"DEAR AGH" (September/October, 1998) Subject: Speaking of the Pirating of Behind Jaggi Lines From: Glenn I remember when Behind Jaggi Lines and Ballblazer were both pirated. I was in Bruce's store the night a cop from the Santa Clara Police Dept. had brought in a copy.  He was a regular customer.  This was when B&C was located on El Camino Real in Santa Clara and I did some part time work for Bruce then. Turns out people inside Atari had made copies for themselves and took them home.  They then shared it with other friends and the copies had spread like wildfire. It was a friday night and the next day I went with Bruce to some fairgrounds south of San Francsico off of HWY 280 for a computer show.  Bruce had contacted Lucasfilm's about the games and they sent an attorney to the show to briefly talk to Bruce and pick up the disks. Atari got in some shit for that one. Your review reminded me of that time. We've always despised how EA and Lucasfilm bitched about the Atari users and how they thought that the inordinate number of pirates in the Atari 8-bit computer world were the reason why they didn't bring out games for the system.  That's such a bunch of baloney.  There were just as many folks trading C64 and Apple II disks in the 80's and yet those companies supported the system with software.  Subject: Atari-PC Linking From: Alberto L. Helly everyone, First of all I'd like to congratulate for your magnificent web page. And then, I have a little technical question. Is it possible to link an Atari 1040STE to a Pentium PC running PacifiST? If so, can you tell me how can I do that? It is possible to link a 1040 STe with a PC to transfer files, etc. under MS-DOS (I'm not sure if it works under Windows). If I remember correctly, it's done with a nullmodem cable via the serial ports using a program called Ghostlink, but I never used it myself and I'm a little bit too busy at the moment to go through all my old ST Format magazines to look it up ... so I would suggest asking the question in one of the Atari computer newsgroups (comp.sys.atari.st) or to visit one of the many Atari ST-specific websites, I'm sure they can help you out there. Subject: Wake Up In There! From: DTG I enjoyed reading your website for the millionth time now. When is it time to update this thing? It's time to update the thing AFTER we take care of our work and family obligations. Actually, we're working on overhauling the site.  And if you checked out the World of Atari '98 recap page, that's what we had been working on for the past few weeks. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the page or what to add, we're open to suggestions. Subject: BATTLESPHERE??? From: James J. Hello, OK.. first of all I think you have a kickass page but it's not updated often enough, I just thought I would throw in my opinion on that. But the real reason I am sending this message is BATTLESPHERE. I mean, what happened to it? I kept up with it for like a year and then everyone was talking about how awesome it was at JagFest and how it's the greatest game to ever be released for the Jag and how they couldn't wait till it hit the market and so on....... Anyways, they all just quit updating their pages and the whole thing just sorta faded out. I was just wondering if you could tell me anything new about it and if its out or coming out. I would enjoy any feedback possible at this point. I don't know where you've been, but if you look at some of the major Jaguar pages, you'll see that Battelsphere is still being covered. And the finished game made its premier at World of Atari '98 this past month in Las Vegas. Right now the main roadblock has to do with encryption, since nobody quite knows where the encryption key is. We've been keeping in close contact with 4Play, however, and are convinced that it'll see the light of day. Bet on it. Subject: What's It Called? From: R. Dowdy I remember an Atari coin-op from the earlier 80's that was my FAVORITE game of all time.  I do no remember the title.  This game was something like this: You drove a futuristic tank-like racing vehicle.  You would go through tunnels shooting other things (they looked a lot like trains) and the graphics, as I remembered were great.  The most memorable thing was, that at he end of every two rounds or so, the tank would get automatic upgrades, different weapons and better shields. You sat on a sort of seat, kind of like a long bench that you sat on like a horse and it's controls were like that of a plane yoke.  The title might have been an acronym, but I don't remember. I've searched everywherre, but can't seem to find screenshots, descriptions, ROM images or anything.  Could you PLEASE clear this up for me?  Thanks." That game would be S.T.U.N. Runner by Atari Games. Subject: Your Jaguar Worms Review From: Ashley D. Just a quick note to say that "Worms" didn`t debut on the PC. It actually first appeared on the Amiga, at the time Team 17 coded for the Amiga only. Of course things have changed since then and they no longer support the Amiga. The game was origonally made by Andy Davidson, it was his first commercial game and he has done nothing else since then but make updates to Worms. I hope this information is useful to both you and your readers. Thanks for the info, Ashley. Subject: DeLorean 7800 Pro System? From: Anonymous Greetings staff at Atari HQ, I thought I'd ask you guys about this since you guys seem to be the guru's of all things Atari.  I'd first like to mention I would like to keep this private, but if you decide to use this on "Dear AGH", please, please keep me anonymous. (thanks) Anyways, my question is, did Atari at one point develop and manufacture a limited number of special edition Atari 7800's for the DeLorean Motor Company? (and since DMC went out of business in the mid 80's these systems never went beyond Atari's R & D building) I'm a big DeLorean fan and recently while browsing one of the DeLorean sites "For Sale" section I encounted a individual  claiming they had 50 rare DeLorean Atari 7800 Pro-Systems, never released, which sported a "DMC" stainless steel emblem on the box and on the actual stamping on the 7800 console.  The controllers also had additional stainless steel trim on them. The seller claims only 50 were made and the boxes are numbered 001-050 respectively.  They also claim they got these directly from Atari's warehouse.  Finally, they also had DMC-exclusive "Pole Position" cartridges also sporting a "DMC" stainless steel badge on the box, manuals, and also came with a certificate of authenticity.  Only 100 of these "Pole Position" games were made. Are these claims true or false? Any information you could give me of this matter would be greatly appreciated. To the best of our knowledge, the items you mention are a fraud. The individuals selling the systems appeared several months back and tried to hawk them to the hardcore guys on the net. We at AGH have many contacts with former Atari employees including hardware and software production managers and none of them ever recall such a product or deal.  Also, there were many inconsistencies with the story around these units. Wrong dates, and other incorrect information caused most of us to call his bluff. At that point, he disappeared from the newsgroups (I guess he figured he could pawn them off on unsuspecting Delorean owners). Our advice to you is to steer clear and tell everyone you know to do the same. Subject: Raiden Fighters From: David Do you know who created the game Raiden Fighters? On the machine it said a company called Fabtek, but there is no mention of them anywhere on the net. A site that list off most Arcade games has Raiden Fighters as made by Atari. Anyway, I was wondering if there were any plans to bring that game to a console like Playstation or something. Raiden Fighters (also called Raiden) was actually made by a Seibu Kaihatsu, a Japanese company, and Fabtek released the coinop here in the US.  If you look up the title "Raiden" you might have better luck finding info on the game.  Raiden came out for several home systems, including the TG16, SNES (Raiden Trad), Lynx, Jaguar and even Playstation (Raiden Project).  Raiden Project includes both Raiden and Raiden II.