Retro Rogue

Atari Inc. cancelling the 5200 earlier that year and then going under in July had something to do with that.

I was at those types before. A cockroach crawled out of my cart when I was cleaning it back at home. Another time some mutant yellow spider with long spindly legs crawled out of some hardware.

Never mind that the original 2008 article was completely wrong anyways. The "Atari" they were buying at the time had nothing to do with the "original pioneer" nor was it "Atari," nor was it in any way an owner of the brand name and IP. Very simply put: In the late 90s, Infogrames bought controlling interest in GT Interactive. If then forced GT Interactive to rename itself to Infogrames NA, Inc. Infogrames then bought out Hasbro Interactive, which included the Atari name and IP. It then renamed Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames Interactive. Shortly after that, it renamed Infogrames Interactive to Atari Interactive and forced Infogrames NA, Inc. to rename itself to Atari Inc. Worse than that, it forced GT/Infogrames NA/Atari Inc. to license the Atari name and IP as well from Atari Interactive as part of the renaming and branding. Then Infogrames started cutting down it's own publishing operations to focus on having GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. do them. Then GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. started having it's major financial problems, so Infogrames bought out the rest of the company. That's when Wilson became head of GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. and then the ex -Sony people were brought in to run Infogrames. They in turn started up Infogrames' publishing operations again, taking back more of the operational responsibilities it had shifted over to GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. Then the Sony guys left, and Jim was promoted to head Infogrames as well. So now he was running both Infogrames and GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. Then they buy out Cryptic, and Jim moves Infogrames' operations to Los Angeles to be closer, and then entirely guts the staff that was left at GT/Info NA/Atari INc. to move them over to Infogrames in Los Angeles (leaving a few people in an office as a shell for GT/Info NA/Atari Inc.) He then renames Infogrames to Atari SA. Then even later he starts merging the few people running the shell GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. with the people running Atari Interactive. Yes, Atari Inc. and Atari Interactive are run by the same few people sitting in a small section of cubes in rented office space in New York. Then Infogrames/Atari SA starts having the financial problems, sells off Cryptic and other assets, and then comes to the realization it can't pay back it's creditors. So Jim has all three entities (really all just him) declare bankruptcy, and has that cockamamy press release done last January to cause more confusion by stating GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. is going bankrupt and it's all "their" (Infogrames/Atari SA) fault. If they (Atari Inc.) could just separate, they'd be ok. Of course, he's just pointing the finger at himself like a split personality because he RUNS BOTH COMPANIES - if you can call GT/Info NA/Atari Inc. a company anymore. Mix in further lies about this "Atari Inc." being the same one that was around all those years ago, and you create the further illusion that "Atari" has been around as a company all these years and could keep going if they could just find someone to save them. Just disgusting on all counts, and I can't believe people are actually still falling for it.

Actually, Mike retired when he left Atari Corp. SEGA went and asked him to come out of retirement. That's something we'll be covering in greater detail in the beginning of the second book, which is actually a long told myth. Jack didn't fire all those people, he actually hired people. The people weren't part of the deal, they were still all Warner employees (which is also why anyone let go received their last checks from Warner, same with anyone who had severance packages). Jack got the facilities, IP, and brand name and then had to review and hire people over. The poor way it was coordinated by Warner though, the way it was essentially turnkey for the facilities, and how fast everything happened in general, the bulk of the people had no idea they weren't part of the new Atari Corp. - which was where the perception that Jack was firing all these people came from. The day of the sale, you basically immediately had two companies - Atari Games, Inc. (the renamed Atari Inc.) and Atari Corporation. Atari Games, Inc. (not to be confused with the spin-off of Atari Games, Corp. formed that January) consisted of all the original Atari Inc. management (including James Morgan for a very brief time, since he took a "vacation" and never came back), and operations and divisions that didn't go to Jack - that includes Atari Coin Division, Ataritel, and a number of other operations. Still a subsidiary of Warner Communications, all the employees were actually still under that. Jack had his son Leonard and several others do a whirlwind interview process of people from the original Consumer Division and other divisions (including coin) to see who they wanted to hire over to Atari Corp. Those that weren't were either kept at Atari Games Corp. or let go. And make no mistake, it weighed heavy on Jack, Sam, and Leonard because they knew the bulk of the people they weren't hiring over were simply going to be let go by Warner.

Ehh, not so sure about that. Remember, Warner still would have had the coin division,which is where all those popular games came out of. That means that the titles that wound up as Atari Games in coin and Tengen in consumer would have been home titles as well for the 7800 or future Atari consoles.

That's a little backwards, and you're also talking about two different companies (Atari Inc. and Atari Corp.) Nintendo had a chance to pair with Atari Inc. and they walked away when it became apparent their ridiculous deadline could not be met because of change in leadership at Atari and a product/dev freeze. Sega had a chance to pair with Atari Corp. and they walked away when Jack wanted world wide (excluding Japan) rights instead of just North America. As for the original question of what would have happened, the 7800 is a small factor in it. What the larger factor would have been was Jim Morgan's planned reorganization of Atari Inc. (think streamlining) into NATCO. Jettisoning non-profitable assets and divisions, and getting rid of half the employees would have given it more of a fighting chance to survive.

We are proud to announce that the digital version of Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun is now out! Available in the iBook, Kindle, and Nook stores, this is a full color version in all it's historic glory. Only $19.95!

No.

Those have already been corrected. And an updated: The Kindle and iPad versions should be available in another week.

And before him it was Ray Kassar. Ray's talk in early 1979 about wanting to do Atari computers in multiple colors for women was one of the primary tipping points for many of the employees that left or threatened to quit. It was also the vision behind having "smart peripherals," they wanted wanted a plug and play look instead of the mutlitude of card swapping/upgrades needed at the time, to try and make it more acceptible in a consumer market. To make it as "appliance" like as possible.

To everyone that's been posting reviews here: please put them up on Amazon as well. Let everyone outside of AtariAge see what you think! (And Todd, hope everything goes ok with your loved ones). Also, we just launced a proper Facebook page for the book - https://www.facebook...ncBusinessIsFun

The 2600 keypads were used for the prototype development of the 5200.

With the non-signed Kickstarter books sent out, here's the first batch of the signed ones sent out today.

I actually think I remember seeing you. Glad you had a blast in the E2M 70s/80s room, and cool you came in all the way from Rochester for it.

Thanks! And I told you, we'll give you a throne in the museum room that you can hang out at. Dress you up with lights and you'll be king of the 8-bits. The previous management were a bunch shysters. Changed their mind the last minute on things they promised (tables, food - like what gamer is going to pay $20 for a lunch buffet when what we said we needed were normal concessions), didn't follow through on other things they promised, and then tried to throw in a bunch of extra charges after the fact. It burned Dan out, I think Gary was going off with his Reserves duty at the time, and I just tried to keep some assemblance of momentum going over the year until Dan felt he'd had enough of a break and wanted to continue doing the show. So then JD found Olympia and we moved there after the year off. During our final year at Olympia (when we were more than outgrowing the location, and it became clear they didn't want our show there anymore and would rather deal with dog shows and weddings) we were contacted by the Sheraton again. Now under new management and ownership, they wanted us back really bad and were willing to bend over backwards (understanding full well there's no way we should give the location another chance). Dan was like no way in hell after what happened the last time, but agreed to humor them and stop by to listen to their pitch. They listened to our needs (with us thinking there's no way they'd grant them) and low and behold they did. And it's truly been a great location for us since then.

Umm...yah... apparently this 18 year old whiney girl isn't a big fan of the show: http://www.gamezombie.tv/2013/03/24/my-experience-at-the-midwest-gaming-classic/#comment-129442 Sounds to me she wants a more corporate trade show PAX style experience.

And there's also Sunday, which is billed as Family Day. Tickets are $15, so I don't see how that's too high for families either. http://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/at-the-show/family-day/

With over 300 coin-ops, playing each machine once would cost (assuming at .50 a play) woud be $150. And as S1500 stated, that doesn't even begin to take into account all the consoles and computers to play as well. (Besides the events and other happenings). We actually had someone complain how we could raise the price this year without any perceivable raise in content value. Just insane.

Yes, he possibly means buying them?

Because the way it wound up being done was different then what was originally planned. Remember, all expansion was originally planned to be through the expansion port on the 4-port. You can read more about the evolution of the 2600 adapter here.

The 2600 adapter was planned from the beginning and was supposed to be ready for the launch.

We're actually going to have bands for the afterparties this year, and one's an AC/DC tribute band!

Ok, that makes far more sense then Re: Kickstarter.

That was basically my problem as well with the "plan." The were resigning the value of the IP to "game roms" for emulation, which would have further devalued the IP and showed very little understanding of the IP or the brand. The damage done by Infogrames to the IP and brand is going to be hard enough to undo without deep pockets, this just would have been the final insult. There is a wealth of IP material involved that can certainly be leveraged in a far more 21st century un-retro manner if done right (which Infogrames never seemed to want to get right no matter how much direction we gave them).

LOL, they had a kickstarter as well. Wonder how many other sites they did this on. http://www.kickstart...ld/posts/424132 Of note, take a look at the response. They're upset that places like AA didn't embrace them, and they also just stated they intend to misuse kickstarter and the funds. You can't have people donate expecting one thing and then state after it closes you're going to actually go in a "different direction."