| 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
|
| 11/28/25 |
It has come
to my attention that there are actually three
different MIDI
Maze prototypes for the Atari 8-Bit
computers. The MIDI Maze page has been
updated to include the earliest
of these prototypes which is missing the highest
level of AI (Nasty) and some of the built in
mazes. Check out the MIDI
Maze page for more information on this 'new'
prototype.
Special thanks to Kr0tki for alerting me to this
third prototype and for finding the hidden maze
loading feature!
|
| 11/7/25 |
And now for
something completely different. Thanks to
prototype historian Ken Van Mersbergen we now have
a working image of the Town
and Country Information System. This
program was one of Atari's attempts to expand
outside the realm of video games and turn the
Atari 8-Bit computer line into a general purpose
computer. The Town
and Country Information System is a mall
information kiosk program which displayed the
location of various shops and amenities in the
Town and Country Mall. While the mall may no
longer exist, thanks to the efforts of Ken the
information kiosk program lives on.
|
| 8/4/25 |
Touch Pad Game Update!
Thanks to
generosity of fellow prototype archivist Ianoid,
the two other known Touch Pad Game prototypes (2-9-84
and 2-21-84)
have been archived and shared with the
community. These two new versions are rather
different the earliest prototype and resemble the
game seen in the Slide Show #2 prototype. Be
sure to check out the updated Touch
Pad Game page.
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