Atari Punk Console

Atari Punk Console: https://youtu.be/AeijwpR2C0A

Why Obsolete Technology Can Save Your Life

So, there's been a lot of ballyhooing about the obsolete technologies our government uses in what are generally thought of as "State of the Art" facilities. As a closet luddite who genuinely misses his old Sears electric typewriter, I have a fondness for old tech, and can even appreciate its myriad advantages over newfangled gadgetry. If you're laughing, ask yourself how many times your PC has crashed while using a word processor e-mail client, think about why those errors occur, and now think about how a typewriter works. 

Okay, yeah, the door being held open by a crowbar is kind of a big screw-up, but using the antiquated computronics is actually rather a stroke of genius and lateral thinking. There's some joke in hacker/computer geek circles that the US Army has the most secure computer network in the country entirely by virtue of the fact they haven't upgraded it since 1992, so not only is most of it offline, but hardly anyone works in it primary programming language, and there's so little RAM to go around that running a virus would likely crash the system before it did any real damage. 

Also, bear in mind the US Army had its ass handed to it in Vietnam by farmers with sharpened bamboo sticks instead of sensible footwear. 

Anyway, going back to the silos...  

Because the floppies are so prone to erasure from interference, they have to be stored very carefully. Removing them or tampering with them would likely corrupt them, making them useless. Considering the way Mutually Assured Destruction is supposed to work, I feel very comfortable knowing our nuclear missiles are most likely to do absolutely nothing. Optical media may not be indestructible, but their relative longevity compared to those disks makes them a liability. In other words, "this message will self-destruct in five seconds." 

As for the computers themselves:

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Those computers aren't exactly versatile, but the one thing they're literally built to do, they do fine and dandy with a cherry on top. There's a reason why people marvel over their old Atari consoles still working while XBox360s get made the butt of jokes for their Red Rings of Death. 

Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima PC games, said in a recent interview that while aboard the ISS, a daily ritual was to reboot the PCs running Windows to reduce their chances of crashing. Similarly, the computers aboard the Space Shuttles had about as much processing power combined as a Blackberry from 2002, but the R&D and Quality Assurance behind their construction is without question because they are made to work. Your average desktop PC has to be a kind of Jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none, but these are purpose-built machines that don't waste time, space, or energy they don't need for their primary function. 

So, frankly, I think all this uproar about old tech in the private sector is unbearably naive and you should all be ashamed of yourselves. As penance, dig out your old GameBoys (or get one if you don't have it anymore) give it a warm, loving kiss, place it on a pillow, and tell it how grateful you are its processing power would have been overkill for the Apollo missions. 


You're welcome. 

Perler Pong

2600 vs. NES: Honestly A Tough Call

We had both an Atari 2600 and a Nintendo Entertainment System growing up. We got our Genesis in 1992 after we'd moved to Albuquerque, which was when I really stopped seeing games as toys and instead saw their potential for slightly more complex narrative. For about the first time since maybe Super Mario Bros. 3, I realized that what I was seeing on screen was genuinely what I was meant to see, not mere simplified representations like how the knight in chess looks more like the noble steed than the rider himself.
I don't think I'd ever heard of Pitfall 2 and I certainly know I didn't play it as a kid. On the whole, I'd say we really stopped buying 2600 games by the time we got the NES. Truth be told, though, as far as favoritism, I'd honestly say the 2600 got as much play time as the NES. When I'd heard about the 7800 being backward-compatible with 2600 games, my first thought was, "What a rip-off." as even the best 7800 games couldn't hold a candle graphically to even the worst NES game. Then again, I thought, even considering my first impression of the Genesis, graphics were never what impressed me, certainly not what kept me playing. Like I said, once in a while we'd still break out the 2600 for some Air Sea Battle or Keystone Kapers long after we'd reached what we thought was the peak of NES perfection with Mario 3.
Now, especially looking at Pitfall 2 and Secret Quest, I think if we'd never gotten the NES and maybe gotten a 7800 at best, I probably wouldn't have minded one bit. Sure, maybe I'd have jumped and down eagerly every time I saw a Nintendo commercial, but I'd have probably gotten over it. I did with the Super Nintendo.

Special thanks to Classic Game Room for making these awesome reviews. Without them, I'd never have known what I sometimes missed out on. If that sounds bitter and backhanded, it's not.

A Dungeon Crawler On 2600 That's Not Dragonstomper?

I can't believe this thing exists. It's an Atari 2600 game released in 1989, 5 years after the release of the Atari 7800* and the NES. It's not a homebrew game; it was made by a toy company called Axlon, which was actually owned by Nolan Bushnell, long after he'd left Atari in the hands of Warner Communications.

What's more surprising is how deep the game is. The last game to approach this level of complexity was Dragonsmasher from Starpath, and that required a special adapter to let the 2600 use cassette tapes instead of its typical cartridges. I wanted to bring this video here because it kind of gently ties into what I was talking about with derivative works. At first glance, this game made me think of the Swordquest games or Adventure or even Haunted House, which had rudimentary exploration elements. Mark Bussler of Classic Game Room made the comparison to Zelda, though I think the game has more in common with Namco's Tower of Druaga or Falcom's Ys series, especially the way the character runs into enemies with sword extended. All these comparisons may sound like I'm putting the game down, but I'm not. In fact, though I called it a dungeon crawler, Secret Quest is firmly in the science fiction genre, with space stations standing in for castles. The object of the game is to explore the station and collect symbols to enter into a command console in the center of each station. Then, a timer appears, giving the player only a scant few seconds to backtrack though the station and get to a teleporter and escape the detonation of the station. If you thought I was going to say, "Just like Metroid." I wouldn't blame you, but you'd be wrong; it's actually more like Major Havoc, an arcade game from Atari released in 1983.

*) Interestingly enough, the 7800 was backward compatible with 2600 games, which I think stands as a real testament to Nolan Bushnell's business genius. The 2600 was easy to develop for, and it still had a solid install base between people who still held onto their 2600s and people who had 7800s as well. Seriously, don't mess with this guy.