The History of Atari Inc.

[AtariVCS101]

Atari Inc. History

 

Atari Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. They first made an arcade coin-op version of the 1966 game SpaceWar! They then made other games such as the famous game Pong.

In 1977 they released the Atari 2600, which was known as the Atari VCS at the time. It was known as the "Heavy Sixer" because it had six switches and it was quite heavy. It was packaged with the game program cartridge Combat, the game manual for Combat, 2 joystick controllers, a pair of paddle controllers, and the onwer's manual. Production had started in Sunnyvale, California, but production was later moved Hong Kong. They released a revision of the Heavy Sixer called the "Light Sixer" because it was somewhat lighter than the 1977 original. In 1980 they made yet another revision to the 2600 that had only 4 switches on the front. The difficulty switches were the same, but were instead made small black switches on the back alongside the channel switch. Sears had been given permission at the time to sell the 2600 consoles and games, but like they did with a lot of brands, they renamed the 2600 to "Sears Tele-Games", and they even renamed a couple of games from Atari too. The last revision (besides the 2600 Jr.) was the all black "Darth Vader" model. It was the same as the 4-switch except that it was all black. The 2600 Jr. was released as the last revision to the 2600. It was smaller and had a rainbow stripe on the middle of it. It could use all 2600 cartridges too.

Atari had made the Atari 5200 soon after the 2600 had came to an end in its life. The 5200 had upgraded quallities from the 2600. The 5200 was meant to compete with the Intellivision. Soon after the 5200 the 7800 was released. The 7800 was backwards compatible with the 2600. By the 1990s the handheld Lynx had been released from Atari. Soon after the Lynx was released the Jaguar was released with 64-bit graphics. Atari had promised disk games, so they released a CD add-on the the Jaguar. In total there were 13 disk games for the Jaguar. Infogrames currently owns the rights to Atari games. The Atari Flashback consoles have been released with a menu of games on them.

The Atari Homebrew community still makes games today. The games range from Pacman 4k to Duck Attack to Halo 2600. Many developers love making games today because of 2 main reasons. The first is that many developers are adults that played Atari games in the childhood. The second is that sometimes they can get their games mass-produced and sold in certain places.

Many Atari employees weren't credited in games they made, so they made their own game companies. Imagic was formed from 9 disencanted former Atari employees. Activision was formed from 4 former Atari employees too. On Atari employee was told that he was no more important than the person who puts the cartridge in the box.

And that is the history of Atari Inc. I hope it was very helpful to anyone's questions about Atari Inc.

Edited April 28, 2013 by AtariVCS101

[fiddlepaddle]

Was this a report you wrote for school? It appears to be an overview of the history of Atari, and touches on the most significant game products produced.

[AtariVCS101]

No. I just wrote it for fun.

[robertski]

Hey , the guy is just trying to bring his overall posts count up.. He's at 14 now.. give the guy a break..

I like the video on Atari history I saw on Youtube, much more information there. Watch the one that is all

about Imagic. Each programmer gets a share of the profits. Atlantis sold 740,000 units so the

programmer made a 250,000 bonus or something like that. Cool huh.

[AtariVCS101]

Yes my man!

[fiddlepaddle]

Hey , the guy is just trying to bring his overall posts count up.. He's at 14 now.. give the guy a break..

(?!?)

 

There was no criticism in my response, only an innocent question to provide context for the best way to add my own input. It just looked like a school report to me. After all, this IS a discussion forum, and I would expect anyone writing on this topic would be interested in more detail and/or clarification where appropriate.

 

No. I just wrote it for fun.

Good for you. Just a note, the 2600 was produced through 1992 and the 5200 was introduced a full decade before that, quite a long time before the end of the 2600's life.

[AtariVCS101]

(?!?)

 

There was no criticism in my response, only an innocent question to provide context for the best way to add my own input. It just looked like a school report to me. After all, this IS a discussion forum, and I would expect anyone writing on this topic would be interested in more detail and/or clarification where appropriate.

 

 

Good for you. Just a note, the 2600 was produced through 1992 and the 5200 was introduced a full decade before that, quite a long time before the end of the 2600's life.

Thanks for telling me that!

[Matthew]

The first Atari was made in Germany, the allies stole it in 1945.

 

After almost 30 years of reverse engineering efforts, the Americans finally figured out how to reproduce it.

 

True story.

[high voltage]

The first Atari was made in Germany, the allies stole it in 1945.

 

After almost 30 years of reverse engineering efforts, the Americans finally figured out how to reproduce it.

 

True story.

 

So true:

Ralph H. Baer (born March 8, 1922) is a German-born American video game pioneer, inventor, engineer, known as "The Father of Video Games", who is noted for his many contributions to games and the video game industry.

[BSA Starfire]

The first Atari was made in Germany, the allies stole it in 1945.

 

After almost 30 years of reverse engineering efforts, the Americans finally figured out how to reproduce it.

 

True story.

 

I do remember reading somewhere that the original 2600 casings took some cues from German WWII industrial design. Is there any real basis for this or just another of those urban myths the internet is so good at propagating?

[AtariVCS101]

I do remember reading somewhere that the original 2600 casings took some cues from German WWII industrial design. Is there any real basis for this or just another of those urban myths the internet is so good at propagating?

I've never heard that story. Where did you read that?

[BSA Starfire]

I've never heard that story. Where did you read that?

 

Hi, finally found where I had read that. It's on page 12 of the Atari Book - 40th anniversary special published by Imagine Publishing.

Anyone have any further info on this?

 

Best,

Chris

[Andromeda Stardust]

Was this a report you wrote for school? It appears to be an overview of the history of Atari, and touches on the most significant game products produced.

I hope not. If he posts it online prior to submitting it for grade, then turnitin.com might flag it as plagiarism if it finds a copy of it anywhere in Google cache. If you're gonna post papers and student projects online, then wait until after you receive a grade for the class. After that, feel free to post away and let some other chum get flogged for copying it!

 

Nice report either way. I clicked the link thinking it would be a preview for the next Atari book. The first one "Business is Fun" was thick and heavy but actually a pretty good read. And there's another one in the works. I recommend it if you're interested in Atari history, which it seems you are.

[Sprybug]

Who needs Wikipedia.

[sqoon]

I give that report an A+. I like how you correctly noted that 5200 was intended to compete with Intellivision, not Colecovision as has been reported by some.