Presentations

Avantgarde Gaming Day opening speach by þorN

First gen – last gen by Dean Jimmy

Summary

Organizer þorN welcomes everybody

Even though only Dean Jimmy made it in time, we only had a 30-minute delay. I welcomed people and had a walk-through of the plan of the planned presentations.

Lynxman presented his Lynx Flashcard

Lynxman did an interesting presentation about his Lynx Flashcard. The flashcard is now 18 years old, but it was used for many games made on the Atari Lynx. He also managed to reduce its size dramatically. A must-have as an Atari Lynx developer.

Dean Jimmy spoke about his first-gen and last-gen consoles

DeanJimmy had a great presentation and explained, why for him the actual PS5 could be the last generation and also showed his first generation. The presentation offers great insights and great thoughts. I only could recommend watching it.

In the following discussion, we also agreed, that game and watch consoles from the 80ties are worth to include in a first gen retrospection.

þorN shared the results of his challenge to find a good arcade local co-op rally racer

After telling the challenge to play a local co-op split screen arcade rally game with friends, a solution was proposed. The game Old School Rally on Steam promises to be an old-school arcade rally racer that offers at least two player split-screen.

All attendees played a little Old School Rally tournament to find out if þorN passed his challenge

We tried it out and organized a small tournament. We played a head-to-head game for 30 seconds and the player who is in the lead won.

Furthermore, we had great fun, and it was really a Rally Championship feeling. Most of the time, we were close to each other, so there was a lot of action in the short games. Sometimes, the challenge was to find an exit because both cars had collided and were now stuck somewhere. It was also great fun.

Results

1st Round

Lynxman -Dejan -> Dejan won
JanK – DeanJimmy -> DeanJimmy won
FF-þorN -> þorN won

Winners finals

Dejan – DeanJimmy -> DeanJimmy won
Dejan – þorN -> þorN won

Final

þorN – DeanJimmy -> DeanJimmy won

Conclusion

Fantastic esports and great fun. Proof of a number of avantgarde gaming principles (v1.1):

#1: Discover new stuff
#3: Reduce gaming hardware (no Game Cube anymore, but reuse Steam Deck),
#4: Reduce cables (XBOX controllers are wireless) and
#5: Reduce controllers (no game cube controllers, but reuse of XBOX controllers) worked.

Dejan presented the PicoA 10400 card for VCS 2600 and 7800

Dejan and DeanJimmy get a workflow up and running, to put a game on a normal 2600 onto the Pico card and then load it in the Atari 7800+
The first time made in public on the Avantgarde Gaming Day!

Is it a step forward? You could do the same with a harmony card. But a Pico card costs only a few euros, that’s the advantage.

Also nice, the Pico card has two ends. One for the 2600 and one for the 7800. Nice design.

We enjoyed some food

Lesson learned: Making some sausages and later having pizza is a good Combination

We played some Atari 7800+ with wireless controllers

Dean Jimmy built up his Atari 7800+ and showed some blockbuster games.
He also explains the new features compared to the 2600+ because it has a new I/O board and the software has some new functionalities.

Robotron 2084

Playing this game with a single controller and using both analog sticks as Twin sticks is always awesome.

Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest

This game is built in the console. A great example of what is possible on the 7800

A.R.T.I.

A remake of Hero.

Rick Dangerous-inspired graphics, Indy and Lara sprites, great sounds and some changes in the gameplay make the game a must-play.

þorN presented the v1.1 update of the avantgarde gaming principles

Lessons learned

Non-playing wives are fans of Avantgarde gaming all married players agree

New & updated principles

Discover new stuff

Be curious and watch out for interesting stuff. There are so many creative people around who create interesting games. There is always something to discover.

Enjoy proved stuff

Create challenges to get the most out of the games you discovered.

Avoid vendor locks

New interesting stuff is created on various platforms and systems, don’t lock you up and let a vendor dictate what you are gaming.

Ensure the availability of your library

Try to buy games from sources where you own the game, and you can persist it in your library even the store or platform disappears.

Attendees got a Waveshare Game Hat for Pi3+ hands-on to demonstrate some new principles

Then hands-on on with a Waveshare Game Hat for Pi 3+ running an old version of RetroPi and tons of uploaded Atari 2600 games showed an alternative to real hardware and new 2600+/7800+ Emulators:

Build your own console.
Put a proper launcher (Retro Pi, Batocera, Retro Bat, … ) on the Pi
Upload ROMs.

This proof of concept proves the “”avoid vendor lock” and “ensure availability of your library” principles:

You define the hardware
- There are others how-to’s around for other hardware solution. Most based on a Pi or a comparable piece of hardware. All the components are available from more than one vendor, so you are not dependent on a hardware vendor.
- Beside the Pi and the display, the how-to’s show how to build a DPad, the analog sticks and the buttons by yourself with standard electronic components.
- There are models for free or for a small amount of money available from various maker-verse platforms. Download them and then print the case with your 3D printer.
You define the software.
- The Linux OS is open source, so no vendor could control it in total, that is at the moment the best avoidance of a vendor lock.
- The launcher stack (RetroPi, Emulator Station, Retroarch, emulators) are community driven projects, if one of the projects is discontinued their code and results could be forked. Of course, you have to spend some efforts in keeping up to date.
- The BIOS files and the ROMs are spread over the internet, but better to save them locally.

Summary: Your console, your library.

The conclusion from the 7800+ and the Game Hat hands-on

Avantgarde challenges:

Know what to use for what use case
Find ways to get more and more running on emulators

We need to have such a matrix:

Gaming experience	Real Hardware (Atari 7800)	Vendor-maintained emulators (Atari 7800+)	Self-maintained emulators (PiX)
Standard games	Plug in real Module	Download Roms	Download ROMs
The game uses the Atari Vox
Game uses the paddles
The game uses the driving paddles
The game uses the number keys
Play on Monitors with HDMI only
Use wireless controllers			Problematic: – Commando

FF shared some impressions from last year’s Kick Off WC and afterward, we did some Kick Off 2 games.

WC was in Nottingham. The next one is in Italy.
Impressive that KO2 community is getting bigger and bigger. Because of the online version players from other countries like Türkiye and Poland appears.The
German scene is not very active at the moment.

Lessons learned from hands-on afterward:

For Atari fans, it’s great that Kick Off 2 Online version could be played without Amiga hardware.
I was happy to score my first goal with the Pac-Man stick against Dean Jimmy. The Pac-Man really has a unique haptic. Thanks to Dejan who get it for me.
Dean Jimmy improved a lot and showed with a suitable joystick
You need to have a full keyboard with a number block to get APT for both players

We did a short Star Blader Chop of the head competition on the Lynx

We wanted to play Star Blader on a Flashcard, but had no already flashed card, so we will play next time with pre-flashed flashcards. But we later played Star Blader via the Game Drive from SD card. Was fun. It only took seconds and the head was chopped off and kicked around. Infantile humor, but we like it.

The morning after: Cleaning Up

Like always, it was great that cleaning up took 15 minutes and was easy. I always like to turn my home into a mess because I like to use the devices I have, but It’s also always magic how quick everything could be cleaned up.

So in the end, a lonely competition replica without micro switches was left on the table. Keep my fingers crossed that it find his way back home.

Goodbye

Make avantgarde gaming awesome soon again

All you need to know about the Avantgarde Gaming Day #1