Abbreviations
The way we list our records is really nothing fancy: the titles are sorted alphabetically and you'll find information on the year of release and publisher as well. Note that, although "publisher" mostly has a commercial connotation, the word also applies to a user group / group of individuals releasing a game, utility or whatever as public domain or shareware. Commercial self-edited programs with just the name of the author will often have
Smith, John as publisher. A
[no publisher] in the column indicates a public domain, freeware or shareware program released with just the author's name as reference.
The last column is more interesting. It indicates how the original Atari program was released. Let's go through the abbreviations one by one...
| ACT | is for programs written in Action! language |
| ARC | is for programs written with The Arcade Machine (a game maker)
|
| BAS | is for programs originally released as plain Atari BASIC files (public domain, type-ins from magazines and books...) |
| EXE | is for programs originally released as standard machine language files (public domain, type-ins from magazines and books...) |
| LOGO | is for programs originally released as Atari LOGO files (public domain, type-ins from magazines and books...) |
| PCS | is for programs written with Pinball Construction Set (all are in the database as executables actually) |
| PIL | is for programs originally released as PILOT files (public domain, type-ins from magazines and books...) |
| TUR | is for programs originally released as Turbo BASIC files (public domain, type-ins from magazines and books...). |
|
BAS and
EXE are the abbreviations you'll see most of the time. Note that they are only used for programs which do not have a
determined format. They can be stored on mostly anything. On the other hand, a second category of programs can only be found on specific
physical media:
| T | for tape |
| D | for disk |
| K | for cartridge. |
This is for
all commercial programs sold
originally in this form and other software natively released in the format in question (floppy disk in most cases). A
? may also be used for programs of unknown origin. In other words, we need your help here as we have no real information on this software item...
Color codes
To mark what's in the collection, in what form and what we need, three different colors are used for the above abbreviations:
black,
blue and
red.
Black is for missing items. This means that we need your help in locating a copy of the program so it can be archived.
Blue is for software that we have in cracked or unverified form. For example, if we know a game was sold on tape and we only have an executable (meaning it was pirated), we will mark it as
T. Same for disks that have been unprotected or need to be verified for authenticity (
D) and for any type of file.
Red is for original dumps only: unmodified disks (either unprotected from the start or still with copy protection), tapes, cartridges or any sort of file.
K,
BAS,
EXE... are abbreviations you'll see.
Of course, the aim of the game is to have lots of
red, to get rid of programs in
blue in favor of
red and to avoid having anything in
black!
Detailed program pages
Click on the program of your choice and you'll have most of the information you'll need, sometimes with nice bonuses and hopefully with a download option. Tabs appear on top of the fields so mostly everything is self-explanatory. You shouldn't have problems if you check the additional windows on the page.
Just two quick notes:
- the rarity ratings are for commercial games only (obviously) and estimated on a worldwide basis
- unless stated, all software programs available for download are original versions.
Enjoy your stay and feel free to leave your comments!