June 2023
•June 2023 Edition•
It’s now in the first days of June, and so far I’m still trying to catch up from everything I fell behind on this spring. In Atari activities, I have been sucked in to my timeline of Atari Corporation once again. The impetus this time was listening to several recent interviews with Leonard Tramiel. Great interviews, though very little that I can use for my timeline directly, yet listening to him overall seems to have given me new, hopefully better intuition about a variety of things. Most prominently, despite his title of VP of software development, most of the period that he had that title I don’t think he was connected to software application development or game development at all. I think his role most of that time was overseeing operating systems and other core software technology. So, with this in mind I’ve been revisiting those overseeing application and game development and marketing, which further cascades into revisiting the corporate marketing people again. I do think things are on their way toward coming together nicely, though! Watching the Atari history video at SPACE last month was very cool, I had not seen that before. I believe it came with Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, which is available on Steam for PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, or VCS (the new one). I may be tempted to buy it, if I can figure out how Steam works. We’ll see, I don’t seem to have any time right now. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting: Friday, June 9, 2023.
Message from Captain Irata: “Dear God! The end is near! Get more quarters quick for continues! HURRY!” HOO-RAH!
A surprising evening for our May SPACE meeting! It started with our regulars; Glen, Tom, Roger and myself. After looking at a few files from the DOM another member showed up. Our President, Michael, who hardly ever has the chance to attend two months in a row walked in to our surprise! I know living so far away makes it difficult, but it was sure nice seeing Michael there. But that wasn’t the end of our surprise. Brian Little walked in and we were shocked. Because of COVID, we hadn’t seen Brian for almost three years and he was our Vice-President. We didn’t know if he was ever going to return to SPACE, so I took the Vice-President position to fill the board. Now since Brian returned and he paid all his membership dues up to date, I offered to give him back his former Vice-President if he wanted. Brian agreed and said he will try to make the future meetings as much as possible. So, now I am back to holding just the Treasurer’s position which is fine with me. So, as far as the Treasurer report is concerned, we started the month of May with a bank balance of $1,203.45. Thanks to Brian, our membership renewals were $45.00, and add to that five DOMs sold, for another $15.00 for a grand total of $60.00. So, our ending bank balance is now $1,263.45. We are close to another record that we haven’t seen in years. We still haven’t been billed for a new year of room rental so our balance would be $360.00 lower than what we have.
HELLO WORLD! Here we are in June and with another Secretary’s Report! Summer is heading our way, and it feels like it. Hopefully, we will get more rain soon. Yes, I know we had a lot of moisture in the winter, but we need rain because there has been little of it lately. So, I hope we get more soon! Anyway, i am happy Brian L. is back as the Veep! Welcome back, by the way, Brian! I hope you can get to the meetings, and I hope I can myself. I will continue to think about how I can get down there. Maybe I can be there for the B-Day Party. On the flip-side, I have been studying math in my adult basic education classes online at night. I was thinking I could use my new-found math knowledge and apply it to computer programming. I want to learn how to program as a hobby. Actually, I wanted to learn to code for a long time. Especially, I want to learn assembly code on the Atari. I have MAC/65 and the Atari Assembler Editor cartridges. If anybody at SPACE has any tips on how to learn, maybe they can tell me. I have been studying a little bit here and there about assembly code on the Atari 2600, but I also want to learn it on the A8 computer. So, I guess I am reaching out to the SPACE Cadets to see how their proficiency is at assembly code. Any hints? I hope to come to SPACE meetings again. I just need a goos way down there and back. This hasn’t been easy, but I will try to go to the SPACE Birthday Party. Maybe I can get some information then. I am understandably curious.
If you want to see what’s going on in the Atari world, you have to show up for our meetings. We have members that bring in things to show us like an old fashioned show and tell! So please try to make it to the June meeting so we can finalize our July Birthday party. Hope to see you there!
With that, I will close. See you soon! In the words of the late, great artist, Stan Lee…
–TABLE OF CONTENTS–
TRIVIA TIME!
PAGE ONE:
The Atari Jaguar has five processors built into its motherboard: Tom, Jerry, the Object processor, the Digital Signal Processor, and the Blitter. It truly uses early RISC technology to run it more efficiently.
The President’s Corner Treasurer’s Report Secretary’s Report PAGE TWO: Multi-Platform Game Review PAGE THREE: SPACE Comics Section
EXCELSIOR!
The Atari Lynx also has multiple processors, including Mike, Suzy, and a 16-bit variant of the MOS 6502 processor.
ATARI MULTI-PLATFORM GAME REVIEW By Steve Peck Welcome back! I suppose you are wondering why there’s no Atari 8-bit DOM Review this month. Let me tell you, it has been a busy May. I plan on moving in October to a new house, for one thing. So, I have been on the go with that. It’s going to be a new adventure for me. Owning my own place and keeping it up to pace is going to be a challenge for me by myself. But, I am convince it will be a successful venture in my life. I think I will do well. Because I have been so busy, I lost track of time with the Review. So, even though the DOM Review will be next month, I will have this MultiPlatform Game Review in its place. So, there will be other DOM Reviews in the future. Anyway, let’s get started! This month, we will review the game “VidGrid” for the Atari Jaguar CD player. It’s a puzzle game with a twist. You have to unscramble music videos while the videos are animate and playing. It’s a really cool game and with a great premise. You can play nine different videos from bands like Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Aerosmith to name a few. You can even unscramble a Jimi Hendrix video, for good measure. The videos have different difficulty settings. You can put them together like a jigsaw puzzle, slide them like pieces on a picture puzzle, and there is also a setting where you have to set the pieces perfectly together in sequence, or it resets. I only made it through one level in this game because it gets difficult very fast. I like the game so much, and I just love to play the full-length solved videos to listen to the music and to see the Cinepak movies in action. It has an interactive menu with a cursor, You can play the videos without solving them. They are very entertaining in that fashion. It has kicking music tracks, great graphics, and the puzzles are to die for. It’s an amazing game! It really takes advantage of the Jaguar’s graphics and sound capabilities very well. Sure, the graphics are grainy and pixelated. But, you still get the gist of it. I don’t care about the grainy look of the game. I think it’s fantastic for a game from 1995. Sorry. I don’t have any photos this time. But, I will score this game anyway. If you have this game for your Jaguar CD collection, you have a treasured copy of it. Anyway, my score for the game: SCORE: Graphics: Gameplay: Animation: Music/SFX:
10 10 10 10
TOTAL SCORE:
40/40 (100% perfect score)
Well, this concludes the Review. I will be back with yet another A8 DOM Review next time. I will leave you now with this. Play your atari games. I am sure they will bring back great memories, and you will have a fun time. Carpe Diem, SPACE Cadets, and thanks for reading! See you next time!
SPACE COMICS SECTION! The Misadventures of A-Man and C.D.!
Ferret Fracas!
Vice President: Brian Little E-Mail: demomantna@gmail.com The nest SPACE meeting will commence on Friday, June 9, 2023, at 7:30 PM, local time! We hope to see you there! Thanks for coming!
Another Message from Captain Irata: “That’s all she wrote, SPACE Cadets!” HOO-RAH!