NolanB

The early art was from a guy named George Faraco. Later George Opperman (who created the Fuji Logo) became the look and taste of Atari. He really had a great eye and none of us would second guess his genius.

Cant talk about things in too much detail but think about board games and then put an I pad in the middle of the table and everyone around the table has an Iphone that is connected to the iPad through bluetooth or Wifi. It becomes the universal board game videogame delivery platform.

Wow, I didn't know that Pong's sounds came from the video circuits. There's that theory that constraints make for great art, because we are forced to move beyond what's easy and truly engage creatively in what we're doing. Apparently the audio constraints of those early years did just that! Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I thought of another interesting anecdote. I told Al to use the sound circuitry from Computer space to simulate a crowd clapping. (you do that by creating noise and then shaping the envelope of the sound wave) Al though it was too much trouble and started poking around on the board till he got the right sounds. Genus. Remember the prime clock frequency was 3.58Mhz and the counters counted down for horizontal and vertical sync. So any frequency that is a binary divisor of that number is available down to 60 hz which is frame rate.

the company continues to have installations and we just signed a big deal in China. This could lead to over 100 units in a few years. As the economy recovers I expect other franchise customers to emerge.

Thanks for the appreciation of Video Music it was the only product on my watch that was not profitable. I think we sold less than 100 at full price. Too far ahead of the curve. the initial DNA of the company was coin op. We found that Music and sound if well done increased earnings drastically. The ability to make good sounds with the technology at the time was expensive and less than satisfying in many cases. Pong for example just used signals that were already available from the video drivers. Nolan

I fired one up about a year ago. It depends on who I am with what cart I use. I keep coming back to the early favorites like tank and breakout. Later titles are in my collection but seldom used. Nolan

After my time and I have no Clue.

We plan to give you guys some previews but not for a few months. We have to bake this cake for a while.

It is true. Remember that Atari at the time did not have the cash to fully exploit the 2600. We ended up selling to Warner so we could finance the inventory. We were growing very quickly and were always short on cash. (am I sorry for that mistake ---you bet.)

I hope to start attending as may of the Atari fan groups as possible. My schedule is not set and we have to make sure that Marty is disarmed.

I programmed several games but the one that played the best and was sent around the country was Fox and geese. In the game the fox could move in any direction at twice the speed of the geese there was only one fox. The geese could move up to the right or the left. If a goose was alone the fox could eat it. If there were two geese adjacent he could not. The object was for the fox to either eat all the geese or escape past them. The geese won if they trapped the fox against the upper part of the screen. The number of geese was variable. 3 geese almost always lost 7 geese always won, Nolan