Category: Atari

  • 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,…

  • The Christmas Train (An Atari Nerd Memoirs Story)

    The Christmas Train (An Atari Nerd Memoirs Story)

    The Christmas Train (An Atari Nerd Memoirs Story) By Steve Fulton Part 1: H.O. Scale Christmas Train tracks feel like the stuff of life to me. They stretch long into an unseen distance, appear never ending, yet always travel to a known and inevitable destination. I’ve always had a fascination…

  • Fultonbot’s Atari VCS Quest: “I Never Got Into Atari, but…”

    Fultonbot’s Atari VCS Quest: “I Never Got Into Atari, but…”

    “I never got into Atari” I’ve heard this phrase so many times from the owners of used and retro video game stores, and fellow retrogamers,   that I’ve now come to expect it.  When I enter a game store, or make a friendly connection at work, I brace myself  to hear…

  • Review: Why I Loved Raiders Of The Lost Ark for The 2600

    Review: Why I Loved Raiders Of The Lost Ark for The 2600

    Wired posted an article a while back about the worst movie tie-in games of all-time, and , Raiders Of The lost Ark for the Atari 2600 made the list. It feels like I’ve been trying to convince people since 1982 that this is simply not the case, and the quest…

  • Fultonbot’s 1983 Atari VCS Quest: The Absent Minded Collector

    The “pile of stuff” in the photo to the left is a collection of 36 years worth of “absent-minded” Atari 2600/7800 collecting.   I say “Absent Minded”  as I was never really serious about  collecting games.  My feelings for the VCS/2600 and 7800 were what I would call “uncomfortable nostalgia”.…

  • 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…

  • 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

  • Atari In the Wild No. 2: 2600, 5200, 400/800/XL/XE Carts

    This is the second installment of “In The Wild”.  In this series, I do first impression reviews of games I have added to my collection of carts for old Atari Systems. In the Wild refers to me having found these while shopping at local retro gaming stores, and other non-ebay…

  • 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

  • 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.

  • Fultonbot’s 1983 Atari VCS Quest: The Checklist

    Here is my quest. This has been bubbling under my skin for 34 years now, and this morning, while walking the dog, I finally understood what I must do. In the summer of 1983, my brother Jeff and I sold a bunch of our Atari 2600 stuff  so we could…

  • The the Wild #1 – Retro 2600 Finds 2/20/17

    The the Wild #1 – Retro 2600 Finds 2/20/17 This is a new feature we will be doing here on 8bitrocket.com, In The Wild, where we describe retro gaming finds in the wild (at a store, flea market, etc), as opposed to an e-bay purchase. We might discuss those too…

  • 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

  • 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?”

  • Gameband: Atari Now on Kickstarter!

    Would you play remakes of classic Atari games on your wrist for $149? Gameband and Atari sure hope you will.   The two companies have teamed-up to launch a Kickstarter, hoping to lure classic gamers to their new wearable.   The Android Marshmallow based device will launch with these games:…

  • 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!”

  • 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

  • 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…

  • Atari To Announce GameBand/GameWatch On Feb. 1st?

    A member of AtariAge Facebook  Group (Andrew Ruth) posted this  image (to the left) today that Atari Interactive had been circulating.   It appears that Atari Interactive is working with GameBand to bring classic games to life in a new way. According to SlashGear GameBand was released in 2015 as stylish way…

  • 1981 : Atari VCS Christmas

     In the fall of 1981, just after starting junior high school, my brother Jeff and I tried to convince our parents that we ‘needed’ an Atari VCS for Christmas. Our parents had never been very electronics or modern convenience friendly, so it was quite a tough sell.  Other than a…

  • One Of The Masters “Speaks” On Game Design : Dan(i) Bunten (Berry)’s Archived Web Site

    It’s no secret that we here at 8bitrocket.com have a few very distinct heroes, and Dan(i) Bunten (Berry) is one of them.  Bunten was the designers/programmer of the classic, unparalleled games M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities Of Gold. An archived web site of Bunten’s exists and it contains some of the only known…

  • Pong Developer Challenge : Reality Bites

    I’ve searched for the past few days to find comments on the Atari Pong Developer Challenge, and most everything I’ve read gives us a very small chance of getting any further in the contest.    The only positive comments I have seen are for AR Pong and Pong World, both…

  • Worst Products And Services For Classic Gamers (circa 1982-1984): Final Roundup Of Even More Useless Products

    In the past two article (part 1 and part 2 ), I have tried to tell stories with insight into just how useless some of these products, services and offers were back in the day.  However, there are a bunch more products that, while not quite as shockingly bad, are still…

  • Update: Atari is *not necessarily* Targeting Hobbyists

    Yesterday we posted a story about Atari targeting a German maker of 8-bit software, and the owner of atari2600.com.    The atari2600.com complaint was real, and the owner of the site has relinquished his rights to the name. However, the it looks like the comlaint against the German aoftware maker was…

  • Atari Nerd: This Week In Atari History : First Week Of May

    1979 May: Atari announces Baseball and Basketball coin-op arcade games •    Both use Trak-Ball controller •    Baseball is in a cabinet similar to Football coin-op 1979 May: Atari ships Subs arcade game •    Uses two monitors 1979 May: Atari announces Superman patches and t-shirts •    For operators to give-away to…

  • Review : Atari Haunted House – Wii : Plus Win A Copy!

    Note: This is the first a new series of articles where we review new games from a retro/viral/indie/web game developer/technical writer perspective.  Since we are not a game review site, we don’t want to review every game out there, but games that fit our perspective (retro evolved, retro remakes, indie…

  • Atari Greatest Hits Finally Coming to the Nintendo DS!!

    I have been waiting for a good version of some Atari retro c classics to hit the DS for a while now. The old DS Atari pack is a pathetic POC, but this new one looks to make up for it and more! This $29.99 pack has about 50 games…

  • Commodore To Make PC in Classic Commodore Case: Pong Ball’s In Your Court, Atari

    It turns out, a company has bought the “Commdore” name and is planning to create a PC housed in a Commdore 64 case. that’s awesome. However, personally can’t buy one as it is simply against my Atari sensibilities to do so. However, if Atari would do the same thing, with…

  • If I Won The Lottery I’d Open An Atari Store

    If I won the lottery, I mean like $100,000,000 lottery, I would open an Atari Store. It would be in some kind of upscale mall or location  like Downtown Disney, Universal City Walk, The Beverly Center, The Grove, downtown San Francisco or Times Square The store would act just like…

  • Atari “Asteroids” Movie Director’s Quote

    In a recent interview with ComingSoon.net , the director of the upcoming Asteroids movie, Lorenzo di Bonaventura had this to say about the concept: “…we really went after a mythology on the level of “Star Wars.” We’ll see if we succeeded or not, but it’s not a simple like, the…

  • Spectacularly Nerdy 8bitrocket Computer Desk Circa 1992

    My sister just found this photo.  It’s Spectacularly nerdy.  It’s a photo of me (Steve) sitting at the “8bitrocket.com” computer desk (the desk Jeff and I shared in the bedroom we shared until we graduated from college).   I think the photo speaks for itself: Above you will notice the following:…

  • Steve Woita: An Original Atari 2600 Game Developer Tackles Flash Games, Speaks-Up About Flash And CGE 2010

    “ I feel like I’ve got more ideas for new types of games to build now then I did back then because there are so many great games to get inspired from now” – Steve Woita, March 9, 2010 If you know 8bitrocket.com then you know we love Flash games.…

  • Top-10 Alternative Ideas for The Universal “Asteroids” Movie

    Last week, Universal announced that they had won a “bidding war” for the rights to turn Atari’s Asteroids coin-op into a feature film. Almost immediately, game pundits  and art critics alike pounced on the news, and scoffed at the idea of a Hollywood version of Atari’s classic game. Many of…

  • The History of 8-bit Computer Games in The USA #1 : CGW Nov/Dec 1981

    The History of 8-bit Computer Games in The USA #1 : CGW Nov/Dec 1981 I never read Computer Gaming World Magazine when I should have. When I finally purchased a PC in 1992, I started to read it and kept doing so as a subscriber until it died late last…

  • ST Action Magazine Online! (Some at least) on Atarimania.com

    ST Action Magazine Online! (Some of at least) on Atarimania.com Back in 1988, one of the few places to get Atari ST or Amiga imported games (or any games for that matter) were in specialty shops such as Computer Games + in  Orange County, CA (well before Marissa, Ryan, Summer…

  • ST Amiga Format Magazine ONLINE (For real!!!)

    ST Amiga Format Magazine ONLINE (For real!!!) On the heels of yesterday’s find of ST Action scanned reviews on Atari Mania, I hopped over to wonderful Amiga Magazine Rack site to find that they have all of copies of the combined ST Amiga Format magazine scanned for your perusal. The…

  • When Golden Age Video Games “Wore The Leather Jacket”

    I’ve been reading Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd lately.  One of the aspects of nerdom that he points out is the need for nerds to “coin phrases”.  Obviously, we at 8bitrocket.com have tried our share of this.  From “Midcore Gamer” (between “casual” and “hardcore”) to “vink” (virtual ink) we have attempted…

  • Atari Nerd Retro Inter-Web Mash up – May 7, 2009

    Atari Nerd Retro Inter-Web Mash up – May 7, 2009 What’s new (and old) in the world of Retro Atari consoles, computers, and what not. Atari 2600 – Play 50 Classic Atari 2600 games online, free (in java or emulated in java). – Retro Thing has a very cool article…

  • USB Enabled Classic Atari 2600 “Red Button” Joystick Announced Today!

    A new era for classic 8-bit retro gaming has arrived today! Curt Vendel over at Legacy engineering just clued-us-in today on his latest project that brings the classic era of the Atari 2600 to modern audiences.  Curt was instrumental in the development of the Atari Flashback 1 & 2 consoles…

  • 8bitrocket Retro Games Inter-web mash up:October 08, 2008

    8bitrocket Retro Games Inter-web mash up:October 08, 2008 The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Retro Game Fans. This time we cover new stuff on Recycled Gaming, Retro Thing, Classicgaming.com, Lemon64, Atari Mania, Lemon Amiga, c64audio, Atari Age, and RetroGamer. Recycled Gaming – A Super Mario 64…