Okay, fine, while I’m here… I acquired my first 2600 cartridge that retailed in Uruguay. (The shop in Montevideo is on a street called Paraguay) Neat little 8-in-1 cartridge, and one of them is a game you don’t find too often on unauthorized multicarts: London Blitz!

Popping in for a quick moment from my ongoing, indefinite, self-imposed social media moratorium to say… 🎊 Unauthorizon is back! 🎊 Cheers to @pirategamething.com and everyone else involved. youtu.be/x7hyVVDj1h0

Tengen's NES version of Ms. Pac-Man contains an Easter Egg seen by having Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man bounce off of each other repeatedly as they go through opposite ends of a tunnel. This causes baby Pac-Men to spawn in the middle of the maze! Eating them nets you 5000 points each.

Parade day. Go Birds. 🦅 More photos later/tomorrow!

THEY’RE CLIMBING THE POLES IN TOKYO GO BIRDS🦅🦅🦅

Had to go celebrate with strangers since I’m not in Philly. What a night!

funniest highlights of the philly police scanner, a thread

It’s time

World fucking champions!!!

The Video Game History Foundation Library is now in early access. For free. For everyone. Wherever you are. Read more: gamehistory.org/vghf-library...

New post on the Atari Archive website: Canyon Bomber! David Crane's melding of two disparate Atari arcade games from the mid-70s really elevates the experience of playing each of them. www.atariarchive.org/atari-vcs/ca...

I include TV-like controls in my retro emulators but never considered linking preferred settings to certain games. > NTSC Colour In Vintage Games > Includes a proposal for a 2600 container format and additional metadata. via @jetsetilly.bsky.social's Mastodon jetsetilly.github.io/Gopher2600-B...

In speedrunning terms, I performed a sequence break and skipped the entire second phase this week (HOLY HELL THEY DID IT!!!)

It’s not Halloween, but it *is* Random Game Saturday! I would never have been able to show this one if not for a recent big trade (yes, an Atari TRADE! in the year of our lord 2025!) Honestly, I expected never to have this one given where prices for it have gone in recent years.

The Video Game History Foundation opens its digital archives to the public next week

The PC is Dead: It's Time To Make Computing Personal Again My new essay on how we lost control of personal computing to Internet surveillance, DRM, and extractive business models—and how we can launch the era of Personal Computer 2.0 www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/ar...

the debris from starship flight 7 caught over turks and caicos. absolutely unreal. 📸: dean olson on twitter

You Wouldn't Download an Arcade Machine...would you? New Video: youtu.be/SONO6LTHuR8 Watch as Ed Fries laser scans an entire arcade machine for us to download and 3D print, and not just any machine, this is an incredibly rare #atari model from 1973. Call the cops!

Another prototype for #Atari2600 console found. It's a diagnostic cart named VCS Vertical Bars by Horace Olive https://forums.atariage.com/topic/378681-new-2600-diagnostic-cart-found-and-released/ #atari #retrogames #retrogaming

ATTENTION: I am starting a charity bundle to benefit victims of the Southern California wildfires. Game (and other) makers, please submit your projects so we can do some good. There is a call for submissions of projects through the 18th, please share widely! FAQ below: itch.io/jam/californ...

Worth noting that the rom's parent directory, at least in our backups at the museum, has a game concept file talking about a fishing game for bars with very similar ideas, wotha file modified date of around a month later than the roms (though the rom was compiled a few months earlier)

It’s Random Game Saturday once more. I let one of our cats choose this one! Here’s 法櫃奇兵 (Raiders of the Lost Ark) from an unknown Taiwan distributor (maybe 立達 “Leader”). Not sure if the titles on these carts were written at the factory or by the end user. I lean toward the former, but don’t know.

Fish, a prototype game for #Atari2600 console discovered on a tape backup of Atari Coin-Op division's mainframe, in the folder of an employee named Mike Albaugh. Download: forums.atariage.com/topic/378560... Info: www.atariprotos.com/2600/softwar... #atari #retrogames #retrogaming

Our latest Video Game History Hour podcast talks to The Strong's director of digital preservation Andrew Borman: gamehistory.org/episode-122-... (Reminder: Patreon subscribers - www.patreon.com/gamehistoryorg - get access a day early, and bonus episodes too!)

"Video Games Around the World" is a book I always recommend, but the chapter on Brazil has a flaw that's a warning to us all. It says BRs only made 105 games from 1983-2010. Why so few? Because it only lists commercial ones... in the country of informality, it only documented the industry's side :/

Advertise your account with one Simpsons image

Recently snagged a very nice box upgrade for the New Zealand silver-label-styled release of Yars’ Revenge. I love that Atari/Monaco redesigned the box sticker so that instead of hawking an included Yars’ comic (since it wasn’t part of the NZ release) it now just says: NEW INSIDE AMAZING GRAPHICS

This would have been a bigger hit if was published by Activision and not CBS... bsky.app/profile/ovga...

Join @billlange.bsky.social and me tonight at 8:00 PM EST as we chat all things Atari Party with the Retro Repair Roundup gang.

Random game Saturday returns! Here’s “Uzay Savunma Zirhlisi” (Space Defense Armor), the licensed release of Defender in the Republic of Türkiye 🇹🇷 by Atari / ME-TA for the 2600.

Worth a read. I would add that a lot of important historical regional contributions are often dismissed over concerns of copying, unauthorized IP use, or piracy. So much unique development, reworking, and adaptation happened in communities where devices like bootlegs and clones were popular.

I was lucky enough to attend the Save the Games symposium at the Strong this past summer, and one of my biggest takeaways was how varied the experience of gaming has been across cultures. People from China, Panama, and Puerto Rico all shared their experiences with me, and they are *fascinating*!

This is the biggest leap forward in a long time for simulating a CRT on a modern display. Even the 120hz demo (if you have a 120hz monitor) is incredible. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this open source code hacks the human eyeball into perceiving smooth movement.

One of the most important articles about video games history. Requires passionate people that can document the local history, and an openness from the established global historians, academics, and journalists, to think beyond the US perspective. It’s the reason I’ve been writing Swedish books.

Unauthorizon is a invaluable resource for anyone interested in video game history, and especially bootleg/unofficial devices. Please consider supporting if you’re able.

Unauthorizon has been such a valuable resource, and its closure today due to high service fees is a massive loss. I am unable to support right now, but I'd encourage you to support their Patreon if you're able to and enjoy what they (or I! I reference it a ton) do.

Unauthorizon, the immense (11,000+ and counting!) online database of video game clone consoles, has had to revoke free access due to increased hosting costs. Hopefully some new Patrons will join me and we can get this invaluable resource back online for all! www.patreon.com/posts/new-ye...

Sorry for the late notice, I'm going to do some live streaming tonight, around 9pm EST. The final push for Extra Life this year, thanks to all who donated! I raised over $1000 for Children's Hospital Of Philadelphia this year. Please be safe tonight! https://youtube.com/@atari2600gamebygamepodcast?…

If you're going to Magfest, I have two panels on Friday afternoon you can check out! The first, Making an Industry, is at 3pm and focuses on the lessons I've learned from my Atari Archive project: conducting research, the linkages between computers, consoles and coinop and clearing up misconceptions

My favorite game about a nuclear power plant supervisor whistleblowing the plant's violation of safety standards, and desperately trying to bring it to the attention of the public, while fearing that another SCRAM incident will produce an atomic disaster.

Found at home recently: my 1984 letter to Santa _and his reindeer_ (hey, it can’t hurt to include them!) in which I ask for “a Pac-Man video game” for Christmas. I’d just turned 4 years old.

Something I enjoy doing is finding the original art that was "borrowed" for unauthorized Atari 2600 cartridges. This Santa/toys artwork by Kim Whitesides was likely lifted from a Paper Moon Graphics Christmas card printed between 1977 and 1981, per this post. westread.blogspot.com/2012/12/chri...

Here's a Christmas tradition I'm moving from X to you lovely bunch on Bluesky - it's the annual outing of the Spectravideo Compumate Christmas demos. It wouldn't be Christmas without them! Don't miss the music demo in the next skeet ...

Found the place; it was a video rental store in Parker, Colorado (suburb of Denver). I still would love to know whose handwriting this is on all the KLUGE carts! Someone at Atari assembled all these and shipped them out to service centers…

When I snagged these I was pretty sure that I was getting both a 2600 KLUGE (Signal Tracing) cart and a Diagnostic cart. And so they were. But this is the first time I’ve seen some inscribed with the name of the Atari service shop that used them!

What’s up gamers from the Sky Gamerz bar here at SeaTac airport, where they exclusively have Atari 2600+ systems hooked up for some reason

Saturday… again? I grabbed a random one off a random shelf. M.A.S.H. (you know, M*A*S*H?) for the Atari 2600, from prolific Argentina distributor Artkaris. 🇦🇷 We’ve got badly drawn Galaxian, badly drawn Popeye, badly drawn… okay, all of it I guess. Pac-Man is about to devour a chess piece.