ANTIC Interview 90 - Glenn the 5200 Man

Glenn The 5200 Man

Glenn Botts is better known to Atari 8-bit users as "Glenn The 5200 Man.” Glenn was perhaps the most widely-known Atari software cracker, because he had a unique specialty. Most pirates removed copy protection from software, making it so it was copyable and able to be shared for free. Glenn’s skill was in taking games that were developed for the Atari 5200 game system, and converting them so they would run on the Atari 8-bit computers.

Many of the games created for the Atari 5200 were not released for the computers, so Glenn’s system conversion cracking had the unique effect of creating games for the Atari computers that otherwise would not have existed.

The Atari 5200 was very similar in architecture to the Atari computers, but not 100% compatible — for one thing, the 5200 carts physically didn’t fit into the Atari computers. Also, the joysticks were very different, with the 5200 using analog joysticks and the computers using digital joysticks.

This is the first time that Glenn’s identity has been revealed to the general public.

This interview took place September 11, 2015.

Teaser quote:

“It was so easy that it actually was very annoying that Atari themselves never would release these games on the 800.”

Links:

Glenn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Amiga_4000

Glenn on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Amiga4000