Still Better Off with Image Editors

Years ago, I tried to clean up this damaged photo. My efforts were unsuccessful, but I think I'd do better if I tried again today. But I thought using Gemini to fix it might yield interesting results. 

 

The photo is a lot sharper now, but holy hallucinations, Batman. The Atari 400 has been replaced by an Atari 2600, and the Atari 400 games have been replaced by Atari 2600 games. And a stack of audio cassettes has replaced the CX40 joystick atop the Atari 410 program recorder. 

Further prompting fixed some of the issues. But not all. 

That's enough fiddling for now. The Atari 400 is there, but its yellow buttons are from the Atari 800 model. I also find it amusing Gemini put an audio cassette into the 8-Track player. 

Have You Fibonacci Today?

Pong
Qix
Pac-Man
Atari
8-bit computers
Created neon memories

Atari 400 Rising

Sylvia and I spent some time cleaning up the garage this weekend, and in the process I found the old Woods family Atari 400 plus most of our cartridges for the system and a few manuals. At least three of the best games--Pac-Man, Tennis, and most tragic of all, Star Raiders--are missing. 

None of our joysticks, either Atari branded or third party, survived. I guess we were pretty hard on them. I don't think we ever had paddle controllers, and we threw away all the peripherals a few years ago, after they stopped working. 

But as far as I know, the computer itself still operates--at least, it did the last time we tested it, which was, to be fair, at least a decade ago now. 

I also found an Intellivision Space Armada cartridge in the box. That's weird, because we never owned an Intellivision, and I don't think any of my friends or Sean's ever brought an Intellivision over to our house. 

I'm tempted to find some joysticks and hook this up to the TV, but I'd have to find some kind of converter to make that possible; the inputs the Atari used don't exist on most modern television sets. 

Doo Do Do Do Dee Do Do Do Doooo Dee

Blogger Paul Lefebvre dug up an old issue of the Atari Computer Enthusiasts newsletter and found an Atari BASIC program by Aaron Ness that if run causes your Atari 400 or 800 to play the theme from Star Wars. Pretty good job, and you can listen on Paul's site here. 

Atari 8-Bit Cartridge Inventory, Continued

(Ignore my incorrect voiceover; this was 1982, not 1980). 

Thanks to Sean, here are a few more Atari 8-bit cartridges we owned back in the day: 

Dig Dug
Tunnel through the earth and use your pump to blow up monsters! Another excellent arcade port. 

Astro Chase
This is one of the few Atari 8-bit games with a cinematic opening of a sort, along with a really decent, if repetitive, soundtrack. You flew around the earth, using your joystick to fire laser beams in four directions. Very fluid and fast moving. 

Choplifter
This was one of our favourites. Choplifter was a 2D side scroller; you flew your helicopter behind enemy lines to rescue hostages. By holding the joystick down for a second, you could rotate your chopper to face toward you and shoot missiles straight down, good for blowing up tanks, or, if you were sadistic, shooting the hostages you were supposed to rescue. 

Q-Bert
Yet another arcade port, in this one you hopped around "painting" the tiles on a faux-3D pyramid while avoiding a purple snake and other hazards. Famous for "swearing" when Q-Bert dies. A fun, accurate adaptation.

Fight Night
I barely remember this one, and Sean thinks it may have been the last game he purchased for the Atari 8-bit (by that time, the 130XE). Here's a video:

Robotron: 2084
A fast-pace, frenetic shooter, the arcade version sported two joysticks: one to control your movement, and the other to fire in any direction. Rather than doing things the lazy way and combining those functions into one joystick, Atari packaged the Atari 8-bit version in a box that allowed you to sit two Atari joysticks side-by-side so you could replicate the way the arcade version played. Sean still has the box! 

Jungle Hunt
Swing through the jungle on vines without missing, swim through the crocodile-infested river, and run up the hill as boulders roll down at you, all so that you can rescue your beau from, well, a rather insensitive portrayal of jungle cannibals. Eek. Swinging on the vines was a lot of fun, though. 

Atari BASIC
Not a game but a programming language, Sean and I learned a lot about computers by fastidiously typing out programs from books and magazines and then experimenting with the commands we learned to create our own programs. 

Super Breakout
A game that's still fun to play today, bounce a ball against a slowly descending wall of colourful bricks in the hopes of smashing them all. 


Moon Patrol
Whimsical but repetitive, in this one you drive a dune buggy--or rather, a moon buggy--across the moon's surface, avoiding craters and the like. Not terribly memorable. 

Centipede
As in the arcade version, you control a little ship at the bottom of the screen, shooting at the centipede winding its way toward you. Mushrooms get in the way, and spiders complicate matters. Fast-paced and entertaining. 

Jumbo Jet Pilot
A very, very primitive flight simulator with terrible graphics. Not very good at all--a waste of money at the time, I remember thinking. 

Qix
This game was almost like impressionist  abstract painting--create squares on the playing field by drawing enclosures with lines while avoiding "sparx" and the Qix itself, a floating bundle of neon-coloured sticks. Great game. 

Frogger
Why did the frog cross the road? To earn some quarters. Another excellent arcade port. 

Protector II
A Defender rip-off, but I remember it being almost as good as the original arcade classic. Fly your ship horizontally over a cityscape and rescue people from alien invaders.

Speedway Blast
A driving game where you drive a race car through a small town while avoiding a really creepy giant snake-like thing with a quasi-human head. 

Ms. Pac-Man
Even better than Pac-Man, in terms of gameplay and fidelity to the arcade version. House of fun. 

Desert Falcon
This might have been the last XE cartridge I purchased; it was a diagonal side-scroller aircraft shooter with a vaguely Egyptian theme. 

Zaxxon
Another side scroller, with good 3D fakery (you could move up and down and side to side to avoid obstacles) and a science fiction theme. 

Shamus 
You're a shamus slinging shivs in an endless labyrinth, dodging robots and looking for clues to escape. Sean and I both really enjoyed this one, despite never winning. I don't think you could, really - there weren't a lot of games you could win in those days. 

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
It wasn't the greatest port of the arcade version, mainly because once again the original used vector graphics, but it was still a lot of fun tooling around the galaxy blowing up Klingons and Nomad. 

Atari 8-Bit Cartridge Inventory

Sean and I were wondering last night, over text, if we still had any of our old Atari 8-bit cartridges. I don't think they're here, and I believe (or hope) that Sean has them. He's not sure either. 

That conversation has made me wonder if I can remember all the cartridge we had. Here's a list of what I remember: 

Pac-Man
One of the two games Mom and Dad gave us along with the Atari 400 for Christmas back in, I think, 1982 or so. A very faithful adaptation of the massively popular arcade game, plenty of fun.

Galaxian
The second cartridge we received that Christmas, another faithful, colourful adaptation of the space shooter. 

Donkey Kong
Sean bought this in Seattle, I think. Another excellent arcade-to-Atari translation. Excellent graphics and sound effects that stand the test of time.

Donkey Kong Jr. 
A few years later, one of us picked up (or was gifted) this charming sequel, in which you, as Donkey Kong Jr., climb vines to save Donkey Kong from Mario, a clever reversal of the original game's objective. 

Missile Command
A very faithful adaptation of the famous arcade game in which you have three missile silos to shoot down wave after wave of nuclear warheads plummeting toward you. You always lose in the end, just like in real nuclear war. 

Claim Jumper
Unlike Atari's plain brown cartridges, Claim Jumper was a semi-translucent red. The game itself was an original, not an arcade adaptation; it was a two-player wild west shoot 'em up. Each player controlled a cowboy and had to avoid tumbleweeds or snakes, and the other cowboy's bullets, while collecting gold and depositing it in the bank. While the gameplay sounds simple, it was utterly chaotic in practice in the best way; the cries of frustration were glorious, whether you were shot just before depositing your gold in the bank or zapped by a tumbleweed or snake at a crucial moment. 

Joust
Players control a knight riding a flying ostrich (?) and attempt to well, joust in midair while collecting eggs and avoiding lava, among other hazards. This is another arcade translation, and an excellent one. 

Eastern Front (1941) 
Another original, this is an abstract, strategic wargame where you control Nazi units invading the Soviet Union during World War II. You control infantry, armour, and air support in the drive to Moscow, but you have to pay attention to supply lines, morale, the dangers of being flanked or encircled, and other complexities of war. The game was tremendously difficult, but on the upside, it's never a bad thing when Nazis lose, which I think they always did . . . at the very least, I don't remember winning the game on anything other than the ridiculously simple Novice level, which pits one German unit against one Soviet unit. 

Asteroids
The arcade version of Asteroids used vector graphics, so the raster graphics of the Atari 400 couldn't possibly support a visually authentic adaptation. Still, it was fun flying around in a little white triangle while blasting space rocks in rainbow colours. 

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
"Finding the golden rope is Pitfall Harry's only hope." Sean and I spent hours on this underground exploration game, rescuing Quickclaw and Rhonda more than once, but never quite finding the correct route to the golden rope and escape. We had a lot of fun trying, though. 

Miner 2049er
One of the classic original creations for the Atari 8-bit computers, in Miner 2049er players lead Bounty Bob through four levels of treacherous mines, "painting" the floors by walking across them while avoiding radioactive mutants. The level design was great, as were the death animations; you could die by touching a mutant, falling, or using too much dynamite in the cannon level and blowing yourself to kingdom come instead of the top of the screen. 

Caverns of Mars
In this vertical scroller, you control a spaceship flying through the titular caverns, avoiding the walls and rockets while shooting fuel tanks to keep you flying. Once you set the reactor at the bottom of each cavern to explode, you have to fly out safely again before the big boom. Simple and highly entertaining.

Basketball
Even though Atari's Basketball supported only a maximum of four players shooting hoops, Sean and I still had great fun running around the 8-bit court, fighting over the ball. I don't remember ever playing with four players, maybe because we rarely had four joysticks working at the same time. 

Blue Max
This was a diagonally-scrolling, World War I-themed shooter. Dad was a big fan of the George Peppard-led movie. 

Star Raiders
Possibly the best game ever released for the Atari 8-bit line, or at the very least the best game not based on an arcade title. It's a first-person spaceship simulator with a galactic map to navigate, front and rear views and torpedoes, a variety of enemy spaceships to hunt, and space stations for repair and refuel. A wonderful game. 

Star Raiders II
A few years later we picked up Atari's sequel to Star Raiders, which I recall as also fun, but not as compelling as the original. In this one, you're bombing targets on a planet. 

RealSports Tennis
I don't know how they did it, but Atari found a way to make it really feel like you were in control of the ball, even though you were wielding a joystick instead of a racket. Mom and Dad liked this one, too. 

Pole Position
8-bit port of the arcade game, faithful and fun, very colourful. Doesn't quite hold up today, though, unlike a lot of other games on this list. 

Rally Speedway
Now this was a racing game! It supported two players racing against each other, with a top-down view of the treacherous curves. If you crashed, sometimes your driver would burst into flames and stop, drop and roll to put himself out. 

We had more games than this, and I feel like I must have missed a few. Perhaps more tomorrow? 

Atari Binder

During its all-too-brief golden age, Atari produced some pretty evocative artwork for its hardware and software products. The most visually arresting art was found on their video game packaging and instruction manuals, but even the staid 400/800 documentation binder was designed with the same art style. 
 

A Game of Khafka-esque Proportions

Caverns of Khafka took seemingly forever to load on our Atari 410 Program Recorder, but it was worth waiting for the software to load from magnetic tape. Your goal in this diabolically difficult game was to make your way through a deadly maze overflowing with different traps, monsters, lava pits, and other obstacles. Sean and I played this game until the cassette wore out. That was a sad day. 
 

Few Finer Than Miner 2049er

Miner 2049er was a top-tier game for the Atari 8-bit line of computers. Sean and I and our cousin Darwin poured hours and hours into this charming platformer. You control Bounty Bob, a Mountie who must reclaim an abandoned mine by touching all the platforms on each level of the mine. Simply walking over the platform tiles does the trick, but you have to avoid deadly radioactive monsters, falling from heights, being crushed by pulverizers, beaming into a monster while using the teleporter, and accidentally blowing yourself up by using too much dynamite for the level with the cannon. Bounty Bob's death animations were particularly satisfying and cartoonishly gruesome. 

Crazy 80s Games Plays Caverns of Kafkha

Sean and I used to play this game for hours in the early 1980s, waiting patiently for the game to load from the cassette-based Atari 410 Program Recorder into our 16K Atari 400 computer. Good times.