Irata Non Grata

Atari under the command of General Wade Rosen, has declared a decisive victory against the Intellivision, as the great console war finally comes to a close with Atari purchasing Intellivision. What of the Amico though? That part isn't really clear...

Another new homebrew for the Atari 7800, this time a great racing game that employs the 320B high resolution mode along with 8-way scrolling. Where might this one go? #atari7800 #homebrewgames #retrogaming

Back in 1981, Atari was working on an Intellivision killer codenamed "Project Sylvia," "Super Stella," or the Atari 3200. What were the specs for this unfinished console and what kind of games would it have had? Let's discuss; H/T to the late Curt Vendel who did so much work in uncovering the history on this. Links: Jerry Jessop thread about it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atarimuseum/posts/836375799727005/ Super Stella Schematics: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/156916-atari-ss1000-sylvia/ Rob Zdybel discusses it (about 7 min in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmqzybUe9m4

A new and radically different entry into the Yars Revenge series is coming to consoles later this year, as a Metroidvania game. Lets check it out and talk a little Yars Revenge history

Time for some more Atari Halloween goodness, this time playing on the Atari 2600 a couple of games that won't be showing up on a compilation anytime soon: Venture (Exidy; Port by Coleco) Mines of Minos (CommaVid) - Most of the video is about this game, playing from start to finish. Which of these games are your favorite?

Who knew that the Lynx was missing out on some Tapper-like action? Ganksoft did, and has created this fun game for the Lynx Jam 2023 competition. I'm playing this on a real Lynx while using an RGB out that I installed as a part of the McWill LCD upgrade. Read more about it and download the game here: https://itch.io/jam/lynxjam-2023/rate/2398773

The Atari 7800 has had a second wind thanks to homebrewers creating new experiences for the system. Here's a full level from E.X.O. - one of the harder levels. I need to get a SaveKey device so I don't have to start the full game over every time I play.

As a sort of follow-up to the 7800 Friendly Rebuttal video, here I defend using the recent homebrew Rikki & Vikki in the discussion of the 7800's power/how it stacks up against the NES. This is solely looking at the tech aspects and not the gameplay, although I personally do enjoy this game on the latter factor too.

Originally filmed back in November 2023, made to celebrate 30 years for both the Atari Jaguar and iD Software's DOOM, both of which launched in November 1993. The Jaguar version was developed by iD & John Carmack but released in April 1994. Either way, lets play DOOM on the Atari Jaguar until I die.

Another Atari mini-console is available for pre-order but it is not based upon the Atari 2600 for a change...but the Atari 400 8-bit computer.

Back in 1988, Atari released ports of Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Jr. to both the Atari 2600 &7800 systems. They were licensed ports and the 2600 versions were commendable for what they were but on the 7800, they were subpar (or rather, total crap). Recently, a coder going by the name of Old Style released a new beta of his WIP port of Mario Bros. and as you'll see here, what the 7800 is capable of is far more impressive than what Atari crapped out back in the 80s. Which is sad, but yet another testament to what happens when you decide to cheap out instead of spending a little more to give customers what they want.

Nov. 23, 1993 - The Atari Jaguar was launched in New York City & San Francisco. This was accompanied by a strong marketing campaign in game magazines - but ultimately, consumers shrugged and waited for other consoles instead. Why did it Atari's effort fail? How should they have approached it? Could better marketing have done anything to result in a better outcome for this infamous 90s failure? I get into the pre-launch as well as launch phases and proffer up suggestions for a better launch line-up that perhaps could have saved the Jag enough to reach better hardware in the Jaguar 2.

Playing to get the Iron Man achievement in Atari's Berzerk Recharged. Thankfully they fixed the voices since I played it last. As played on the Nintendo Switch.

Just discussing the latest acquisition by Atari, getting the community site AtariAge.

32-bit this, 64-bit that...does it *really* matter? Not like marketing gurus in the 80s and 90s claimed it did. When it comes to that discussion, no other platform gets bashed about bits than the Atari Jaguar. To ignore the bit discussion and just show what the system could do - that's the real purpose here. Most games were captured using my AverMedia Live Gamer Plus 2 Portable with my Jaguar connecting to HDMI through a composite-to-HDMI convertor. In a few instances, such as Jag CD games, I had to use an emulator as unfortunately my CD drive isn't very co-operative these days. I also may do a follow-up video this as I have missed things like the Virtual Light Machine (VLM) and interesting FMV games like Vid Grid. Perhaps if I can fix my JagCD (I tried Vid Grid on my JagGD as well as BigPEmu and no luck). Credit and links to a few videos I used below to show examples. Watch much more gameplay than the quick tease I provide by clicking below: Livewire (Bello Games): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXuGaaruW-8 Jumping At Shadows (Reboot - PUSH THE BUTTON): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lamEqUOwW-U Towers II video (Songbird Productions): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ypdRjfd14c

Who is Atari's mascot character? Join me for a deep dive into a question that pops up once in a while in Atari circles but it was also a question on the minds of Atari management back in the 90s. They tried to come up with a new character - when they had a bunch of characters to choose from already. Who were those characters? Would any be worthy of carrying the brand on their shoulders, like Mario carries Nintendo or Sonic carries Sega? Join me to find out! Timecodes: 0:36 - The Tramiels look for a new mascot 1:20 - Rare pics of Oswald 2:00 - What makes a good mascot? 3:21 - Are mascots even necessary? 4:47 - Where are my favorites like Paperboy, Peter Packrat and Xybots? 5:53 - Atari's first character - Deep sea diver/shark hunter 7:12 - Outlaw 7:54 - Atari Pinball machines 9:26 - Commander Martin Champion 12:11 - Knight/gnome from Adventure 13:48 - Tor & Tarra from Swordquest 14:55 - Adventurers from Dark Chambers 15:43 - Oliver from Centipede 16:45 - The Archer from Millipede 17:42 - Yar from Yars' Revenge 19:10 - The eyes from Haunted House 20:23 - Charley Chuck from Food Fight 21:19 - Major Havoc 22:57 - Bentley Bear from Crystal Castles 26:27 - Robot 1984 from I, Robot 28:05 - From Atari Inc to Atari Corp. 29:20 - Nine Iron Ninja from Ninja Golf 30:03 - Louie from Scrapyard Dog 31:00 - Trevor McFur 31:31 - Atari Karts 32:30- Fight For Life 33:14 - The Modern Atari - Atari SA 33:51 - Berzerk (Evil Otto) 33:34 - Bubsy 36:51 - In Summary

Playing the first level of Gauntlet...not the original arcade nor Gauntlet Legacy but the 2014 PC game. Playing Gauntlet Slayer Edition in particular, just as Questor the Elf. Note that Warner Bros. owns all of the Atari Games IP (1984-1999 arcade releases) as well as all Midway/Williams IP. Background noise here is from a real arcade.

There's one game by iD Software that should have joined Wolf 3D and Doom on the Atari Jaguar - as well as graced the Lynx. What is it? Well, keep watching

What's great and what isn't tends to be subjective to the viewer but in my humble opinion, Star Raiders is objectively a great game and one of the greatest to come out of Atari. Footage is from the new enhanced version of Star Raiders that is found on the Atari 50th Anniversary Collection.

Today's Atari news veers us towards the Atari Jaguar, where surprisingly, JV Games has been working on remastering their original RPG for the Atari Jaguar and will be launching it Summer 2023. For Jag and RPG fans, this is very welcome news!

Back in 1998, the "Project X" console was creating a bit of buzz as it was allegedly so powerful that it could all sorts of graphical techniques that other consoles of the time couldn't, including real-time raytracing. The console would later be called the NUON, a chip that was put into DVD players. So was the hype about raytracing real or just fluff? This shows the raytracing demo that Jeff Minter (of Llamasoft and Tempest 2000/3000/4000 fame) and Eric Smith created to demonstrate the NUON chip capabilities. I then show the one game that was going to feature real-time raytracing in-game, the marble maze title aMaze by Fungus Amungus. This game seems to have been lost to time - could someone out there have a copy to release?

Checking out the new Caverns Of Mars Recharged on the Nintendo Switch, joined by my 7 year old chatterbox who controls the firing ship and colors up the commentary in ways I could never dream of. I like this better than the original Caverns of Mars for the Atari 400/800. That game was OK but I never really clicked with it, whereas something about this almost feels like River Raid...going the opposite direction (and of course you've got destructible terrain, and other differences but the pace kind of fits).

Just a capture from my Samsung N501 DVD player which does in fact play video games, thanks to the NUON chip inside. Granted, so few games were released for the NUON that you can count them on two hands with fingers to spare. Merlin Racing was made by Miracle Designs, which previously created Atari Karts on the Atari Jaguar. Where the latter was made as an 'answer' of a sort to Super Mario Kart, Merlin Racing was the 'answer' to Mario Kart 64. This game was able to produce better graphics than MK64, given that the characters were all in 3D instead of sprites - I'll do a comparison video here soon. #videogames #nuon #gaming

StarFox was the influence, naturally, which turned 30 today. Later that same year, CyberMorph would launch on the Atari Jaguar as the pack-in title

Iron Soldier by Eclipse is one of my favorite series found on the Atari Jaguar, presenting mech action in a fast-paced, almost arcade style format. Here I compare the three games together, although as mentioned in the video, IS3 was brightened up a bit since the source video is rather dark. Comparison starts at 5:08. Iron Soldier was released on cart for the Atari Jaguar in 1994; Iron Soldier 2 CD was completed in 1996 but not released until 1998 on the Jaguar CD and later cartridge; IS3 launched for the Sony PSX and VM Labs NUON-enhanced DVD players in Spring 2001.