| 10/7/26 |
Early Atari Prototypes
Thanks to
AtariAge user ETWelty who released three new
prototypes for some early Atari games.
Prototypes from this era (1977-1981) are quite
rare and almost never turn up. These new
prototypes also have fascinating differences from
the final versions.
First up is a mid level beta for Yars'
Revenge dated 8-12-81.
This prototype features some minor gameplay
differences and a completely different variation
with an invisible shield. This variation was
scrapped for the Ultimate Yars variation in the
final.
Second we have a mid level beta for Warlords
dated 12-8-80.
Much like the Yars' Revenge prototype, this
prototype has some minor gameplay differences (the
ball physics are a bit buggy) but also features
different variations from the final in the form of
'Team Variations'. In the Team Variations
two players share a life counter and must play
against another team that also shares one life
counter. When one member of the team dies,
the other team scores a point.
Finally we have late
beta for Video
Pinball. While there don't appear to
be any noticeable differences on the surface, the
code has some changes to it that requires more
investigation. It's possible that the ball
physics were still being fine tuned at this point.
|
| 9/28/26 |
Motorodeo
Madness!
Thanks
to the efforts of John Hardie and Ken Van
Mersbergen, we now have two new Motorodeo
prototypes. The first
prototype dated 2/16/90
is a very late beta that is dated only days
before the final version and only differs by a
few bytes. It's unknown what the
difference is, but most likely a last minute
bug was discovered that had to be squashed
before the game was sent off to be
mastered. The second
prototype is far more interesting.
Dated 8/7/89
(almost 6 months before the final release),
this prototype is a completely different
version than what was released. In this
prototype players compete in a series of seven
events in order to achieve the highest
score. The events are wide and varied,
but offer differing amounts of fun. So
why was the game redesigned at the last
moment? You'll have to read the page to
find out!
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| 8/16/26 |
Another
day, another Ken Van Mersbergen prototype
find. Today we have a rather early version
of Touchdown
Football for the Atari 7800. While the
released version wasn't exactly a masterpiece,
this early
prototype is very bare bones with only some
rudimentary gameplay implemented. Best of
all, the prototype will crash if you attempt to
select a kick play (not that you actually could
kick or throw in this version anyway). Be
sure to gaze upon this early
prototype and see the beginnings of where it
all went wrong.
|
| 8/14/26 |
Thanks to
the extraordinary talents of Ken Van Mersbergen we
now have what is believed to be the final version
of Tower
Toppler for the Atari 8-Bits. It was
long thought that the prototype that had been
circulating the internet since the early 2000s was
the final version, but now we know that that
version was actually a late beta. While the
new prototype is mostly the same gameplaywise, it
features a colorful new title screen and text
screens (no more Mode 8 artifacts!) and some bug
fixes. Be sure to check out this new
prototype here.
Ken has also found a late beta for the 7800
version of Tower Toppler. While the
changes are fairly minor compared to the final
version, it's always nice to have a new
prototype. Check out the 7800 version here.
|
| 7/29/26 |
Today we
have two new 5200 prototypes from the 'I didn't
even know those existed' department.
Programmer Frank Cohen of Cohen's Tower and
Scrolls of Abaddon fame (and many others) has
graciously donated his source code for his two
attempts at an Atari 5200 game. While Frank
was well known for his Atari 8-Bit efforts, it was
unknown that he had also been working on Atari
5200 titles as well.
First up is Topsy
Turvee, an early demo for a 'two
dimensional' platform game. Although it's a
very early demo, it shows some interesting
ideas. Frank was apparently trying to find a
publisher for the game but no one was interested
so he stopped development.
Next up is Mail
Boy. Mail
Boy is an early version of what eventually
became Cohen's
Towers. The 5200 port is in the middle
stages of development and is very playable but is
missing a lot of the extras that the finished
Atari 8-Bit game had (and most of the fun).
Still, it's an interesting glimpse into what could
have been if Datamost had decided to get into
publishing Atari 5200 games.
Special thanks to John Hardie for providing the
source code an Ken Van Mersbergen for compiling
and getting the code to run. Also thanks to
programmer Frank Cohen for providing several bits
of information about the games.
|
| 7/15/26 |
Thanks to
the generosity of legendary programmer Dan Kitchen
AtariProtos has been allowed to post reviews of
two of his early unreleased games from his time at
Activision. First up is Keystone
Cannonball, a sequel (of sorts) to the
legendary Keystone Kapers which just happened to
be programmed by his brother Garry. This
sequel would have seen Officer Kelly running
across the roof tops of a train in order to catch
the legendary bandit Harry Hooligan.
Unfortunately the game only got as far as a nice
looking tech demo before being set aside.
Thankfully Dan revisited Keystone
Cannonball this past year and released it as
Casey's
Gold through Audacity Games.
Secondly we have The
Levee Game. This prototype is a little
further along and actually features some gameplay,
although it is still quite early on in the
development process. The
Levee Game would have once again featured
Officer Kelly, but this time guarding a crumbling
dam rather than chasing after Harry. Be sure
to check out both games to see what could have
been.
|
| 5/23/26 |
Today we
have something very special. Four new
versions of Crack'ed
for the 2600! These early development
versions were rescued from an old Atari ST hard
drive by archivist Ken Van Mersbergen and thanks
to amazing talents of Thomas Jentzsch they were
fixed made to work. So go to the Crack'ed
page and check all these new versions (I
slaved over them all day just for you!).
One thing to note is that these new versions are
meant to be run from an Atari 2600 development kit
which could handle up to 24K. As these
prototypes do not respect the 4K bankswitching
limit of the 2600, they will not run on real
hardware. To run them you will either need
an Atari 2600 development kit (you have one of
those right?) or a modified emulator that is
capable of supporting the 24K mode.
|
| 5/18/26 |
7800 Nintendo Madness!!
Ok maybe
it's not quite 'madness' but it's still pretty
crazy. Today we have not one, not two, not
three, but FIVE different prototypes for 7800
Nintendo arcade games. All three games, Donkey
Kong, Donkey
Kong Jr., and Mario
Bros, we done by the same small company
called ITDC and may have been programmed out of
China. These prototypes are completely
playable but are still very much works in progress
with rough music (VERY rough) and slow choppy
gameplay. Be sure to check them out!
Thanks once again to Ken Van Mersbergen for
finding these prototypes!
|
| 3/11/26 |
It's not
often an Atari 7800 prototype shows up, but thanks
to generosity of SuperGun we now have a prototype
for Jinks
to examine. The prototype appears to be the
final version, but it came with a WIP manual that
shows lots of changes and missing
information. Be sure to check out the new Jinks
page for more info.
|
| 3/10/26 |
CBS Update!
Today we
have three different prototypes that were
developed by Roklan but released by CBS.
First we have a VERY early prototype
for 2600 GORF.
This prototype is nothing more than a movement
demo, but it shows how the game began. Next
we have a late
beta of Wizard
of Wor for the 2600. The only
difference with this one is that the start vector
is set to a different address (this change is not
visible when playing). Finally we have a version
of Wizard
of Wor for the Atari 5200 that has a
different title screen which credits Roklan
instead of CBS Electronics like the final version.
Special thanks to Ken Van Mersbergen
for supplying all these prototypes
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