Bring me the head of Jack Tramiel!!!!

[Brad2600]

I was just reading up on the atari-history.com profiles on all 3 Atari systems and just realizing how much potential was lost, I hereby accuse Jack Tramiel of the following crimes:

 

-Shelving the 7800 for 2 and 1/2 years while Nintendo and Sega reshaped the video gaming market

 

-Screwing around with Atari's proven formula, thus resulting in the near death of Atari

 

-Not doing enough to keep Atari vital in the first place. Focusing in computers was the death knell.

 

-Allowing the 5200 to be killed off without reaching it's full potential.

 

To make it clear, Atari was sold to Tramiel's company on July 2nd, 1984. While the blame does not rest completely with Tramiel, it should be noted that more could have been done to save Atari and all of it's consoles.

 

Being a long-time video game player, the Atari 2600 started it all for me. I never even SAW the 5200 or the 7800 until I discovered Atari Age. Last time I saw a 7800 was over 1 year ago at a flea market..it was obviously scooped up before I could buy it. I salvaged most of my 2600 collection from dumpsters(most of the systems/games found still work), flea markets and garage sales, as well as the games that my Dad bought when my brother and I were younger.

 

My point is, Jack Tramiel is guilty of a capital crime and should be tried and convicted for attempted murder/reckless endangerment of Atari. It is my sincere hope that Infogrames will bring Atari back from the dead one day. And hopefully, they will not make the same mistakes that Jack Tramiel made..the same mistakes that nearly killed Atari. Infogrames can do better, besides just slapping the Atari name on newer games. Haven't they thought about building a 2600/5200/7800 megasystem or something? How about a newer system to challenge the XBOX/PS2/GAMECUBE/GB ADVANCE market? If they wanted to, they could!

 

I will continue to salvage anything Atari that I can find around here. Not just Atari, but Colecovision and Intellivison. I do not consider any console to be "superior" and I treat them all as equals.

 

I may still be a n00b(pardon the geek language) to this forum, But my heart is bleeding Atari. No matter what system I play nowadays, Atari is still worth playing, as well as collecting!

 

Who's with me? Who's pissed off at Jack Tramiel and the others that nearly killed Atari

[+Allan]

Don't you mean 'JACK' Tramiel?

 

Allan

[Brad2600]

Many aplogies there.

 

I must have been in a sugar rush as I got the first name mixed up.

[Nukey Shay]

What were those ST and Falcon things, anyway? Were those games or something?

/sarcasm

 

BTW there is a super-megasystem that plays all of your favorite games...it's called Mess. If you want to play them correctly, use the appropriate classic console.

 

"What was your crime?"

"Whistling on a Tuesday."

"You bastard!"

[Brad2600]

MESS is nice..but I'd rather have a playable console that you can use like any other console. It would have the harder to find games built in, and it would use 2nd parties to distribute common games.

 

I dunno. I just wish there was something I could hold in my hands. However, each individual system is worth more than a megasystem would ever be worth.

[Osbo]

Well... I don't know, but I saw a lot... I mean A LOT of Atari Slash for PS2 in the discount shelf at the store the other day, among with Britney Dance with me and the demo cd, I don't think that say a lot about the new Atari management, hopefully they will come out with some nice games again

[Brad2600]

Atari is nothing more than another brand name to Infogrames.

 

Who wouldn't like to see a return to Atari's glory days?

 

I don't mean to be challenging or anything. I'm just saying that I've learned so much MORE that I didn't know regarding Atari and I enjoy looking over pictures of prototypes and so forth.

 

It's all good. :wink:

[Witchfynde]

I may still be a n00b(pardon the geek language) to this forum, But my heart is bleeding Atari.

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when I asked a video game store employee about the Atari Jaguar, and he said "Atari screwed up again!"

 

Oh DUDE! Back then, it was one of the better consoles out there, but it had a lot of bad games, I'll admit, but you do *not* blame good hardware on bad software! Sheesh...

 

Anyway, the rest of the post was really well done. I never heard of the Tramiel fiasco until several months ago, and was really disgusted.

 

BTW, what's that s. o. b. up to nowadays, or was he burned at the stake a while back? (one can hope )

[Witchfynde]

MESS is nice..but I'd rather have a playable console that you can use like any other console. I dunno. I just wish there was something I could hold in my hands.

 

Yeah, that's what most of us feel: only use MESS for saving games (comes in handy) and if you can't find something out there, no matter how hard you try! Trying to find the arcade game I, Robot is pretty impossible!

[King Atari]

We really need to hunt Tramiel down and say nasty things to him.

 

*The above comment was simplified in case children 5 years or younger are viewing*

 

Seriously, do you think he'd have an e-mail address, or is he too afraid?

[Brad2600]

Let's build an Atari robot out of Pac-Man cartridge shells and old broken 2600s and then dispatch it to beat up Tramiel!

 

I'd like to have a few words with him anyway. He's responsible for the near death of Atari anyway.

[somePUNK]

ahhhh come give him a break he did some good things the commadors were good

[Brad2600]

Only if you were a fan of the C-64.

 

For Atari fans..the story is a little different.

[ubersaurus]

Well you know, atari was going out of business when he bought it...and he did make it profitable again. His problem was that he spread the resources too thin when he decided to go back to video games.

[MegaManFan]

ahhhh come give him a break he did some good things the commadors were good

 

I love my Commodore 64 and 128 to death, but he must have done something pretty BAD to be given the unceremonious BOOT out of the company that he was; golden parachute or not. That bad blood followed him to Atari and he proceeded to poison the well there too.

[joeybastard]

Well Jack did make some bad decisions but we should all remember that we have hindsight on the matter, and hindsight is 20/20. If you just bought a company hemorraging (sp?) money, you'd make drastic changes too. While I mourn the terrible decision not to release the 7800 when it was ready, it probably seemed somewhat reasonable at the time. This was the middle of the big crash after all.

[Nukey Shay]

That was the whole thing. The desire to make the ST viable...trying to shake the image of "just a you-know-what" machine (which Warner's Atari never managed to do...even against lesser machines like the AppleII). Slowly gaining more support for the 8-bit machines (especially in Europe...tackling C64 and Spectrum head-on). The simple fact that PC-clones were getting cheaper (monthly!) didn't help matters.

[King Atari]

Read the system histroy of the 7800 in MESS, he was obviously a jerk, he shouldn't have focused on just computers, but given even time to the consoles, too.

[Inky]

That was the whole thing.  The desire to make the ST viable...trying to shake the image of "just a you-know-what" machine (which Warner's Atari never managed to do...even against lesser machines like the AppleII).  Slowly gaining more support for the 8-bit machines (especially in Europe...tackling C64 and Spectrum head-on).  The simple fact that PC-clones were getting cheaper (monthly!) didn't help matters.

 

I never did really understand why Jack and co. pushed the Atari computers more heavily over in Europe rather than the states. Then, when there was a bit of demand, we could hardly get anything because all the product was going to europe!

 

And even in the stores that sold the ST here in the states, everything was imported from Europe.

 

Didn't make sense to me.

 

Atari would probably be alive and still viable now if the Tramiels hadn't taken control of Atari. We'd all be playing the A-Box right now.

 

Atari will not come out with a new console unless there's a huge meltdown in the market. And then that's just speculation

[Hydian]

Going for it on 4th and 1 is stupid when you fail and brilliant when you succeed.

 

In other words, the man took a bit of a gamble and moved the company in the direction that he thought was the best for the company. It's not like he bought Atari in order to run it into the ground or anything.

 

Sure, we can all look back and talk about how bone headed it was. Of course, it might have been worse if he did stick with consoles. We just don't know.

 

It wasn't the overall plan that did them in so much as the little things anyway. It was the day to day stuff that killed Atari.

[Godzilla]

Just imagine how different things would be if Atari had released the 7800 back during the supposed 'crash' times. The superior quality of the 7800 and it's games, and it's (finally smart,) backwards compatilibility, may have saved the market before it even finished crashing. And nintendo might have begged Atari a little harder to release the NES here instead of doing it themselves... the world may never know ...

[somePUNK]

or the 7800 wouldn't have sold like the other systems of the time the market would have went under still and we woldn't have the great atari computer stuff that we do.

[Joey Kay]

or the 7800 wouldn't have sold like the other systems of the time the market would have went under still and we woldn't have the great atari computer stuff that we do.

 

I really suspect that may have been the case... but who knows, really. It all depends on who would have bought Atari in '84 - Warner desperately needed to get rid of it.

 

I wrote an article about a year ago for The Atari Times about this... let's see if I can find the link...

 

here it is...

 

 

http://www.ataritimes.com/classics/feature...7800doomed.html

 

Poor Atari... I really think they were screwed either way...

 

Cheers!

 

Joey

[Nukey Shay]

It's pretty well known by now that NOBODY wanted to touch Atari at the time...if he would not have picked it up, it would have been liquidated (no 7800**, Lynx, Jaguar, XE 8-bits, ST's, etc.).

 

**besides what was already manufactured

[LiquidPenguin]

Tramiel was a fucking maniac and an asshole. I'll have to look up the various dates, but this is what I know about Tramiel.

 

Back in Tramiel's day, Commodore was the Microsoft of the early 80's. Commodore accountants would always demand prompt payment from those who owed the company money. However, Commodore would work its ass off to actually avoid making payments to those that they owed money to. A classic example would be chip manufacturers. Commodore would promise payment as long as the company continued to ship chips. However, without any income, the chip manufactuer couldn't stay solvent so the owners would be forced to sell during bankruptcy. Commodore would then swoop in like a vulture, buy the company, then forgive its own depts. Commodore did this because they had a variety of investment practices. By holding onto the money as long as possible meant they could take advantage of a variety of high interest rates. As high as 18% in 1981 for example. With this practice, no one in Silicon Valley liked his company.

 

California magazine once ranked Tramiel as 3rd on the list of, "Bosses from Hell."

 

Investigations showed that Tramiel and a lending firm in Canada were involved in some sort of financial scandal involving bloated interest rates, misleading financial statements and two fake companies. Tramiel was never indicted and his partner in Canada died before a full inviestigation could be launched.

 

All that was before Atari. I'm sure everyone here knows what happened when he took over Atari