Oct 22, 2015
Gerri Brioso: Halftime Battlin' Bands, Coco-Notes, Movie Musical Madness
Gerri Brioso is part of The Dovetail Group, a company that created three children’s games for the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 computers. All three games were released in 1984: they were Halftime Battlin' Bands, Coco-Notes, and Movie Musical...
Oct 20, 2015
Alan Murphy, Atari Animator
Alan Murphy was Senior Animator at Atari, where we worked from 1980 through 1987. Alan created the graphics for the Atari 8-bit versions of Defender, Xevious, Galaxian, Countermeasure, Pac Man for the Atari 5200, Demons to Diamonds for the 2600, and many other games. He also worked...
Oct 18, 2015
Adam Billyard, Chop Suey/ElektraGlide
Adam Billyard's first three games for the Atari 8-bit computers were "Bellum", "Henri", and "Chop Suey,". Bellum was published through the Atari Program Exchange, although Adam never received any royalty from Atari for it. "Chop Suey" was one of the first modern-style...
Oct 16, 2015
Glenn The 5200 Man
Glenn Botts is better known to Atari 8-bit users as "Glenn The 5200 Man.” Glenn was perhaps the most widely-known Atari software cracker, because he had a unique specialty. Most pirates removed copy protection from software, making it so it was copyable and able to be shared for free. Glenn’s...
Oct 14, 2015
Bruce Poehlman, The Last Starfighter/Star Raiders II
Bruce Poehlman only worked at Atari for a year — from June 1983 until July 1984 — but he told me “it was an interesting year.” Bruce coded the game The Last Starfighter for the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computers — a game that was never released. Two years later,...