Did you develop any games or software for the Atari systems?

[belboz]

I never really released anything when it came to the 8-bit line.

I really got into programming on the ST line though. Never did any games but did do some various applications

Flasher: Program that simply allowed you to tweak the colors on the terminal program Flash

Laser Printer CPX module: Basically allowed you to monitor your Atari laser printer with my CPX module

Raw SLM printer dump utility. Used it with Page Stream to print a raw dump file dumped by page stream out the Atari printer

IJCTSILU: Little program to monitor caller ID on a dialup modem. It would announce the number of the caller with my voice, allow you to record your own things to have it say when certain numbers called, automatic disconnect on certain numbers, and logging of all calls

Genies Assistant: This was a program to help defragment and organize your information created by the Genie online services Atari GEM interface to their board.

Video Slideshow program (never released). I did a multimedia picture, video, sound, music player that was scriptable and worked with TT and Mega STE graphic cards. It would view standard graphic picture formats, and also supported fli animations and a couple other animation formats, played WAV files, and also interfaced with the MOD player Paula for mod file playback. It was all scriptable too. Used this a couple times at the Mist show in Indianapolis to demo things. It was amazing to people at the time, because they hadn't seen high color animations, images, playing on and Atari screen, all the while playing music in the background.

There was other things, plus a lot of personal or specific stuff for me, but those spring to mind.

[kamakazi20012]

Well, I did translate an old text-based BASIC program into an Atari 800 BASIC program complete with graphics and submitted it to Video 61 & Atari Sales for publication. They liked the game, but wanted to improve the graphics and sent it to someone else who was working for him. However, the guy suffered a heart attack and so the project was then sent to another person who broke a leg...literally. After about 6 years, the game has not seen the light of day. The game I used was called Bombardment.

The game used the highest graphics mode possible with Atari BASIC. There was a 7x9 grid giving a total of 63 positions. Only a one-player game, the player and computer was allowed to "hide" platoons. Once setup, each player would hunt down all of their opponent's platoons. Naturally, the first one to find all platoons first won. The game did incorporate the OPTION button which allowed the player to change the skill level (Beginner, Advanced, Expert), how many platoons (5 to 15), and player colors. I tried to follow Atari programming guidelines to create a quality game. It was saved on a Program Recorder of which I no longer have.

I am currently trying to learn the 7800, which is proving to be harder than it seems. I'm using actual hardware (except the devcard which I can't find) instead of emulators. The way the graphics are read by the machine is backwards, but the MARIA chip, if programming skills are properly developed, can actually out perform the NES in lots of ways.

As far as working for Atari during its time, I never did, but wanted to. Unfortuantely, my knowledge was with BASIC only, and needed time to develop. On top of that, by the time I was out of high school, Atari was already on its way to the end.