June 2016
June 2016 Edition December 1979: Holosonics, Inc. was declared bankrupt, and ownership of more than 150 holography patents reverted to the People’s Bank of Seattle and Citibank.
Message from Captain Irata: “Practice makes permanent! No pain, no gaining high scores while you are playing the games on the DOM! Hoo-Rah!” (NOTE: By the way, that is not a typo you see. The Cap really means practice makes permanent.)
It’s not very Atari computer related, but perhaps I’ll share how I’ve recently pinned down the timeline of the Atari Advanced Products Group and the Atari Cosmos. Fall 1979: Atari VP research and development Al Alcorn recruited Atari (Coin-Op) engineers Roger Hector and Harry Jenkins to work with him to investigate designing a consumer electronics product that would utilize holography. The new R&D unit would come to be known as the Atari Advanced Products Group.
February 1980: Nearly 200 holography patents came up for sale by the People’s Bank of Washington in Seattle and New York’s Citibank, which had taken possession of the patents when they foreclosed on loans to the patents’ owners, Holosonics Inc. Atari would acquire the exclusive right to manufacture and market products involving holograms intended primarily for toys and games, and Atari’s Advanced Products Group would establish the Atari Holoptics Lab. January 5, 1981: Atari announced the Cosmos Programmable Game System (EG500; featuring “Holoptics” images). For the Cosmos, Atari also announced 8 games: Superman, Football, Basketball, Outlaw, Sea Battle, Space Invaders (title by Taito), Road Runner, Asteroids. Asteroids was to ship with the system. (In their ad in Merchandising Atari announced a ninth game for Cosmos: Dodge ‘Em) January 9-12, 1981: At the Winter CES in Las Vegas Atari introduced the Cosmos Programmable Game System (EG500). February 9, 1981: Atari announced that there would be 8 games for Cosmos - The Third Dimension, including: Asteroids, Superman, Football, Road Runner, Destroyer, Space Invaders, and Outlaw. Cos-
mos with Asteroids was to retail for $99.95 and was expected to ship August 1981. February 15-17, 1981: Atari featured the Cosmos at the 78th annual American Toy Fair in New York. June 1981: Atari Advanced Products Group engineer Roger Hector was promoted to Manager - Advanced Products, replacing the departed Al Alcorn as head of the unit, and would now report directly to Atari CEO Ray Kassar. October 1981: Atari Advanced Products Group engineer Harry Jenkins would be promoted to Manager - Advanced Products (head of the unit, report directly to Atari CEO Ray Kassar, replacing Roger Hector who departed the company. March 1982?: The Atari Holoptics Lab was shut down, and the Atari Advanced Products Group would be reconstituted into the Atari corporate Design Research group. Harry Jenkins, previously Atari Manager - Advanced Products (reporting to Atari CEO Ray Kassar), would become Atari manager of corporate design research (reporting to Atari VP/chief scientist Alan Kay). Next month is normally the SPACE birthday party, so be sure to show up this month if you want to help influence the party plans! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday June 10, 2016.
reviewing the games. Well that’s all I have for this month so I hope to see you all on June 10 for our next meeting. We had five members in attendance for our May SPACE meeting. It was great to see Lance and Brian back and after having our President, Michael, back last month I really feel like this is going to be a good year for SPACE. With another excellent 8-bit DOM for May and members renewing their memberships our treasury is looking better than ever. I hope that if Nolan reads this newsletter he gets in touch with me so that we can square things up with the website. Here is how May shapes up for SPACE: May’s beginning balance was $267.54. Our receipts for May was $93.00 which consisted of $75.00 for membership renewals, $15.00 for 8bit DOMs and $3.00 for ST DOMs. The ending SPACE balance stands at $360.54. This compares with $234.54 last year at this time. Of course we still need to get square with Nolan on the web-site billing which we haven’t paid for since August of 2015. It was February 2012 when SPACE recorded receipts of $93.00 and we haven’t had anything higher since then so tying that amount was quite an achievement for us in May 2016. If you haven’t purchased the April and May 8-bit DOMs I highly suggest that you buy them at a future SPACE meeting. Please read the reviews for those two DOMs in the review sections of the newsletter. Steve Peck does a very fair job in
HELLO WORLD! Well, it’s time for the June Secretary’s Report. So, I will go ahead and report on the preceeding month. It was Friday, May the 13th, and if you believe in superstitions you might consider this day unlucky. It was not like that for the Club. The meeting started at 7:32 PM. Four people renewed that night, including Lance and Brian. It was nice to see them again. We now have ten members in the Club. The treasury is growing and we are still prospering as an Atari users’ group. I think that after three-plus decades of serving the local Atari Community, we will be fine for awhile longer. So, despite the superstitions surrounding Friday, the 13th, I think that we are having some good fortune. Don’t you? :) Anyway, moving on, Richard Mier is still wanting to return to the Twin Cities to start an Atari ST repair service from his home. I would love to see that happen. I think I would have a lot to ask him about how the ST works. Greg brought in some Egyptian cuisine from his neighbors. I thought that it was tasty and quite good. I had it with gusto. Thanks for the morsels, Greg, and I am sure eve-
ryone appreciated the cookies as well. Speaking of food, there was talk of a certain Mexican dish that never leaves peoples’ minds for a certain SPACE event coming in July (now, this food shall remain nameless, as you all probably know already what I am getting at). Well, for the record, we might as well have a commerative day for this special dish, since we talk about it so much and eat it so often. Go figure. Well, Lance has finally announced the sale of V61’s latest release for the 8-bit, “Amok Bots!” Made in the tradition of Berzerk and Frenzy, you go around mazes fighting nefarious robots that are out to destroy humankind. For more info, go to V61’s web site as it is already posted on there. There are two V61 1010 Evolved drives left that can handle only 2 GB SD cards. There will be an upgrade soon to handle higher-capacity media. The current price for the 2 GB version is $74.95, and this is while supplies last. The main meeting concluded at 8:10 PM, lasting thirty-eight minutes. But, there was some activity after the meeting and carousing between the members there. Well, that concludes the Secretary’s Report for May. Carpe diem, guys, and in the words of the great artist, Stan Lee… EXCELSIOR!
Atari 8-Bit DOM Review By Steven Peck
Well, here I am, back with the DOM Review for the Atari 8-bit computer. This DOM is pretty cool, as they all are, and I will go in depth with each program on the DOM and rate them all. So, here we go. May 2016 DOM, Side A: Blowsub is a game where you have your battleship dropping depth charges on enemy submarines and mines. Be careful, as the subs will fire back at you. Do not bomb the electric eels in the water, as you will get electrocuted! If you bomb any mines, they act as smart bombs and destroy every sub in the water. You also have a time limit that can be extended if you do well enough bombing subs. Now, personally I love this game. It is challenging, but easy to master. It reminds me of the old penny arcade games from what I have heard about from the 1950s and 1960s. I would say this game, although not perfect, is a true gem. Kudos. Graphics: Gameplay: Animation: Sound:
9 10 9 10
Total Score:
38/40
Getting Into 2015 is a demo full of music and graphics and it blows me away. The scanned pictures are a delight and look great. This is a great demo and I give it good marks. Perfecto! Graphics:
10
Animation: Sound:
10 10
delightful adddition to the SPACE DOM game collection.
Total Score:
30/30
Graphics: Gameplay: Animation: Sound:
10 9 10 9
Total Score:
38/40
Last Attempt is a music track that is an excellent example of what the Pokey chip can do when pushed to the limits. Very good job with the pulse-pounding composition. Total Score:
10/10
NYD 2K16 Intro has a somewhat racy message when it starts, but it looks good and has real-time text ticker animation. Good job, but I am giving it low points on the raciness of the message. Graphics: Animation: Sound: Total Score:
6 8 8 22/30
NYD 2016 Nessie is a game where you have to shoot the Loch Ness Monsters (called Nessies) with a limited amount of bullets and there are only ten Nessies to shoot. The gameplay was great, ut the graphics and sound needed improvement. Overall, I think that it is a challenging game that people would enjoy playing. Graphics: Gameplay: Animation: Sound:
5 10 4 3
Total Score: 22/40 Side B: Bobby Bearing is a game that is like a combination of Marble Madness and Airball, where you have to guide a marble through a maze filled with treacherous obstacles. The graphics are great and the gameplay is even better. This is a
Sounds Like Chicken is a music track is quite delightful and sounds great. I like the peppy music as it sounds like some stroll down an urban neighborhood to me. Pretty good musical demo. Total Score:
9/10
Wolf 3D is a unplayable demo of how the Wolfenstein 3D engine would possibly look on the Atari 8bit, and it is amazing. Pretty good programming and you can steer around the 3D environment. I love this demo. Graphics: Animation: Sound:
10 10 7
Total Score:
27/30
This concludes the DOM Review for this month. Sorry this newsletter is so abridged, but I ran into time constraints. I will have more stuff to review next month. Have a Happy, guys!