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Atari Now Offering Free Classic Arcade Games Online
NEW YORK, Nov. 23 /PRNewswire/ — Atari, one of the world’s most recognized brands, announced today the phase one re-launch of Atari.com. Gaming fans will have the opportunity to play Atari’s legendary, addictive coin-op arcade and 2600 classics in the new Atari Arcade for free, get information on Atari’s most recent and upcoming releases, buy games through the Atari Store via box or digital download, access exclusive merchandise, and enter contests and more through the newly designed Atari.com web site.
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Atari 2600 and How It Made History
24. April 2009
From Financial Times:
Born in the early 1970s, I’ve experienced only a few world-changing events along the lines of the automobile, the telephone, and the television. Sure, I was around the campus computer cluster when NCSA Mosaic was installed in 1994, but the Internet didn’t make a grand entrance. (The UC Museum of Paleontology, a prominent early Web site, was only so interesting.) The World Wide Web doesn’t compare with 1981, when my brother and I got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. Before Atari, no video games at home. After Atari, video games all the time. Males of a certain age will regale you with tales of long mornings roping cattle in Stampede and the distinctive thumb cramp that the joystick delivered. But enough nostalgia for now. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, two professors of media studies, have written a book, Racing the Beam, that approaches the beloved machine from a new angle: What was it like to program for the Atari 2600?
Examining the Atari 2600 as a device built of microprocessors, ROM, and I/O ports lets us glean a new lesson from its rise and fall: Simple, flexible machines make great gaming platforms because they inspire unexpected uses of the hardware. The potential downside of flexibility is the loss of quality control. The “North American video game crash of 1983″ is partly attributed to the glut of cartridges for the 2600-consumers at the mall couldn’t tell what was good or bad. Yet, as Montfort and Bogost write, the quirks and rudimentary nature of the 2600’s hardware offered unanticipated ways to innovate on the platform and allowed for games as enjoyable as River Raid, as mockable as E.T., and as execrable as the “adult” Custer’s Revenge.
See the full article here [Financial Times]
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Typhoon 2001, A Tempest 2000 spin-off
18. March 2009
Typhoon 2001 is freeware game based on the Tempest 2000 and original Tempest games. Using concepts from both games it also implements some updated features and new ideas. Features include:
- Incredible graphics
- Awesome sound
- 100 Levels
- 7 different enemies
- Slowly rising difficulty level
- Starting level freely selectable
- Controlled by keyboard, mouse or gamepad
- Built in level editor
- Uses OpenGL and Allegro
Trackball users can even take advantage of this game for a nostalgic spinner-like feel. Future plans include cop-op multiplayer, improvements to the bonus rounds, and several graphical enhancements.
You can download it off the official website here.
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GameTap Gets Overhauled, You Get To Try It For Free!
10. March 2009
Big change is coming to GameTap. In just over 2 weeks a completely re-designed GameTap website full of new features, an improved digital download store, and a new way to access and launch your games will be launched. The bottom line is, it’s a whole new GameTap.
One of the exciting changes is the addition of a new Classic Pack. For $4.95 a month or $49.95 for a whole year you get access to over 500 great arcade and console titles that you can play right in your web browser!
But the best news is for those who have still never even tried GameTap. To celebrate the introduction of the Classic Pack, they are offering everyone (no really, EVERYONE) a sneak peek for free starting on Thursday, March 12. That’s right. Play over 500 games as much as you want for free. What’s the catch? This extravaganza ends when they flip the switch to the new system, or March 18th, whichever comes first.
So don’t wait or you’ll miss it, head on over to GameTap and take advantage of them before they change their mind!
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HyperPin Frontend for Future Pinball
5. March 2009
BadBoyBill (creator of the HyperSpin frontend) has started development on an amazing Future Pinball frontend for pinball emulation. If you didn’t already know, pinball emulators are basically 3D remakes of real arcade machines with advanced ball physics for realism.
HyperPinFeatures:
- Supports only Future Pinball and doesn’t currently support visual Pinball
- Supports f4v video format for preview videos and png format for preview images.
- Dual Monitor support, you can preview videos or images on the playfield area and images on the secondary monitor or backglass.
- All images and videos are named after a common description so they never have to be updated, so when you upgrade tables you just have to update you database with your new version.
- Many other features.
HyperPin should be ready for a beta release soon, they have a few loose ends to tie up with keyboard controls and resolution currently. In the meantime check out this awesome video of what it’s capable of, just try to imaginewhat you see here in a pinball-like cabinet. Whoah!
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Quake Live Goes Live
25. February 2009
Id Software’s Quake Live has been in development in closed beta for nearly 7 months, but has finally entered Open Beta stage for everyone to play now! QUAKE LIVE is a new and innovative multiplayer game experience from id Software - the creators of DOOM and QUAKE - that offers game players of all skill levels a totally free and easily accessible multiplayer game and community through a single website. Every element of the QUAKE LIVE experience, from finding and playing games to post match stats review and social networking are delivered through a single state-of-the-art website. “This is a very exciting time for the project and we hope that all of you, who have contributed your time and feedback, share in that excitement.”
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KEEP - A MAME-Killer in Development at Portsmouth University
12. February 2009
UK-based Portsmouth University in co-operation with the European-based KEEP (Keeping Emulation Environments Portable) have an ambitious plan that aims to save old video games from the ‘digital black hole’ by developing the world’s first general purpose emulator and archival system. And yes, even though it sounds like the famous arcade emulator MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) with newsgroups, it’s not. It’s much bigger than that.
The project aims to safeguard old game files in the same way that aging literary works are now being digitally archived online, including Google’s large database of books. And once all those gaming files are securely stored away, the project aims to go one step further by developing emulation software that can play all those files. The project’s ultimate aim is to design an emulator that will play all of ‘em, from 1970s Space Invaders games to three-inch floppy discs.
An interesting quote from Doc Anderson says “Early hardware like games consoles and computers are already found in museums but if you can’t show visitors what they did, by playing the software on them, it would be much the same as putting musical instruments on display but throwing away all the music. For future generations it would be a cultural catastrophe.” Maybe someone should tell him the famous phrase ‘what goes on the internet, stays on the internet’.
But there’s still more to it than that. They go on to say in the press release that “Currently, there are lots of emulators out there, but they are all self-enclosed and can become obsolete just like the media they are emulating.” So what happens if the MAME devs all die off and MAME no longer works on the next big O/S? “The difference with [KEEP] emulation is that you are freed from these problems. Every time hardware, software, operating systems or anything else upgrade, the KEEP machine just emulates on this new platform. It means it is as future-proof as these things get.”
So somehow this can magically work on future un-made operating systems? Color us skeptical.
Read the Full Press Release Details
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Image Gallery
24. November 2009
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