ATARI's 40th Anniversary

[atari2atari]

Well, according to CNN, today is the 40th anniversary of the ATARI company's founding - -

 

http://www.cnn.com/2...ari-anniversary

 

From the article:

 

"In 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney were looking to produce an electronic tennis game to be called "Pong." They formed Atari Inc. on June 27 of that year and released the black-and-white tennis game five months later. The gaming world hasn't been the same since."

 

 

Well, that's interesting!

 

I guess you're over-the-hill ATARI.

 

What are you going to do for a mid-life crisis, ATARI?

 

Load up ACTIVISION's GRAND PRIX and drive really, really fast?

 

I'm thinking I would prefer to see you play EPYX's CALIFORNIA GAMES, and head to the beach and surf . . . Maybe pierce your ear, grow a pony tail

 

 

-atari2atari

[Rex Dart]

I had no idea.

[atari2atari]

I had no idea.

 

Ha! Serves me right for not checking the "Current Events" forum!

 

I am such a creature of habit . . . I only peruse my favorite forums . . . much like many folks, I would imagine . . .

 

-a2a

[atari2atari]

Hmm, KOTAKU has a nice piece, too - -

 

http://kotaku.com/59...nce-all-for-you

 

Complete with a fun graphic (downloaded and re-attached for your ease-of-viewing)

 

 

-a2a

Edited June 27, 2012 by atari2atari

[onlysublime]

you forgot the video!

 

[onlysublime]

Engadget has a really nice article with a lot of decent detail:

 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/atari-celebrating-40-years-on-the-dots/

 

Especially loved the bits on the Atari ST.

[+fabman99]

Hi all, Go to FAcebook if you use that and add like atari and it should show U 40th anniv page. It has entries to win atari shirts caps, etc. My son in law showed itto me so thats all the info I have.

[+wood_jl]

It's actually kind of sad that the only way they're capable of generating headlines today is a Ruby Anniversary that they have absolutely nothing to do with, rather than headlines about how great their products are.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Hi all, Go to FAcebook if you use that and add like atari and it should show U 40th anniv page. It has entries to win atari shirts caps, etc. My son in law showed itto me so thats all the info I have.

 

I would but there contest is restricted to US so screw them..........

[Retro Rogue]

As part of the 40th celebration, we released a preview chapter to the book -

 

www.ataribook.com

[pangasinan]

Happy Birthday !!!

[raskar42]

so where's my cosmos?

[+Nathan Strum]

As part of the 40th celebration, we released a preview chapter to the book -

 

www.ataribook.com

 

I'm hooked.

[Rob Mitchell]

My iPad lit up this morning to say that AGH is FREE TODAY ONLY! On iTunes! Usually $14.99

[Pioneer4x4]

My iPad lit up this morning to say that AGH is FREE TODAY ONLY! On iTunes! Usually $14.99

Yep, search iTunes store for Atari and several things are free! Thanks!

[Godzilla]

awesome cake! will have to check the store on me iPad when I get home... thanks for the tip!

[Byte Knight]

This month's Retrogamer has some great articles on this as well...

[SoulBlazer]

Never knew that Bill Gates worked for Atari for a short time. Learn something every day!

[gorfcadet]

Yeah, I paid for the full Atari ipad suite ages ago. woot. Freaked me out though... said I'd lose my games next time I deleted or whatever... guess everyone got that message regardless.

[Amstari]

As part of the 40th celebration, we released a preview chapter to the book -

 

www.ataribook.com

 

I'll be pre-ordering this!

 

I missed out when it was on the Kick Starter.

[Retro Rogue]

Never knew that Bill Gates worked for Atari for a short time. Learn something every day!

 

That's a joke, right?

 

 

Engadget has a really nice article with a lot of decent detail:

 

http://www.engadget....rs-on-the-dots/

 

Especially loved the bits on the Atari ST.

 

Terrible article, full of a lot of errors. It's a reprint of an article from earlier in the year.

[+frankodragon]

I wonder what, if anything, Gates stole from Atari?

[Master Phruby]

How come AGH isn't free on Android?

[SoulBlazer]

Never knew that Bill Gates worked for Atari for a short time. Learn something every day!

 

That's a joke, right?

 

 

Not according to this article: http://games.yahoo.c...-184349799.html

 

"The company has seen a number of famous alumni, including both Steve Jobs, who had his first real job at Atari after dropping out of college, and Bill Gates, who was actually fired from the company after his project got stalled.

Both, of course, went on to much greater things. But Bushnell likes to think that the experience both had at Atari gave them the confidence to launch Apple and Microsoft.

"Atari showed that young people could start big companies," he says. "Without that example it would have been harder for Jobs and Bill Gates, and people who came after them, to do what they did."

 

They link the Gates reference to another good Bushnell article here: http://techland.time...nolan-bushnell/ but I don't see him mentioned in this article.

Edited June 29, 2012 by SoulBlazer

[Retro Rogue]

Never knew that Bill Gates worked for Atari for a short time. Learn something every day!

 

That's a joke, right?

 

 

Not according to this article: http://games.yahoo.c...-184349799.html

 

 

That's just wrong. There's a difference betwen having a contract with Microsoft to supply a version of BASIC (like a lot of the early micricomputer companies did) and Bill Gates literally working at Atari. He did not work at Atari, he was never employed there. The source for that claim is a third hand account from David Crane. Microsoft (not Bill Gates as an individual) was hired to provide a version of Microsoft BASIC for the initial BASIC. It simply didn't work out.

 

"The company has seen a number of famous alumni, including both Steve Jobs, who had his first real job at Atari after dropping out of college, and Bill Gates, who was actually fired from the company after his project got stalled.

Both, of course, went on to much greater things. But Bushnell likes to think that the experience both had at Atari gave them the confidence to launch Apple and Microsoft.

"Atari showed that young people could start big companies," he says. "Without that example it would have been harder for Jobs and Bill Gates, and people who came after them, to do what they did."

 

That's more of what fellow ex-Atari people call Nolan 'waxing philosophical.' I.E. romanticizing and stretching the truth in hindsight, which he regularly does in interviews. That's where Al Gore like statements of inventing packet switching come from, or claims of Asteroids being Atari's first CPU driven coin-op.

 

 

They link the Gates reference to another good Bushnell article here: http://techland.time...nolan-bushnell/ but I don't see him mentioned in this article.

 

Which contains a few more inaccuracies. They were looking for investors or to sell the company long before the VCS was started for example, it wasn't sold because of the VCS. Another of his 'waxing philosophical' is the statements:

 

"When I was running Atari,” he told me, “violence against humanoid figures was not allowed."

 

That's simply not true. In Shark JAWS you have a diver eaten by a shark, in Outlaw (the coin-op) you're having a quick draw match against a cowboy, and in Witch Hunt you are literally shooting down a witch on a broom. All violence against humanoid figures.

 

It's why you can't take everything stated in interviews as gospel, it's got to be cross-referenced and fact checked.