Atarimania's strategy on VAPI downloads ?

[Mr.Bacardi]

Will Atarimania provide VAPI images only for games where no unprotected version exists or are there plans to relpace the cracked ATR's with VAPI images ?
Will you offer cracked ATR and VAPI image together for download ?
Btw, when I talk about "cracked" version I mean versions as close to the original as possible, without any additional cracker intro

[Atari Frog]

Eventually, we'd like to have any disk archived as a VAPI image for preservation purposes (among other things). We may have cracked versions in some cases (if an original is buggy and the crack fixes it for instance).

We are now using color codes in the main table to reflect this: red for 100% verified / original dumps, blue for cracked / unverified stuff and black when the title is missing from the database. We still have a long way to go but we believe it's a step in the right direction for true in-depth archival work.

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

[Andre]

Will you offer cracked ATR and VAPI image together for download ?

Why should one care about cracked stuff if the real thing is available? Taken all games we have in our collections there remains only a small part of what cannot be archived from original media like tape or disk.

Personally, I would only care about cracked stuff if it had

1) some nice intro or other additional game features like bug fixes or trainers

or

2) if it is extremely well copy-protected in order to allow for conversion projects (like the conversion of Alternate Reality to cartridge) without having to do the whole de-protection from scratch first.

[krupkaj]

I would like to see both ATR and ATX for download. There are more reasons why. But the one of main is that SIO2IDE doesn't know VAPI so this format is not so usable for me...

[ijor]

I would like to see both ATR and ATX for download.

I agree that for some reason or other, there will be always need for cracks (personally, I have nothing at all against cracks).

But I think that Atarimania approach is more geared to a structured preservation. You could always find cracks in other places. And you can always make a (re)crack from a VAPI image, but you can’t the other way around.

But the one of main is that SIO2IDE doesn't know VAPI so this format is not so usable for me...

I’m not familiar with the SIO2IDE internals, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t be able to support VAPI images in the future. Again, I'm not denying that cracks are useful.