The Curious case of the Robot Prostitute?

A Maggie Exclusive!!

Hot on the heels of the legal shitstorm that plagued Jeff Minter's release of "It's like Tempest 2000 but it isn't Tempest 2000", a new outburst of small- mindedness threatens to rock the games world and Atari nostalgia fanboys in particular.

The new owners of Atari have only gone and lawyered up, lashing out with steel- tipped writs in the direction of the latest foolish souls deluded enough to attempt to profit from Atari's most priceless intellectual property. Indeed, some say that this is a treasure beyond all worth that they tamper with at their peril!

Whisper this quietly, we are talking of none other than 'Atari Breakout for the GEM Desktop'!

I'm sure that most of you reading this will instantly be transported back to their first heady encounter with this gaming landmark. The fondly recalled stench of trapped ozone seeping from the holes in the back of your monitor, intermingling with the garishly primary school colour scheme. But there may be a few new readers who deserve an explanation of the magnificence that is, Atari Breakout for the GEM Desktop.

Many of the greatest acts of genius are compressed into the shortest timescale possible. It can't be verified, but it certainly seems as if Atari Breakout was coded in a single afternoon, with an hour or so of that limited time taken off for tea and cake.

The whole experience cannot easily be conveyed with mere words, but for the readers sake, one must try.

Clicking on the program icon transported you to another world. A world where instant responses, visually appealing sights and crisp clear sounds are not required. It has been said that Atari Breakout was best appreciated with a blood alcohol level somewhere between violently parking your car in a hedge and total unconsciousness rapidly approaching death.

This is something I dared not to attempt when I first reviewed it, but several contemporaries in the final stages of liver destruction have confirmed this is indeed the case.

Trying to play it after a couple of large glasses of Burgundy gives you a glimpse of that appealing rawness, but you are still wishing to lie down on a patio afterwards. (Or in a shed if you drink several glasses of something less aspirational.)

It was deemed 'too good' for the vulgarity of retail sale. Atari were so keen on everyone with one of their computers to experience the sublime after several pints of muscle relaxant gameplay, that they bundled it free with their Falcon 030 series. Unfortunately, very few copies of this game survive 'in the wild', as the floppy disks that they came on, seemed to be curiously prone to reformatting accidents?

So, coming back rudely to the present day, what's all the fuss and bother that's going on with it now?

Well we have another remake from a person wishing to follow ineptly in the yak- shaped footprints of Jeff Minter. Richard "Sir Stalin Beard" Madly. Madly has dredged up several loose interpretations of Jeff's past works, most notoriously his "Idi Amin's Lawnmower Panic", a tasteless 'tribute' to Llamasofts classic hit 'Hover Bovver'.

He's now gone and reinterpreted the classic Atari Breakout for 21st Century platforms such as the Sony RuttingStation and Sexdroid mobile phones. Needless to say, Atari, via the current owners of their IP, are not best pleased.

We now turn to the current owner of Atari for their views and input. Jean Paul Chretian, an investment banker, is the current 'Mr Atari', having kneed the previous owners in the groin and made them an offer that they could not refuse, as they were writhing on the floor in a tight bundle of agony.

He would firstly like to remind the readers that his surname is pronounced 'Kre-ti-anne' and not 'Cretin'. From his short and irritable manner, we at Maggie suspect he is rather tired at having to explain this constantly to people.

We firstly asked Mr Chretian why he was interested in Atari in the first place.

"I'm an investment banker, its an unsentimental profession where megadollars are king, dog eats dog, be more shark and all of that. Yet somehow Atari irresistibly throws me back to my childhood memories."

He provided more detail of those cherished memories.

"Dangling younger thinner children over a pit of faeces to extort their lunch money, issuing a writ against my parents for being human, making my first million on the tears of my teachers, those were a few of my favourite things. My defining game on the VCS console was "Shyster Runner, so yeah, I've nothing but good memories from my youth."

When asked about his attitude to the various intellectual properties that came with his ownership of Atari, he emphatically stated his fierce defence of these.

"With Atari GEM Breakout (TM), a lot of people loved that game. It's a timeless classic, perfect in every way and needing no improvement whatsoever. Now that jerk Madly comes along and tries to revamp it. Can you believe he added vector line tunnels and random goats, and it flashes like mad all the time. It's also unbelievably fast and responsive, too much so for me. That's not the original classic at all, yet he's ripping it off."

The plot thickened further, as Chretian revealed there was even more to this than first met the eye.

"Atari GEM Breakout (TM) contains several bullshit sub-patents embedded in the main game. Such as 'JerkyScrolling'(TM), 'LaughableColours' (TM) and 'LazilyEditedSample'(TM) - If Madly or anyone else tries to get their slimy hands on those, there's gonna be hell to pay!"

But surely, if Atari were not ever going to return to Atari GEM Breakout (TM) themselves, why not engage with the person most interested in breathing new life into this old classic? Chretian was dismissive.

"Does a dog need to return to its vomit? The dog might want to, but I disagree!"

As Atari were going to defend their classic games with all the zeal of harpies, without remaking and reinventing them for a new generation themselves, what was their future business plan instead?

"We're already big in online gambling, our website invites thousands of people every day to PLAY OUR HOT SLOTS! But we're gonna take it up a level with actual new hardware."

Now this was interesting.

"It's gonna go totally 'Vegas' with the remnants of the formerly great Atari name. With the gambling will come Atari branded cybertronic whores. We have advanced designs of latex, injection moulded plastic and silicone ladies of negotiable virtue ready for manufacture. With tinny voice-boxes all chanting "FILL OUR HOT SLOTS!" If it all goes to plan, we'll sell five hundred thousand units in the first year."

"This time next year, anywhere in the world, thanks to me, countless acts of cold joyless sex will take place, sweatily thrusting away mere centimetres from an Atari logo!"

This seemed to be a natural place to end for ourselves, so we made various excuses and left Mr Chretian to his plans for world domination of the worst kind. It was only fair to follow up with a few words from the creator of the unauthorised new version, Richard Madly.

Firstly we asked, what was going on with him following Jeff Minter's career and lifestyle trajectory.

"It all started with Flossie the sheep, Ovine girlfriends are always much easier to relate to.."

"As for the games, Jeff was the man for sure, he is a genius, so I was inspired by his works. My games such as "Idi Amin's Lawnmower Panic", "Lidrunner" and "Revenge of the Mutant Carmichaels" came all too easily to me."

Then Richard lets us in to a big secret, it's bigger than the undersea mountain that Red October nearly crashed into.

"Jeff wasn't the only celebrity coder who did work for Atari, the code for the original Atari GEM Breakout (TM) was all mine!"

Well of course, we're rocking back on our heels with that revelation. Of course it turns out that like Jeff, Richard signed away any rights to Atari at the time.

"I thought that as the original was such a badly coded bunch of tat, that Atari would not be over-bothered with protecting their rights to this lame excuse for a game. It turns out that to be a successful rich person like the current owner of Atari, one has to be unreasonable beyond the dreams of the craziest of asshat clowns."

"I spent all my time and remaining funds talking to a bunch of lawyers. They communicated on a 'pay per view' system, fifty dollars for a single letter of the alphabet at a time. So I had to fold eventually. It's a shame that Atari were so unreceptive to my new ideas for Atari GEM Breakout (TM), some of which are cheeky remixes from my previous games."

"Here's one from Lawnmower Panic. An animated fridge containing the severed heads of his enemies comes on at level 44 and chases the player down to their certain doom!"

And with that, we decided to leave asking any more questions right there...

So to end this rather uplifting tale, there will be no new version of Atari Breakout for GEM! Unfortunately, there are still unaccounted for copies of the original. There is every chance of an Atari emulator capable of running it being made! Find them all and kill 'em all before its too late!

DISCLAIMER:- The events, people, companies and actual and potential trade marks in this article are fictitious and bear no resemblance to any real life counterparts, or their lawyers. Any such resemblance is unintentional and purely coincidental and down to the author's poorly functioning imagination.

CiH For Maggie - 3.4.15

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