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Ups and downs
Welcome to the September issue of MyAtari. Many of you will have noticed that the last few issues of MyAtari have been... shall we say a little behind schedule? This has been due to a number of reasons including holidays
and pressures of work.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you that e-mailed us recently with offers of support concerned that the magazine might have closed. Far from it! With the summer behind us, the cold winter evenings looming (and our fourth birthday next month), I am pleased to confirm that we are indeed alive and kicking :-)
However, sadly the software publisher Acclaim Entertainment is not.
Following weeks of speculation and uncertainty, Acclaim finally called in the receivers at the end of last month. Founded in 1987, Acclaim was once an active software
house on the Atari scene publishing games including also enjoying reasonable success on the PS2 and Xbox platforms with games such as ALIAS and Turok.
At the time of writing, Acclaim's web site still does not include any official press release and continues to promote its forthcoming release, Juiced - which must surely be now in doubt.
![[Image: Acclaim game covers]](images/acclaim.jpg)
On a positive note. As promised last month, I am pleased to announce that although we recently lost control of our mirror site at http://www.myatari.org, we have now secured hosting for our back issues thanks to reader Graeme Hinchliffe (LinkoVitch). As a result, you can now download every issue of MyAtari to read and enjoy off-line.
Until next month, remember it's our fourth birthday so see you at the party!
Date is Saturday 02 October in London, contact
us for details.
See you next month,

Matthew Bacon, Editor matt@myatari.net

Leaves
on the line We
did it... We were so late with the August issue
(actually ready for weeks but simply lacked
a cover picture!), we didn't manage to
formally invite everyone to our second big curry
night (at the end of August) in time, but well
done to the ones who caught our invitation on
the forum. It was a blast, even if the orders
got even more messed up than last time! The
London sightseeing tour earlier in the day was
also great fun, we visited the Namco Station
arcade inside County Hall by the River Thames,
and missed a stop on the London Underground
due to Stone and Tyrant's riveting discussion
about the Jaguar's transparency and colour space.
Atari historians and the older ones among us
know that Namco's arcade operation has its
roots in Atari of Japan, so even if the idea of an Atari
Station arcade doesn't become a reality (come
on, New Atari, explore this one), wouldn't it be great,
and easily done to also incorporate Atari classics
into Namco Station? I clearly remember an Atari-badged
Pole Position sit-down cabinet at the theme
park formerly known as Chessington Zoo, and
how cool it was to see the "real"
version of the game I played so much on the
Atari 800 home computer.
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Movin'
on the queen's highway Lookin'
like a streak of lightnin'
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A
stripy Felice closely followed
by Tyrant disguised as a Bee
Gee.
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Stone
pondering what to have
for lunch by the river, with
the fluffy thing he won at the
nearby fun fair.
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MyAtari
was always intended to be more than just a magazine,
and in recent times, the community aspect has
matured well, thanks to the participation of
readers and supporters from other sites.
Funny
for all the wrong reasons I
was never into any of the Driver games,
but I had a riot of a time during our review
sessions of Driv3r while taking screen-shots.
Like Club Drive on the Jaguar, I found it to
be most entertaining when played in totally
the wrong way to that originally intended. That
meant attempting to mow down wire fences in a single motion
with no breaks, and checking out the damage
simulation by
reversing at speed to swing doors open then snapping
them off against walls and other hard objects! There was also a hilarious moment where
I managed to drive one car up the stairs of
a monorail station and onto the platform, then
mounted the track! Unfortunately I slid off in the excitement of having got up there, before managing to find out
what would happen if I tried to ram a train
off it... Subsequently we spent at least another
hour just trying to find out which car was narrow
enough to get up the stairs of which station
again, for a second
attempt, and to get a screen capture of it.
If any readers find out, let us know, or even
send us a photo! In fact why not send us pictures
of your funniest Atari gaming moments, the only
condition must be that it actually happened
in the game and is not faked. There's no fun
in that, right?
Like
a '70s kung-fu flick featuring Jim Kelly, you
too can find bags of unintentional humour, in
your games, so it's time to dust them off and
play again, with complete disregard for the rules...

Shiuming Lai,
Features and Technical Editor shiuming@myatari.net
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