Conversational French - what's the deal?

[ClubNinja]

Ok, so this is listed in the DP7 as having surfaced in two instances, but there's little more than that. From what I knew, this was supposed to be one of the cassette programs for the monster sized computer thingy. Does this entry mean that there are *cartridges* of this floating around out there now? Any info/pictures? I sure hope not... I was perfectly content just lusting after Congo Bongo and Fathom. Not to mention, I totally hated French in high school ; )

[Daerr Zh]

I assume that you are referring to the Atari language course series. I think that there were three of them...Spanish, French, and German. They wanted a Japanese one, but the frequency doesn't go up that high or something :) Anyway, they were programmed in Basic...and since the Atari recorder could pipe the cassette audio directly to the speaker, there was no need to actually "digitize" the speech. After the program area loads, it just turns the motor on and off at timed intervals to get the speech. The Spanish course I have is pretty easy to use, though about the only thing that I remember these days is "Soy Americano"...which I think means that I'm an American who really likes soy. It doesn't teach you the really interesting words that you hear when driving back across the border at 100mph dodging people who lunge for your backseat or attach themselves to your bumper. It also teaches you proper Spanish punctuation...which is at the beginning AND the ending of sentances. The idea here is that you know it's a question before you struggle with pronouncing the rest of the line...so you know when it's a question or an insult. They advise you to write these symobols upside-down in the front...just in case you change your mind mid-sentance and have to run away after you just accidentally called the resaurant owner's wife a stand-in for a Macy's Day parade float instead of asking for quick directions to the toilet.
But the cassettes were good for a laugh, at least as entertaining as anything on Telemundo (follow the adventures of American Chris Best and Senorita Carmen Gonzolez as they try to get it on "West Side Story"-esque in character-graphic slideshows while neglecting Carmen's grandparents and hiding out in various Mexican locales). /boring lecture

[digitalpress]

It's not described correctly in the Guide - these are NOT cartridges (games that play with the original Keyboard Component), they're CASSETTES. I'm making that change so it will appear on the online addendum.

Also, you need the ORIGINAL Keyboard Component to play - the ECS won't do you any good. We had these on display at Classic Gaming Expo.

Hope this helps!

[icbrkr]

It's not described correctly in the Guide - these are NOT cartridges (games that play with the original Keyboard Component), they're CASSETTES. I'm making that change so it will appear on the online addendum.

Also, you need the ORIGINAL Keyboard Component to play - the ECS won't do you any good. We had these on display at Classic Gaming Expo.

Hope this helps!

It helps me alot! I'm down to under 20 games left for the Intv, and I had marked through this one in my guide with the caption "no way in bloody hell I'm finding this one" 8-) I wasn't even going to count it to consider my collection complete.

Brian

[ClubNinja]

Yup, that helps, thanks!

I can now cross this off as an "I don't care" item ; )

[Arcade Antics]

"Ah would like to go to zee ho-tel."

</Steve Martin>

[Daerr Zh]

* brings Arcade Antics a shoe with cheese on it