How to make Atarimania popular

andy_bernstein · Post by **andy_bernstein** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 3:49 pm

Good morning gang,

The web site is getting better every day but still is very young. I presume that when both the 2600 and XL/XE databases get beefed up to the point where almost everything is available, the traffic generated will hopefully near the one drained by Atariage.

Also, I'm wondering how we can get more 'new' people interested in the Atari XL/XE line. When I mean new, I'm referring to nostalgic 20-30's something that maybe didn't have that machine in their childhood but are interested in retro-gaming.

Any thoughts ?

AB.

Arqueologia_Digital · Post by **Arqueologia_Digital** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:17 am

Maybe a banner exchange with my site makes that this site will be famous in Southamerica!!!

Best regards

Matías

oesii · Post by **oesii** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 4:19 pm

Give it a little more time too, I checked out the site a few weeks ago, really liked the ads after I followed the link from Atari Age. Didn't notice the forums then but I did this morning after coming over here for the release info on the Zone Patrol proto game.

So, I would say unique content, like the nice manual scans of 8bit games will draw more and more in soon enough. I was just browsing the manual for 180 Darts, if I wanted to show someone how to play the game, I now know where to send them

andy_bernstein · Post by **andy_bernstein** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:26 pm

Oesii,

It's good to see you here !

I agree, let's give a little bit more time to Atari Mania. Interestingly, I expected Al to open the Atari 8-Bit section on Atari Age earlier this year but no news so far. Anyway, Atari Mania does a kick-ass job for the Atari 8-bit line (Vive La France !) and I must admit I visit the site every day. Good sign, isn't it ?

Later Guys.

AB.

oesii · Post by **oesii** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:09 pm

Hi, glad to be here, I see there's only a dozen or so people here right now but there's always potential.

My other main thought was this could be 'the' place for Atari 8bit discussion. Atari Age is great for 2600, 5200, and 7800 talk but ST guys use www.atari-forum for the most part and Jag users have relied on JI2 and now www.talk.atari-explorer.com

So if more unique content keeps showing up here like Disk images, documentation, and box art (Atari Age will only be doing 8bit carts for now) then more people will use the forum for discussion. The release of Zone Patrol was a good step towards this end

And you know that the Atari Age 8bit section is sort of open right? It's just not accessible from the main page, here's what they have so far:

http://www.atariage.com/software_search ... stemID=800

Post by **Atari Frog** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:53 am

Hi guys,

Thanks for the comments

Glad you like the place. As Andy said, the page needs to mature a bit and find an audience but we hope to see many more A8 fans from around the world stop by in the future. Don't worry about content, we still have TONS and TONS of material we need to upload, be it hard to find software dumps, rare box art or scans

To tell you the truth, I submitted the project to AtariAge about a year ago. The only problem was that Albert wasn't really interested in covering non-US software and merely wanted to concentrate on cartridges to begin with. Needless to say meeting Franck (Atarimania) to bring this project to fruition was a godsend

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Post by **atarimania** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 5:47 pm

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your support. As AtariFrog said we still have a lot of things and ideas for this website, it's just the beginning, the A8 section opened 1 month ago now

oesii · Post by **oesii** » Mon Mar 08, 2004 3:28 pm

The site is starting to look very nice, I would love the 8bit scene to pick up some momentum like the Atari ST scene is doing these last few months. A couple of ambitious websites and databases have just recently opened:

http://www.atarilegend.com/

http://gsmmanuals.no-ip.info/atari/

Very fun times for Atari in 2004, thanks for your website!

Post by **Atari Frog** » Mon Mar 08, 2004 11:05 pm

Thanks for the links

I think the A8 is picking up thanks to a more cosmopolitan approach. Hopefully, new projects will continue to appear throughout the year.

The big problem with the A8 was that nothing happened in the US these past fifteen years. Hardware upgrades are nice but if no software is created, the platform dies... There is no scene in North America, not one leading user group, no demos created, no games either, not even a magazine... Fact is the US has to make up for lost time one way or another...

I'm sure a better "marketing scheme" conveyed by magazines and user groups could have improved things at the time but it may be too late now... What the A8 needs now is a worldwide approach (even more North American users interested in European software) and more US programmers writing games in machine language.

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

andy_bernstein · Post by **andy_bernstein** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 1:36 am

What the A8 needs now is a worldwide approach (even more North American users interested in European software) and more US programmers writing games in machine language.

Count me in. My current project is to produce a protoype board of the GTIA (or double GTIA) upgrade by Analmux. I have all the schematics and I started an early version using breadboard... but it's not good enough. I've contacted a PCB manufacturer in the Valley (north of Los Angeles) and they may be able to manufacture one for around $ 200 (talk about an expensive project !).

Later on, I'd like to port Galaxy Force to the XL/XE line but, without more graphic capabilities thanks to that upgrade and, let's say, a stereo pokey, it's not going to look or sound anything like the arcade game (for a proof, look at the C64 version - even the SMS release seems to do a better job at recreating the game). To sum it up, current project -> the upgrade. next project -> Galaxy Force (and hopefully tons of other games after that).

Later and may the schwartz be with you.

AB.

How to make Atarimania popular

How to make Atarimania popular

Good to see you !

Count me in