• 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”.…

  • De-Motivational Engineering Problem Solving Worksheet from 1989 applies now more than ever

    (warning, some adult language is in this post) By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) When my dad left his job at Hughes Aircraft in 1989, he gave my brother, Steve, and I a lot of advice and a whole bunch of de-motivational type stuff that had been hanging around his office.  We…

  • 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…

  • Dead End Game Development: There Is No Such Thing As Free Beer

      Note: “Game Development Dead end” is new blog series where we tell the stories behind games that were never finished or released (most of the time,  for good reasons.)    For every game a developer releases, usually there are 10 more sitting 1/2 finished on their hard drive.  This…

  • 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…

  • Linkstorm!: 8bitrocket Retro Gaming News Update

    IDW To Release Atari Themed Board Games IDW Games, designers and distributors of a multitude of games (including the magnificent The Game) have signed a deal to create board games based on Atari properties.  The first will be Centipede in September 2017, followed Asteroids and Missile Command.   The games…

  • 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

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Linkstorm!: 8bitrocket’s Retro Gaming News (Updated!)

    Atari Box Art Finally Being Recognized Atari VCS box-art is very close to our hearts here at 8bitrocket.com.   The recent book, Art Of Atari made it even more-so (see review on this site soon).  Now The Onion AV club has a new column named Art Of the Game by…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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!”

  • Listen Kids, This Job Won’t Exist When You’re My Age

    The airline pilot was absolutely killing it. I was standing in the back of the room, waiting for my turn, and thinking ‘I have gone about this all wrong‘. The pilot had all the 2nd graders gathered around his computer, as he talked in commanding, excited tones about  take offs,…

  • 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 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…

  • Flashback Post! Review of PS2 Activision Anthology (2003)

    Activision Anthology PS2 By Steve Fulton  For A Change, Nostalgia Is Done The Right Way…But Will your Kids Care? The name “Activision” means more to me than it rightly should, and far too much than I can ever admit to my wife.  To me at age 11, the fab-four were “David Crane,…

  • Linkstorm! 01/17/2017 : 8bitrocket Retro Gaming News Update

    News The Nintendo Switch will be released March 1st.  No word on the Virtual Console transfers  or whether we will have to buy our classic games again…for the 3rd time in a row.  Appropriately, NintendoAge has a ton of threads about it. DIY/Maker Gaming  Adafruit: World’s Largest Vertical Maze Illuminated…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Viva Amiga: The Story Of A Beautiful Machine Documentary Now Available

    “Amiga users make Macintosh users look like IBM users” -Viva Amiga Trailer After a successful Kickstarter campaign,  the documentary “Viva Amiga” was released last week and it looks amazing (see trailer below). We will have our review after we had watched the movie and had time to digest the whole…

  • 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…

  • Linkstorm: Jan. 9, 2017 : New/Improved Retro Gaming News Update Now With C.E.S.!

    News CES 2017 took place last week/weekend.  Not a lot there any more for retro gamers.  Certainly not if you recall the CES conventions of old, when all the video game manufacturers would display their wares.   Mistly it was AR/VR innovations, drones, etc. However, we did see a couple,…

  • The Exact Moment Nintendo Won The Video Game War: Feb 12th, 1985

    ( Since we are relaunching the site, we are periodically identifying stories we published during our “dark periond” from 2012 through 2016. This was re-posted from October 11, 2014) February 12th, 1985. That’s the day Nintendo won everything. It was the day the 2nd to last issue of Electronic Games…

  • RetroPie Tip: Network Discovery From Your Windows 10 Computer

    This is a very simple tip, but also something that baffled me for a very long time.    When I first installed my RetroPie, my Windows 10 machine automatically found it on the network and allowed me to see the file system.  However, after running for a few hours, it…

  • Linkstorm Jan. 2, 2017: 8bitrocket Retro Gaming News Update

    News The Making Of Activision Frostbite for the Atari 2600 on RetroGamer.net The Making Of Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600 on RetroGamer.net DIY/Maker Gaming  Smile Game Maker gets a VR Mode Products Armchair Arcade reviews the Pac-Man LED Desk Clock Goofy Foot An Alternative NES Controller…

  • Some Fireworks To Salute The End of 2016!

    Thank God 2016 is Over! Here is a video of $49.99 safe and sane firework I bought for the 4th of July in 2010. Now let’s hope we don’t need to do this again to salute the end of 2017.  

  • 8bitrocket.com New Year’s Resolutions

    Play games with my family more often Spend less time on social media sites Spend less time worried about “likes” and spend more time giving “hugs” When playing retro games, savor each one.  Find the best way to recreate the experience of playing the game back-in-day, and less time trying to…

  • “…and The Kitchen Is Stocked With Free Beer And Snacks!” : A Short One Act Play

    Setting: Snack room in an anonymous pre-IPO start-up software  firm.  Boxes of candy bars and chips line a large, round table in the middle of the room.  An industrial sized refrigerator with a glass door is off to one side, stocked with soda, water, and even beer.   The walls…

  • Linkstorm Dec. 29, 2016 : 8bitrocket Retro Gaming News Update

    News Retronauts Get Serious:  Jeremy at Retronauts said last week “I’d like to try and turn Retronauts into a true and proper venture”.  We wish them all all the luck in the world. One of our favorite developers, Chris Sawyer served as producer for the rel-release of his classic PC…

  • 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…

  • R.I.P. Carrie Fisher

    Carrie Fisher died today at age 60.   I’m currently reading her 2nd autobiography, The Princess Diarist which I started a few weeks ago. as well as being Princess Leia, she was a very funny and talented writer.   I will review her book here as soon as I have finished it.…

  • 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…