9 ms·

Atari asks for help finding developer of 2600 game Aquaventure

285 points by dutchbrit 5y ago

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> “In a fast growing market, studios wanted to make it more difficult for competitors to poach talented programmers by keeping their identities hidden. This practice is why we don’t know exactly who conceived and programmed Aquaventure, along with many other titles from the early ’80s.” I don't think Activision did that. I remember David Crane's name on Activision newsletters and maybe instruction manuals, too. Then of course there is the first Easter Egg ever - Warren Robinett's hidden name in "Adventure", but that supports this statement rather than refutes it.
- imdsm 5y ago
  Is that why the room of names was created? I can't recall which game it was, but being able to view everyones names within the game when a developer/publisher didn't want them credited.
- kgwxd 5y ago
  Activision was formed by former Atari employees specifically because they didn't get the recognition they deserved.
  - arwineap 5y ago
    Wow, if that's true, then my perception of activision has been wrong for a long time [edit] it is!
    - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
      Oh, don't worry. The Activision you're probably familiar with is the one purchased and revived by Bobby Kotick in 1991.
    - vikingerik 5y ago
      The current Activision and Atari each have nothing to do with the companies from the early 1980s - each shut down and ceased operations long ago, and the name was just bought out by successors.
      - 300bps 5y ago
        Interestingly, Atari was bought by Jack Tramiel who was the founder of Commodore Business Machines that made the Commodore Vic-20, Commodore 64 and more. January 1984, Jack Tramiel essentially got booted out of the company he founded (Commodore). July 1984, Jack Tramiel bought the Consumer Division of Atari Inc. from Warner Communications.
        geoelectric 5y ago
        It's even more interesting. Commodore hired a bunch of ex-Atari people for the Amiga while Tramiel was building his cadre for what became the ST. They basically swapped talent. https://dfarq.homeip.net/atari-st-vs-amiga/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/atari-st-vs-amiga/
        0xcde4c3db 5y ago
        If you squint enough, there's a chain that looks something like this: Atari 2600 => Atari 400/800 => Amiga => Atari Lynx => 3DO. It's not that there's a specific set of people or technological concepts running through all of them, but each one has a strong connection to the next.
        pkaye 5y ago
        There is a lot of similarity between the Atari 400/800 display list and the Amiga copper list given they were developed by the same team.
        HNSucksAss 5y ago
    - vanadium 5y ago
      Not only that: "Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer." Growing up, that was the lens I always saw them through (and I had minor addictions to Laser Blast and River Raid, among others), so to see what they've become, well, you know. Not the same in any way from the David Crane days, just as it is with Atari from the Bushnell days through Warner, then Tramiel, then JTS, Hasbro, etc through present day. Days long, long gone. The memories are nice.
      - lowercased 5y ago
        IIRC, Imagic was the second? Demon Attack was, again IIRC, their first, and was visually smashing compared to almost anything else on the Atari VCS at the time.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        LaserBlast dedication page: https://laserblast.neocities.org/ https://laserblast.neocities.org/
        orionblastar 5y ago
        I played Laserblast when I had the chickenpox and I scored one million and all the numbers turned into explanation points. I took a picture but had flash on so it didn't take.
      - DerekL 5y ago
        By the way, David Crane and others are making Atari 2600 games again! https://adgm.us/portal/index.html https://adgm.us/portal/index.html
        tomcam 5y ago
        They don’t seem to be trying very hard. The Buy button yields, well, suboptimal results
        5y ago
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      You should check out the origin of EA / Electronic Arts. They were really about empowering artists -- the initial concept was pretty highminded and artist-oriented. [Trip] Hawkins had developed the ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers, "software artists" [...] Their first such ad, accompanied by the slogan "We see farther," was the first video game advertisement to feature software designers. EA also shared lavish profits with their developers, which added to their industry appeal. The square "album cover" boxes (such as the covers for 1983's M.U.L.E. and Pinball Construction Set) were a popular packaging concept by Electronic Arts, which wanted to represent their developers as "rock stars" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts#1982%E2%80%931991:_Trip_Hawkins_era,_founding,_and_early_success The name, "Electronic Artists", flowed from this idea. Incredible to think of, in light of the microtransaction nightmare hellscape seen in most EA software.
      - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
        I remember those ads. IIRC, they were two full page spreads in the most popular magazines for the Commodore, and I'd assume for Atari too. As a kid, I was confused why they were showing these people because no other company did this. From that time on, it stuck in my head from that computer games weren't some kind of magic that came down from the heavens but were created by actual humans. While I never wrote games that got published, I started experimenting and playing around with making them myself, which lead to a career in software development.
        JohnBooty 5y ago
        Yes! Those ads were so inspirational!
        tanseydavid 5y ago
        Will Harvey's Music Construction Set was the first EA title that I ever purchased. They definitely gave this guy the aura of a rock star in the packaging that came with the title.
    - kgwxd 5y ago
      Cool origin story for sure, but they're not even close to the same company anymore :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- paxys 5y ago
  Way back in the day at Microsoft it was a common practice to add the author's name, email and a small description of changes in the header comment at the top of source files. Then management started making us scrub all of them before release when vendors/competitors started using our source dumps as their recruiting database.
  - jamesfinlayson 5y ago
    I've seen a fairly old codebase (started in the late 1980s) where the tops of the files have author details and changes but the author details are just initials.
    - astrange 5y ago
      That was common in CVS; there was a macro that'd expand into the entire changelog when you checked files out. …still don't know why you'd want that.
      - jamesfinlayson 5y ago
        Ah right - not sure what version control this project started (in 1989 I'm guessing "none" is a high probability) and I think it recently got moved from SVN to git.
  - tryauuum 5y ago
    I am not a programer, but I always regarded this practice as weird. Every time I saw such headers in my company the header would feature a name of some long-gone employee. So no point of knowing the author's name since you cannot reach him for help. And if I really wanted to know the author's name, then git log --follow would help me anyway Nothing but a someone's ego boost and a theft of my screen space
- coldpie 5y ago
  > Then of course there is the first Easter Egg ever - Warren Robinett's hidden name in "Adventure" Here's a really good video exploring very early Easter Eggs in video games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97TfAhDKGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97TfAhDKGk It's not Adventure! (I say this not to "well actually" you, but hopefully give you some fun new info!)
jedberg 5y ago
This actually sounds like a cool game. I think I'll grab the ROM later today and give it a go.
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
> According to a blog post written by AtariProtos’ Matt Reichert, “Until the mid 1980s, most games were only credited to the company that published them. In a fast growing market, studios wanted to make it more difficult for competitors to poach talented programmers by keeping their identities hidden. This practice is why we don’t know exactly who conceived and programmed Aquaventure, along with many other titles from the early ’80s.” Oh that's rich, coming from the company that pioneered the responsible policy of suppressing developer credits from the games they made.[0] [0]https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/easter-eggs-the-hidden-secrets-of-videogames/ https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/easter-eggs-the-hidden-s...
- toast0 5y ago
  This latest Atari has no corporate lineage to that Atari. Just like when the OG Atari picked the name, because it sounded cool and had something to do with games, so did this one --- but this one had to pay into the estate of the previous name holder to do it.
squarefoot 5y ago
According to some searches and the filename of a copy of the ROM I happen to have, the developer name appears to be Gary Shannon. https://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=855 https://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=855 https://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=person&name=Gary+Shannon https://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=person&name=Ga...
- capableweb 5y ago
  This "Gary Shannon" is mentioned in the original RFH ("Request for Help"): https://atarixp.com/blogs/discover/the-search-for-the-developer-of-aquavanture https://atarixp.com/blogs/discover/the-search-for-the-develo... > Aquaventure has never been spotted on internal Atari memos or status reports from the early 80s, so it has been a challenge to determine who was responsible for programming the game. For many years it was assumed that programmer Gary Shannon wrote Aquaventure during his short tenure at Atari. I first credited Gary, along with developer Tod Frye, with the development in my article about Aquaventure on atariprotos.com in 2008. From Gary themself: > “I had just come to Atari from Sega (coin op "Gremlin-branded" games) and was very new to the 2600, so I was definitely not the lead programmer and did mostly grunt work behind the scenes. After that I worked for a few weeks on another failed 2600 game, Miss Piggy's Wedding, which never got off the launching pad at all.” Conclusion: > while Tod Frye may have programmed the kernel for the Aquaventure, and Gary Shannon did minor updates to an already existing code base, the identity of the original programmer who was responsible for the majority of the code remains unknown.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    > I worked for a few weeks on another failed 2600 game, Miss Piggy's Wedding, which never got off the launching pad at all. Another masterpiece lost to time.
  - tedivm 5y ago
    Tod Frye is such an interesting guy. I had the luck to meet him taking an AI class in Berkeley a couple years ago- I don't think he'll ever stop learning.
grae_QED 5y ago
I get some serious astroturfing vibes from this post
- buescher 5y ago
  You know, if someone is astroturfing something around an Atari 2600 prototype, I want to know about it. When and where and by whom was the cartridge discovered? The screenshots have an almost too pitch-perfect 19A0 vibe. I guess that isn't impossible for 1983, which is later than most of the best known Atari games.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
3327 5y ago
Atari needs to help itself first. What a great example of having something amazing at the right time and burning it all down. Do the research- its a crazy spiral.
evo_9 5y ago
Kind of ironic considering Atari was super against letting their programmers take credit for the games they created, and this lead famously to a group of them leaving and forming Activision. It also lead to Warren Robinett hiding his name in the classic 2600 game 'Adventure' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJFao67acks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJFao67acks)
- jftuga 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(1980_video_game)#Easter_egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(1980_video_game)#Ea...
- jcun4128 5y ago
  I think that game was mentioned in Ready Player One
- drzaiusapelord 5y ago
  I mean that was 40+ years ago, all the leadership who ran the company like that are either long retired or passed away. Atari is now just a trademark that gets sold left and right. I don't know why this is happening but no one from the 80s is making this call. Those people went from cradle to grave engaging in anti-worker action and giving into the worst and most perverse incentives capitalism has to offer. They retired wealthy and all of this awfulness paid off. This is why modern video companies are run similarly. As a dev or artist, you're not getting ownership either. You're work for hire and will be treated as such. The division asking for this author is Atari XP, which sells rare and unreleased games, which is most likely looking for this author because this might have a copyright claim. The profit incentive drives this question, not any sort of altruism. Atari XP doesn't know the contract signed by this person and Atari and if they try to release this game commercially they could be sued if they infringe on his rights. If there's no contract at all, then this author would probably have the full life of copyright on their side. If this person is found and also found to not have a claim, then this game will be released with the creator getting nothing that isn't specified in the contract. This is not done for the love of old video games, but to create and maximize profit. Doing things like this is how the leadership of Atari XP got there and maintain their position there and how they will advance their careers past it. The author remaining anonymous stops Atari XP from monetizing this old work and might be intentional to keep this game from being published. If published it will enrich some company they havent had a relationship with in decades and most likely don't care for (Atari ex employees seem very bitter about their time there). Or considering this person has never spoken up all this time all this time, perhaps they passed away long ago, well before most of HN was even born. The hypothesized copyright would move to their heirs, who may be entirely unaware they own this game.
mikerg87 5y ago
I’m surprised no one has searched up Jed Margolin. He was kind of Mr Atari and had his fingers on all kinds of things in the golden age of Atari http://www.jedmargolin.com/vmail/vmail.htm http://www.jedmargolin.com/vmail/vmail.htm Also http://atariemailarchive.org/ http://atariemailarchive.org/
LennyHenrysNuts 5y ago
Obligatory comment: Modern Atari is nothing to do with Atari. It's a french games company called Infogrames that bought the name when Atari went bust.
mastazi 5y ago
Looking at the gameplay, it seems fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI-N_TnTp1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI-N_TnTp1c Apparently it was released with the Atari Flashback 2 mini console and that's how it became known to the public https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/12/atari-flashback-2-only-flashback-worth.html https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/12/atari-flashback...
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  > Atari Flashback 2 I have one of those. Picked it up for six bucks at Goodwill about 5 years ago, specifically because you can add a cartridge slot and run actual 2600 games.
  - mastazi 5y ago
    Nice, I had seen those but had no idea that you could add a cartridge slot
    - mastazi 5y ago
      Found an article about it http://portablesofdoom.org/?p=244 http://portablesofdoom.org/?p=244
bdowling 5y ago
> Atari XP is offering a proper physical copy of Aquaventure to pre-order on the Atari XP site, which will ship sometime early this year. Probably not if they can't find and make a deal with the copyright owner.

285 points by dutchbrit 5y ago

> “In a fast growing market, studios wanted to make it more difficult for competitors to poach talented programmers by keeping their identities hidden. This practice is why we don’t know exactly who conceived and programmed Aquaventure, along with many other titles from the early ’80s.” I don't think Activision did that. I remember David Crane's name on Activision newsletters and maybe instruction manuals, too. Then of course there is the first Easter Egg ever - Warren Robinett's hidden name in "Adventure", but that supports this statement rather than refutes it.

imdsm 5y ago
Is that why the room of names was created? I can't recall which game it was, but being able to view everyones names within the game when a developer/publisher didn't want them credited.
kgwxd 5y ago
Activision was formed by former Atari employees specifically because they didn't get the recognition they deserved.
- arwineap 5y ago
  Wow, if that's true, then my perception of activision has been wrong for a long time [edit] it is!
  - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
    Oh, don't worry. The Activision you're probably familiar with is the one purchased and revived by Bobby Kotick in 1991.
  - vikingerik 5y ago
    The current Activision and Atari each have nothing to do with the companies from the early 1980s - each shut down and ceased operations long ago, and the name was just bought out by successors.
    - 300bps 5y ago
      Interestingly, Atari was bought by Jack Tramiel who was the founder of Commodore Business Machines that made the Commodore Vic-20, Commodore 64 and more. January 1984, Jack Tramiel essentially got booted out of the company he founded (Commodore). July 1984, Jack Tramiel bought the Consumer Division of Atari Inc. from Warner Communications.
      - geoelectric 5y ago
        It's even more interesting. Commodore hired a bunch of ex-Atari people for the Amiga while Tramiel was building his cadre for what became the ST. They basically swapped talent. https://dfarq.homeip.net/atari-st-vs-amiga/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/atari-st-vs-amiga/
        0xcde4c3db 5y ago
        If you squint enough, there's a chain that looks something like this: Atari 2600 => Atari 400/800 => Amiga => Atari Lynx => 3DO. It's not that there's a specific set of people or technological concepts running through all of them, but each one has a strong connection to the next.
        pkaye 5y ago
        There is a lot of similarity between the Atari 400/800 display list and the Amiga copper list given they were developed by the same team.
        HNSucksAss 5y ago
  - vanadium 5y ago
    Not only that: "Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer." Growing up, that was the lens I always saw them through (and I had minor addictions to Laser Blast and River Raid, among others), so to see what they've become, well, you know. Not the same in any way from the David Crane days, just as it is with Atari from the Bushnell days through Warner, then Tramiel, then JTS, Hasbro, etc through present day. Days long, long gone. The memories are nice.
    - lowercased 5y ago
      IIRC, Imagic was the second? Demon Attack was, again IIRC, their first, and was visually smashing compared to almost anything else on the Atari VCS at the time.
      - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        LaserBlast dedication page: https://laserblast.neocities.org/ https://laserblast.neocities.org/
        orionblastar 5y ago
        I played Laserblast when I had the chickenpox and I scored one million and all the numbers turned into explanation points. I took a picture but had flash on so it didn't take.
    - DerekL 5y ago
      By the way, David Crane and others are making Atari 2600 games again! https://adgm.us/portal/index.html https://adgm.us/portal/index.html
      - tomcam 5y ago
        They don’t seem to be trying very hard. The Buy button yields, well, suboptimal results
        5y ago
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    You should check out the origin of EA / Electronic Arts. They were really about empowering artists -- the initial concept was pretty highminded and artist-oriented. [Trip] Hawkins had developed the ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers, "software artists" [...] Their first such ad, accompanied by the slogan "We see farther," was the first video game advertisement to feature software designers. EA also shared lavish profits with their developers, which added to their industry appeal. The square "album cover" boxes (such as the covers for 1983's M.U.L.E. and Pinball Construction Set) were a popular packaging concept by Electronic Arts, which wanted to represent their developers as "rock stars" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts#1982%E2%80%931991:_Trip_Hawkins_era,_founding,_and_early_success The name, "Electronic Artists", flowed from this idea. Incredible to think of, in light of the microtransaction nightmare hellscape seen in most EA software.
    - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
      I remember those ads. IIRC, they were two full page spreads in the most popular magazines for the Commodore, and I'd assume for Atari too. As a kid, I was confused why they were showing these people because no other company did this. From that time on, it stuck in my head from that computer games weren't some kind of magic that came down from the heavens but were created by actual humans. While I never wrote games that got published, I started experimenting and playing around with making them myself, which lead to a career in software development.
      - JohnBooty 5y ago
        Yes! Those ads were so inspirational!
        tanseydavid 5y ago
        Will Harvey's Music Construction Set was the first EA title that I ever purchased. They definitely gave this guy the aura of a rock star in the packaging that came with the title.
  - kgwxd 5y ago
    Cool origin story for sure, but they're not even close to the same company anymore :)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paxys 5y ago
Way back in the day at Microsoft it was a common practice to add the author's name, email and a small description of changes in the header comment at the top of source files. Then management started making us scrub all of them before release when vendors/competitors started using our source dumps as their recruiting database.
- jamesfinlayson 5y ago
  I've seen a fairly old codebase (started in the late 1980s) where the tops of the files have author details and changes but the author details are just initials.
  - astrange 5y ago
    That was common in CVS; there was a macro that'd expand into the entire changelog when you checked files out. …still don't know why you'd want that.
    - jamesfinlayson 5y ago
      Ah right - not sure what version control this project started (in 1989 I'm guessing "none" is a high probability) and I think it recently got moved from SVN to git.
- tryauuum 5y ago
  I am not a programer, but I always regarded this practice as weird. Every time I saw such headers in my company the header would feature a name of some long-gone employee. So no point of knowing the author's name since you cannot reach him for help. And if I really wanted to know the author's name, then git log --follow would help me anyway Nothing but a someone's ego boost and a theft of my screen space
coldpie 5y ago
> Then of course there is the first Easter Egg ever - Warren Robinett's hidden name in "Adventure" Here's a really good video exploring very early Easter Eggs in video games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97TfAhDKGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97TfAhDKGk It's not Adventure! (I say this not to "well actually" you, but hopefully give you some fun new info!)

jedberg 5y ago

This actually sounds like a cool game. I think I'll grab the ROM later today and give it a go.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

> According to a blog post written by AtariProtos’ Matt Reichert, “Until the mid 1980s, most games were only credited to the company that published them. In a fast growing market, studios wanted to make it more difficult for competitors to poach talented programmers by keeping their identities hidden. This practice is why we don’t know exactly who conceived and programmed Aquaventure, along with many other titles from the early ’80s.” Oh that's rich, coming from the company that pioneered the responsible policy of suppressing developer credits from the games they made.[0] [0]https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/easter-eggs-the-hidden-secrets-of-videogames/ https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/easter-eggs-the-hidden-s...

toast0 5y ago
This latest Atari has no corporate lineage to that Atari. Just like when the OG Atari picked the name, because it sounded cool and had something to do with games, so did this one --- but this one had to pay into the estate of the previous name holder to do it.

squarefoot 5y ago

According to some searches and the filename of a copy of the ROM I happen to have, the developer name appears to be Gary Shannon. https://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=855 https://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=855 https://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=person&name=Gary+Shannon https://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=person&name=Ga...

capableweb 5y ago
This "Gary Shannon" is mentioned in the original RFH ("Request for Help"): https://atarixp.com/blogs/discover/the-search-for-the-developer-of-aquavanture https://atarixp.com/blogs/discover/the-search-for-the-develo... > Aquaventure has never been spotted on internal Atari memos or status reports from the early 80s, so it has been a challenge to determine who was responsible for programming the game. For many years it was assumed that programmer Gary Shannon wrote Aquaventure during his short tenure at Atari. I first credited Gary, along with developer Tod Frye, with the development in my article about Aquaventure on atariprotos.com in 2008. From Gary themself: > “I had just come to Atari from Sega (coin op "Gremlin-branded" games) and was very new to the 2600, so I was definitely not the lead programmer and did mostly grunt work behind the scenes. After that I worked for a few weeks on another failed 2600 game, Miss Piggy's Wedding, which never got off the launching pad at all.” Conclusion: > while Tod Frye may have programmed the kernel for the Aquaventure, and Gary Shannon did minor updates to an already existing code base, the identity of the original programmer who was responsible for the majority of the code remains unknown.
- judge2020 5y ago
  > I worked for a few weeks on another failed 2600 game, Miss Piggy's Wedding, which never got off the launching pad at all. Another masterpiece lost to time.
- tedivm 5y ago
  Tod Frye is such an interesting guy. I had the luck to meet him taking an AI class in Berkeley a couple years ago- I don't think he'll ever stop learning.

grae_QED 5y ago

I get some serious astroturfing vibes from this post

buescher 5y ago
You know, if someone is astroturfing something around an Atari 2600 prototype, I want to know about it. When and where and by whom was the cartridge discovered? The screenshots have an almost too pitch-perfect 19A0 vibe. I guess that isn't impossible for 1983, which is later than most of the best known Atari games.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

3327 5y ago

Atari needs to help itself first. What a great example of having something amazing at the right time and burning it all down. Do the research- its a crazy spiral.

evo_9 5y ago

Kind of ironic considering Atari was super against letting their programmers take credit for the games they created, and this lead famously to a group of them leaving and forming Activision. It also lead to Warren Robinett hiding his name in the classic 2600 game 'Adventure' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJFao67acks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJFao67acks)

jftuga 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(1980_video_game)#Easter_egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(1980_video_game)#Ea...
jcun4128 5y ago
I think that game was mentioned in Ready Player One
drzaiusapelord 5y ago
I mean that was 40+ years ago, all the leadership who ran the company like that are either long retired or passed away. Atari is now just a trademark that gets sold left and right. I don't know why this is happening but no one from the 80s is making this call. Those people went from cradle to grave engaging in anti-worker action and giving into the worst and most perverse incentives capitalism has to offer. They retired wealthy and all of this awfulness paid off. This is why modern video companies are run similarly. As a dev or artist, you're not getting ownership either. You're work for hire and will be treated as such. The division asking for this author is Atari XP, which sells rare and unreleased games, which is most likely looking for this author because this might have a copyright claim. The profit incentive drives this question, not any sort of altruism. Atari XP doesn't know the contract signed by this person and Atari and if they try to release this game commercially they could be sued if they infringe on his rights. If there's no contract at all, then this author would probably have the full life of copyright on their side. If this person is found and also found to not have a claim, then this game will be released with the creator getting nothing that isn't specified in the contract. This is not done for the love of old video games, but to create and maximize profit. Doing things like this is how the leadership of Atari XP got there and maintain their position there and how they will advance their careers past it. The author remaining anonymous stops Atari XP from monetizing this old work and might be intentional to keep this game from being published. If published it will enrich some company they havent had a relationship with in decades and most likely don't care for (Atari ex employees seem very bitter about their time there). Or considering this person has never spoken up all this time all this time, perhaps they passed away long ago, well before most of HN was even born. The hypothesized copyright would move to their heirs, who may be entirely unaware they own this game.

mikerg87 5y ago

I’m surprised no one has searched up Jed Margolin. He was kind of Mr Atari and had his fingers on all kinds of things in the golden age of Atari http://www.jedmargolin.com/vmail/vmail.htm http://www.jedmargolin.com/vmail/vmail.htm Also http://atariemailarchive.org/ http://atariemailarchive.org/

LennyHenrysNuts 5y ago

Obligatory comment: Modern Atari is nothing to do with Atari. It's a french games company called Infogrames that bought the name when Atari went bust.

mastazi 5y ago

Looking at the gameplay, it seems fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI-N_TnTp1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI-N_TnTp1c Apparently it was released with the Atari Flashback 2 mini console and that's how it became known to the public https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/12/atari-flashback-2-only-flashback-worth.html https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/12/atari-flashback...

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
> Atari Flashback 2 I have one of those. Picked it up for six bucks at Goodwill about 5 years ago, specifically because you can add a cartridge slot and run actual 2600 games.
- mastazi 5y ago
  Nice, I had seen those but had no idea that you could add a cartridge slot
  - mastazi 5y ago
    Found an article about it http://portablesofdoom.org/?p=244 http://portablesofdoom.org/?p=244

bdowling 5y ago

> Atari XP is offering a proper physical copy of Aquaventure to pre-order on the Atari XP site, which will ship sometime early this year. Probably not if they can't find and make a deal with the copyright owner.