Category: Reviews
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Atari 50th Anniversary Celebration Review with New 2024 DLC
(original review posted Nov 11, 2022) I own pretty much every Atari collection ever produced for nearly every platform it was produced for, going all the way back to the Atari 2600 Action Packs released by Activision before the internet was even a thing. However, almost every single collection has…
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10 Fun Red Rat Games for the Atari 8bit Computers and your Atari 400 mini
Red Rat was a Manchester Based Microcomputer Software Developer that started in 1985 and mostly made only Atari 8bit and ST games until 1988 when they added The Amiga ad MS Dos to their stable of platforms. The released over 20 games for the Atari 8it, 10 of which we…
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Atari ST Goes MAGNUM! Ocean’s 4-Hit Game Multi-Disk Pack!
We use Cyberlink 365 Video, Photo and Audio Software Magnum 4 is a 1990 Ocean game compilation released for the Atari ST. We excitedly purchased this pack in 1990 from an import shop here in California, but as we did mostly in the late 80’s and 90’s got rid of…
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![Music Review:[alternate] Declaration (The Alarm)](https://intotheverticalblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/6191b-banner.png?w=1024)
Music Review:[alternate] Declaration (The Alarm)
40 years ago I discovered my future. One day early in the year 1984 I was watching Video One with Richard Blade.It was a syndicated TV show that many 80’s teenagers in the Los Angeles area watched on a daily, religious basis. Without access to MTV, Video One was a…
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Atari Proving Grounds: Galaxian. Atari Proving Grounds: Galaxian. Atari ST vs 2600 vs 7800 vs Atari8bit/5200
Welcome to the premier episode of Atari proving grounds where we take a look at the official and semi-official games that were released across multiple classic Atari systems and pit them against one another to see which port we like the most. In this episode we are covering the Namco…
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Never Stop – The Making Of Karateka (Updated for 2023)
2023 Thoughts on “The Making Of Karateka” Digital Ecplise (Note: This is an update to my book review of Jordan Mechner’s ‘The Making Of Karateka which is included at the end of these thoughts) By Steve Fulton The dog woke me up at 3:30 this morning, and then, instead of…
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Arcade1up Atari Centipede Legacy Overview and Review
With 14 games and authentic controls, The Arcade1up Atari Centipede Legacy should be a must-have product for any Atari fan, but is it? The Atari Centipede Legacy is an at once partially great and also misfire that is, literally, one Wi-fi OTA update away from being near perfect. Can Arcade1Up…
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Atari 8bit Gaming Gems Vol 2: 25 Great Games + Notes and Ratings
25 more of our favorite Atari 8bit games. One per year for the first 25 years. Many more videos to come, exploring the entire library up until today. If your favorite isn’t here, tell us below. It will probably show up in a video later in the series. There are…
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Atari 8bit Gaming Gems Vol 1: 25 Great Games + Notes and Ratings
25 of our favorite Atari 8bit games. One per year for the first 25 years. Many more videos to come, exploring the entire library up until today. If your favorite isn’t here, tell us below. It will probably show up in a video later in the series. There are A…
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Atari ST / STE Gaming Gems: Vol 5 – 20 more well crafted games
20 more Atari ST/STE Games that are fun to play get the most out of the little 16-bit that could. After 4 videos of “games that rock” we are now digging into the ST library to find gems we have missed. Some of these rock, some are just fun or…
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Never Let The Fires Die #26: War and The Alarm Central
After a year break when there was no need for a podcast because The Alarm was basically podcasting 2 hours of content a week, we are back to discuss the twin earthquakes that shook The Alarm world this week: War and Alarm Central.
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S3:E24: Three Ghosts From Christmas Past
As we prepare for the 2020 Christmas episode of Into The Vertical Blank, here is a supercut of three Christmas stories from past seasons told for the first time, in Chronological order: -The Best @*#! Christmas Ever (1983) -Atari 7800 Christmas (1986) -The Christmas Train (1982-2011) Written, Edited, Produced by…
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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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“Perfect!” : Book Review: Galaga By Michael Kimball
Perfect ! A Minimalist Coming Of Age Story By Way Of The Best Golden Age Single Screen Shooter I recently finished “Galaga” by Michael Kimball, book #4 in the “Boos Fight Books” series, and I’m still kind of giddy from that “high” I get after reading something with which I…
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Book Review: The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak
When the marketing team at Simon and Schuster were calculating the target demographic for Jason Rekulak’s first novel, The Impossible Fortress, I’m sure they didn’t segment it directly to “romantic-at-heart mid-to-late 40’s computer nerds who are impossibly stuck in 70’s and 80’s nostalgia”, but maybe they should have. …
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Classic Games And CGE at E3 2004 (R.I.P. Keith Robinson)
Note: This is a lost story from before 8bitrocket.com existed. It was published June 1st, 2004 on Andrew Bub’s Gamerdad.com as E3 Embraces The Classics. This was the first time I met Keith Robinson, one of the original Blue Sky Rangers from Mattel Electronics, and the owner of…
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The King Of Kong: The Sociological Inner-Workings Of The Nerdcore
There is a line near the end of the extraordinary documentary The King Of Kong that carries the weight of the entire film. It was spoken by a tween-age girl, but in the context of the film, that girl might be the most “adult” person to show-up on the screen…
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Review: Extra Life By David S. Bennahum
The experience of growing up at the dawn of the video and computer game age is one that I know all-to-well. Video games and computers exploded at the end of the 70’s and have became an increasingly larger part of daily life ever since. However, while video games and computers…
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Review: Atari 2600 Dragonstomper.
In 1981 a small company named Arcadia was formed with the purpose of cashing in on the craze that was home video games. The company was quickly renamed Starpath when it was learned that at least one copyright was already registered with an association to video games (Emerson Arcadia) and…
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Book Review: The Art Of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford
(Note: How great is this book? I wrote this 10 years ago, and all I had to do was change about 20 words, and this review is as relevant now as it was in 2007) By all rights, Chris Crawford’s book The Art Of computer Game Design should be a…
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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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S-Town And The Age Of The Binge Podcast
A lot has been written online in the past week about the new podcast “S-Town” from the producers of Serial and This American Life. “S-Town” seemed to drop out of the blue last week as a bingable, 7-episode monster of humanistic insight and emotion. The story is about…
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Review: Lucky Wander Boy plus Interview With Author D.B. Weiss
(note: An edited version of this review originally appeared on http://www.gamerdad.com in 2003) About 15 years ago, I ventured past the realm of the “Classic Game Fan” to a destination that can only be described as the absurd. I had been a fan of Atari since around 1977. I’ve owned every…
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Fact Checkers Sharpen Your Pencils: Nolan Bushnell Interviewed For NPR’s “How I Built This” Podcast
Let me just get this out of the way, I LOVE Nolan Bushnell. He is the visionary without which we would not have all that is and was Atari. Sure, if he did not start Atari with Ted Dabney back in the early 1970s’s, someone else would have eventually created…
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Review: Phoenix IV : The History Of The Video Game Industry By Leonard Herman
Phoenix IV : The History Of The Video Game Industry by Leonard Herman is the most well researched, historically accurate chronicle of the video game industry that you will ever find. Almost completely devoid of conjecture, hyperbole, and opinion, the books attempts (and succeeds) to posit an impartial, fact-based account…
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Podcast Review: Antic Interviews “Wild” Bill Stealy Co-Founder of Microprose Software
I’m a huge fan of Antic, The Atari Podcast from Randy Kindig, Kevin Savetz, and Brad Arnold. I’m especially fond of the interview episodes conducted by Kevin Savetz. The sheer volume of interviews they produce is astounding. Many of them are with fascinating yet curious bit-players in the history of…
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Atari Flashback Portable Game Player: Review
I’ve been waiting for a device like the AtGames Atari Flashback Portable Game Player for many many years. I’ve always dreamed of holding a mini-Atari 2600 in my hands, and playing all my favorite VCS games from the early 1980’s While I’ve had emulated game collections for the the…
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Atari Vault : Multi-Player Breathes New Life Into Age-Old Games
I spent much of last weekend attempting to get a multi-player games started with someone, anyone, on the internet. It was not a game of Star Wars Battlefront, or Words With Friends, or even Clash Royale. It was a game of Atari 2600/VCS Basic Math. Let me back-up a bit. Basic…
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What Indie Game Developers Can Learn From Jordon Mechner’s Book “The Making Of Karateka”
I’ve always been a huge fan of Jordon Mechner’s Karateka. Released in late 1984, it was one of the major games that bridged the gap between the pure arcade games of “Golden Age of Atari” and the richer story telling of the “Nintendo Age.” Written for the Apple II, the…
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Atari 8-bit Computer Games Played with The Syzygy Company’s new Classic 2 USB Stick
I received a review version the the new Syzygy Company’s Classic Atari 2600 stick a couple months ago. It was right as my mom was going in and out of the hospital, so I didn’t get a chance to review it them, but now I have a little extra time, so…
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Gone Home : Is The Fullbright Company The New Infocom?
I just finished ”Gone Home”, a new, indie, PC game developed by the Fullbright Company. At $19.99 (through Steam) it’s the most expensive PC game I have bought in a long time, and clocking in at just about 3 hours, the shortest. In “Gone Home” you play a young adult…
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Vectrex Regeneration + iCade: Proof That “Retro” Gaming Is Alive And Well In The Mobile Era
I believe technology has reached the point where “retro” game collections can move beyond mere curious nostalgia, and truly return players to a specific time and place in their past. I recently experienced something akin to this while playing Vectrex Regenerations on the iCade. Back in the summer of…
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Book Review: Atari Inc. : Business Is Fun
My review of the new book, Atari Inc. Business Is Fun, by Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg is up over at Gamasutra.com Here is an excerpt: Atari Inc: Business Is Fun is an exciting, messy, sprawling tour-de-force that fills in a lot missing gaps for Atari fans worldwide. The book reads…
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Retro Atari 8-Bit Computer Gaming – Commando for the XE Game System
By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) Retro Atari 8-Bit Computer Gaming – Commando for the XE Game System Commando for the Atari XE Game system was supposed to be released in 1989 by Atari for the limited re-birth of the Atari 8-bit computer systems. Sculptured Software developed this game, Crossbow, Dark Chambers…
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Retro Atari Lynx Gaming: Zarlor Mercenary
By 8bitjeff (Jeff D. Fulton) One of the first games we had for the Atari Lynx was Zarlor Mercenary. I remember purchasing it at the Manhattan Village mall in the B-Dalton Software Etc when they still sold Atari products (they even had a shelf of Atari ST and Jaguar games!). Zarlor Mercenary is…
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Retro Atari 8-bit Computer Gaming – Arkanoid
By Jeff D. Fulton – 8bitjeff What a pleasant surprise. Arkanoid for the Atari 8-bit computers is a very well made game. Note: My brother Steve and I owned pretty much every Atari game system and computer until the company closed in the mid 1990’s. Using emulation, I am going…
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Retro Atari ST Gaming – Tempest
By Jeff D. Fulton (8bitjeff) Atari UK released a lot of arcade conversions for the ST line of computers in the late 80’s. Many of these were packed into “gaming” bundles sold at shops all over Europe and via mail order in the USA. I am not sure…
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Vectrex Regeneration Closes The Loop On My Retro Game Needs
One a summer day, just like this one, nearly 30 years to the day, I bought a GCE Vectrex with money I made from selling my Atari 2600. At the time, it felt like an investment in the future. The Vectrex had a black and white vector screen…
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Sim City Social : Social Game Perfection, Cynical Game Design
Yesterday I sat down to try Sim City Social. I, honestly, wanted to see how EA had translated one of my favorite old school games to the Facebook platform. I was not playing as a “joke” or just because I wanted rant about it, I honestly was hoping…
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