The Missing Retro Gamer features

[Mayhem]

The story of Atarisoft.

Who made all those wonderful C= 64 cart versions? Why/how did Ocean get rights to do Nintendo games over again? (And why did they want to when there already were some fine versions available?)

I can answer both of those questions, to a degree. All of the C64 Atarisoft games were contracted out to third parties. Some of those people I have managed to either find out who did a certain game, or actually conversed via email regarding their work. And yes, some of the proposed games never made it to completion. I spoke to the guy who did Mario Bros that wasn't released. He completed it, never got published. Got leaked somewhere as the final version he submitted is out there on the net.

As for why Ocean could convert Mario Bros and Donkey Kong again... it is all down to formats. When the games were licensed, cartridges were considered a different proposition to tape/disk, and there were separate deals made. It's like the fact that consoles used cartridges, so there was often one license for console releases, and one license for magnetic media. Hence Ocean got a new license for tape/disk releases here, in the same way that Parker Bros released a cartridge version of Frogger on the C64, but Sierra had a disk conversion out there too.

[NorthWay]

Darran, get your ducks in a neat row and make that article happen... you have even more resources than I thought! (And another opportunity to get out some of the old Oceanites.)

(At the very least it needs to be From The Archives, but I can smell 8 pages. Easily

[Antiriad2097]

This thread is getting long, has anyone suggested an MIA game MIA article?

It strikes me that there are many archival projects around, for me the most notable would be World of Spectrum.

Now, browsing there it clearly indicates games that were known to exist or promoted as such but are currently MIA with no copy/dump.

The mag has the potential to reach an audience with that info. Potentially there's quite a bit known about these, so its possible you could contact programmers and/or publishers to ask about them for the article as well as the WoS archivists, pulling together something from this info and the previously published material.

How great would it be if RG readers then unearthed some of this lost treasure?

Possibly a one off short feature, maybe a semi regular single page with 2-4 games, either could work.

[Darran@Retro Gamer]

Darran, get your ducks in a neat row and make that article happen... you have even more resources than I thought! (And another opportunity to get out some of the old Oceanites.)

(At the very least it needs to be From The Archives, but I can smell 8 pages. Easily

Providing we have a strong cover option, then we'll happily do more obscure stuff like this. In fact the issue we're working on at the moment has a lot of stuff that wouldn't normally be in the mag, and most of it is based on feedback from this very thread.

[gman72]

Has there ever been an article on Parker Brothers games? They made some class 8bit games, Gyruss on the c.64 being my fave. I do have a vague recollection of RG doing something on this company.

[jdanddiet]

Issue 82, From The Archives Parker Brothers.

[NorthWay]

Did they have a separate UK division?

I can answer this, yes they did. Done a lot of coverage on their output in Atari User magazine.

Mh... this magazine is not available on the net I take it?

The Spectrum version of Robotron had a writeup, didn't it? That's the kind of interesting stories you hope for. The program was even "availabilitized" later I seem to remember.

[NorthWay]

And yes, some of the proposed games never made it to completion.

Names, platforms, author(s), and % complete would make for interesting reading. Prod Darran for a boxout or better with that.

[NorthWay]

When the games were licensed, cartridges were considered a different proposition to tape/disk, and there were separate deals made.

I hear you, but did they really chop up the (say) Donkey Kong rights that finely? The Apple II never had a cart option so that version was disk only (which I actually have (missing hw notwithstanding) - it was too cheap to pass).

I guess this quickly drifts into Tetris licencing territory

[NorthWay]

I spoke to the guy who did Mario Bros that wasn't released.

(A bit of googling later) You learn something new every day. That Atarisoft version has been doing the rounds since pre-cambrium and I would never have guessed it was not a shipped product.

10 pages Darran...

[Mayhem]

Yeah, sometimes you find people, sometimes they find you. In my case, it's usually been because they've Googled and stumbled across my website. Especially relevant to them if the product was going to be released on cartridge. Mario Bros was one project canned when Atarisoft stopped doing home formats. There are other games out there that were proposed (because if you look at the product number allocation tables, the company wanted to get almost all games across a multitude of formats) but barely got started before the axe came down. Hence no Missile Command, Vanguard, Joust, or Donkey Kong Jr on the C64.

Crystal Castles was also completed but not released by Atarisoft, I have a prototype cartridge of that. It was eventually snapped up by US Gold and released in Europe. Yes, that home release in 1986.

[NorthWay]

Crystal Castles was also completed but not released by Atarisoft, I have a prototype cartridge of that. It was eventually snapped up by US Gold and released in Europe. Yes, that home release in 1986.

Which I (slightly ashamedly) forgot I actually have. Not sure if I ever actually used it, just put it in as part of the collection.

Embarrassingly the Thundervision version is better. In fact, it is a bit of fantastic.

[samhain81]

Whatever feature it may be, make sure its a Spectrum feature.

[crusto]

Whatever feature it may be, make sure its a Spectrum feature.

Yeah, why break from the norm....

[NorthWay]

The story of Atarisoft.

And as I sit and google around I found this (check out comments too) http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=987