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ejagfest 2017

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The European Atari Jaguar Festival, “ejagfest” in short, took place on November 4th and 5th of this year in Kleinenbroich (between Düsseldorf and Mönchengladbach), Germany. We celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Atari 2600 this year which has been released in 1977 in the USA.

Find the Highlights of this year below:

  • TXG_MNX:
    • Showed a prototype of the Jaguar “Voice Modem”. The modem was meint for online matches in games like Ultra Vortek, but was never released by Atari.
    • A Panther Dev-Kit. The Panther was a planned but never released 32-Bit Console from Atari. It was cancelled in favor of the Jaguar.
    • Showed his Jaguar Kiosk. Atari used them to show the Jaguar at trade fairs and in shopping malls in the USA. It is very rare to find in Europe.
  • GazTee:
    • He is well known for his Jaguar custom box sets and manuals. This year he brought us new boxes for ST Ports for the Jaguar. For games like Bubble Bobble, R-Type Gauntlet 2 and more.
    • In addition to that, he sold the latest ST-Port games on cartridge, games like “Badlands, Commando, Bionic Commando and Dragon Breed” for the Jaguar.
    • Further he offered the new print of the Orion releases on Cart and CD.
    • He showed us the Co-Jag Arcade Board with the game “Freeze”. Co-Jag is the Arcade hardware which is based on the Jaguar.
    • Albert from Atari Age send him the latest Jaguar releases to show them:”Jeff Minter Classics, Astro Storm, Escape 2042″.
    • And last but not least the latest version of the new home-brew game “Kaboom!” for the Jaguar.
  • Nick Persijn:
    • Many remember him from his visit in 2013 when he sold his very good self made rotary controllers. This year he did this as well.
    • Further he sold the Duranik Native-Demo and the homebrew game Martian Attack from Tursi, AvP Alpha, Redline Racer Beta and all three known prototypes of  “Thea Realm Fighters” for Jaguar on cartridge.
    • In the name of Wave1 Games he offered the game “Frogz64” for the Jaguar on cartridge.
    • For the first time at the show, the “Jag Zombies ejagfest Beta Demo” for the  Jaguar.
    • Further he showed a Vectrex with the Madtronix 3D Imager.
  • DerLuchs (neXGam):
    • Showed and sold some of his homebrew games for Jaguar, Lynx and Vectrex. He got some new releases as well.
    • A new release is the “ejagfest Slideshow” for the Lynx which comes with a poster and a pin.
  • Marco Willig (McWill):
    • Showed again his VGA-Screen hardware mod for the Atari Lynx and the Sega Game Gear. It improves the screen quality a lot. Further it provides an VGA-Out to play Lynx on external VGA displays and TVs.
    • On Sunday he modified systems on side.
    • He showed his FPGA based Handheld prototype.
    • A new project is the FPGA C65.
  • DragonBox Shop:
    • The Dragonbox shop presented the „MIST FPGA“ Computer. This device emulates the most known and unknown 8 and 16 BIT computer and consoles. Everyone was able to try this device out at the show.
    • Further the GPD Win
    • Custodian for the Jaguar inkl. Box and manual.
    • And the Atari 5200 Ultimate SD Card Atarimax
  • Thomas Ilg:
    • The programmer of Anarcho Ride  for the ST showed the Box design for his game.
    • In addition to that, he showed some special ejagfesot level for his ST game “Laser Ball”.
    • Further a raycasting experiment on GFA Basic.
  • Michael Lünzer:
    • Showed a Mattel Electronics exhibition on Sunday . It contained some 1970’s handhelds like “Auto Racing” the first electric handheld at all.
    • Further an Intellivision (version I & II) incl. the system changer (Add On to play Atari games on it).
    • He also showed an selection of current homebrew games and demos for the system.
    • And an Aquarius Computer and the electric drum set “Synsonics Drums”.
  • Atari Shop NL:
    • Sold retro-games and goodies for different retro systems.
    • Further Mr. Atari showed his Atari 800 games like “Lost in Space”.  
    • And his new Atari 2600 game “Give me my Pancake!” in the ejagfest edition.
  • Retrospiel:
    • Showed and sold new homebrew games for different retro-systems.
  • Wolfsoft:
    • The well known retailer and hardware-mod specialist for retro consoles was at ejagfest on Sunday as well. He showed and sold a selection of his goods from his store.
  • ST-Computer Magazine:
    • The german ST-Computer magazine was there as well. They showed and sold their latest issue of the magazine.
    • Further they showed some of the rare issues of the magazine.
  • SainT (RetroHQ):
    • Thanks to SainT. He sends us a Lynx SD card.  Everyone was  able to try this device out at the show. It can play lynx games, homebrews and prototypes via SD card on your Lynx.
  • Gameplan:
    • The publisher is well known for high quality books about retro video games and home computer in germany. They offered some of the books at the ejagfest. Beside the german versions of “Spielkonsolen und Heimcomputer, Volkscomputer, Spielemacher and Joysticks” also the rare english version of the “Encyclopedia of Game Machines”.
  • Zone 3 gaming area:
    • Thanks to “Zone3” we presented you a gaming area with beanbags for gamers and full of retro-gaming highlights.
  • Matthias Domin:
    • He send his latest project, the SD to Skunkboard device to us. This device makes it possible to load programs from SD Card via the Joypad port to an Skunkboard.
  •  OhrBit Youtube-Kanal:
    • The guys from the OhrBit Youtube-Channel where there as well.
    • They prepared an video about the show.
    • And sold some retro-games.
  • Jacek Selanski:
    • The artist showed us his paintings.
    • This paintings are the originals from some Virtual Boy and Lynx homebrew games (like Weltenschlächter, Hanoi, Yastuna ect.).
  • Digital Foundry:
    • John Linneman from the Youtube channel Digital Foundry visited the ejagfest and collected footage for his upcoming Jaguar video.

Further exhibitions:
A transparent Jaguar case was on display. It’s a special edition, which was produced in spring of 2015 with the original Jaguar tooling. This limited run was sold to support the “RVGS” console. The system was later renamed to the “Colecovision Chameleon” and it was planned that they would also use this tooling. After some problems during the production of the console, the project was canceled. What is left, are this nice cases for the Jaguar. For the second time at an Atari event we showed you a HotRod. After Atari discontinued the Jaguar, they sold the tooling to a company who made dental cameras. The HotRod was the flagship product of them.

Competitions:

  • Checkered Flag european championship – 6 player network (Lynx)
  • Mario Kart Double Dash (Gamecube)

This year was the event‘s 17th anniversary and it took place for the 3rd time in the location in Kleinenbroich. Let’s celebrate Atari!

You can find more pictures of this event in the Gallery 2017 and reports in the Press Echo section. We would like to thank our guests, all helpers and our partners and supporters.

The Facebook event can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/ejagfest/events

Source(s): ejagfest.de, Foto John Linneman

ejagfest 2017

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