoulders “What’s the 5200?” Alex asked, pointing at the next page “It’s Atari’s new system. It’s supposed to kick…
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1986 : Atari 7800 Christmas
“Holy crap!” “What?” Jeff replied. He looked over at me to see that I reading an advertisement in Antic Magazine. “Look at this…Atari 7800’s for sale!” October of 1986 was a trying time for Atari 8-bit nerds like Jeff and I. We had seen the vastly inferior (to us)…
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