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ANTIC Interview 454 - Steve Kranish, Parker Brothers Frogger

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Release Date: 03/06/2025

ANTIC Interview 461 - James W. Burley, APX Data Base/Report System show art ANTIC Interview 461 - James W. Burley, APX Data Base/Report System

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

James W. Burley, APX Data Base/Report System James W. Burley is the programmer of Data Base/Report System, which was sold by Atari Program Exchange beginning with the Summer 1982 APX catalog. It was catalog number 20134 with a price of $22.95. APX sold it for about a year, through the Summer 1983 catalog. APX awarded Data Base/Report System first prize for new software in the "Business & Professional Applications/Personal Finance & Record Keeping" category: for that, James was awarded an Atari Star plaque and $2000 prize. (He received the plaque, but says he never received the...

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ANTIC Interview 460 - Tim Jenkins, Cheating at Roulette show art ANTIC Interview 460 - Tim Jenkins, Cheating at Roulette

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Tim Jenkins, Cheating at Roulette with an Atari Computer Tim Jenkins is the author of several humorous memoirs: "Missions Accomplished: And some funny business along the way", "More Missions Accomplished: And a lot more funny business", and "Business Missions Accomplished: Silly travel tales on the corporate dime". I wanted to talk to Tim about one chapter in his 2018 book More Missions Accomplished: the chapter is titled "Gaming the System" and it tells the tale of him trying to cheat a roulette using his Atari 800 computer. A brief excerpt from that chapter: "Las Vegas — 1989. Shortly...

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ANTIC Interview 459 - Mike Lorenzen: Atari Program-Text Editor, Pitfall II show art ANTIC Interview 459 - Mike Lorenzen: Atari Program-Text Editor, Pitfall II

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Mike Lorenzen: Atari Program-Text Editor, Pitfall II Mike Lorenzen worked at Atari, Activision, and Accolade, creating games for the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit, and Commodore 64 computers. At Atari, Mike coded Golf and Circus Atari for the Atari 2600. For the 8-bit computers, he wrote MEDIT (which he told me stands for Mike’s EDITor.) Atari got a lot of mileage from MEDIT, using versions of that text editor in several products: first, in Atari Program-Text Editor (which was bundled with Atari's Macro Assembler), and in two Atari Program Exchange products: APX 20075, Atari Program-Text Editor;...

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ANTIC Episode 129 - SDX and FNSlots show art ANTIC Episode 129 - SDX and FNSlots

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

ANTIC Episode 129 - SDX and FNSlots In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast…Brad plays around with SDX, Kay and Randy bring you news from some vintage computer shows, we drool over all the new hardware news, and we bring you FujiNet news, including FNSlots… READY! Recurring Links    Interview index:           What we’ve been up to Box of stuff from Bob Fraser Light pen -   Disks! Six early versions of MEDIT -   Prerelease version of DOS 2.0S -   INIT HELLO at System Source Computer Museum Print...

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ANTIC Interview 458 - Allan Bushman, Atari archivist show art ANTIC Interview 458 - Allan Bushman, Atari archivist

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Allan Bushman, Atari Archivist If you've ever looked up an Atari computer manual at Internet Archive, chances are you've come across some of Allan Bushman's scans. For well over 13 years, Allan has been uploading scans of Atari-related catalogs, manuals, and books to the archive. Before that, since 1995 or before, Allan contributed to and AtariMania. With a particular emphasis on finding and archiving Atari Program Exchange manuals, Allan has helped save the vast majority of the APX library. This interview took place on April 19 2026 at Vintage Computer Festival East. As of this recording,...

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ANTIC Interview 457 - Atari at the Science Fair: Lisa Link Melville, Weather Prediction show art ANTIC Interview 457 - Atari at the Science Fair: Lisa Link Melville, Weather Prediction

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Atari at the Science Fair: Lisa Link Melville, Weather Prediction The Herald Times newspaper, April 17 1984: "March 24 proved to be an exciting day for several area students participating in the South Central Indiana Regional Science Fair which was held in Bloomington. Lisa Link, an Edgewood High School junior, and Maxwell Brothers, a Bloomington North senior, took top honors in the advanced division. Programming an Atari 800 computer to forecast the weather was Link's project. The computer's entire 48K memory system was needed to develop the long and complicated program which predicts...

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ANTIC Episode 128 - Stepping in a Pile of 800XLs show art ANTIC Episode 128 - Stepping in a Pile of 800XLs

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

ANTIC Episode 128 - Stepping in a Pile of 800XLs In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… special guest Rob McMullen (Player/Missile Podcast) joins us to talk about all the Atari 8-bit news; such as new and updated emulators, Jumpman level editor, Club Med and the Atari, and a whole lot more! READY! Recurring Links    Interview index:           What we’ve been up to AltirraSDL -   Fujisan -   Jumpman Reverse Engineering:     Player Missile Podcast   Audacity AI noise reduction plugin...

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ANTIC Episode 127 - Brad's 76K Brain show art ANTIC Episode 127 - Brad's 76K Brain

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

ANTIC Episode 127 - Brad’s 76K Brain In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we turn the podcast into more of a multi-media experience, we cover a LOT of new and updated utility software for the Atari 8-bit, and Kay accuses Brad of having a 76K brain! READY! Recurring Links    Interview index:           What we’ve been up to pokey stream player -   Fujisan with FastBASIC -   This Week in Retro episode 262 -   Atari lightbox -   Indy Classic Expo -   New & Updated Games  Dodger -...

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ANTIC Episode 126 - All Atari All the Time show art ANTIC Episode 126 - All Atari All the Time

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

ANTIC Episode 126 - All Atari All The Time In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… We bring in special guest Paulo Garcia, author of the incredible FujiSan emulator, and bring you all the Atari news we can find. READY! Recurring Links    Interview index:           What we’ve been up to FujiSan version 1.1.8 -   Conversational German -   New & Updated Games European Countries & Capitals Updated -   Text Adventure Homo Sapiens -   FujiNet Maze War - Mozzwald:   Source code available...

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ANTIC Episode 125 - Combining SQL with Fun (and Poo) show art ANTIC Episode 125 - Combining SQL with Fun (and Poo)

ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

ANTIC Episode 125 - “Combining SQL with Fun (and Poo)” In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… Wade Ripkowski comes onto the show and gives us an update on his work to bring SQL to the Atari (and an extremely useful poo management tool!), we cover good news concerning the Curt Vendel Atari collection, we report on an exciting updated browser-based emulator, a huge update to AspeQT, and a whole lot more!! READY! Recurring Links    Interview index:           What we’ve been up to cubeSQL project blog post - Unfinished...

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Steve Kranish, Parker Brothers Frogger
 
Steve Kranish is the creator of the Atari 8-bit and Atari 5200 versions of Frogger, the versions published by Parker Brothers. Parker Brothers had the rights to publish cartridge versions of Frogger. Sierra On-Line had already published versions of Frogger on floppy disk and cassette, so Parker Brothers bought the rights to use that version as the basis for its cartridge version. But there were a few problems: for one, the 13K cassette game would need to be shrunk to fit on an 8K cartridge. Another: the source code was lost.
 
Steve also worked on an Atari 8-bit version of the board game Risk, and a game called Baker’s Dozen, both of which were unfinished. He also worked on Project Zelda, Parker Brothers investigation into distributing Atari VCS games via cable television. 
 
This interview took place on March 2, 2025. In 2016, I interviewed John Harris, who programmed the Sierra Online version of Frogger (as well as Jawbreaker and Mouskattack). Check the show notes for the link to that.