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[Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion]

I just got the 4th volume of the Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion by Brian Matherne. I had Amazon ship it to him directly so he could sign it and send it back to me. I won signed copies of the first three volumes last year during the Stella-thon fundraiser organized by ZeroPage Homebrew, back when I knew very little about homebrews.

The original Atari 2600 library has amazing games, but truly, it's the homebrew community and developers that have taken a venerable platform we love to another level and have kept it relevant in the 21st century. Many amazing games have been released -- games that'd be difficult to believe are 2600 games -- and many more are in the pipeline.

Do you play homebrews? What are some of your favorites?

Some of my favorites include:

• Amoeba Jump
• Conquest of Mars
• Draconian
• Juno First
• Jump VCS
• Space Rocks
• Star Castle Arcade
• Tower of Rubble

I have more than 30 physical homebrew releases from AtariAge alone and I haven't played them all yet.

Hello, RVG world! I met TrekMD on another forum, and he told me about RVG. I'm really digging the landing page and the decor -- love the Space Invaders graphics. From what I've gathered, RVG seems to be a gathering of folks from all over the globe 👍

I live in the northwest corner of the United States in the suburb of Seattle with my two sons and wife. I've worked my entire career in the tech industry as a program manager for most of those years. I spent the majority of my career involved in software localization. If you used the non-US English version of Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, or 8, then my team's fingerprints are there somewhere 😀 I left Microsoft just before launching Win8, but even Win10 -- all the legacy parts of the OS anyway -- should still contain localization inherited from previous releases.

As far as retro gaming is concerned, my primary love is Atari. The 4-switch VCS (as it was known then) was my first console back in the early 80s. I think I was in 4th or 5th grade when I got it. At the time, my weekly allowance was $3 and the price of the VCS was $120. I made a proposal to my dad that if he bought me the console, I would forego a year's worth of allowance. "You'd save $36," I said to my dad. A few days later, we went to the store (Toys R Us) and bought the VCS, but he kept giving me my weekly allowance 🙂 Thank goodness that he did. Otherwise, I'd have been playing Combat by myself for a year, and that's not much fun for a kid with no brothers or sisters.

In middle school, I fell in love with computers. I hung around the computer lab for a year as a sixth grader since programming class and access to computers (Commodore PET) were only open to seventh and eighth graders. I got an Atari 800 with the cassette drive in seventh grade and for several years until I got the 520ST, the Atari 8-bit (800, 800XL, 130XE) was my BFF. I can't remember what ever happened to my VCS.

Fast forward almost 40 years to 2020, and I've been re-united with the 2600. Last year, out of nostalgia, I bought a Retron77, but I never opened the box. I discovered AtariAge forum earlier this year and got a 7800 five months ago. I recently found out that it has compatibility issues with some homebrews and that prompted me to get a light 6-switch 2600 in July. Two weeks after that, I jumped on a nice deal for a fixed up and upgraded 5200. The past couple of months have been a blast reconnecting with the Atari consoles from my childhood and discovering for the first time so many console games that I passed up because I was busy with my Atari 800. I even picked up a CRT TV recently to complete the full retro setup.

In case you're wondering, last year I picked up an Atari 800 and 800XL. I also got the devices to load programs from SD card but I haven't set them up yet. After storing them in boxes for many years, I threw away all my Atari computers, peripherals, and software when we moved nearly 20 years ago. Let's not talk about it. 😭

Outside of my love for Atari, I discovered retro gaming relatively recently -- 3 or 4 years ago -- by stumbling across videos by Metal Jesus Rocks (a Seattle-based YouTuber). That prompted me to get into all the PlayStation and Xbox consoles. I previously owned PS1, Xbox 360, and PS3 but only had a handful of games. I now have a sizable library of physical games (too many if you ask my wife). I also have a GameCube, Wii, WiiU, and most recently added SNES.

I will admit that I don't know much about games and consoles -- I don't know the details that many folks seem to know, but I'm a gamer at heart (although I suck at most games) and a life long Atari fanboy. I'm glad to be here and look forward to getting to know the RVG community better. Thanks for reading.