Atari files for bankruptcy
There goes my Childhood. (Ist anscheinend halb so dramatisch, es geht um eine Reorganisation der Finanzen (Chapter 11 Bancruptcy) und Abtrennung des US-Geschäfts vom französischen Mutterkonzern… but still.)
The U.S. operations of iconic but long-troubled video game maker Atari have filed for bankruptcy in an effort to break free from their debt-laden French parent.
Atari Inc. and three of its affiliates filed petitions for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York late Sunday.
Its leaders hope to break the American business free from French parent Atari S.A. and in the next few months find a buyer to take the company private. They hope to grow a modest business focused on digital and mobile platforms, according to a knowledgeable person not authorized to discuss the matter privately.
Atari U.S. operation files for bankruptcy, spOn: Atari meldet in den USA Insolvenz an (Danke Hank!)
Atari Computer Demonstration Center, circa 1979
Aus dem wie immer fantastischen Flickr-Stream von X-Ray Delta One. Der Atari 800 kam 1979 zusammen mit dem 400er auf den Markt und war der Quasi-Nachfolger der 2600er-Konsole, Specs: „8KB RAM, Atari 8-bit OS, CPU MOS Technology 6502B @ 1.79 MHz (NTSC version), 320×192 Pixel Resolution, 256 colors, 4× sprites, raster interrupts“.
Super Mario 2600
AtariAge User Sprybug hat eine funktionierende Demo eines SuperMario-Klons für das Atari 2600 online gestellt. Das Game gibt’s bislang als Binary für das Harmony Cartridge, sowas wie ein SD-Karten-Adapter fürs 2600er. Jetzt müssen’se das Game nur noch fertig entwickeln (bislang läuft nur Level 1-1 wirklich rund) und auf ‘ne Cartridge brennen. Gold!
Super Mario Clone World 1-1 Playable Demo! (via MeFi)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Halo for Atari 2600
Halo 2600-Code visualized
10 Years of internal Atari Mails, 82-92
Jed Margolin hat vor zehn Jahren 3 Gigabyte 4 Megabyte mit internen Atari-Mails und Memos aus den Jahren 82 bis 92 online gestellt und die lese ich grade ungezielt quer. Ist ‘ne Mischung aus Retrotech-Porn und Techie-Corporate-Geblubber und die Stellen, in denen sie intern über Piraten diskutieren und sich über geleakte Cartridges beschweren sind pures Gold. Es gab 1985 übrigens ein BBC namens Pirates Bad, die Nummer war 415 775 2384. Kein Scheiß!
Legacy was stolen by someone outside Atari and I believe it could not be prevented. These things happen and part of our business. The people involved are going to be nailed. The sad part is that a copy showed up at Atari.
Auf seiner Website hat Margolin ein paar Details zu den Mails aufgeschrieben:
VAX Mail wasn’t as sophisticated as Email; it was limited to ASCII text with no attachments. ASCII text was fine. Besides, I don’t think HTML had been invented yet. And you didn’t need attachments. If you wanted someone to have your file you just set the Protection Level of your file so they could read it.
The first users of the VAX were the PC Department (to do PC Boards), the Programmers, and me (a Hardware Engineer who also wrote software in order to test hardware in an organized and repeatable manner.) I also used it to write memos and status reports. Before the VAX, the procedure for getting something typed was to write it by hand and give it to the Department Secretary. We had several Department Secretaries, but only one at a time. Since I was a peon (“Let’s go peon Jed”) my memos and status reports were done last, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes I had to write them out by hand. With the VAX, I could actually produce legible memos. In any event, the ones done before the VAX were done on paper only and were left behind in my filing cabinet when I left the Company.
My Vax Mail, Memos, and Status Reports from Atari/Atari Games 1982-1992
40 Jahre Atari
Heute vor 40 Jahren gründeten Nolan Bushnell und Ted Dabney Atari, rippten das Spielkonzept des Tennisgames der Magnavox Odyssey-Konsole ab und entwickelten zunächst die Pong Arcade-Maschine. Nach einer Heim-Variante des Games baute man das Atari Video Computer System, das man kurze Zeit später in Atari 2600 umbenannte. Bei mir zuhause steht selbstverständlich eins und es funktioniert. Rest is History.
Geekdad hat eine nette Timeline der Atari-Milestones aus den vergangenen 40 Jahren, „Nerd-Attack!“-Autor Christian Stöcker hatte drei Tage zu früh einen Text aus spOnline, Websites die man kennen sollte sind Pong-Story.com und Atari Age (und da vor allem die Comics), unten habe ich meine drölfmillionen Atari-Postings zusammengesucht und Time.com hat ein Interview mit Gründer Noland Bushnell: Atari at 40: Catching Up with Founder Nolan Bushnell
Once upon a time, back in the 1960s, there was a videogame called Spacewar!
It was remarkably ingenious and addictive, and probably would have become a pop-culture phenomenon if it weren’t for its one downside: You could only play it on a mainframe or minicomputer, at a cost of $120,000 and up.
For that reason, Spacewar!‘s fan base consisted largely of students who were lucky enough to have access to university computer centers. Oftentimes they indulged in the game in the wee hours, when nobody was around to chastise them for wasting precious computing resources.
One of those Spacewar! enthusiasts was a University of Utah engineering student and part-time amusement-park arcade manager named Nolan Bushnell. He thought that videogames could be a big deal. “The only question,” he remembers, “was how to bring them to everyone, not just those of us who could sneak into a computer lab late at night.”
In 1971, Bushnell and partner Ted Dabney managed to turn Spacewar! into the first mass-produced video arcade game, Computer Space. It wasn’t particularly successful. Undeterred, they continued their partnership, Syzygy, by founding Atari, Inc..
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Super Atari Poetry
Back in the days
Atari 2600 sex’d
Atari Age Magazin Madness!
Barbarella 2600
Atari Users Desk, circa 1983
Scans von Atari-Game-Katalogen 1981/82
Atari 2600 Games as if they were made today
Atari vs. Pressefreiheit, droht Gameseiten mit dem Anwalt wegen schlechter Reviews (UPDATE)
Yars Revenge-Commercial auf Atari-LSD
Atariology – Endlich eine Religion, der ich uneingeschränkt zustimmen kann
Atari 2600 Joystick Lamp
Atari 400 Synth-Mod
Tron 2600
54 Atari2600 Klassiker online
Fake Atari2600-Cartridges feat. Rickroll, Google und Barack Obama
Pacmans visualisierter Assembler-Code feat. Super Mario
Golden Atari Chip-Ring
Atari 2600 Triptychon
Atari Cartridge-Geldbeutel
Kafka und Clockwork Orange Atari Cartridges
Rambo Atari2600-Konsolen-Ripoff
Atari 2600-Gamepackaging für moderne Filme
Atari 2600-Gamepackaging für Dark Knight, Lost und Wall-E
Slate über Atari 2600
DIY Atari 2600-Lamp
Halo for Atari 2600
Atari Computer Concepts
Halo 2600-Code visualized
Atari Cartridge-Art
Ataris Greates Hits auf dem iPad
3D-printed MicroSD-Atari810 Diskdrive
Atari 2600 Chiptunes-Guitar
Atari 2600 Chiptunes-Guitar
Youtube Direktatari, via Neatorama
Jemand namens cTrix hat sich aus einem Atari2600 eine Chiptunes-Gitarre gebastelt, im Video sieht man das Teil beim Live-Einsatz bei einem Gig in Japan.
The “gAtari” was my excuse to do something a little silly after I discovered that the Atari 2600 was more limiting than I realized! (31 pitches, minimal waveforms and only 2 channels!) I needed an EQ which could take a high voltage and drop it down to line level (Boss bass EQ) plus a way to hold loops between tracks and parts (Boss delay). So rather than have it “DJ” style config, I thought I make something a little more creative. It uses my atari-x-mod converter software which compiles binary files for Atari.
3D-printed MicroSD-Atari810 Diskdrive
Schicke Miniaturausgabe eines Diskdrives für den Atari810, das Gehäuse ist 3D-gedruckt und es frisst MicroSD-Karten.
The original 810 managed 90k per disk and had a volume of about 30,000 cm3. Assuming a 8Gig card the new version can store about 90,000 disks and at 5 cm3 only takes up 0.000167 times as much space. So it is a lot bigger and a lot smaller. Progress eh? […]
The microcontroller code emulates up to 8 Atari drives. At power on it checks for a microSD card, mounts a Fat16 or Fat32 file system and scans the card for .ATR and .XFD disk image files commonly used with Atari emulators. It also looks for XEX files which are Atari executables, another emulator mainstay. The code then “inserts” the BOOT.RUR image into drive 1 and waits for the Atari to start sending commands during bootup.
Ataris Greates Hits auf dem iPad
(Youtube Direktatari, via Kotaku)
Atari hat heute für das iPad eine Retrogame-Bombe platzen lassen und eine App gelauncht, über die man 100 olle Games auf dem Ding spielen kann. Die Games umfassen alte Arcade-Maschinen und Spiele für’s Atari2600 und die kommen sogar mit Scans der Anleitungen. Ich habe mir die Anwendung natürlich gleich installiert und grade eben Yars Revenge auf dem iPad gezockt. Hach!
Aus einem Review auf Touch Arcade:
Atari’s Greatest Hits [link] is a free Universal application for the iPhone and iPad that comes bundled with their first game ever, the 1972 classic Pong. And, while the games-for-free situation ends there, the fun certainly doesn’t — not by a long shot.
By way of in-app purchases, Atari’s Greatest Hits can deliver to your iOS device up to 99 more games from the historical studio’s back catalog, a mix of both arcade and (then) cartridge-based VCS / 2600 releases that you just might’ve grown up with. These games can be had in four-title game packs available at $0.99 each, as well as in a 68MB lump download of the entire library for $14.99.
“Atari’s Greatest Hits” Review – My God, It’s Full of Pixels!
Die komplette Liste aller 100 Games nach dem Klick.
Atari Cartridge-Art
Atari – hbt10-p074 von Hollis Brown Thornton. Ist mit 1650$ vielleicht ein bisschen teuer und die Spiele kenne ich fast alle schon – mal abgesehen von den Sportspielen – wer zum Geier spielt schon Sportspiele? (via Interweb3000)
Halo 2600-Code visualized
Vor zwei Monaten hatte ich Ed Fries’ Umsetzung von Halo für das Atari 2600 gebloggt, der hat sich den Code des Spiels von Ben Fry visualisieren lassen, dessen Programmier-Kunst ich hier auch schonmal vor einer halben Ewigkeit hatte.
Like any other game console, Atari 2600 cartridges contained executable code also commingled with data. This lists the code as columns of assembly language. Most of it is math or conditional statements (if x is true, go to y), so each time there’s “go to” a curve is drawn from that point to its destination.
When a byte of data (as opposed to code) is found in the cartridge, it is shown as an orange row: a solid block for a “1″ or a dot for a “0″. The row is eight elements long, representing a whole byte. This usually means that the images can be seen in their entirety when a series of bytes are shown as rows. The images were often stored upside-down as a programming method.
Halo for Atari 2600
Halo 2600 ist nicht einfach nur ein Retrogame-Remix von Halo in Flash, sondern die haben das Ding tatsächlich auf Cartridges gebrannt und einhundert Stück davon auf einer Classic Gaming Expo verteilt und man kann das Game tatsächlich auf einer alten Atari 2600-Konsole spielen. WANT!
Halo 2600 has a very “Adventure” feel to it: players control Master Chief in a non-scrolling exploration design. There are 64 “rooms” to explore with a variety of enemies to shoot, including a final boss – but first you have to find your gun. Energy barriers can impede your progress, but once you track down a key or take down enemies the wall will disappear and you can move on.
The final product was made available at the Classic Gaming Expo. Only about a hundred cartridges were made for this event – complete with a wonderful retro-modern label designed by Mike Mika from Other Ocean Interactive.
Halo Goes Old-School, hier die Online-Version des Games, mehr Infos dazu (via Waxy)
DIY Atari 2600-Lamp
(Youtube Direktatari, via Make)
Sehr schöne DIY-Lampe von Youtube-User Doktaluv aus einer Atari 2600-Konsole, Cartridges und Scans der Game-Packagings als Lampenschirm. Hach!
Max Capacitys Pixel-Images
Sehr schöne Flickr-Sets im Stream von Max Capacity, vor allem die Spektrum ZX-Bilder und die Pixel-Skylines. (Und das NES-Circuit Bending… und die Atari Frying-Collagen).
(via Interweb3000)
Slate über Atari 2600
Slate hat einen wunderbaren und tatsächlich ziemlich romantischen Artikel über das Atari 2600. Ich würde als Urknall von „Gaming @ Home“ zwar eher Pong (ja, ich hatte eins, zwar nur ein Ripoff namens „Telespiel“, aber es war Pong) bezeichnen, aber hey: ATAAAARI!
Born in the early 1970s, I’ve experienced only a few world-changing events along the lines of the automobile, the telephone, and the television. Sure, I was around the campus computer cluster when NCSA Mosaic was installed in 1994, but the Internet didn’t make a grand entrance. (The UC Museum of Paleontology, a prominent early Web site, was only so interesting.) The World Wide Web doesn’t compare with 1981, when my brother and I got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. Before Atari, no video games at home. After Atari, video games all the time.
Speak, Atari – How the 2600 forged the home video game future. (via Digg)
