As I remember, Atmega 128 has 0.8 mm pitch. This pitch can be relatively easy soldered by hand with conventional soldering iron. The thing is, liquid flux is required to prevent bridges. Put some flux on PCB and also wet chip before soldering. I personally use old colophony-alchohol mixture, it works very well. I also use soldering iron with flattened screwdriver-like tip (it is really destructive to the tip and iron, but it is not the case when it costs 3 $). After installing and positioning chip at the PCB, hold it when soldering. I personally use tweezers.
Also solediring something useless with same pitch before atmega will help.
There are pictures of my ARM PCB somewhere here. 0.5mm pitch on poorly - made DIY PCB
, but works fine.