Gamertell

Shop Goodwill has an auction today that represents classic gaming at it’s best. At 8:50AM PST, Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana put an Atari 2600 with all of the necessary cables and accoutrements. The bidding started at $5.00, and since there’s only been one bidder, it is still at $5 (at 7:36 PM CST June 30, 2008).

The highlight of the auction is the collection of 16 games which come with the system. Pretty much every game is an amazing title. So if you bid, you’ll also be getting Asteroids, Centipede, Chopper Command, Crackpots, Defender, Grandprix, Joust, Outlaw, Pac Man, Pitfall, Pitfall II, Robot Tank, Space Invaders, Target Fun, Q*Bert and Yars’ Revenge.

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Neverwinter Nights 2‘s second expansion pack, Storm of Zehir has just been announced. Atari has stated in an official press release that the second expansion is currently being developed by Obsidian Entertainment and should be completed and in stores before the end of 2008. I guess Neverwinter Nights 2 players now know what they want in their stockings.

The main highlight of the Storm of Zehir expansion is the newfound freedom and 15 hour campaign. Players will be able to completely explore the Sword Coast and Samarach regions without being confined to a set path. Players will also be able to become wealthy merchants through trade, or attack other caravans to steal their goods to sell on their own terms. There also will be improved party communication and configuration options. 

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Leonardo DiCaprio made a real fist of his meaty role in the Academy award-winning biopic The Aviator in which he played Howard Hughes. DiCaprio will once again portray the role of a real-life pioneer in the Paramount Pictures’ film tentatively titled Atari. The film will tell the story of one of the pioneers of the videogames industry, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari.

The movie has been scripted by Brian Hacker and Craig Sherman who were able to convince…

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Make magazine makes me want to make more stuff. The most recent issue of this DIY mag has three juicy game goodies in its pulp-based publication: The Multari handheld Atari 2600, Pixelmusic 3000 video generator a la the Atari 2600 and four WiiMote hacks for making audio tracks (and involves Macs).

All three fall into the Way Frackin’ Kewl category of do it yourself projects, so click through and check them out now…

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If you are not dialing in to a local BBS (Bulletin Board System), you have no idea what you are missing. While there are hundreds across the USA, there are likely a few dozen in the nearest city.

BBSes can be a video game aficionado’s delight with plenty of information being traded to help you get through that particularly nasty level or flick that joystick the right way at the arcade. (And you can often download some choice Playboy calendar pages in ASCII. That’ll get your dot matrix printer totally hot).

Here are few suggestions for first-time BBS users…

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Imagic, the creators of Atlantis, which was just released for the Atari, is going to hold a fantastic contest titled “Defend Atlantis”to find the treasure of Atlantis. The four players who send in the highest scores from Atlantis will be sent to Bermuda with a guest to compete in a contest to win a chest of gold worth $10,000. All the players who manage to make it to the finals and don’t win will receive $1,000. Even if you aren’t that good at Atlantis, don’t despair, the 250 third place winners will get snorkeling sets and and 1,000 runners up will receive Atlantis T-shirts.

Keep reading to learn how to enter.

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The Intellivision game Tron Deadly Discs will make it to the Atari 2600, too! I cannot wait to try the disc-tossing fun in this game on Ol’ Woody. If it is anything like the Tron arcade game I will totally sweat through my favorite headband while playing.

A local store - Village Mall Video in Webster, NY (USA) - has already promised to sell Tron Deadly Discs for Atari at a discounted $28.29 instead of the usual $34.95 (those Village Mall guys are the radist dudes ever.) The game should be coming out…

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I just picked up the latest Atari Catalog (CO16725-Rev. E) at Sears. It lists 49 games, four of which are completely new from the previous catalog (CO16725-Rev. D). It also has a section in the back with a few accessories for storing games and a better picture of the Game Center storage case.

The last page also features “Coming Attractions” that include a yet-to-be-named football game that will have “life-like pro players,” a baseball game and a “jolly version” of video volleyball. Atari is also promising an updated version of Combat (Combat II or maybe Revenge of Combat?) and a “gripping” adventure game in two installments in October and November 1982.

The four news games are…

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According to a post at Ars Technica, Atari has announced that nine games in their library are now available for download on Steam, with more on the way. This is more good news for Atari, after a long dry spell of poor performance in the industry. First Phil Harrison, now Steam.

The full list of games, from the post:
”Act of War: Direct Action: a real-time strategy experience that puts players squarely in control of counterterrorist forces and delivers a first look at tomorrow’s war.

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Late last week (January 25, 2008), Sega announced it had officially agreed to start putting its Master System and Game Gear games up for grab on the Wii’s Virtual Console service.  IGN states that Fantasy Zone and Fist of the North Star (retooled and released in North America as Black Belt) will be the first of such games to launch onto the service next month in Japan and shortly thereafter in North America and Europe.

While the Master System wasn’t actually Sega’s first console (in Japan, it was referred to as the Sega Mark III), it was the first to see release outside of Japan and its competition with the NES throughout the mid and late ‘80s was the basis for the…

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