Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games
What happened to the Atari fanboys? Nintendo and Sega have theirs, Blizzard and Bungie too, Square and Enix, Capcom and SNK. Yet Atari Games, in its heyday, produced some of the most brilliant arcade game designs the world has ever seen. Unique and idiosyncratic, at its best it made games the likes of which no one else could. Later, it is sad to say, it produced games that no one else would want to.
Some people rave about Nintendo; how its designers come up with new ideas so often, about its fearlessness in taking risks with unconventional designs, and how it reinvents its franchises endlessly.
But even Nintendo has never been as original, as brilliant, as determined to design what developers think best regardless of what management, critics, and eventually, even players might have to say, as was Atari Games in its heyday. A trip through Atari's classic arcade game catalog is like a course in game design all by itself.
Link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3679/game_design_essentials_2...
Stella 2.6.1 Released
The excellent Atari 2600 emulator Stella has seen some significant updates this month, first to version 2.6, which was then quickly followed by version 2.6.1. The jump to version 2.6 brought several new features, which you can read about here. Version 2.6.1 includes several bug fixes as well as additional features and improvements, and you can learn about those here. Visit the Stella home page to download the latest version for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Link: http://stella.sourceforge.net/
From: http://www.atariage.com/
Atari podcast at Bitjam
505 of Checkpoint writes: Another Atari related Podcast will be played on Bitjam radio station in the evening of 1st of June. This episode is a tribute to the YM-kings of the oldschool demo days from many years ago. Though, their musics can touch ones heart pretty much still today. :) You can tune into the radiostream or download the episode after the show.
Bitjam radio http://www.bitfellas.org/e107_plugins/radio/radio.php
BItjam Podcast http://www.bitfellas.org/page.php?100
From: http://www.dhs.nu/
SNDH Archive v2.8 released
Grazey of PHF writes: 125 new SNDH files! 10 months since the last update! Shocking! I hear you say, but there are reasons (see the full readme for info).
Again a wild bunch of tunes, brand new Outline tunes, a weird mixture of exotic old stuff and finally the T1000 tunes :) The Cream guys have even released an updated plug-in for Winjam which allows you to play new SNDH-Digi tunes.
Download the archive at the SNDH site http://sndh.atari.org/
Download the Winjam updated plugin http://files.dhs.nu/files_util/SNDH_Replay.zip
From: http://www.dhs.nu/
The Multari: Atari 2600 gets elegantly shoved in a handheld
We already knew what Marshall was capable of when we caught wind of his masterfully assembled portable Nintendo 64, but the modder extraordinaire has really outdone himself this time. As the name implies, The Multari is a portable Atari 2600 with 32 games built right in. The chassis itself was crafted from vacuum-formed styrene plastic, and aside from the colorful buttons and iconic D-pad, there's also a 5-inch display and what appears to be a set of speakers. Mmm, retro never looked so good. Peek the video after the break (right after you grab your drool cup).
Link: http://retroactive.be/multari/
From: http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/the-multari-atari-2600-gets-eleg...
The other Atari
Poking around Natsume's website, I noticed something very curious - an Atari logo I didn't recognize. Perhaps it's common knowledge to some, but until it became independent in 2002, this Atari was Natsume's pachinko branch company. I believe the company name was actually taken in 2002, and amazingly, in the English introduction page, only the Go reference is made - nothing is said about the existing years and years of Atari as a game brand. Here's a bit of it (unedited): "When naming our new company, we desire to maintain these objectives. We also thought of a Japanese word, "atari", used in the expression such as: A World of Hit business is counted by "How much you earn if you hit atari"; Pachinko is a game to aim "atari"; and thus in such a world by working hard We want to come up with big atari (big hit) machine!!. So, summing all up, we decided a company name, "Atari Inc.""
The company seems to do some things aside from pachinko as well, like digital gambling games and business consultation. There's really not that much to say other than the fact that it exists, and it boggles my mind. Certainly there are two Climax game companies, but two Ataris is too much.
Link: http://www.natsume-game.com/
From: http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002373.html
Play Atari 2600 at a grocery store
Wondering what to do while mums shopping? Worry not, you can play video games. The guys at this funky Milwaukee, Wisconsin grocery store are happy to oblige with an in-store Atari 2600 lounge. The display includes a fully functional Atari 2600, along with a wide assortment of about 50 classic games to keep your mind sharp in between the Cap 'N Crunch and the Mrs.Paul's Frozen Fish. I especially dig the retro wallpaper and crappy old color TV, which completes the kitschy room motif.
Link: http://www.gizmodiva.com/other_stuff/play_atari_2600_at_a_grocery_s...
Announcing PLATARIADA 2008
Sorry for late announcement, but here it is:
This year, I'm again inivting you all to Ceske Budejovice in the south of Czech Republic,for another, this time tenth meeting of ATARI users and friends of them.
It will take place at usual place, usual date 13.-15.6.2008 (in two weeks), usual time 18:00-12:00 (or so).
No special program is being planned (but who was there knows, that the whole event is special :-) ),but I can besides ATARI bring also the DDR pad+Stepmania on PC, Nintendo Wii with some games and Wii Fit.
So, looking forward to meet you there people, and (more) info at http://platariada.atari.org and lieblp @ centrum . cz, where I am also awaiting your comments and words that you will come. :-)
Link: http://platariada.atari.org/
From: http://www.atari.org/
Explosion Takes Out AtariAge
If you tried visiting AtariAge between Saturday afternoon and today (Monday) around 2:30pm CST, you may have noticed that you could not reach the site. At 4:55pm CST on Saturday there was an electrical explosion at The Planet's data center in Houston where AtariAge's dedicated server is housed. This explosion and resulting fire damaged a significant portion of the building's electrical infrastructure, and all 9,000 servers hosted at this location went offline. Only last night was The Planet able to start restoring power to servers (fortunately none were damaged, nor was anyone injured), with the AtariAge server getting power and network connectivity restored a bit before 3:00pm today. This is, by far, the longest AtariAge has ever been offline since its launch over seven years ago, and hopefully we'll never have to suffer through such an outage again!
Update: Yep, the site was unavailable again for an extended period of time, between about 2:45am early Tuesday morning until 5:30pm. Turns out the temporary backup generator that The Planet was using to power "Phase 1" of their Houston data center developed a fault and the generator could not be repaired. It then took some time for them to get another generator on site and operating. Hopefully we'll be online now without further interruptions of this nature. Other hosting options are now being explored.
Link: http://www.atariage.com/
SNDH Archive v2.8 released
Grazey of PHF writes: 125 new SNDH files! 10 months since the last update! Shocking! I hear you say, but there are reasons (see the full readme for info). Again a wild bunch of tunes, brand new Outline tunes, a weird mixture of exotic old stuff and finally the T1000 tunes :) The Cream guys have even released an updated plug-in for Winjam which allows you to play new SNDH-Digi tunes.
Download the archive at the SNDH site http://sndh.atari.org/
Download the Winjam updated plugin http://files.dhs.nu/files_util/SNDH_Replay.zip
From: http://www.dhs.nu/
