I love stories like this. I used to be active on atariage forums back in the day. I even created my own 2600 rom dumper which supports the vast majority of bankswitching schemes that is compatible with both Raspberry Pi and Arduino [1]
NGL I'm kinda bummed I missed out on this one. Makes me want to get back into game preservation game again.
I've been looking for years for a way I could make the tiniest contribution to game preservation. My most viable option seem to be getting a high quality scanner and scanning magazines, manuals, and box art. I've also noticed that while there's a great guide on how to scan material, there's no good consensus or where the files are placed or how they're organized. For example, MobyGames has an excellent assortment of scans. But they're not preservation grade scans. Internet Archive has plenty of scans, but their tagging isn't standardized. It's possible to scan something that's already been done. Perhaps the best option would be to organize all of the places that hold scans and attempt to build a standard.
If you see this, email me (see my profile). Would love to discuss scanning methods. I'm creating a magazine encyclopedia, and I have a lot of past experience with scanning that I would love to use to build up a wiki for preservation techniques.
there is a podcast called the "Ted Dabney Experience" which talks to a lot of game developers of the time from Atari and such. I like the old business stories kind of interesting.
Growing up reading the Tarzan books as well as living in Africa convinced me as a kid that his story was most likely real, with just some fantasy elements perhaps scattered in to make it more interesting.
He was basically my Santa Claus until somewhere around 10 or so.
NGL I'm kinda bummed I missed out on this one. Makes me want to get back into game preservation game again.
1. https://github.com/drzaiusx11/WiringVCS