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S2:E3 We always wanted to work for Atari
iTunes Google Play Player FM Spotify Into the Vertical Blank: Generation Atari. Season 2: Episode 3. We always wanted to work for Atari Steve and Jeff provide two new stories about wanting to work for, with, or somehow adjacent to classic Atari. The boys also answer feedback, to explain recent…
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S2:E2: Going, Going, Gone
iTunes Google Play Player FM Spotify This week we are inspired by one of our all-time a favorite podcasts This American Life. Taking a cue from Ira Glass’s often copied, but never duplicated style, we have collected three new stories on single topic: Going Going, Gone. Our first “Going” story…
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Bonus #2 Friday Display List: Feedback and response
This week, 8bitjeff gets into a some awesome listener feedback and provides some of his own for the Atari 5200 Podcast. First up some questions and answers for Tony Longworth, who’s Into The Vertical Blank song gets its own full length airing in the episode. Next up is an incredible…
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S2:E1: The Disappearance Of Charlie Chuck : Atari Food Fight
iTunes Google Play Player FM Spotify S2:E1: The Disappearance Of Charlie Chuck : Atari’s Food Fight In this first episode of season 2 the Fulton’s dive into a mystery: Why hasn’t Atari’s magnificent 1983 game “Food Fight” appeared any of their retro game collections? Where has it is gone? Episode…
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Commercial Off-The-Shelf, Dad : Why My Dad Never Joined The Computer Revolution
(Feeling melancholy about my dad’s birthday today. Here’s an old (slightly reworked) story about his aversion to technology. First published October 13th, 2012,) My brother Jeff and I loved computers as kids, and my dad supported that love as well as he possibly could. He bought us a our first…
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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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Bonus Podcast: A Trip To The Retro City Festival In Pomona, CA
Summary: In this Bonus podcast between Season 1 and Season 2, Steve takes his family to the Retro City Festival in Pomona, CA .Mild, family friendly hijinks ensue.
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S1:E10 Christmas In The Vertical Blank
S1:E10 Christmas In The Vertical Blank S1:E10: Christmas In The Vertical Blank n this season 1 finale, the Fulton brothers discuss the early years of Atari and Christmas, culminating in a Christmas story that ties a bow on a few of the previous stories and themes from this season. There…
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s1:e9: The Weird Family Thanksgiving In the Vertical Blank
s1:e9: The Weird Family Thanksgiving In the Vertical Blank In the penultimate episode of season one of Into The Vertical Blank, travel back to Thanksgiving holidays of the past to find out how pop culture, games and Atari fit into The Vertical Blank. This episode features a story by Steve Fulton named “The…
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Into The Vertical Blank S1:E8: The Bronze Age Of Arcade Games
S1:E8: The Bronze Age of Arcade Video Games In this episode Steve and Jeff discuss their favorite games and memories of the Bronze Age of arcade video games, a period that spans 1971 (pong) to 1978 (Space Invaders). The pair talk about what was special about those games, and why…
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Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari S1:E7 – Playing Together, Side By Side
This episode takes a slightly more personal turn as twin brother hosts Jeff and Steve Fulton tell stories and relive memories of playing together in both analog and digital ways in the 1970’s. The episode includes an original non-fiction story by Steve Fulton titled “Big Mouse And Little Mouse 1.0”.…
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Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari S1:E6 – Interfaces are where two worlds collide
Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari S1:E6 – Interfaces are where to worlds collide The only thing from the 80’s that could rival our love for Atari was our love for punk rock and new wave, and especially, our favorite band: The Alarm. In 1987 those two things combined in…
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Atari Play field – Atari ST games #1 : Michtron.
Note: (This article was originally written by me – Jeff Fulton – in 2009 for the Retrogaming Times online magazine. The article does not show up anywhere in their archives anymore, so to make sure it is not lost forever, i am putting it here again. It might lead to…
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S1:E5: All Appointments Life (Asteroids Part 2 )
Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari Season 1, Episode 5: All Appointments Life (Asteroids Part 2 ) This is the second episode where we will be covering the game Asteroids in story and discussion form. We have a story from 8bitjeff, and also very nice contributions Shinto, and Jim Fullerton.…
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S1:E4: Escape To The Asteroids Zone :Part 1
Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari Season 1, Episode 4: Escape To The Asteroids Zone : Part 1 Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari Season 1, Episode 4: Escape To The Asteroids Zone Part 1. In Part One of our two-part extravaganza, we delve into the that game forms the…
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S1:E3: Atari Nerd
Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari Season 1, Episode 3: Atari Nerd In this episode we dig up one of our first podcasts from December 2008, which is one of the first Atari dedicated podcasts ever recorded. This low-fi descent into the aughties, complete with bad mics, driving noise, and…
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S1: E2: “A Hole Burned In my Pocket: Toys R Us And The Atari 7800″.
Into the Vertical Blank: Growing Up Atari. Season 1 Episode 2: “A hole burned In my Pocket: Toys R Us And The Atari 7800″. What was the “game cage”? What does it mean to “disconnect” while being “connected”? “Can a hole really be burned in your pocket?” In this episode,…
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S1:E1: All The Scan Lines Have Been Written
Into The Vertical Blank: Growing Up Atari Season 1 Episode 1 – All The Scan Lines Have Been Written In this, the real premiere episode, the boys pull out all the production stops to bring some much needed levity and interludes to a game playing session and discussion on modern…
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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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S1:E0: Into The Vertical Blank Podcast: Newbie
8bitrocket’s Into The Vertical Blank, Growing Up Atari Ep: 0 This is the test episode of the Into The Vertical Blank, Growing Up Atari. In it, 8bit Jeff (Jeff Fulton from 8bitrocket.com) tries out and reviews 5 Atari XL/XE Cartridges (probably won’t work on a 400 or 800) that he…
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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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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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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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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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…
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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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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…
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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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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…
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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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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…
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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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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…
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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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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…
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