Our readers probably know well my interest, even obsession, with both the Atari VCS and licensed games. As Nick and I put the final touches on our forthcoming book on the Atari, I've been doing a lot of final fact confirmation online. In the process of doing so this weekend I fell upon some of the best ideas that, alas, never really were for the system, thanks to the Van Gogh-Gogh's comedy site.

The first: Interactive 8-tracks! We've discussed music-game tie ins before (1, 2), but nothing compares to the concept of a double-ender 8-track/Atari VCS game. The fake ad for Foghat's "Slow Ride" game, at top right, is unreasonably credible, and might even make a decent game. Other suggested 8-track arcade titles include Kansas's "Dust in the Wind" game and Rush's "Geddy Lee's Pancake Canoe," in which "the player is Geddy Lee, riding a pancake canoe down a syrup creek, trying to get the best time while avoiding forks and butter pats downstream."

The second: a wealth of would-be Atari film/tv licenses and adaptations. Some charmers: Free the Falklands (which allows me to tick the "political games" box for this entry), the sitcom tie-in Bosom Buddies, Kramer vs. Kramer ("played in a court rather than on one"), and a game that I might be accused of making, Hands Across America, pictured at right.

A lot of these mocked-up screens might look credible to the untrained eye, but those familiar with the Atari VCS's unique graphics system will immediately see clear traces of fakery. For example, the sprites in Hands Across America have the horizontal striping associated with the VCS's scan line-oriented graphics, while the Union Jack in Free the Falklands would be darn near impossible to create. That said, nothing in the description attributes the Falklands game to the Atari VCS specifically, and the rest of the screens much more closely match the graphical constraints of the machine than many other fakes.

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