Atari Flashback Portable

Fellow retro geeks, nostalgic nerds and dated dorks, as far as I am concerned, this is the Holy Grail of portable gaming and I've wanted this for as long as I can remember.

It's the friggin' Atari Flashback Portable.

Badass

Even as a child back in the Dark Ages, I recognized that technology was getting smaller, faster and cheaper and I often pondered how long it would be before the industry would eventually get to the next logical place and release a hand-held Atari, Colecovision or Intellivision system. I recall spending far too much time in my bedroom sketching and designing what I thought such a system might look like but of course, it was all just a bored kid's fantasy.

Now the good folks at AtGames, who previously brought us a slew of retro machines like the SEGA Classic Gaming Console, the Intellivision Flashback as well as the venerable Atari Flashback, are planning to release the Atari Flashback Portable, first officially licensed hand-held Atari 2600 game system. The unit should be out November 2016 and here's some marketing verbiage from their site:

• LCD screen
• Video out port (cable not included)
• Rechargeable battery included
• SD slot for downloaded games
• A travel-friendly MUST HAVE for the avid gamer
• 60 Legendary Atari 2600 hits including: Millipede®, Pong®, Missile Command®, Asteroids®, Centipede®

If AtGames follows their previous pricing from the SEGA Portable, which was updated earlier this year, then the Atari Flashback Portable should be priced around $50. Not too shabby.

The big selling point for me is the built-in SD card slot. In the past, the Flashback consoles have been limited by the built-in games that the producer was able to license for that particular version of the machine. So for example, the Atari Flashback 2 may have had a few more games built into it than the Flashback 1, but it may no longer have included a couple of your favorites due to the ongoing legal challenges of trying to license early computer-game technology from companies that often no longer exist or others who have now grown so large, their licensing fees have become too prohibitive for small companies like AtGames to tackle. Hell, I'm still not sure if there's ever even been a Flashback console released that has included Activision's top-seller, Pitfall, arguably the most popular 2600 game ever made!

But now we finally have a Flashback system with an SD card slot that lets you load up your own downloaded Atari 2600 roms, meaning that you're no longer stuck just playing the same included games over and over again. Better yet, you can most likely fit the entirety of the 2600 library on one inexpensive SD card enabling endless hours of retro-gaming Atari goodness on the go! That, to me, is worth the price of admission.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT ATGAMES ATARI FLASHBACK PORTABLE PRODUCT PAGE

WATCH THE VIDEO ANNOUNCEMENT FROM "THE NO SWEAR GAMER"

BONUS VIDEO: ENGINEER-EXTRAORDINAIRE BEN HECK'S HAND-WIRED PORTABLE ATARI 2600

The Art of Atari

As you all pretty much know, when I was just a wee tot living in suburban Wisconsin, milking cows and drinking beer, I spent a lot of cold winters sitting in front of our (alarmingly) warm TV set playing classic Atari games like Missile Command, Adventure and Asteroids. Games that, when played on a home console in 1981, looked pretty much like ass. The graphics, as some of you will recall, were embarrassingly simple -- one game's soccer ball was another game's ICBM missile. The sound of an explosion in a space shooter might double as the sound of a crowd cheering on a football team. What I'm getting at here folks is that the narrative power of these 2-kilobyte game programs was extremely, extremely limited, so we had to actually use our own imaginations while playing our video games back then. Which, ironically, was something that I think was lost on many parents of the time, as they often lashed out against this wicked new video-technology that would most assuredly eat their children's souls and melt their brains.
But how do you market and sell a game that contains only a dot, a line and a wall of bricks to millions of sweaty, greasy teenage kids who can't wait to hop into their station wagons and cruise on over to Kay Bee Toys to pick up the latest radical game cartridge?

Like this:

Not real, but an incredible simulation.

Nope, not what you're thinking about at all when you're eight years old and spinning a paddle in your hand -- sorry, that sounded weird. But believe it or not, this approach ended up working well for Atari and having been initially run by a bunch of stoners and hippies anyway, they were very up on the idea of dedicating a fair amount of cash and resources to art and design right from the start.

So wouldn't you know it, some forty-odd years later and long after the original company imploded, someone has finally put together a book chronicling this hitherto overlooked aspect of our favorite video game behemoth, and it's available today in hardback.

Penned by Chicago-based designer, Tim Lapetino, The Art of Atari gives the reader a comprehensive overview of the various design initiatives employed by Atari over the course of its entire history and reveals the stories behind them as well.

From the official site:

"THE ART OF ATARI is the first official collection of such artwork. Sourced from private collections worldwide, this book spans over 40 years of the company’s unique illustrations used in packaging, advertisements, catalogs, and more.

Includes a comprehensive retrospective collecting game production and concept artwork, photos, marketing art, with insight from key people involved in Atari’s rich history, and behind-the-scenes details on how dozens of games featured within were conceived, illustrated, approved (or rejected), and brought to life!"

Pick up your copy for only $39.99 from their site by clicking the link below!

VISIT THE MAIN ART OF ATARI SITE HERE FOR MORE INFO

BONUS VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR, TIM LAPETINO

Fix-It Felix Jr. Mini

You can't tell, but this is tiny.

Disney's 2012 animated epic, Wreck-It Ralph, paid tribute to many classic video games from the '80s and '90s by bringing to life some of the most beloved game characters of all time such as Q*Bert, Pac-Man and my personal fave, Tapper. However the main story centers around a fictional creation of Disney's called Fix-It Felix Jr., a game that most likely took inspiration from the legendary Nintendo hit, Donkey Kong. In it, our titular hero takes on the task of repairing a crumbling building while avoiding the wrath of the evil Ralph, who tries to take out Felix by hurling rocks, or clumps of dirt or something at him...you know these 8-bit games make it tough to tell, sometimes.

It's not a bad little game and I know because Disney went the extra mile of actually designing and programming the concept into a playable game which you can download for your iPhone, Android or Windows phone -- sorry Blackberry (kids be like, wtf is a Blackberry?) You can even play it on your home computer, as long as you have Flash. (kids be like, wtf is Flash?)

But because it was never actually a real arcade game, you retro game collectors out there can forget about getting your hands on a working model, unless one of those kit-bashers, game-hackers or MAME-floggers that live in your web browser decides to build one. I'm looking at you Ben Heck!

But until that day arrives, what you can do is stop by eBay and pick up a (relatively expensive) mini-replica of the arcade game itself. This decorative miniature doesn't actually let you play the game, but it does feature an LCD screen with a video loop and sound effects and would be a worthy addition to any geek's man-cave. The bidding starts at $70, which I think is a little steep, but if you're a fan of the film, this is one collectible that you probably won't find anywhere else.

CLICK HERE TO PAY BIG BUCKS FOR A FIX-IT-FELIX JR. REPLICA

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE GAME ONLINE FOR FREE

8-Bit Cinema

Stolen from Deviant Art. How's THAT for deviancy?

Ever wish you could see your favorite movie or TV series remade into an old school Nintendo-style video game? Well now you can with CineFix's 8-Bit Cinema series on YouTube.  A partial list of their remakes includes Jurassic Park, Big Lebowski, Terminator 2, Happy Gilmore, The Shining, Frozen (for the kiddies) and even The Walking Dead. While a more anally-retentive nit-picker would point out that some of their productions tend to lean closer to the 16/32-bit era art-style, I won't do that here.

Whoops, sorry.

So enjoy the videos and check out the links below for even more CineFix craziness. Sorry for the pre-roll ads, Google are greedy bastards.



CLICK HERE FOR MORE 8-BIT CINEMA

CLICK HERE TO VISIT CINEFIX

Camp Atari

Wet Hot American Summer

When I was a kid back in the 1980s, I remember being in the back seat of my parents' car, probably on our way back home from the mall, and listening to two guys on the radio prattling on with some "back in my day" rant -- kind of like this blog. At one point, during the laughter and comedy, one of the DJs says to the other "if your kid comes back from summer camp with a tan this year, it's because they moved Pac-Man outside." The idiot kid I was, I immediately sat up in my seat and inquired of my father as to just exactly where this awesome summer camp was where they play video games. "It's a joke, son, they were joking" was all I got back.


Well as it turns out, there actually was such a camp, sort of.

Back in 1982 our old pal, Atari, decided to throw their fortunes at a risky proposition (they were great at doing this) by investing in a series of computer camps across the U.S. called, of course, Atari Computer Camps. I never got to meet anyone that actually went to one, and at nearly $3,000 for a week's stay that's not a shocker. Keep in mind, $3,000 back in 1982, adjusted for inflation, would be about one kajillion dollars today. So you know, that one super-duper-rich kid in your school probably got to go. Along with the normal camp activities, swimming, baseball, volleyball, weaving, bonfires and sing-a-longs, kids got to learn how to program and operate Atari 8-bit computers, thereby positioning the next generation of kids to be well-informed future-consumers of all things gadgety and technical. I would have LOVED it! Legend has it that all of the remaining E.T. carts that weren't buried in that landfill in New Mexico were used to stuff mattresses at the camps while the instruction manuals were stacked high in the commodes for, ahem, personal use.

Want to know more? Then watch this historical document:



Oh, and there's a mini-documentary on the subject as well. Have a gander at this:



Still not enough? For even more info check out the links below:

CLICK HERE TO READ AN ARTICLE FROM ANTIC MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 1982

CLICK HERE TO READ AN ARTICLE FROM ATARI CONNECTION, AUGUST 1982

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT OFFICIAL ATARI LITERATURE INCLUDING BROCHURES

CLICK HERE FOR THE PODCAST AND MORE LINKS FROM THE TEAM AT ANTIC

A-Bit of Doctor Who

8-Bit musician Joe Jeremiah mixes it up with some Doctor Who. You can check out some of his original music here: https://soundcloud.com/joejeremiah. Enjoy!

1980s Video Store and Arcade Models

Video stores and arcades. We used to love them. Now they are gone. Check this out.

eBay Watch: Mini Arcade Replicas

Not real, but an incredible simulation.

Some amazingly cool U.K. artist is selling super-awesome mini arcade machine replicas on eBay for pretty darned cheap. These hand-made little gems are non-functioning and are for display only, but feature some amazingly precise detailing and very faithful cabinet design. For around $60 U.S. you can pick three designs from over 100, including all of your favorites like Pac-Man, Tempest and Paperboy, and they'll arrive fully constructed, signed and numbered by the artist himself. And since the replicas stand around 6" tall, they're a perfect match for your nerdy action figures!

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE TEENY TINY ARCADE GAMES!

The Return of Retro-Cade

Good news everyone, after a brief hiatus, the Retrogeeker Retro-Cade is back online! For the grand re-opening we're featuring the video-game classics, Ms.Pac-Man and Q*Bert, with more to come soon! Scroll on down for some glorious 8-bit action!!


BONUS VIDEO: PAC-MAN FEVER

Retro Reading

My kids think magazines are broken iPads.

If you really want to get your retrogeeking on, you've got to put down the mouse, walk away from your computer, and sign up for a subscription to the newest retro-gaming magazine on the newsstands -- yes I said "magazine" and yes I said "newsstands" -- titled simply Retro. Although now that I think about it, you'll probably have to sit back down at your computer to actually set up the subscription. So forget what I just said. Anyway, this Kickstarter-funded publication is now on its fourth issue and as a subscriber myself, I can attest to its retro-goodness. Led by native-Californian and founder of GameGavel.com, Mike Kennedy, Retro features a team of video-game experts whose talent and experience spans a whopping three decades and promises to be your next go-to source for all things digital and retro. Check out their Kickstarter video below to hear more about it!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HOME OF RETRO MAGAZINE

Breaking: E.T. Atari Cart Landfill Legend

Instant Karma Got Atari

There are tons of posts from other bloggers on the web that talk about the infamous "worst-game-ever" from former king-of-the-hill game-maker, Atari, so I'll spare you the personal experiences this time. 

Here's the brief: Around Christmas '82, Atari released a rushed E.T. game for their 2600 home system. The game blew so it stopped selling and the company was left with tons of unsold inventory on their embarrassed hands. About a year later the media reported that Atari would be dumping 14 truckloads of games and other gear into a landfill somewhere in New Mexico so that they could write off the loss. Of course, rumors immediately sprang up speculating that thousands of leftover E.T. carts were part of the burial. Not too long after this incident, the entire video-game market crashed hard and of course, people eventually began to point to the shamefully horrible E.T. game as one of the many nails in the Atari coffin.

But now, today in fact (April 26, 2014), this enduring mystery may finally be solved. A group of filmmakers are currently in New Mexico digging up the infamous site in hopes to finally get an answer to this 30 year-old legend.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY AT THE GUARDIAN

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UPDATE: E.T. CARTS FOUND!! WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!

Mad Ducketts: Every Video Game Manual Ever

OK the title of this post was a bit exaggerated, but there's a gentleman on eBay selling his collection of over 800 classic video game manuals for only…drumroll please…$1,300. He's also taking best offers so you might throw him a lowball offer of like 20 bucks and see what happens. Who knows?
Here's the list of included items:

• Approx. 120 poster inserts
• 5 PS1 Manuals
• 2 large posters
• 10 PS2 Manuals
• 7 M Network Manuals
• 6 xbox live and other code papers. I do not know if the xbox live free months have been used.
• 8 Sega Dreamcast Manuals 
• 4 PS3 Manuals and 1 PS3 Art cover
• 5 NES Manuals
• 2 SNES Manuals
• 3 N64 Operational Cards
• Approx. 350 Random manuals and inserts
• 107 Sega Genesis & Game Gear Manuals
• 7 Atari/Sega Manuals
• 12 GameCube Manuals
• 5 Intellivision Manuals
• 16 Sega Saturn Manuals
• 10 Imagic Manuals
• 39 Activision Manuals
• 2 Xbox Manuals
• 2 Sears Tele-games
• 2 Wii Manuals
• 9 Sega CD Manuals
• 19 Coleco Vision Manuals
• 85 Atari

Before the internet, words lived on paper.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE SALE ON EBAY

Game Boy in the Palm of Your Hand

12 AA batteries not required

It's not an app, it's not platform dependent, it doesn't cost money so you should just go visit Ben Midi's GameBoy page right now cuz it's freakin' cool. Tap the link below on your touch-screen phone (tablets and PCs work too but don't scale well) and you'll be magically whisked away to a webpage that turns your incredibly expensive, state-of-the-art smartphone into a classic 8-bit monochrome Nintendo GameBoy! LTE data speeds and 8-core CPUs don't mean sh*t when you're playing Mario Bros on a 160x144 pixel black and white screen! The full list of playable games includes: Mario Land, Tetris, Dr. Mario, Bomberman, Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby XXL, Space Invaders, Motocross Maniacs, Bomb Jack, Boxxle 2, Castelian, Centipede and Stopwatch (haven't tried this one out yet, I think I know how it works, though). After recently watching Nintendo smash down anyone trying to steal from their holy vault of intellectual property, however, you can bet Ben's GameBoy page will be coming down fairly quickly so you may want to check it out sooner rather than later (Lawyers? Anyone else smell lawyers?)

CLICK HERE TO VISIT BEN MIDI'S GAMEBOY PAGE

Into the Dragon's Lair

Illustration by TBottch. Stolen from DeviantArt.com - how's THAT for deviancy?

In 1983, as the Great Video Game Crash was looming upon the horizon, ready to crush huge software development houses and well-established corporate brands into digital dust, the gaming industry still had a few tricks up its Coca-Cola shirt sleeve. While kids continued to rabidly stuff quarters into arcade machines all over the country, the availability of increasingly sophisticated home gaming consoles was already chipping away at the coin-op market. This of course wasn't that surprising because after all, who wants to drive all the way out to the mall and drop $5 in quarters on Donkey Kong at the arcade when you could hit "reset" on your Colecovision at home as many times as you liked? So just as the film industry had done by introducing Technicolor and Panavision into theaters to stave off irrelevancy during the post-war television boom, the video game industry began looking into ways to pull kids away from their Ataris and Intellivisions in their living rooms and back into the money-sucking arcades.

Improvements upon graphics and sound had been, up until then, the standard way to attract gamers who were looking for the latest and greatest in what the arcades had to offer, but the computer technology behind most games of the time was already being pushed to its limits. As fate would have it, however, a bright fellow named Rick Dyer, who at the time was the president of Advanced Microcomputer Systems, got the idea to take the basic structure of early computer text adventures and scale it up to accommodate prerecorded audio and photo stills, which would form a sort of visual story in which a player could take part. After several failed attempts at generating investor interest for what he dubbed his "Fantasy Machine," a chance viewing of producer Don Bluth's 1982 animated film, The Secret of NIMH, got him thinking about replacing the static photos with quality, full motion video which, as it turns out, was just what the project needed to get people excited about it. So Rick hired the veteran Disney animator's production company to do the grunt work and on an anemic budget of about a million dollars plus, they produced roughly 22 minutes of animated footage, which could then be played back on standard arcade machine monitors using Pioneer laser-disc players and coordinated by Dyer's "Fantasy Machine" hardware.

In partnership with seasoned coin-op manufacturer, Cinematronics, the first game released to utilize this new laser-disc technology was called Dragon's Lair. It's story revolved around a brave but sometimes reluctant sword and sorcery hero named Dirk Daring, whose purpose it was to explore a dark wizard's castle and battle magical monsters in order to rescue the beautiful Princess Daphne from the clutches of the evil dragon, Singe. As in most video games, the player would interact by using a joystick and button, and had only a limited set of lives with which to complete the game. However unique to the arcade industry at the time, Dragon's Lair cost not just a quarter but a whopping 50¢ to play, which didn't sit well with a lot of gamers. Complaints also surfaced regarding Dragon Lair's gameplay as the pre-rendered video scenes only allowed the player to react to the canned events of the game, which meant that the player could not actually direct character movement or action as in traditional video games like Pac-Man, Galaga, etc.

The initial success of Dragon's Lair did succeed in bringing excited gamers back to the arcades and eventually resulted in a number of sequels, knock-offs and competitors entering the market. But it was a short-lived victory as the Great Crash (known in Japan as Atari Shock) eventually came anyway and obliterated everything in its path, leaving the landscape fresh and clear for a little company called Nintendo to take root and rebuild the video game industry from scratch. But that's a tale for another time.

In the meantime, please enjoy this video which contains all 22 minutes of the original Dragon's Lair footage, as well as about 8 minutes of prototype video, taken from the 2002 laser-disc reproduction of the game.

BONUS VIDEO #1: AN EPISODE FROM THE VERY SHORT-LIVED ANIMATED SERIES

 

BONUS VIDEO #2: DON BLUTH TALKS ABOUT MAKING DRAGON'S LAIR

 

Light Those 8-Bit Candles

OK, so apparently Hanukkah ended yesterday and I was trying to get a related post up before then but dammit, there's just not a lot of retro-Hebronic stuff out there on the net. But I did find a little 8-bit styled interactive candle-lighting diversion that's kind of fun. So I apologize for this belated post but the way I see it "belated" is a just another word for "retro" so I'm in the clear. I'll try and do a little better next year. Now, I'm off to start my search for retro-Kwanzaa stuff on the web. That can't be too tough, right? 

Mad Ducketts: The $500 Pac-Man Watch

My kind of smart watch.

OK, these things don't come up often on eBay and when they do, they're gone PDQ. It's the Nelsonic Pac-Man watch and back in 198-whatever, they were hot, very hot, since the Holy Grail of gaming at that time was to bring Pac-Man into the home, even if he was a three millimeter dot on an LCD screen the size of a postage stamp. Nelsonic, who still exists today but just makes boring old regular watches (boo!) produced two different models of the highly coveted Pac-Man watch - one with the tiniest little joystick you've ever seen, and another that employed basic directional buttons instead - apparently the tiny joystick was too easily lost or broken for them to keep producing. 30 years later, Nelsonic's game watches are just as hot as they were when they were new (albeit in a much smaller market) and right now there's one on eBay that hails from the U.K., so I guess you wear it on your other wrist. The starting bid for this electronic bad boy? Just £299.99. That's about $500 to us Yanks, and there's three days left on the auction so I'm pretty sure the price will go up from there. Check out the video below to see a demo of someone else's awesome watch and then click the link to drop some mad ducketts on my Christmas present…and please include a gift receipt if you can. Thanks!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE LISTING FOR THE PAC-MAN WATCH

The 8-Bits of Christmas

…and a cartridge in a pear tree.

Tired of hearing the same old Christmas music, year after year? Me too! So I went to the website, 8bitpeoples.com, and downloaded an all-star chip tune artist album, The 8bits of Christmas, absolutely free! Now you too can enjoy soon-to-be classic holiday songs like Jesus Holy, Born So Lowly, Last Christmas Hot Digi Rmx and The First Blip Blop Noel (sample video below) all played on retro game and computing gear including an NES, a ZX-Spectrum and even a Commodore Vic-20. You can preview the individual tracks or download the entire thing from 8bitpeoples' site. Cover art included.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO 8BITS OF CHRISTMAS AT 8BITPEOPLES SITE

Tiny Games

Pew! Pew! But tiny.

Don't have the cash or space to add a full-sized arcade machine to your retro-gaming collection? Sure, we all do! These pint-sized and portable video games from BasicFun, makers of the ViewMaster and Bop-It, not only fit in your pocket, but fit your budget as well. You can pick one of these up for as low as $7.99 so they make great little stocking stuffers. Choose from Tetris, Space Invaders, Centipede or Breakout. They used to make a Frogger edition as well, but you'll have to check eBay or your local Target's bargain bin if you want that one, sorry.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT BASICFUN'S OFFICIAL SITE

Starcade on the Web

"And the question is "what is Pong?" Alex"

Hey, remember the 80s? No? Well let me tell you all about them. There was Reaganomics, John Hughes, a little kid trapped in a well, Def Leppard and of course, video games. Notice I didn't say internet? And that sad fact right there is what made us 80s kids get up off of our lazy butts, stand up on our own two feet with pride and conviction, and walk over to the TV to turn it on and leave it on. And what did we watch on our Zeniths and Sanyos? Shows about video games, of course! And the best video game show of all (that was tragically cut short by a dramatic drop-off in interest fueled in no small part by the Video Game Crash of 1983) was a game show called Starcade. On Starcade, contestants we're challenged with topical video game trivia questions and got to play the hottest, newest video arcade machines of the time in order to win thousands of dollars in fabulous prizes! Aside from the Price is Right and maybe Family Feud, it was the only game show I cared about. And now, you can too. So quit trying to catch up on Breaking Bad and click/tap/lick the link below to head on over to Starcade.tv where you can feast upon over 60 classic episodes of this 80s retro sweetness!

WATCH STARCADE ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

Play Classic Nintendo Games on Your iOS Device for Free

GBA4iOS

You got an iPhone or iPad? You want to play Nintendo games on it but you don't want to jailbreak your phone to do it? Well it's easier and quicker than you might think. Pull this post up on your iThing of choice and follow these simple instructions:

1. Open SETTINGS app and go to GENERAL
2. Tap on DATE & TIME
3. Toggle off SET AUTOMATICALLY
4. Change the date to anything in 2012 (your Messages and data services will be disabled for a minute)
5. Tap HERE to go to the page to download the free GBA4IOS app
6. On the page tap the drop down and choose GBA4IOS and then tap INSTALL
7. Important: BEFORE you change back your dat & time setting, OPEN the GBA4IOS app and leave it up and running
8. Go back to SETTINGS app and toggle on SET AUTOMATICALLY to restore the date & time - your data services will be restored

That's it, the app has now been installed on your non-jailbroken device without going though the App Store! Crazy! Now, you'll need to download some game roms for your GameBoy emulator app but it's way easy too:

1. Your GBA4IOS app should still be open from before so go to it
2. Tap on the magnifying glass button at the top right of the app's screen
3. Tapping the button opens Safari and pulls up a web search with game rom sites, tap the first link
4. You'll be taken to a mobile site where you can download all the game roms you want - woo!
5. Pick a game and tap DOWNLOAD NOW which pops open a box asking you which app you want to open the download with, choose OPEN IN and then choose GBA4IOS
6. Wait a few seconds and you'll be taken back to the GBA4IOS app and your download should appear in the rom list

That's it, just tap on your rom and start playing!

I know it looks like a lot of steps, but honestly it took be about 2 minutes to complete, and it's worth it!