Tag Archives: Atari

Propaganda!

To forestall counter-revolutionary regressions and the tactics of those who would betray the ideals of the sacrifices our Comrades have made, please benefit in these glorious depictions of our shared console heritage. Onward!

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Video Carnage 36 — The Checkered Flag

My Video Carnage reviews have all wrapped up, and I’ve done the circuit from console to console, all the way from the lowly Odyssey to the Xbox.  I’ve stopped in with some computers along the way to check out the driving there,and all told, I reviewed 99 games for 33 systems.  Now it’s time to […]

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That Fembot Sound…

Growing up as I did in the 70s and 80s, I was exposed to the glory of 8-bit sound effects when I was a kid.  These kinds of synthesized sounds invariably accompanied the revelations of fembot characters, like on the old Bionic Woman show. Since then, electronic beeping sounds have been one of the pleasures […]

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Video Carnage 24 — Atari Jaguar

Oh boy.   You know you have one craptacular shitfest of a console when you’re forced to resort to infomercials to sell it because no one wants to buy the damned thing.  I bet a fucking ShamWow can display better graphics than the Atari Jaguar.  This was purported to be the first “64-bit” console, but only […]

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Video Carnage 17 — Atari 7800

Oy.  Here we find ourselves in Underwhelmsville again, population 7800.  Like I mentioned before in The Golfyssey, the Atari 7800 was shelved for two years before it was released in an attempt to compete with none other than the legendary NES.  The graphics are shitty, regardless of how many terrible-looking sprites this system can handle […]

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Video Carnage 10 — Atari 5200

Recently, I rediscovered the Atari 5200, thanks to an emulator that fixed the console’s horribly flawed non-centering joysticks.  Being released shortly before the 1983 industry crash, this system had a short life, so there weren’t many games released for it.  Only one racing game was released, and it is a port of an ultra-popular arcade […]

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Video Carnage 03 – Atari 2600

Many game collectors and classic gaming enthusiasts start with the Atari.  And for the most part, this is where home console gaming really began.  But this system has some truly terrible games.  Thankfully for us, it also has some extremely fun games that were programmed by early masters of the art. Indy 500 (1977) This […]

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Lusting after computer hardware

This post may not be quite about what you think it’s about. In my “Reassessing the Atari 5200” post below, I talked about how shocked I was to learn that Atari had developed the internals for that console five years before they had released it.  It appeared as though Atari sat on this technology for […]

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Reassessing the Atari 5200

The Atari 5200 was a dud.  The story behind it is interwoven with the head-scratching tale of Atari’s journey from industry leader and juggernaut to has-been and bankrupt joke.  I’m going to have to insert another link to the Angry Video Game Nerd because you should watch his review of this console. With my fondness […]

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Golfyssey 12 — Atari 7800

Oh, Atari.  If Commodore jumped off a cliff, would you? In an effort to prove that stupid and disastrous business decisions would not be monopolized by its competitors, Atari decided to inflict 1000 paper cuts upon itself over the course of the mid 80s and 90s and thus die that slow, agonizing death that had […]

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Golfyssey 05 — Atari 5200

This console was a bad idea that brought lots of bad ideas to the market.  Where to begin?  First of all, it has stopgap written all over it.  When the Atari 5200 was released, the ColecoVision console had already come out, and it had immediately become the number one seller in the market due to […]

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Golfyssey 02 – Odyssey²

Bring me the head of Nolan Bushnell! I have fond memories of the Odyssey².  As I mentioned below, I was a poor-ass kid growing up.  My father bought me and my brothers an Odyssey² for Christmas one year, I believe in 1984.  The system itself was released originally in 1978, so we’re talking bargain-bin, unload-it-fast […]

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Golfyssey 01 – Atari 2600

Ah, the Atari 2600.  The video game system from 1977.  Even though I have plenty of games for the Atari, I never play any of them regularly.  The graphics and especially the sound are just too primitive for me to enjoy anything on this thing.  In fact, some of the games that were released for […]

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