8 ms·

AtariAge and Atari

89 points by erickhill 3y ago

fathom108 3y ago
Now Atari wants everything
ilaksh 3y ago
It looks like all the game ROMs now 404. Does that have anything to do with being acquired by Atari?
- erickhill 3y ago
  Probably. A friend of mine who is a big user of atariage.com told me they'd been “cleaning” a number of things up for months which all makes sense now ahead of the acquisition. Fact is if anyone wants Atari ROMs they are massively easy to find online, though. Heck, you can even find them on archive.org at this point.
  - xp84 3y ago
    Seriously, with the whole libraries of these 8-bit consoles being a few tens of MB zipped, and distributed across the entire Internet thousands of times, it is just ridiculous that any IP holder wastes their time trying to suppress this particular sequence of bytes. Frankly it's embarrassing that our copyright system doesn't already make them public domain.
- boilerupnc 3y ago
  Don't think so. Quick check on the wayback machine shows it has been showing a 404 since June 2019. May 2019 snapshot had a live page [0] [0]. https://web.archive.org/web/20190503205052/http://atariage.com/system_items.html?SystemID=2600&ItemTypeID=ROM https://web.archive.org/web/20190503205052/http://atariage.c...
schlauerfox 3y ago
I hope someone archives the site, because fan sites with this kind of history get butchered when a commercial interest has a change of mgmt, and companies have a shorter lifespan than the fan interest. Good on the site operating turning it into some income though.
- ddingus 3y ago
  For a while, the site author will continue to maintain and build the site and community. This will help stave off what we all know usually happens. I've been a member there since almost the beginning. The site builder really did a great job with AA. I hope it runs well for a long time yet.
midnitewarrior 3y ago
Wow. Time to bring my 130xe out of storage and see if it boots...
- ddingus 3y ago
  Get a FujiNET for it. I bought one of these. About $60. The FujiNET is amazing. It works via the standard SIO subsystem provided by the Atari system OS ROM. Device independent I/O. D: DISK P: PRINTER ETC... Now has N: for network. This device makes Atari Basic Internet capable. People have written 10 line programs to do all sorts of Internet tasks. Multi player online games are possible and have been done. There are app servers hosting disk images. I got mine, connected it to my home wi-fi and was playing Zork over the internet in about 5 minutes. It has an SD card slot for local storage and the onboard CPU has all sorts of capabilities aimed at making the Internet useful to existing Atari software and permit easy new development. That device is a lot of fun and replaces having a disk drive and some sort of modem or serial interface to work online.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    As a Commodore person, FujiNet (and thus SIO) is one of the things that I envy about Atari. <https://np.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/10cktls/the_fujinet_wifi_for_the_atari_400800/j4n31l5/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/10cktls...>
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      I’ve seen equivalents for the C64 and Apple II.
      - TMWNN 3y ago
        I'm not sure how far along the Apple II version is, but that's not surprising given its ability to autoboot from a card. As I discuss in the linked thread, FujiNet for the C64 is not and cannot be the equivalent because of lack of SIO or something akin to it.
watersb 3y ago
Wow. AtariAge Forums were a great resource for gathering all things of retro computing, some of which ended up contributing to collections such as BitSavers and Trailing Edge. It's where I initially discovered wonderful work by volunteers to create an archive of scanned BYTE magazines: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/167235-byte-magazine/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/167235-byte-magazine/ Now there are a number of sites that have BYTE collections, and the Internet Archive is a natural place for them. But the Internet Archive is constantly attacked by copyright holders, and it's quite possible it could be taken down at some point in the future. So AtariAge added robustness to the collective Internet as an archive. I don't expect that to continue, now that it has been acquired.
snickerbockers 3y ago
How many different Atari corporations have existed during the atari-age forum's lifespan? for any other brand this would be exciting news to see the original developers get invested in homebrews, but in atari's case i just see this as yet another desperate attempt by whoever's in charge at this point to try to find a way to monetize a brand name which is both extremely iconic and entirely lacking in products, services and customers. Last I checked they were trying to launch a chain of hotels which would cater to game conventions and e-sports events, guess that one didn't pan out. Kinda curious if the problem was launching during COVID, or just having a fundamentally dumb idea. It just seem like this brand gets passed around a lot between investors/VCs because it seems like the name recognition alone should make it a goldmine and yet it doesn't. I'm actually surprised Elon didn't buy it to be the new brandname for Twitter in lieu of X. Anyways, if the corporation that currently calls itself "Atari" is going to get in the business of distributing "official" carts of homebrews for classic Atari products I think that's really neat and it might actually be viable as a small business as long as they keep their ambitions in check and don't try to compete with the likes of Nintendo[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision_Amico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision_Amico
- morelisp 3y ago
  The current Atari is (so far) a puzzling combination of the weirdest hype-chasing stuff like the hotels and NFTs, but also absolute top tier remakes and rereleases of their catalog (both the good and historically interesting parts). A few years ago I wouldn’t believe we’d ever see the last Swordquest game, or a Minter-ized Akka Arrh, yet here we are.
boricj 3y ago
The Atari Jaguar homebrew community is still using statically-linked Linux a.out executables built around 1995 (https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/4c449fab-8135-5057-7d2c-7b948ce130cc@theinnocuous.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/4c449fab-8135-5057-7d2c-7b94...), at least to some extent.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  I would assume that this isn't by choice?
  - boricj 3y ago
    They have replacements for some of these artifacts, like rln for aln (linker), rmac for mac (assembler) or slightly patched GCC 3.4.6 + binutils 2.16.1a for the 68000 CPU, some being adapted from parent forks or related tooling whose source code is available (like a version of mac for the Atari ST). However, these substitutes usually aren't completely interchangeable with the original tools. It also does not cover some of the more difficult bits to replace, like a toolchain for the custom RISC cores, which have lots of errata that the one toolchain not lost to time doesn't seem to compensate for (http://www.3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3356#p37117 http://www.3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3356...). While I'm not a member of the Atari Jaguar homebrew community, I'm currently tinkering with an experimental reverse-engineering technique that might be of use to them (https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-original-atari-jaguar-sdk-to-elf/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-origina...). Basically, I'm developing tooling that allows one to delink executables back into object files. In the near-term this should allow relinking these a.out executables into ELF executables and stave off obsolescence for a while, in the long term this should allow them to decompile/reimplement these object files one at a time until they Ship-of-Thesesus themselves out of trouble. It's a bit of a side-quest for me since I originally developed that tooling for delinking PlayStation 1 video games in an effort to decompile Tenchu: Stealth Assasins, but these proprietary executables happen to be a fairly decent and well-rounded set of test cases to try it out on.
glimshe 3y ago
I love the Atari 8-bit computers. I don't want to start a flame war with C64, CoCo and Apple II folks because I love them too... But the early Atari computers, as opposed to the console and the ST, seems to be less remembered despite being so amazing.
- fidotron 3y ago
  Agreed. The Atari 8 bit computers were like 8-bit Amigas, which isn’t a coincidence. M.U.L.E. is best on the Ataris.
  - mben 3y ago
    Jay Miner was responsible for Atari 8 bit home computers and later for the Amiga.
    - deaddodo 3y ago
      Yup, the Amiga is more Atari than the later Ataris are.
      - rbanffy 3y ago
        I honestly like the STs better as computer designs. They are clean and general-purpose while the Amigas ended up being hurt by an overly complicated hardware that made it expensive for Commodore to keep up with PCs.
        deaddodo 3y ago
        Sure, I'm not evaluating their quality. Just pointing out design lineage.
        rasz 3y ago
        More like basic and barren, missing the simplest/cheapest to implement quality of life features (scrolling = video start address offset register, pcm output). Add awful Engineering, signal integrity is marginal with many hacks to keep the house of cards from falling over. "Bad DMA" chip recall (would erase your hard drive on first access) was actually caused by using too fast DMA chip picking interference on the overloaded bus. What hurt Commodore was technologically clueless management. Just one example - they didnt update Audio/Floppy controller chip for 9 years because original designer Glenn Keller left (maybe even fired, you never know with Commodore) in 1988, nobody else knew how to and Commodore didnt want to hire/pay competent people. As a result Commodore was shipping computers with 720KB drives all the way to 1994 while on PC 1.44MB was standard since 1988.
pauldenton 3y ago
How long will it take for this AtariAge thread to bring up Tommy Tallarico and the Intellivision Amico I wonder.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  The Amico is dead and buried as far as any one concerned cares, at this point.
  - snickerbockers 3y ago
    The Amico was always dead as far as anybody with more than two brain cells is concerned. IIRC there was a bit of scandal involving the AA mods censoring criticism of the Amico. Not sure if there was an actual conflict of interest or just fanboys getting drunk on hype, but it was only a couple years ago and to see them getting into bed with yet another company trying to capitalize on a retro gaming brand is bound to draw comparisons.
MenhirMike 3y ago
Happy for Albert to get a job, but I expect this to be the end of the site in the not so far future, given that Atari seems to be more about squeezing every last drop out of their old portfolio. The homebrew community can be forever grateful to the site though (well, to Curt Vendel and Glenn Bruner) for getting ahold of the original Jaguar Encryption keys so that homebrew CD games just work on unmodified consoles, so that's a pretty amazing legacy to leave. What is the current Atari company actually doing? They seemed to have scrapped their crypto casino, their VCS seems to be a complete failure that made even less money than the Ouya, so that leaves the $1000 limited edition cartridge set, merchandise, and compilations of old stuff for current systems (Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is really good!)? Nothing wrong with being a nostalgia company, but I really wonder if they have anything new going forward, or if they are just going to maintain the brand to re-release old games?
- lordfrito 3y ago
  I don't mind Atari being a nostalgia company. Actually, when I think about it, at this point their business only makes sense if they embrace being a nostalgia company. The old company is long gone. Even if it was around, the people/skillset are no longer relevant to game development. There's no engineering/developer continuity, tech continuity, etc. So it makes no sense for Atari to attempt to compete with other AAA game studios on state of the art games. Compete on what merits? At best they're just a publisher of other dev houses games. In essence Atari is nothing but a name, and a gaming legacy attached to that name. And what a legacy for a killer retrogaming Nostalgia brand. It seems they're focusing core business around this concept. I suppose the idea is that they become a publisher of games specifically tailored to retrogamers, heavily leveraging the classic Atari games lineup. A lot of heavy hitters in there. Atari 50 nailed that perfectly, showing that they've figured out how to package gaming nostalgia in product form. They can reboot/reimagine classic games franchises, introduce to modern audiences, etc. Throw in some retro inspired hardware, limited edition cartridges, and other swag on the physical items side of the business. It seems a more sound strategy than what they've been doing with the brand up till now. Retrogamers may be a limited market, but it's a real market that's currently not being serviced by large companies in any consistent way. They might be able to create a new market segment in the casual gaming space as well. Mr. Run and Jump shows that this idea of arcade/twitch gameplay with casual gaming might have some legs. It certainly feels like Atari. I'll admit I'm guilty of throwing them money just to get the Fuji logo on some items. I bought the VCS, speakerhat, etc. I love my new 2600 joystick with USB port. So I, for one, welcome our new Atari overlords.

AtariAge and Atari

89 points by erickhill 3y ago

fathom108 3y ago

Now Atari wants everything

ilaksh 3y ago

It looks like all the game ROMs now 404. Does that have anything to do with being acquired by Atari?

erickhill 3y ago
Probably. A friend of mine who is a big user of atariage.com told me they'd been “cleaning” a number of things up for months which all makes sense now ahead of the acquisition. Fact is if anyone wants Atari ROMs they are massively easy to find online, though. Heck, you can even find them on archive.org at this point.
- xp84 3y ago
  Seriously, with the whole libraries of these 8-bit consoles being a few tens of MB zipped, and distributed across the entire Internet thousands of times, it is just ridiculous that any IP holder wastes their time trying to suppress this particular sequence of bytes. Frankly it's embarrassing that our copyright system doesn't already make them public domain.
boilerupnc 3y ago
Don't think so. Quick check on the wayback machine shows it has been showing a 404 since June 2019. May 2019 snapshot had a live page [0] [0]. https://web.archive.org/web/20190503205052/http://atariage.com/system_items.html?SystemID=2600&ItemTypeID=ROM https://web.archive.org/web/20190503205052/http://atariage.c...

schlauerfox 3y ago

I hope someone archives the site, because fan sites with this kind of history get butchered when a commercial interest has a change of mgmt, and companies have a shorter lifespan than the fan interest. Good on the site operating turning it into some income though.

ddingus 3y ago
For a while, the site author will continue to maintain and build the site and community. This will help stave off what we all know usually happens. I've been a member there since almost the beginning. The site builder really did a great job with AA. I hope it runs well for a long time yet.

midnitewarrior 3y ago

Wow. Time to bring my 130xe out of storage and see if it boots...

ddingus 3y ago
Get a FujiNET for it. I bought one of these. About $60. The FujiNET is amazing. It works via the standard SIO subsystem provided by the Atari system OS ROM. Device independent I/O. D: DISK P: PRINTER ETC... Now has N: for network. This device makes Atari Basic Internet capable. People have written 10 line programs to do all sorts of Internet tasks. Multi player online games are possible and have been done. There are app servers hosting disk images. I got mine, connected it to my home wi-fi and was playing Zork over the internet in about 5 minutes. It has an SD card slot for local storage and the onboard CPU has all sorts of capabilities aimed at making the Internet useful to existing Atari software and permit easy new development. That device is a lot of fun and replaces having a disk drive and some sort of modem or serial interface to work online.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  As a Commodore person, FujiNet (and thus SIO) is one of the things that I envy about Atari. <https://np.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/10cktls/the_fujinet_wifi_for_the_atari_400800/j4n31l5/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/10cktls...>
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    I’ve seen equivalents for the C64 and Apple II.
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      I'm not sure how far along the Apple II version is, but that's not surprising given its ability to autoboot from a card. As I discuss in the linked thread, FujiNet for the C64 is not and cannot be the equivalent because of lack of SIO or something akin to it.

watersb 3y ago

Wow. AtariAge Forums were a great resource for gathering all things of retro computing, some of which ended up contributing to collections such as BitSavers and Trailing Edge. It's where I initially discovered wonderful work by volunteers to create an archive of scanned BYTE magazines: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/167235-byte-magazine/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/167235-byte-magazine/ Now there are a number of sites that have BYTE collections, and the Internet Archive is a natural place for them. But the Internet Archive is constantly attacked by copyright holders, and it's quite possible it could be taken down at some point in the future. So AtariAge added robustness to the collective Internet as an archive. I don't expect that to continue, now that it has been acquired.

snickerbockers 3y ago

How many different Atari corporations have existed during the atari-age forum's lifespan? for any other brand this would be exciting news to see the original developers get invested in homebrews, but in atari's case i just see this as yet another desperate attempt by whoever's in charge at this point to try to find a way to monetize a brand name which is both extremely iconic and entirely lacking in products, services and customers. Last I checked they were trying to launch a chain of hotels which would cater to game conventions and e-sports events, guess that one didn't pan out. Kinda curious if the problem was launching during COVID, or just having a fundamentally dumb idea. It just seem like this brand gets passed around a lot between investors/VCs because it seems like the name recognition alone should make it a goldmine and yet it doesn't. I'm actually surprised Elon didn't buy it to be the new brandname for Twitter in lieu of X. Anyways, if the corporation that currently calls itself "Atari" is going to get in the business of distributing "official" carts of homebrews for classic Atari products I think that's really neat and it might actually be viable as a small business as long as they keep their ambitions in check and don't try to compete with the likes of Nintendo[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision_Amico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision_Amico

morelisp 3y ago
The current Atari is (so far) a puzzling combination of the weirdest hype-chasing stuff like the hotels and NFTs, but also absolute top tier remakes and rereleases of their catalog (both the good and historically interesting parts). A few years ago I wouldn’t believe we’d ever see the last Swordquest game, or a Minter-ized Akka Arrh, yet here we are.

boricj 3y ago

The Atari Jaguar homebrew community is still using statically-linked Linux a.out executables built around 1995 (https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/4c449fab-8135-5057-7d2c-7b948ce130cc@theinnocuous.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/4c449fab-8135-5057-7d2c-7b94...), at least to some extent.

deaddodo 3y ago
I would assume that this isn't by choice?
- boricj 3y ago
  They have replacements for some of these artifacts, like rln for aln (linker), rmac for mac (assembler) or slightly patched GCC 3.4.6 + binutils 2.16.1a for the 68000 CPU, some being adapted from parent forks or related tooling whose source code is available (like a version of mac for the Atari ST). However, these substitutes usually aren't completely interchangeable with the original tools. It also does not cover some of the more difficult bits to replace, like a toolchain for the custom RISC cores, which have lots of errata that the one toolchain not lost to time doesn't seem to compensate for (http://www.3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3356#p37117 http://www.3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3356...). While I'm not a member of the Atari Jaguar homebrew community, I'm currently tinkering with an experimental reverse-engineering technique that might be of use to them (https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-original-atari-jaguar-sdk-to-elf/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-origina...). Basically, I'm developing tooling that allows one to delink executables back into object files. In the near-term this should allow relinking these a.out executables into ELF executables and stave off obsolescence for a while, in the long term this should allow them to decompile/reimplement these object files one at a time until they Ship-of-Thesesus themselves out of trouble. It's a bit of a side-quest for me since I originally developed that tooling for delinking PlayStation 1 video games in an effort to decompile Tenchu: Stealth Assasins, but these proprietary executables happen to be a fairly decent and well-rounded set of test cases to try it out on.

glimshe 3y ago

I love the Atari 8-bit computers. I don't want to start a flame war with C64, CoCo and Apple II folks because I love them too... But the early Atari computers, as opposed to the console and the ST, seems to be less remembered despite being so amazing.

fidotron 3y ago
Agreed. The Atari 8 bit computers were like 8-bit Amigas, which isn’t a coincidence. M.U.L.E. is best on the Ataris.
- mben 3y ago
  Jay Miner was responsible for Atari 8 bit home computers and later for the Amiga.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    Yup, the Amiga is more Atari than the later Ataris are.
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      I honestly like the STs better as computer designs. They are clean and general-purpose while the Amigas ended up being hurt by an overly complicated hardware that made it expensive for Commodore to keep up with PCs.
      - deaddodo 3y ago
        Sure, I'm not evaluating their quality. Just pointing out design lineage.
      - rasz 3y ago
        More like basic and barren, missing the simplest/cheapest to implement quality of life features (scrolling = video start address offset register, pcm output). Add awful Engineering, signal integrity is marginal with many hacks to keep the house of cards from falling over. "Bad DMA" chip recall (would erase your hard drive on first access) was actually caused by using too fast DMA chip picking interference on the overloaded bus. What hurt Commodore was technologically clueless management. Just one example - they didnt update Audio/Floppy controller chip for 9 years because original designer Glenn Keller left (maybe even fired, you never know with Commodore) in 1988, nobody else knew how to and Commodore didnt want to hire/pay competent people. As a result Commodore was shipping computers with 720KB drives all the way to 1994 while on PC 1.44MB was standard since 1988.

pauldenton 3y ago

How long will it take for this AtariAge thread to bring up Tommy Tallarico and the Intellivision Amico I wonder.

deaddodo 3y ago
The Amico is dead and buried as far as any one concerned cares, at this point.
- snickerbockers 3y ago
  The Amico was always dead as far as anybody with more than two brain cells is concerned. IIRC there was a bit of scandal involving the AA mods censoring criticism of the Amico. Not sure if there was an actual conflict of interest or just fanboys getting drunk on hype, but it was only a couple years ago and to see them getting into bed with yet another company trying to capitalize on a retro gaming brand is bound to draw comparisons.

MenhirMike 3y ago

Happy for Albert to get a job, but I expect this to be the end of the site in the not so far future, given that Atari seems to be more about squeezing every last drop out of their old portfolio. The homebrew community can be forever grateful to the site though (well, to Curt Vendel and Glenn Bruner) for getting ahold of the original Jaguar Encryption keys so that homebrew CD games just work on unmodified consoles, so that's a pretty amazing legacy to leave. What is the current Atari company actually doing? They seemed to have scrapped their crypto casino, their VCS seems to be a complete failure that made even less money than the Ouya, so that leaves the $1000 limited edition cartridge set, merchandise, and compilations of old stuff for current systems (Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is really good!)? Nothing wrong with being a nostalgia company, but I really wonder if they have anything new going forward, or if they are just going to maintain the brand to re-release old games?

lordfrito 3y ago
I don't mind Atari being a nostalgia company. Actually, when I think about it, at this point their business only makes sense if they embrace being a nostalgia company. The old company is long gone. Even if it was around, the people/skillset are no longer relevant to game development. There's no engineering/developer continuity, tech continuity, etc. So it makes no sense for Atari to attempt to compete with other AAA game studios on state of the art games. Compete on what merits? At best they're just a publisher of other dev houses games. In essence Atari is nothing but a name, and a gaming legacy attached to that name. And what a legacy for a killer retrogaming Nostalgia brand. It seems they're focusing core business around this concept. I suppose the idea is that they become a publisher of games specifically tailored to retrogamers, heavily leveraging the classic Atari games lineup. A lot of heavy hitters in there. Atari 50 nailed that perfectly, showing that they've figured out how to package gaming nostalgia in product form. They can reboot/reimagine classic games franchises, introduce to modern audiences, etc. Throw in some retro inspired hardware, limited edition cartridges, and other swag on the physical items side of the business. It seems a more sound strategy than what they've been doing with the brand up till now. Retrogamers may be a limited market, but it's a real market that's currently not being serviced by large companies in any consistent way. They might be able to create a new market segment in the casual gaming space as well. Mr. Run and Jump shows that this idea of arcade/twitch gameplay with casual gaming might have some legs. It certainly feels like Atari. I'll admit I'm guilty of throwing them money just to get the Fuji logo on some items. I bought the VCS, speakerhat, etc. I love my new 2600 joystick with USB port. So I, for one, welcome our new Atari overlords.