Welcome to episode one of a new, monthly podcast which really just amounts to an excuse for me to rewatch dozens of classic Peanuts specials and films. This month, we discuss “Charlie Brown’s All-Stars”, which was the 1966 follow-up to the instant classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Does it honor it’s predecessor? Then, we watch episode 3 of the 1988 series “This is America, Charlie Brown” and learn things. In a cartoon! Madness! My thanks to Henry Pope for the use of his “Linus & Lucy” Remix. You can find that and more of his music... Read More

This week’s game is Atari’s 1981 classic: WARLORDS. And this week’s theme is …family. Parents, man. You and your brothers are goofing around, innocently catapaulting fireballs at each other when your dad, ruler of the land, gets in your face being all kingly and banishes you to the forbidden lands. But you guys get bored easy so you each pick a corner to barricade yourselves in and fling lightning balls at each other. King Dad always warned if you didn’t stop you’d end up imprisoned in endless battle for all eternity inside an Atari game cartridge. But what do... Read More

One of my great childhood joys was the Peanuts comic strip. Charlie Brown and the gang were friends to me. I especially identified with Linus. A great Saturday afternoon for me would be spent with a bowl of Cheetos and a collection of Peanuts strips. I especially liked the week-long story arcs and the brilliant mix of humor, frustration and perseverance of these lil’ folks – though I am a little sad Shermie never took off as a main character. Animated Peanuts was great too. The airing of a Peanuts TV special was a big event in my house. I was pretty young, but I remember seeing Race... Read More

If you think a “barnstormer” is what a stormtrooper becomes after leaving the Empire to work a moisture farm on Tatooine, you need to listen to this episode. This week’s game is BARNSTORMING. Activision goes down on the farm and up in the air all at once in this 1982 plane-flying adventure. Test your reflexes and your nerves as you maneuver your bi-plane over windmills and through barns, all the while asking yourself: “Why am I doing this?” And then you smash into the south end of a north-flying goose. It’s kind of like life, really. Want to know more about the... Read More

On EPISODE 14 of ATARI BYTES, we down some of the leftover ‘shrooms from the Centipede episode, indulge in some peyote and wash it all down with a bottle of Jack and…Oh, wait. No actually, we just played AMIDAR. But that does even weirder things to your brain. Gorillas that want to paint while being chased by WILD warriors that really just look like boogers. Gorillas that turn INTO PAINT ROLLERS and are pursued by pigs. That’s the game. No, we’re not kidding. We couldn’t make this up. But there’s some OTHER stuff we could…listen to find out what sort of... Read More

This game is TURMOIL-ISH! TURMOIL-SOME! TURMOIL-U-TUOUS! Lookit, there’s lots of turmoil in this 1982 20th Century Fox game. With weird creatures that look like tanks, UFO’s, pink tie-fighters and Andes candies, we’re not sure if this game is a space alien shooting gallery or the weird office cubicle fever dream you might experience after inhaling copier toner all day. Find out more about the Atari Party in California here. If you can, donate to the show on Patreon. My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for the creative commons license to his songs “Take a Chance”,... Read More

A podcast like Atari Bytes is a lot of fun to make and, I hope, a lot of fun to listen to. However, that fun comes with a sizeable commitment of time and resources. The host services, storage and games are not free. And as the show grows and we try to do more things, those costs will grow too.   And so, I made the decision to put Atari Bytes on Patreon. Here. A lot of you probably know how Patreon works. It’s kind of like an Internet tip jar. If you like a thing – such as this podcast – you can go to Patreon and leave a tip or donation or hush money or whatever you want to call... Read More

DRIVERS, START YOUR ENGINES! Seriously, you can’t drive if you don’t start the car, doofus. Atari’s 1983 POLE POSITION, a formula one Grand Prix racing game, is our focus this week. How can we make a story out of little more than a race car on a track? Listen and find out! The finest twenty-two minutes of a man alphabetizing his toothpaste collection you’ll ever hear. My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons license to use his songs “Take a Chance”, “Reformat” and “Pinball Spring”. Go here to get more info about... Read More

PASS THE ‘SHROOMS, MAN! Atari goes down on the farm in this episode. Atari’s CENTIPEDE from 1982 is our topic.  While other elves are out fighting wars and hanging with Hobbits on epic quests, your poor little elf Oliver is stuck tending a mushroom farm. If that isn’t bad enough, you’re being pummeled by giant centipedes, scorpions, spiders and FLEAS. No one would blame you if you used that magic wand to teleport yourself out of here. But no! That’s not the Atari way. On this farm, we beat our swords into plowshares…then use those plowshares to beat the holy... Read More

When we talk about the story within the games on ATARI BYTES, we approach it as if we are analyzing a piece of literature. Every story basically has five points: Introduction, where the setup happens; the rising action (building up to the big reveal); the climax (te high point of the story), the falling action (where the story winds down); and the resolution or denouement (how the story is wrapped up) If you charted it, it might look like this:                                                        CLIMAX                                                    ... Read More