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37 years of Breakout

Not a Doodle, but an Easter egg Google has a fun way to celebrate Atari Breakout's 37th anniversary.
posted by doctornemo on May 14, 2013 - 42 comments

 

Fixing E.T. / Rehabilitating E.T.

We all know that E.T. for the Atari 2600 was a terrible no-good awful game (previously, previously-er). But could it be that our received wisdom about the cartridge is just wrong? Yeah, probably not ... But to be fair, follow this in-depth guide to hacking the ET ROM and you, too, can transform the game into something far more play-worthy (and don't worry, you can still turn ET into its ninja form).
posted by barnacles on Mar 31, 2013 - 66 comments

Atari VCS (2600) Demo 2012

Atari VCS Demo 2012 - Liquid Candy by Noice [slyt] VCS or 2600? Ah, who cares about nomenclature, just enjoy. If anyone knows how the heck this is done on a VCS, please comment.
posted by marienbad on Feb 20, 2013 - 30 comments

For Amusement Only: The life and death of the American arcade.

But the golden age was destined to be a very short one. Walter Day told writer Tristan Donovan, author of the book Replay: The History of Video Games, that the industry was "off the rails by" 1981, opening more arcades and ordering more machines than its players could ever support. By early 1982, cracks were already starting to show in the newly flourishing industry: that $400 a day machine, Time Magazine reported, was often "sucker bait, dangled to obscure the dreary truths that markets are becoming saturated and that dud games... bring in no money at all."
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jan 16, 2013 - 42 comments

The Inside Story of Pong

The Inside Story Of Pong - On Nov. 29, 1972, a crude table-tennis arcade game in a garish orange cabinet was delivered to bars and pizza parlors around California, and a multi-billion-dollar industry was born. Here's how that happened, direct from the freaks and geeks who invented a culture and paved the way for today's tech moguls.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Nov 30, 2012 - 18 comments

A Debilitating Case of Pac-Man Fever

"The original Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 was quite the disaster and though it did sell a few million copies many would argue it was the beginning of Atari's end. And rightly so. Dennis Debro's brand new and properly indie Pac-Man 4k, on the other hand, hopes to make things right by cramming a way more faithful post of the original pill-chomper arcade game to the very same and now very retro machine." (via IndieGames)
posted by Shadax on Oct 22, 2012 - 55 comments

Super VCS Bros.

Over at the AtariAge forums, user Sprybug has been coding an Atari 2600 Super Mario Bros. clone to run on the Harmony Cartridge. Some screenshots. The game running on the cartridge. The game running in an emulator. And some previous discussion on the difficulty of programming for the Atari 2600.
posted by griphus on Aug 22, 2012 - 18 comments

Classic Video Game Ads

This great Flickr album of classic video game advertisements is a nostalgia overdose for those of us who read video-game magazines in the 80s and 90s. From classic ads like the "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" ad to ads for Pac Man, The Simpsons, Super Mario Brothers 2 and ye olde Atari Lynx, this helps you relive the glory days of the medium, when even the ads were entertaining. And for those of you who never got to experience gaming magazines in their heyday, check out this entire copy of the first issue on Nintendo Power (PDF) from way back in 1988. And then get off my lawn.
posted by Effigy2000 on Aug 16, 2012 - 26 comments

40 years of arcade gaming

Atari, the first successful arcade video game company, would have been 40 years old today. The blog Arcade Heroes takes the opportunity to look back over 40 years of arcade gaming (from Atari and other companies) with flyers and video. Part 1 (1970s & 80s) - Part 2 (1990s to present). (WARNING: huge pages ahead with lots of flash videos.)
posted by JHarris on Jun 28, 2012 - 24 comments

Head like I/O

Pretty Eight Machine - an 8-Bit rendition of the Nine Inch Nails album.
posted by Artw on Jun 17, 2012 - 29 comments

Awesome! Now Do "Mappy".

Porting a 30 year-old vector arcade game to an obsolete 33 year-old home game platform: "Star Castle 2600". In 1981 a young Howard Scott Warshaw, left his first programming job at HP for a more interesting job at Atari. His first assignment was to create an Atari 2600 conversion of the vector coin op game Star Castle... After evaluating the arcade game and the console hardware he came to the conclusion "that a decent version couldn’t be done". Thirty-one years later, former Atari employee D. Scott Williamson has finally ported Star Castle to the 2600. (via MAKE)
posted by 40 Watt on Apr 26, 2012 - 58 comments

RIP Jack Tramiel

Commodore International founder Jack Tramiel has died. [more inside]
posted by mephron on Apr 9, 2012 - 91 comments

You got Atari in my geetar!

Behold the gAtari 2600. An Australian musician performing under the pseudonym cTrix specializes in creating chiptunes using a combination of games consoles from 1977 - 1992, including a Commodore 64, Amiga 500, a clear-cased Gameboy, and an Atari 2600. The latter is possibly the most striking setup, incorporating the Atari (running custom-written sequencing software) into an oversized guitar body, with a fretboard packed with Boss stompboxes and a great pun as a name — gAtari.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Dec 31, 2011 - 40 comments

"Diane, I’m holding in my hand an Atari game program called Black Lodge"

"A day in the FBI was never like this before! You are Special Agent Dale Cooper and you’ve found yourself trapped inside of the Black Lodge, a surreal and dangerous place between worlds." Black Lodge is an Atari 2600-style action game for PC and Mac, created by Jak Locke as a love letter to both retro gaming and Twin Peaks. [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Sep 27, 2011 - 36 comments

AtariPadGasm

Atari Brings 100 Retro Titles to iOS in "Atari's Greatest Hits". Designed for the iCade. Toucharcade review. ArsTecnica review. Does it break the iTunes App rules?.
posted by chavenet on Apr 7, 2011 - 73 comments

Notes: Level 6-3 made entirely out of pentagrams

What do you mean you don't remember Olegco Gaming? They were like the best developer for the Atari! They had classics, like Cool Beens, and Ghost Garden Man. Don't tell me you never played Baron of the SkeleBone Zone! Well, you take a look at all of their games on their archive site. Now try to be a little more knowledgeable before we talk about video games again... thanks.
posted by codacorolla on Mar 14, 2011 - 18 comments

The Game Preservation Crisis

Trash cans, landfills, and incinerators. Erasure, deletion, and obsolescence. These words could describe what has happened to the various building blocks of the video game industry in countries around the world. These building blocks consist of video game source code, the actual computer hardware used to create a particular video game, level layout diagrams, character designs, production documents, marketing material, and more.

These are just some elements of game creation that are gone -- never to be seen again. These elements make up the home console, handheld, PC and arcade games we've played. The only remnant of a particular game may be its name, or its final published version, since the possibility exists that no other physical copy of its creation remains.

As a community of video game developers, publishers, and players, we must begin asking ourselves some difficult but inevitable questions. Some believe there is no point in preserving a video game, arguing that games are short-term entertainment, while others disagree with this statement entirely, believing the industry is in a preservation crisis.

Where Games Go To Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis [more inside]
posted by timshel on Feb 9, 2011 - 44 comments

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

Retro video games have come back into the public consciousness. (See previously) [more inside]
posted by reenum on Sep 10, 2010 - 18 comments

Hard to believe how far we've come

iFixit is well known for posting teardowns and repair guides for modern hardware (like the new iPod Shuffle.) To celebrate the addition of game console guides to their site, they did teardowns of five classic and not-so-classic game consoles: Magnavox Odyssey 100, RCA Studio II, Atari 2600, Nintendo Famicom, Nintendo Virtual Boy. Marvel at the 1.78 MHz processors and the 128 bytes of RAM you got for $200.
posted by smackfu on Sep 8, 2010 - 10 comments

Smithsonian to exhibit videogames as art. Jason Scott Completes GET LAMP. Can this day be any better?

The Art of Videogames, a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit set to open in March 2012, has been featured on CNN today. But you don't have to wait until 2012 to get your fix of gaming history. CNN has let the cat out of the scanner: our very own Jason Scott (jscott) has finished GET LAMP. It's now shipping! [more inside]
posted by honest knave on Aug 19, 2010 - 17 comments

The Light. The Dark. The Crystite.

Archon and M.U.L.E. Two of the best 8-bit games ever made, in the elder days when Electronic Arts was the best gaming company around. Play them again in modern re-creations.
posted by bitmage on Aug 19, 2010 - 33 comments

"Halo 2600: It Only Looks Old"

What would Microsoft's Halo have looked like if it had been written years ago for the Atari 2600? "Ed Fries, former vice president of Microsoft’s Game Publishing Division, programmed an old-school version of the beloved game that features blocky graphics, deliberately basic sound effects, and simplified movements. And yet it's still recognizable as 'Halo.'" You can play it online here. [more inside]
posted by Daddy-O on Aug 5, 2010 - 27 comments

Looking Pac-ward

Pac-Man's creator, Toru Iwatani shares some of the original concept art and Pac-Man Design Sketches from 1979.
posted by ShawnStruck on Jun 23, 2010 - 20 comments

"My job was to make it look like Atari!"

When TV's Fringe dipped into an episode-long flashback to 1985, the opening title sequence flashed back with it. Sequence creator Andrew Kramer discusses how a 1985 version of the opening title was made; VHS tracking distortion, CyFy font, and all. [more inside]
posted by Servo5678 on Apr 3, 2010 - 98 comments

110100100

Monday Morning Nerd-Porn
posted by jtron on Mar 22, 2010 - 28 comments

25 cents, same as in town

The Joydick (NSFW) is a wearable haptic device for controlling video gameplay based on realtime male masturbation. Construction photographs.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 13, 2010 - 65 comments

Not pictured: line of five other kids

Pictures of toy store video game console kiosks! via
posted by Pope Guilty on Feb 25, 2010 - 11 comments

Much more fun than that E.T. game

Panic, makers of fine Macintosh software, commissions an illustrator to work with the concept "What if we were around in 1982, and our apps were early Atari 2600 games?" Awesomeness ensues.
posted by porn in the woods on Dec 9, 2009 - 59 comments

Play 5,000+ classic video games in your browser

TheSmartAss.info's suite of Java emulators allows smooth, in-browser playback of literally thousands of old-school video games: 517 Atari titles, 148 for DOS, 636 Game Boy games (and 410 for Game Boy Color), 2,019 (!) NES titles, 238 GameGear games, 802 Sega Genesis titles, and 284 for the Sega Master System. Highlights include Space Invaders, Frogger, Galaga, Pitfall!, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, SimCity, Zero Wing, Duke Nukem, Sonic the Hedgehog, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, Pokemon, and Metal Gear Solid. Use the search function to find your favorites! You can also register an account to save games on emulators that support it. Make sure to check the purple bar below each game for control info and links to alternate emulators in case the default one is buggy or slow.
posted by Rhaomi on Nov 30, 2009 - 54 comments

Clickin' it old-school

The newly launched Atari.com includes the Atari Arcade, wherein you may play Adventure, Asteroids, Battlezone, Crystal Castles, Lunar Lander and Yars' Revenge in your browser.
posted by jbickers on Nov 23, 2009 - 37 comments

Where did you learn to fly?

"So why bring up this sore spot in 2009, roughly 16 years after the Jaguar's ill-fated launch? Because as an artifact of video game history, the Jaguar speaks volumes about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going." Linking the past, present, and future: The Atari Jaguar as console artifact [more inside]
posted by joedan on Oct 10, 2009 - 33 comments

Crocodiles don't talk.

I Went Left Instead Of Right In Pitfall And Kept On Tickin' And Now I Believe In Miracles: An absurdist play.
posted by NoraReed on Jul 9, 2009 - 13 comments

He'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in his ear

(NSFW) The Angry Video Game Nerd (taking a cue from seanbaby's lead) has been producing video reviews of some of the most notoriously awful NES games, from Top Gun to Bible Games. (Can't miss: The Power Glove.) Not content to go after one system, he's upgraded his range to take on other colossal failures like the Atari Jaguar, Superman 64, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (the movie). His newest series of videos, You Know What's Bullshit?, takes on everyday nuances like DVD box sets. He may be vulgar and his vignettes silly, but damn straight he's got a point. Enjoy all his archived videos here, spanning five years of obscenity-laced love/hate for his greatest passions.
posted by Christ, what an asshole on Jun 23, 2009 - 18 comments

Runnin' from the Hagar

David Lee Roth Assteroids. (Flash, URL may be NSFW) [via]
posted by eyeballkid on Jan 27, 2009 - 25 comments

The Chuck E. Cheese Ouroboros

In 1977, Nolan Bushnell allowed Gene Landrum to bring Chuck E. Cheese [yt] to life as a family-friendly access point to Atari games. This, perhaps, explains the pizza. [more inside]
posted by batmonkey on Dec 31, 2008 - 17 comments

The End of a Videogame Era

The video games of the 1983 Sears Wishbook
posted by empath on Dec 21, 2008 - 74 comments

Homesoft's Disk Images of Atari 8-bit Games

Homesoft's Disk Images. 354 disks full of 8-bit Atari games. Click on game titles for screenshots. [more inside]
posted by milquetoast on Sep 23, 2008 - 13 comments

He got a stiffy for Cabbage Patch Kids

A most legendary find. Alex Handy likes to collect old video games. A few weeks at ago at a flea market, he bought what he thought were some old ColecoVision EPROMs for $2 each, got them home, and realized that some of them could contain the never published Cabbage Patch Kids Atari 2600 game. If the data on the chips had survived, it would be an unprecedented discovery. A friend helped him dump the ROMs, which you can download for free from Alex. Identifying the other games was an adventure in itself. [more inside]
posted by bugmuncher on May 5, 2008 - 37 comments

Retro action

The Retroist is a veritable treasure trove of 80's (and 70's) goodness. TV commercials, catalogs, and of course the poetry of Mr. Leonard Nimoy. The Youtube channel alone is worth the price of admission-- Tobor! Diet Rite! Candyland!
posted by dersins on Apr 24, 2008 - 15 comments

Fun from yesteryear

"So I hit up a garage sale over the weekend and bought a genuine, working-condition Atari 2600, with a huge stack of games nearly mint in their boxes, for a song. I thought I’d scan the box covers and give you all a look back into the fun of yesteryear."
posted by sveskemus on Apr 21, 2008 - 74 comments

1981 Atari Catalog

It's the 1981 Atari product catalog!
posted by mr_crash_davis on Apr 13, 2008 - 39 comments

If your company has more VPs than it does bathrooms, you’re in trouble.

Dadhacker started his game programming career, like many people, by making a freeware knockoff of a popular arcade game. This got the attention of Atari, who hired him to do the official conversion of Donkey Kong, then Super Pac-Man. After the crash of 1983, he survived a round of layoffs, and was pushed into the development of the Atari ST along with a group of programmers and executives from Commodore.
posted by CrunchyFrog on Mar 17, 2008 - 18 comments

You are not yet enlightened, Inky-san.

Retro Sabotage is a collection of recreations of classic video games. Or is it? [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 23, 2008 - 20 comments

At least you won't die of dysentery in this one.

Thule Trail is a cute modern remake of The Oregon Trail.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 25, 2007 - 17 comments

Get this Freakin' Duck Off of Me!

Adventure II (a sequel to Adventure, here's a playable version of the original)
posted by bardic on May 11, 2007 - 23 comments

This has destroyed my productivity, now it can destroy yours...

Steem is an Atari ST emulator for Windows and Linux that is very simple and user-friendly. More details on installing are in a helpful beginner's guide, but you're probably most interested in the games, of which there are lots [more inside].
posted by greycap on Apr 1, 2007 - 22 comments

Old School!

An old dog learns new tricks The venerable Atari 2600 may no longer be at the forefront of high-end gaming, but that won't keep it down for long. Its new career? Drum & Bass synthesizer(warning: ugly, ugly site), complete with MIDI.
posted by lekvar on Jan 30, 2007 - 15 comments

You favorite musician's favorite Atari game sucks.

Friday Flash Fun: Play a Missile Command clone in a somewhat-hidden section of Ryan Adams' redesigned web site. (So this is why he released so many albums last year...)
posted by emelenjr on Sep 8, 2006 - 17 comments

Danger lurks at every turn.

Skatefall. It's what happens when you jam a copy of Thrasher Magazine into an Atari 2600. via
posted by Smart Dalek on Aug 21, 2006 - 12 comments

E.T. Phone Home!

Nerds travel to the infamous Atari 2600 E.T. video game landfill, dig up hundreds of carts, play them and make a music video of it. (Quicktime video.)
posted by loquacious on Jul 28, 2006 - 37 comments

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