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| Atari Star Ad Compute! Magazine January 1982 Pages 6, 7 |
The Atari Star ad is from pages 6 and 7 of the January 1982 issue of Compute! magazine. The Atari Star award was given to the top software entries submitted to the Atari Program Exchange (APX). The same ad appeared on page 143 of the April 1982 issue of Byte magazine.
Fernando Herrera was the winner of the first $25,000 Atari Star Award for his educational software title My First Alphabet. With his winnings, he went on to form the First Star Software company. Antic, The Atari 8-Bit Podcast, did an interview with Mr. Herrera in Episode 13.
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| My First Alphabet |
APX, which was a division of Atari, was like an early mail-order based App Store for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. APX was started by Dale Yocum in early 1981. Sadly, it was later closed down in 1984. During its run, anyone, professionals or hobbyist, could submit user-written programs to APX for evaluation. If accepted, the software would appear in future quarterly catalogs. APX products included computer games, programming languages, educational packages, music programs, productivity applications, books and even some hardware. Software authors would receive royalties, Atari products and possibly other cash and prize awards.
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| Caverns Of Mars |
Some best selling APX titles such as Atari software professional Chris Crawford's seminal wargame, Eastern Front (1941) and teen-aged hobbyist Greg Christensen's Caverns of Mars later went on to be manufactured as cartridges and included in the main Atari catalog. Other popular titles from APX included the game Dandy by John Palevich which inspired the classic ATARI arcade hit Gauntlet and cops and robbers game GETAWAY! by Mark Reid. A new map was developed in 2016 for GETAWAY!. ANTIC, The Atari 8-Bit Podcast interviewed John Palevich in the Interview 164 Episode.
The April 1983 issue of Antic magazine has a one page article on page 30 covering the 1982 Atari Star Winner, Typo Attack by David Buehler. It also covers the Atari Star Award and other winners from 1982. Typo Attack is another one of those APX titles that was later licensed by Atari and included in the main Atari catalog.
Most, if not all of APX's information, catalogs, software and manuals are available online.
--Bill
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