Crap Super Pac-Man easter egg from 1984 found
Remember the recently uncovered 26-year-old Donkey Kong Atari easter egg we pointed you to? The guy who uncovered that, Don Hodges, has now also found one in the Atari port of Super Pac-Man.
This one is just slightly cooler than the Donkey Kong one. Slightly. If you hit the reset button at just the right time between stages, you get the message "4 A GOOD TIME JSR 91BD." Yep. That's it. It's supposed to be a play on the bathroom wall scrawlings you see in the gas station pooper. JSR stands for Jump SubRoutine, says GameSetWatch. The "91BD" part? It means nothing.
Landon Dyer, who ported the game, had this to say about the message:
... I couldn’t think of anything to put in. So all I did was to repurpose some display code I already had around, and stuck that scrolling message in. 91BD was supposed to do something more interesting (I dunno, maybe a shower of pacmen or ghosts or something), but I didn’t finish it up.
Dyer may well be on his way to breaking the record for the worst easter eggs ever.
From: http://www.destructoid.com/crap-super-pac-man-easter-egg-from-1984-...
How to Beat Video Games: Berzerk for the Atari 2600
Another great video from Vestron’s “How to Beat Video Games” series, explaining how to beat “Berzerk” for the Atari 2600:
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZuBMwqIJDw
From: http://www.retroist.com/2009/07/15/how-to-beat-video-games-berzerk-...
Atari Punk Console and Mini Moog and owyheesound sequencer
Recently someone asked me if my DIY sequencer would work with an Atari punk Console.
I was so motivated that I worked out the design and then created my own Atari Punk Console with a Voltage control input. This video shows my APC being used with my own 8 step sequencer and a minimoog. There is a quick shot of one of the Printed Circuit Boards that I am developing for my latest sequencer design. The Reuseum in Garden City Idaho is sponsering much of my work which is why the Reuseums name appears on the PCB. The Reuseum will also make the PCBs and full kits available for sale for those who want them.
From: http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2009/07/atari-punk-console-and-mini...
The Atari Video Music
In 1976, Atari released the Atari Video Music. The AVM was a early sound visualizer that you would plug into your stereo and television. When you would play music, you would see a visualization of it on your TV screen. This is a normal function of music players today, but in the 70s this was cutting edge, even if the graphics were not: (link for video)
DEVO trivia: An Atari Video Music can be spotted in the background of the music video for “The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise”.
The AVM was not very popular and was only manufactured for a year before being discontinued, so if you are lucky enough to find or have one, treasure it.
From: http://www.retroist.com/2009/07/17/the-atari-video-music/
Revisiting GEM For The Atari ST, Part 1
Way back in 1985, I started my “professional” career as a software guy as a developer for the brand new Atari ST computer. After a few years as a 3rd party developer, I was hired by Atari to provide developer support to ST developers in the USA.
Part of what made me a good choice for that role was that I had a really good in-depth understanding of GEM. For example, when I worked on the WordUp word processor for Neocept, I wrote more than a dozen GDOS printer drivers for various printers, including color, that Atari’s drivers didn’t support. Quite a lot of that information is still burned deep into my brain, even though it’s been many years since I actually wrote any code for the Atari.
These days, when something reminds me of GEM for some reason, the main things that come to mind are the various problems, glitches, and workarounds for various things. This article is going to be mainly about the various design flaws in GEM, their workarounds, and how they impacted development.
From: http://www.fultonsoft.com/2009/07/18/revisiting-gem-for-the-atari-s...
Lookin’ Back #11 - Atari Lynx
Before the GameGear, before the Gameboy – there was the Lynx Balls I hear you cry – Gameboy was out before Lynx, right? Wrong! Way back in 1986 the original concept for the Lynx, then called Handy Game, was in development by a company called Epyx . This prototype was shown at the Winter CES in January of 1989 by a financially struggling Epyx. Luckily Atari happened to be wandering the show floor with a pocket full of cash and decided to partner up with Epyx to produce the hardware side whilst Epyx concentrated on the software side.
Atari made a couple of modifications like changing the infra-red multiplayer system to being wired and changing the internal speakers and then came back to CES in the Summer of 1989 with the new, shiny Portable Colour Entertainment System (what a great name guys!). The name soon changed to the more palatable Lynx. Atari seemed to have the thing in the bag, a new handheld system, backlit COLOUR LCD screen and software ready to roll. The fly in the ointment – Nintendo.
Yes also prowling the show floor this time was the big N touting for business with it’s chunky grey monochrome box – The Gameboy. The race was then on to see who could get their system out first and for what price. Nintendo won this hands down, the console as shipping for Christmas and at around $90/£180. Atari could barely mange to get a few units out the door in time for the holiday season and it came in at a whopping $180/£360! Hello – Déjà vu - Sony anyone?
So Atari were screwed from the start really. No one cared that this little device was a gaming beast. It had dedicated sprite scaling chips for god’s sake! Sadly to say that not long after this battle Sega introduced their GameGear and that was all she wrote for the Lynx. Production of the hardware ceased and from 1994 – 1996 hardware and software dried up.
From: http://brutalgamer.com/?p=9506
Demo STE : ANOTHER KID STORY
The demo is called 'Another Kid Story' and is made for STe. It follows the story of Animatrix - A Kid Story. Code by Tobe and Herrv, graphics by C-Rem and music by Tomchi.
Note : doesnt work correctly on emulators
Link: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=53483
From: http://www.atari.org/
SuperVidel poll
We have just put a registration form on our homepage, nature.atari.org, where you can tell us how many boards you want, when we make them. We need this information to be able to give you a good estimation of the final price. Of course you're not obliged to buy anything later, but we also want you to be honest.
Link: http://nature.atari.org
From: http://www.atari.org/
New release from MJJ Prod
MJJ Prod surprised us today with a nice release from the VIP party in France.
The demo is called 'Another Kid Story' and is made for STe. It follows the story of Animatrix - A Kid Story. Code by Tobe and Herrv, graphics by C-Rem and music by Tomchi.
Download 'Another Kid Story" by MJJ Prod http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/kidstory.zip
Watch a 50 FPS video recording http://dhs.nu/video.php?ID=234
At Pouet.Net http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=53483
From: http://www.dhs.nu/
The Atari VCS Reconsidered
While my blogcation continues I did take some time last week to review Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort's excellent book Racing the Beam for Rhizome. The text gets under the hood of the Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS) and considers the game design of several key titles in relation to the underlying technical capabilities of the console. The book is the first in a new series on Platform Studies that the authors are editing for MIT press. Montfort and Bogost on the essence of platform:
Platform is the abstraction level beneath code, a level which has not yet been systematically studied. If code studies are new media's analogue to software engineering and computer programming, platform studies are the humanistic parallel of computing systems and computer architecture, connecting the fundamentals of new media work to the cultures in which they were produced and the cultures in which coding, forms, interfaces, and eventual use are layered upon them.
Cruise on over to Rhizome to read the review if you are interested - I think the text is pretty much required reading for anyone in game studies or media scholarship.
Link: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2792
From: http://serialconsign.com/2009/07/atari-vcs-reconsidered
