• 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…

  • Goodbye Old Friend And Fare Thee Well: Adobe Announces Flash End Of Life

    Goodbye Old Friend And Fare Thee Well: Adobe Announces Flash End Of Life

  • 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,…

  • Father’s Day Story – A Moment Near Aspen Grove

    Note: This story was recorded for “Never Let The fires Die: The Alarm Podcast”, and is available Listen in iTunes or Google Play The full story in written form is below: A Moment Near Aspen Grove We were on our way to Aspen Grove, a small campground in the Sierra Nevada…

  • Chris Crawford’s Famous Dragon Speech and Interview From 2008

    Chris Crawford recently highlighted a “cleaned-up” version of his famous, game industry-defining “Dragon Speech” from GDC 1992.  In this speech, Chris Crawford explained his dream of of true “interactivity” and how the game industry and he had parted-ways.    While he was almost universally rejected at the time, in an…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Never Let The Fires Die: The Alarm Podcast : Episode #4

    Note: Jeff and I produce and host a podcast for the 80’s band The Alarm.    The Alarm are still going in 21st century, making new music, and inspiring their fans.   We’ve been spending much of our “online” time working on the podcast over the past couple months, which is…

  • 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…

  • Controlled Chaos and The Meaning in Software Development

    Controlled Chaos and The Meaning in Software Development

    I believe that I was born to be a computer programmer. Somewhere, deep in my soul, there is a need to organize my thoughts in ways that are both new and interesting, but also foundational and reusable at the same time. I’ve always felt that there is something atypical about…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Never Let The Fire Die (podcast episode #2)

    Jeff and I host the official podcast for the band The Alarm.   They had a bunch of alternative hits in the 80’s  (The Stand, 68 Guns, Strength, Spirit Of ’76. Rain The Summertime, Rescue Me, Sold Me Down The River).    They new 21st century version of the band…

  • 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…

  • Pac-Man, Electronic Games Magazine, And The Exact Moment Atari Lost The Video Game War

    Note: As I discover the 120 or so games on my list of “lost” VCS games from the 80’s, I will spend some time discussing the ones that, in one way or another,  mean something significant to me.     This is one of those stories. “It’s disappointingly difficult to…

  • 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…

  • 8bitrocket Retro-Game And DIY Game Development News Update

    New Book About Atari 8-Bit computers! A new book, Breakout: How Atari 8-Bit Computers Defined a Generation by veteran tech writer Jamie Lendino was released last week by Ziff Davis.    The book looks mighty interesting, but so far there is no news about the actual contents.  We here at…

  • 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