These videos were all in an older AVI format that didn’t play nicely on my Mac, at least using QuickTime. They did work with VLC. I’m sure all of these are already on YouTube somewhere, but I decided to convert them to mp4 with ffmpeg and post them here in one place for your enjoyment.

These ads are all pretty cheesy and some even have cringy jingles. I hope you enjoy these low-resolution ads from the past!

Atari 2600 “amazing” Graphics

🎶The fun is back, oh Yessiree, it’s the 2600 from A-tar-e! 🎶

Dear Atari Anonymous

Only Atari

Atlantis from Imagic

Chopper Command by Activision

Demon Attack from Imagic

E.T., the Extra Terrestrial

Ice Hockey by Activision

Mario, where are you?

Megamania by Activision

Woman of the Year: Ms. Pac-Man

Pitfall! by Activision

Billy Martin touts RealSports Baseball

Vanguard

Watch out, Yar

What Atari 2600 ads do you remember?

Leave a comment

Enjoy this article by Sung J. Woo. It may focus on the Commodore 64, but I think it applies to most of us that were around in the 80s. — Paul

(If you prefer, you can also listen to the audio version.)

The slogan was on the back page of Compute!, a magazine I often bought from the video game store of the strip mall where my parents operated a gift shop. The advert displayed a trio of competing personal computers on the top half of the page, the Apple IIe, the Tandy TRS-80 III, and the IBM PC, the cost of each machine near a thousand dollars or well above it. The bottom half starred a family of three staring at a computer monitor showing the planet Saturn: mother on the left, father on the right, and the son in the middle with his fingers over the brownie-brown keyboard. “The Commodore 64. Under $600,” the final lines of the ad read. “You can’t buy a better computer at twice the price.”

I sighed, heavily. Six hundred was cheaper than a grand, but it was still six hundred. As a twelve-year-old boy who got paid five bucks a day for helping out the family business, it might as well have been a million dollars.

A month later, I bought the October 1983 issue. Same exact ad on the back, except one enormous difference: “The Commodore 64. Under $300.” Two months later, it dropped under two hundred, an eye-catching $199, at our neighborhood Toys R Us, just in time for Christmas.

My family and I did not celebrate Christmas traditionally, as we were entirely too busy. For many retailers, Christmas is where the majority of sales happen for the entire year, and we were no exception. The whole month was crazy, but in a good way – at the end of the holiday season, my father would stack the bills on the living room coffee table, and it was like something out of a movie, literal pillars of paper currency. If there was any hope of having my own hands hover over a computer keyboard, this was the moment to seize, right after the new year began, before the household belt tightened again.

Did I ever seize the hell out of it! The excuse was that I had moved up to middle school, sixth grade, and a computer would enhance my future education. Did my parents buy my story? Possibly, because they bought the computer, plus the Datasette for another seventy dollars. It didn’t take long for my ruse to be exposed, when weeks later, I spent my life savings and forked over thirty dollars for Pooyan, a video game where I played an arrow-slinging mother pig who shot down wolves floating down from the sky on balloons. When my dad saw me unplug the joystick from my Atari 2600 and plug it into my Commodore, he knew he’d been had.

Except this wasn’t true at all. This 8-bit computer with 64 kilobytes of random access memory – to give you an idea how microscopic that is in our now very modern times, my Google Pixel smartphone has a quarter of a million times more space in its silicon brain. This breadbin-shaped plastic box, this fully-functional personal computer that a lower middle class family like ours could afford – if my father were still alive, I’d tell him that the Commodore 64 he and my mother bought for me more than forty years ago has given me a life worth living.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, but holding down a job that pays the bills is as essential as essential can get, and I wouldn’t be a Lead Application Developer for a Fortune 500 company if I hadn’t grasped the rudiments of computing from my C64, and not in the way most people might imagine. I never learned beyond the basics of BASIC, the programming language that came with the computer. Instead, what made me the coder that I am today are the pirated games I played. These games didn’t come with any instructions, so figuring out how to play them was often a bigger challenge than the game itself. That tenacious act of discovery, of trying and failing and eventually succeeding, over and over again, would become my full-cycle programming bedrock. Who would’ve thought unearthing all the keystrokes for Micro-League Baseball would one day lead to developing RESTful web services?

And speaking of baseball, there’s a line about sports in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City that speaks to another enormous part the C64 played in my youth:

More and more you realize that sports trivia is crucial to male camaraderie. You keenly feel your ignorance. You are locked out of the largest fraternity in the country.

Because the only sport my father enjoyed was golf, I had no help in joining this vast fraternal organization, and even though I watched my New York Mets as much as I could, I didn’t learn the ins and outs of the American pastime until I mastered Hardball! on my computer. Hit and run, curveball versus screwball, the double switch – all the intricacies became obvious when I was throwing and hitting the ball. The reason why I’m able to follow all the popular sports as an adult is due to these sports titles – 4^th and Inches, GBA Championship Basketball, Powerplay Hockey, On-Court Tennis. The nickel defense, traveling, icing, the backhand slice: If I was familiar with these terms by watching, I learn them for good by doing on the C64.

When my aunt who lived in Austria visited us with her husband Josef a year later, we all exchanged hellos with him but not much more, as he could speak neither Korean nor English that well. But then his eyes locked onto my Commodore on the desk next to the couch. He pointed to it and smiled, I pulled over a chair from the dining room, and we spent the next couple of hours in front of the computer we both adored, with joysticks in hand and no need for language. Not long after their visit ended, I received a cardboard envelope in the mail; Josef sent me his favorite games on 5 ¼” floppy disks. It was the first piece of international mail I’d receive.

The C64 expanded my world, not only through my aunt’s Austrian husband but through the local Bulletin Board System (BBS), once I got my hands on the 1660 Modem, connecting our home telephone line to message boards and online chatting. Its speed topped out at 300 baud – roughly 30 characters per second. That’s slow enough that a person could read the words as they ran on the screen, ridiculous to even imagine today, and yet it opened me to stimulating conversations and real people. That’s probably the biggest difference between the online of today versus then, that it was still a local affair, as one only rang BBSes that did not incur outrageous long-distance charges. I was invited to parties where I met my fellow dialers; I attended users group meetings with a guy I met online who became a friend and co-worker at the computer store I’d eventually work at during high school.

And when I wasn’t working or hanging out with friends, I was writing. Spurred on by reading the rich imaginations of Stephen King and Douglas Adams, I started out by writing short stories on the Paperclip word processor. When I graduated to the novel, which I attempted my senior year, I literally came to the end of the line; at some point, there was no more space in the memory of the word processor, so I had to save to disk and start a new document to continue. Eventually, I’d fill two full disks for my first book. The title page read:

Between the Stitches

A Novel

By: Sung Joon Woo

4/14/90

To

5/27/90

When I printed out the document on my dot-matrix printer, which sounded more like a shop tool than a computer peripheral, it was just over 200 double-spaced pages. Closer to a novella than a novel in length, but boy, did it have heft, at least in the physical sense! This is how it ended:

And he slowly pulled on the knob, quietly shutting the door behind him as he walked out into the new world.

A touch melodramatic? Of course, as it sprung from a fertile and febrile teenage mind. But then again, this was also a time when Electronic Arts, the nascent computer gaming company not yet the titan it would eventually become, featured a print ad that asked, “Can a computer make you cry?”

Despite my devotion to the machine, I know I didn’t cry when I let go of my Commodore, because I don’t even remember how or when I got rid of it, decades ago, probably through the local newspaper classifieds. But in 2018, I walked by a retro computer shop and bought the 1541 disk drive, because I kept the floppy disks that contained my early writing. I was able to transfer that ancient data to my PC, thanks to a custom circuit board some genius created, but the thing I remember most was when I flipped on the 1541’s power switch. The sound of the motor kicking up was so instantly familiar that it brought a lump to my throat. More than the sound, I felt the slight stirring of air by my fingertips, a wondrous marriage of analog and digital for my senses.

This is why when an enterprising YouTuber Peri Fractic (real name a much more ordinary Christian Simpson) managed to re-establish the Commodore International Corporation last year, buying up all the necessary trademarks and patents to exactly replicate the old machine with newer technology, I plunked down my cash and bided my time by watching the monthly update videos of manufacture and assembly. Peri promised it would beat Christmas, and he was good on his word, the package arriving with a week to spare. I couldn’t wait to feel my first computer again.

The Commodore 64 Ultimate now sits in my guest bedroom, on the floor, which was where my initial computing experience occurred. Back then it was connected to our television and not an LCD monitor our guests use to stream Netflix, but the vantage point is no different. As a boy, I could spend untold hours in that position, craning my neck to stare at the screen; as a man in his sixth decade, I’ll need to relocate it to a more ergonomic location if I want to keep using it.

Will I? I don’t know. What I do know is that right now, it’s pure joy just to see it there, sitting on the rug, waiting for me to turn it on.

© 2026 Sung J. Woo

Sung J. Woo writes at From Nothing to Something.

You might also enjoy:

In fact, their original slogan was “Power without the Price” and it truly was a great slogan that still resonates today. However, a cool slogan can’t sell computers all by itself.

In its previous incarnation, Atari was known for having a lavish advertising budget. However, this new Atari was a much smaller and leaner company. Lavish advertising was not in the cards.

For the most part, Atari seemed to feel that word of mouth about the ST’s incredible value would help sell them. Although there are many companies that get by without any significant advertising today (Tesla is a notable example), I don’t think that was nearly as common in the 80s.

This is not to say that they did not do any advertising. They absolutely ran print ads in many computer magazines. Let’s look at a few of them.

Considering it is July, let’s start with this patriotic ad for the Atari ST. This is the first Atari ST ad I ever saw and it certainly has a theme!

This ad touts “the new” Atari, the “Power without the Price slogan and the low $799 (about $2500 in 2026) price of the 520ST (with a monochrome monitor and single-side floppy). It’s hard to overstate how amazing that price was in the summer of 1985.

The next ad that I saw in several places really focused in on the price, pointing out how much more expensive other computers cost.

That ad keeps the slogan, but drops “the new” part. It’s now just Atari. That is a pretty compelling table, but it is showing retail prices for the IBM PC, Macintosh and Amiga. It is fun that the Amiga is shown just as an outline, implying that it was not yet readily available.

This next Atari 1040ST ad has a great headline, “Introducing technology so advanced, it’s affordable”. It’s a little wordy, but I like it.

As an aside, I really miss this style of advertising with lots of copy text describing the produce. Ads today have almost no details. It’s all vibes and hype.

This ad is a bit different. Rather than highlighting the computers, it focuses on the 3rd party software market, which is probably more important. After all, a computer is not all that useful to regular people if there’s no good software for it.

This is probably my favorite ad and one I had a really hard time finding. This photo is actually from an eBay auction listing I found.

This two pay ad for the 1040ST proclaims “It’s like getting the power and speed of a Ferrari for the price of a Ford.” I love the car comparison. It has another table comparing specs and pricing to the newly released 1040ST with It’s 1MB of RAM and double-sided floppy.

I don’t recall many big full-color ST ads after this. There were a few here and there, but for the most part, Atari kept things more low-key, such as with these low-budget quarter-page ads for the 1040ST.

What were some of your favorite Atari ST ads that you remember seeing?

Leave a comment

I recently wrote My First Atari ST and reader Mark Miller chimed in with his own Atari story in a comment to that article, which was both long and interesting. With his permission it is now a main article here on Goto 10 for all to enjoy. Check out Mark’s Tekkie blog for more of his writings. — Paul

Subscribe now

Oh man, memories!

I got my 130XE in 1988 just before going off to college, with 1050 disk drive, and an ICD P:R: Connection and Panasonic dot matrix printer. I used it for writing most of my school papers, using AtariWriter Plus, and it did that well enough for my professors. I didn’t use the computer itself for doing my programming assignments. As you saw, most everyone else who had a computer had 16-bit PCs or Macs. I knew several other people who used other computers; a few had 8-bits, like Ataris, Commodore 128, but mostly upgraded Apple IIs (to turn them into IIGS equivalents). The guys I knew with Ataris just used them to play games. The other outliers had Atari STs and Amigas. Using an 8-bit didn’t get much respect, but I didn’t really care. It felt like a challenge.

I was already some ways into my Pascal class. We were running a compiler on the campus supercomputer, a CDC Cyber. We shared processor time with atmospheric researchers who were running models on it. I knew about a full-screen editor we could run on the Cyber, called FSE, that made writing our Pascal code easier, but it used function keys on lab terminals for editor functions. I went to freshman orientation, and learned from our student advisor that there was a compatible terminal program we could get from the campus IT department that would allow one to run FSE from our computers at home, called Kermit. It only ran on PCs and Macs. I asked if there was a version for my Atari, and got a curt “No,” with a bit of a chuckle. Still, this did not deter me. It finally occurred to me one day that those function keys must be sending character codes to the Cyber, but I just didn’t know what they were. I’d bought a terminal program called Chameleon, and my roommate showed me how to use ftp on Unix, and how to download binaries from the Unix systems to my computer. (I used his Unix account, since I didn’t have one yet.) I’d learned about the Atari Archive at the University of Michigan, and (IIRC) found an 80-column VT-100 emulator there that worked pretty nicely with no 80-column card, called VT10Squared. It did soft emulation in Graphics mode 8. So, one day, I tried logging in to the Cyber with this VT-100 emulator, and made sure to set the emulator’s character bit width to 8 bits, no parity. As I remember, this VT-100 emulator worked flawlessly, which helped a lot. I fired up FSE on a scratch file, and started trying control codes, and using Escape with regular characters and control codes, and I was able to get most of the features to work! I wrote down the codes that worked, and started using it from my dorm room. This was one of my proudest achievements at school! :)

I knew about Pascal compilers for the Atari, and I recall kicking the tires of the PD ones after I’d completed my Pascal class. I tried porting one of my assignments to them, and it didn’t go well. About ten years ago, I heard about Kyan Pascal for the Atari, gave it a try with the last Pascal assignment from that class, and it ran perfectly! So, Kyan was quite capable. Funny thing. As I looked at the Kyan setup, it reminded me a lot of a Pascal compiler I saw one of my later roommates had on his Apple IIGS. As I remember, he wrote his Pascal assignments with it, and it worked out fine. Many years ago, I learned that Apple had bought Kyan Pascal, and shipped its compiler as standard on the IIGS.

While I was still in school, I remembered back to when I heard about C compilers for 8-bit computers, such as Lattice C for the Apple II. I got curious if there were any for the Atari. I read up on the commercial ones, but their features were pretty limited. I’d learned C at school, and had gotten used to the K&R feature set. However, once again, going back to the Atari Archive, I managed to find a PD C compiler called CC8, written by someone who wanted to make improvements on the PD Ace C compiler. I was impressed with CC8’s features. It wasn’t a complete implementation, but it wasn’t bad. To use it, you had to set up Ace C on a disk, and just replace its compiler with CC8. I downloaded Textpro as my text editor. There were so many files involved, I felt like I needed subdirectories. So, I downloaded a copy of MyDOS, and used it to set up a disk for this compiler. I set it up to autoload the RAMdisk with both the compiler and the text editor, so these would load fast. I just barely got everything to fit on one enhanced-density disk, which was important, since I only had one disk drive! I had a little room left for saving source code, and generating object files, and executables.

One summer, I decided to try to port all of my Data Structures assignments from Pascal to C, using CC8, just to see if it could do it. I quickly realized the only way I could get this to work was to write my own heap manager, since no 8-bit C compiler had one. I decided to set my heap up in Page 6, just 256 bytes! Nevertheless, *all* of my assignments worked! No exceptions, and in 256 bytes of heap! The only major difference I had to account for was that Ataris didn’t have {}’s. So, every C compiler used an alternate syntax for blocks, $( to start a block, and $) to end it. I knew right away this meant I couldn’t use it for schoolwork, but I didn’t care. I was just tickled that my little computer could do what I thought only worked on the powerful campus computers!

I wrote about this compiler, and included complete source code for my heap manager, in a two-part article for Atari Classics Magazine. I think it was called “Advanced C Programming on the Atari 8-bit.”

An odd thing about 8-bit C compilers was none of them generated native machine code. They all generated what they called “p-code,” which ran in a VM, or runtime. I learned many years ago about the history of this, and it dates back to Intel 8080 computers, where a compiler called Small C was written. All of the 8-bit compilers were derived from this, and generated Intel 8080 machine code, which they called “p-code.” The VM we ran was essentially an 8080 emulator. This made compiled code shareable, but also made it so that compiled code didn’t compete with assembly for performance. I tried a speed comparison, and C code from my compiler ran noticeably faster than an equivalent on Atari Basic, but the difference wasn’t dramatic.

I got a Mega STe in 1992 from a computer retailer that was right near my college campus, and used it for my last year of school. I still have the invoice for it somewhere. I think it cost $1,100-1,200 ($2,600-$2,900 today). I tried something I heard from a friend who was going to a different university. I took out a student loan. He was able to take it as cash to buy his Mac SE-30. I tried to do the same thing, and...didn’t get cash. The university required that it be put toward either tuition or room and board, or both. I didn’t find this out until the loan came through. So, I used it for the semester. I worked it out with my grandparents who were largely funding my college costs. I promised I’d pay back the loan, but I wanted to use the money they meant for tuition for that semester for the computer. It took some explaining, but they agreed.

Even though I probably could’ve compiled code for school assignments on it, I didn’t. I didn’t even have a C compiler for it at the time, as I recall. I used ANSITerm for accessing my Unix accounts. I got around to porting some of my semester projects to my ST after I graduated, which didn’t require much in the way of code changes.

For starters, the 800XL was the family computer and in a central room. Although I certainly used it the most, I did no…

Read more

Read more

In addition to their wonderful magazines, Compute! also published books. The Compute! books for the Atari 8-bit series, such as Mapping the Atari and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Books of Atari, are highly regarded.

Compute!’s first Atari ST book was Compute!’s ST Programmer’s Guide. Released in 1986, it was not highly regarded. It only covers BASIC and Logo with a rudimentary overview of GEM and TOS. ST information was scarce at the time, so it was probably better than nothing, but I think most people stuck with the Abacus books that were also available.

Computes St Programmers Guide

19.1MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

However, in 1987 Compute! released their Atari ST Technical Reference Guide series, which consisted of three books covering VDI, AES and TOS. Written by Sheldon Leemon, who was relatively well-known in the Commodore and Atari world at the time, these books were excellent and a tremendous improvement over the Abacus ST reference books.

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers. For a taste of Goto 10, check out these free articles at the Goto 10 web site.

Subscribe now

Read more

Writing programs and saving them on cassette was an exercise in patience that …

Read more

You control “Bounty Bob” as he climbs ladders and walks on the framework. Use the special equipment like the transporters, the lift, and the cannon to help Bob claim the mine. Collect the various possessions left by previous explorers, but watch out for mutant organisms that lurk everywhere and try to waste you!

Read more

I was very fond of this Mega STE and missed it so much that I purchased another one in April 2023, which now sits behind me in my office.

I used my original Mega ST…

Read more

As you might guess, most of my retro computers are Atari-related. I’ll try to list them in the order I acquired them. Let’s dive in!

Atari 800XL

I was given this system by my Dad. It’s not the same 800XL that we had when I was a kid, but it serves the same purpose. This one is actually a later model that has Atari BASIC rev. C. This computer rekindled my love for retro computing and started me on the path that eventually led to the creation of Goto 10.

I’m very fond of my time with our 800XL from about 1985 to 1988. I used to it learn how to program, using BASIC and Pascal, wrote many papers on it in high school and played many great games.

Read more

The first thing to notice if you’ve never…

Read more

Cartridges have the advantage of being super-easy to use, essentially turning the computer into a console for game cartridges. But cartridges could also be used for programming languages and productivity software.

Because the cartridge contained the software on ROM, it could be used with computers that didn’t have much RAM or by people that didn’t yet own any peripherals, such as a tape drive or disk drive.

Out of all the computers that used cartridges, the Atari 8-bit computers probably had the most cartridges available for it. My Atari 8-bit cartridge collection keeps growing these past few years and a recent bundle purchase has added even more!

Let’s look at some of the new carts I’ve acquired, with a little commentary thrown in for good measure.

I now have a fairly large number of duplicate carts, which are now listed for sale on the Goto 10 store ($5 each), if you’re interested in filling out your collection.

Read more

It is obviously not in the best of shape and didn’t even co…

Read more

Compute! published many books for the Atari 8-bit computers and I’ve written about their first two already:

The other Compute! book I own is Compute!’s First Book of Atari Graphics. I don’t have Compute!’s Third Book of Atari, the Second Book of Atari Graphics or Compute!’s Atari Collection Volume 1.

But for this article, let’s dig into Mapping the Atari.

Read more

Pay special attention to the pricing. Although the prices of these computers all look reasonable through today’s eyes, when you factor in inflation, they were all incredibly expensive, much more so than most com…

Read more

Read on to learn how this program caused some controversy in the Atari computer world and to watch a video of it in action.

Read more

Some computers had a command-line, such as those that used CP/M or DOS. Others would use BASIC as the interface, such as the Commodore 64 or Apple II. Wi…

Read more

The paddle controls were a somewhat interesting controller. The style first became popular with Pong and the original Atari VCS included joystick and paddle controllers.

You spin these dials to move something on the screen, the “paddle” in the case of Pong. The controllers were not free-spinning; they would stop when they reached their max left and right positions.

Atari did make free-spinning paddles for the Indy 500 game. I think that might be the only game that use them.

Unfortunately, the paddle controllers were not always reliable. The small potentiometer that they used would wear out quickly resulting in “jitters” that would cause the item on the screen that was being controlled to jump around on the screen slightly.

One particular oddity is that two paddle controllers connected to a single control port on the 2600. That meant you could have up to four players for some games!

Now, on to the games.

Read more

I don’t usually write about such recent topics1, but 25 years is a long time and Mac OS X was a Big Deal. It was a big deal to me personally because I got my first Mac in 2001 shortly after the release of Mac OS X. It also was an even bigger deal for…

Read more