Category: Atari
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XEGS Games Carts that should have been – if Atari had decided to continue. Vol 1
When Atari Corp dropped support for all 8bit systems in 1992, they had only produced a couple dozen official game cartridges for the XEGs console. But Atari UK and Germany produced or were in the middle of producing a number of high quality semi-budget games that could have been used…
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Using A8bit #fujinet to play “Pet” Galaga from – Homesoft Game Disk 404
By Jeff D. Fulton Today we are going load up Homesoft game Disk #404 and play the only version of Galaga available for Atari 8bit 400/800/XL/XE Machines. We Will play directly an Atari 130XL by loading it over the internet via WIFI with #Fujinet! Disk 404 Download #Fujinet Here is…
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S3:E23: Why We Are Thankful for STOS: The Game Creator
In this episode the brothers talk about the creation of their one and only completed Atari ST game (“Zamboozal Poker Dice”) and the tools that helped them complete it: the Mandarin / JawX Software products under the STOS banner. Come along for the ride as they discuss the old days…
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Season 2: Episode 15: The Atari 7800 and ST. Our Next Gen Super Systems
Notes: Season 2: Episode 15: The Atari 7800 and ST. Our Next Gen Super Systems In this episode we dig into American Thanksgiving 1986 and discuss our transition from the Atari 800 to the Atari ST with the Atari 7800 squeezed in between. Tony Longworth: https://patreon.com/tonylongworth Some of the music…
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S2:E12: Star Wars and Atari In The Vertical Blank : Part 2
Tunes Google Play Player FM Spotify S2:E12: Star Wars and Atari In The Vertical Blank : Part 2 In the follow-up episode to the Season 2, Episode 12, Steve and Jeff continue their discussion of the impact that Star Wars on their video game experience and video games in general.…
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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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S2:E8 The Exact Moment Nintendo Won the Video Game War
The Exact Moment Nintendo Won The Video game War (A Short, Left Handed Episode) In this short summer bonus episode, Steve explores what he thinks is the exact moment Nintendo beat everyone and and won the video game war. I imagine, it’s not exactly what you expect. The Into The…
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S2:E7 Emits a shower of Sparks: Pele’s Soccer
Into the Vertical Blank: Generation Atari – Season 2 Episode 7 : Emits a shower of sparks: How we stopped playing soccer and started playing Atari (along with Pele) In this episode, Steve and Jeff cover Pele’s Soccer for the Atari 2600, and the cultural as well as business atmosphere…
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S2: E5 Electronic Games Magazine
In this episode of Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari, Steve and Jeff celebrate the magazine that started it all. The first publication in the USA that was strictly devoted to video and electronic games, Electronic Games Magazine. The brothers bring you two stories of thos glories magazine, each featuring…
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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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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…
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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…
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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…
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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”.…
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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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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…
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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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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…
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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…
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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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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:…
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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 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 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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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:…
intotheverticalblank.com 