July 2020
1982•38TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION•2020
SECRETARY’S REPORT
TECH TALK
TOTAL SCORE:
By Steven Peck
By Steven Peck
HELLO WORLD!
In this edition of Tech Talk, we will focus on Atari Dev Studio for Visual Studio Code™, from Microsoft©. Atari Dev Studio is a full-fledged integrated development enviroment (IDE) for Visual Studio Code™. It is available for Mac™ and Windows™.
I will be back next time with another review of the Atari© home platform games. See you soon, and thanks for reading!
Hi, again! Here we are with another Secretary’s Report. It is the anniversary of the founding of SPACE. So, Happy Birthday and Happy Independence Day, SPACE Cadets! Anyway, although we do not have any SPACE meetings coming up anytime soon, I hope that everybody is doing well healthwise and keeping busy. I know that I have ben busy, let me tell you! I hope that we can see each other and have SPACE meetings soon. Of course, I will continue to create these abridged newsletters for the Club. It is my duty and I am obliged to help. Thank you for offering me the service of doing this. Let’s hope that the city council of Falcon Heights opens up the City Hall soon! I am getting really anxious for another SPACE meeting in the future. So, I hope that all goes well and we can all share our techy points of view. Thanks again! This concludes the Report. See you soon! In the words of the late, great Stan Lee… EXCELSIOR!
Atari Dev Studio allows homebrewers to design, program, and test their games all within the IDE. It has emulators for the Atari© 2600™ and 7800™ to test your games. You can also create your game sprites with the built-in sprite editor, which is compatible for the 2600™ and 7800™. Plus, it utilizes the DASM assembler, Batari BASIC (a BASIC variant for Atari© 2600™ programming), and 7800basic for programming. This is all in one package. Best of all, Visual Studio Code™ and the Atari Dev Studio extension are both free. Visual Studio Code™ is available from Microsoft© on their website, and all you need to do is download it. So, that is it for this edition of Tech Talk. I will be back next month with another edition. See you then, fellow Atarians! Thanks for reading. Visual Studio Code and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Atari, 2600 and 7800 are registered trademarks of Atari Corporation. Mac is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. All rights reserved. ATARI HOME PLATFORM GAME REVIEW Welcome back to the Atari Home Platform Game Review! In this edition of the Review, I will focus on the Atari© 5200™ version of “Gyruss™.” In “Gyruss™,” you play a space pilot fighting through myriads of alien armadas to get to Earth and save the world from invasion.
Message from Captain Irata: “Be well, be safe, and get your GAME on!” HOO-RAH! TRIVIA TIME! Yars’ Revenge is named after forner Atari CEO Ray Kassar. the name “Yar” is Kassar’s first name spelled backwards.
THE REAL WAY TO GAME!
This game is different in the fact that it moves 360 degrees. It is in forward perspective, where you are at the front of the screen, and your enemies are in front of you.Because they are far away in the background they look smaller, but are still deadly. You can get power-ups to enhance your ship. You can get double-shot lasers to incrrease your firepower. The object is to get to Earth from Pluto. You are at the fringe of our Solar System, so yo uhave to get to the inner planets to find Earth. That is not as easy as it sounds. Your enemies are relentless and, as I mentioned, deadly. They will stop at nothing to keep you from reaching Earth. I like this game, but there is a problem. When you shoot, it shoots very slowly, which complicates play. I think that the shots from your ship should be faster. I like the premise of the game, though. It is fun and looks like it is three-dinemsional. It could be more, but it is graphically pleasing. With that, I will score the game accordingly. SCORE: Graphics: Gameplay: Animation: Sound:
8 6 8 9
31/40
Gyruss is a registered trademark of Konami Corporation. Atari and 5200 are trademarks of Atari Corporation. All rights reserved.
Have a S afe and Happy Fourth of J uly and SPACE Birthday ! Be Happy and S afe, Fellow Atarians !
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