Another Tramiel Mistake!

[NovaXpress]

Check out this bit from Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/hi...history_pr.html

 

Michael Katz (president, Sega of America): In '88, when I was still at Atari, Hayao Nakayama and Dave Rosen brought us the Genesis. They asked if we wanted to license the product. At the time, we needed a next-generation system to take on Nintendo, and Genesis would've been perfect. But Jack Tramiel turned it down.  

 

Jerry Jessop (engineer, Atari): Brad Saville was a production guy at Atari during the Tramiel days. When the 780017 machine was finished, he went to Tramiel's office to present it. Brad said Tramiel swept the prototype right off his desk and onto the floor, yelling, "We're a computer company now!"  

 

Don Thomas (director of customer service, Atari): Tramiel wanted Atari to produce consumer electronic products. I think he was hoping to turn it into a Radio Shack type of company.  

 

Katz: Ironically, one year after Sega approached Atari, I took over Sega of America, where I was in the same position I'd been in all along: Nintendo had all the hot arcade licensees tied up. We needed a character to introduce with Genesis and compete with Mario. Nobody knew who Sonic was. American kids didn't even know what a hedgehog was, but it didn't matter. It was a terrific game that you could get only on Genesis.

 

Let that one soak in for awhile. Yar's Revenge for the Atari Genesis coulda been sweet. The webpage has a lot of great stuff on the 2600 era and interviews with the players of the time.

[+Allan]

Check out this bit from Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/hi...history_pr.html

 

Michael Katz (president, Sega of America): In '88, when I was still at Atari, Hayao Nakayama and Dave Rosen brought us the Genesis. They asked if we wanted to license the product. At the time, we needed a next-generation system to take on Nintendo, and Genesis would've been perfect. But Jack Tramiel turned it down.  

 

Jerry Jessop (engineer, Atari): Brad Saville was a production guy at Atari during the Tramiel days. When the 780017 machine was finished, he went to Tramiel's office to present it. Brad said Tramiel swept the prototype right off his desk and onto the floor, yelling, "We're a computer company now!"  

 

Don Thomas (director of customer service, Atari): Tramiel wanted Atari to produce consumer electronic products. I think he was hoping to turn it into a Radio Shack type of company.  

 

Katz: Ironically, one year after Sega approached Atari, I took over Sega of America, where I was in the same position I'd been in all along: Nintendo had all the hot arcade licensees tied up. We needed a character to introduce with Genesis and compete with Mario. Nobody knew who Sonic was. American kids didn't even know what a hedgehog was, but it didn't matter. It was a terrific game that you could get only on Genesis.

 

Let that one soak in for awhile. Yar's Revenge for the Atari Genesis coulda been sweet.

 

Something's not right here. The whole pushing the machine off the desk thing was suppose to have happened to the 7800. I wonder what the real story is.

 

Allan

[NovaXpress]

I think they are referring to the 7800 as far as the desk-throwing incident. Just more examples of the mindset at the time.

[+Allan]

Yes, your right. That's what happens when you read something when your tired.

 

Allan

[rasty]

Tramiel swept the prototype right off his desk and onto the floor, yelling, "We're a computer company now!"

Sad!

 

Wrong management choices could be excused one way or the other, but ther's no excuse for not respecting the work of other people! :thumbsdown:

 

regards,

Rasty.-

[ElectricTroy]

This story is flawed. Why? Because the 7800 was already in production. Several thousand were manufactured before Tramiel arrived and pulled the plug.

 

As for Sega licensing Genesis to Atari, why would they want to do that? Sega was in a better financial position than Atari in 1988.

[jsoper]

Maybe both stories are true and there were even more

Think what a cool pile of chipped up systems there could have been on the floor beside that desk

[AtariDude]

The only part of the story that I could be sure is real is that Jack Tramiel yelled. My understanding is that guy had a problem with his temper. He also had a problem with being stingy with money.

[Joey Kay]

I remember reading in a video game mag back in the day that Atari was offered the Genesis before Sega manufactured it... was it Sega technology or did Sega snag the license? Anyhow, I'm sure the gist of this story - perhaps editorialized slightly - is true.

 

I personally suspect that there were staff and management at Atari serious about the video game business... perhaps even one of the Tramiel sons... but Jack Tramiel was not one of them.

 

It is too bad Atari passed on the Genesis... especially considering that they were at their best financial position in years... I guess another one for the armchair quarterbacks...

 

Cheers!

 

Joey

[tyranthraxus]

I don't trust anything in that poorly researched article. They credit

Pac-man as being a pre-Warner hit made by Atari. They also state

that 4 years after Atari's fall that the industry was dead. Ignoring the

early years of the NES and the computer games of the mid 80s

altogether. They probably mean the NES and not the Genny!

 

John

[ApolloBoy]

The only part of the story that I could be sure is real is that Jack Tramiel yelled. My understanding is that guy had a problem with his temper. He also had a problem with being stingy with money.

 

Oh yeah, Tramiel definetly had an anger problem. He yelled in his employees faces, banged his fist on his desk, and even did mass-firings.

[surfnmadness]

The only part of the story that I could be sure is real is that Jack Tramiel yelled. My understanding is that guy had a problem with his temper. He also had a problem with being stingy with money.

 

Oh yeah, Tramiel definetly had an anger problem. He yelled in his employees faces, banged his fist on his desk, and even did mass-firings.

 

 

Does not seem any different from my boss today.

[joeybastard]

Why would Sega go to Atari at all? They already had distribution in the US for the SMS that could also be used for the Genny and a known presence from the SMS and arcade. They had no use for Atari at that point.

 

I think this is somebody really screwing up the offer from Nintendo for Atari to distribute the NES.

[rasty]

Just another suspicious quote from the article:

 

Bushnell: We treated engineers like mini-gods. We gave the best ones private offices.

From what I remember seeing on the Stella gets a new brain CD, there were pictures of Atari programmers taken at the workplace and these didn't look like private offices at all, but rather open space offices without any kind of wall or compartment and with libraries used as desk!

 

I don't have the cd here now but I'll check it again in a few hours

 

Rasty.-

[Godzilla]

dis all zounds like ee crock ta me.

[Curt Vendel]

Check out this bit from Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/hi...history_pr.html

 

Jerry Jessop (engineer' date=' Atari): Brad Saville was a production guy at Atari during the Tramiel days. When the 780017 machine was finished, he went to Tramiel's office to present it. Brad said Tramiel swept the prototype right off his desk and onto the floor, yelling, "We're a computer company now!"

[/quote']

 

 

Either they misquoted Jerry or Jerry misunderstood how I told it to him, Brad is good friend of mine and we went into great length over this at his office one afternoon on his work at Atari:

 

Brad was an Atari employee from 1973 and worked the assembly lines building Pongs, as time went by he found ways to streamline the assembly line and deal with problems and faulty products. He would later be promoted up the chain and become Production Line manager and would oversee the change over of Wongs from making pastic owls to making Atari products, would assist with ATMC (Atari Tawain Manufacturing Company) and would work with Chinon and Chelco on their assembly methods, although that was more Barry Masrhals area...

 

Brad had setup the El Paso Texas plant and it was in the process of producing the new 3600's (original product # for the 7800) and 5,000 had just run off the assembly line (even though ASG: Atari Semiconductor Group was still ironing out some bugs right up to June 6th on the latest Rev D. Maria chips...) and Brad returned from El Paso with the latest batch of machines and during the 1st week the Tramiels took over after July 2nd, they began to interview personel (while also given lists to various managers requesting they pick out several people from each list that they would recommend to keep, the rest were layed off)

 

Brad had a meeting with Jack & co. at which time he placed a 7800 on the desk and prepared to give a review of the product status. Jack leaned over, knocked the unit off the desk and stopped Brad in mid-sentence and said "We're a computer company now, we don't make videogames anymore..." 3 Days later Brad was fired...

 

Several months later Brad was contacted by someone at Atari wanting to know if he knew the location of the die molds to make 7800 plastics, Brad told him he did know and for 200-300 hours at $50 an hour he might be able to find them for Atari... outraged the person on the other end of the line threatened that Atari's lawyers would be in contact, no one ever did.

 

The whole statement: We are a Computer Company, we don't make videogames anymore. That was a rather premature statement by Jack, you see Atari in fact had every intention shortly afterwards of making videogames, in fact the Atari 2100 project (one of the final product #'s for the 2600jr) was being ramped back up and "JAN" a 3 in 1 chip combining the TIA, 6507 and 6532 was being reinvestigated to do a cost reduced version of the 2600jr and was into heavy talks within Atari about progressing forward with it. What it appears is that the 7800 project was stalled and put on hold, a bad decision nonetheless, but that was the case...

 

Karl and I are working on some new information that we are compiling and there is some remarkable information regarding the whole 8bit line of computers too, turns out a much bolder line of computers were orginally planned before the final XE designs were signed off on... damned shame too, because what was in the works right up till about Sept/Oct was a far better line then what the XE's turned out to be....

 

 

Curt

[NovaXpress]

Thanks for clearing things up and also telling a much better story!

[surfnmadness]

I would much rather read it from someone that was there than from a magazine who's next story is on how to get to level 9 of pokemon.

[Joey Kay]

Clearly the article has a facts confused and editorialized, (the problem is that the Brad Saville part is misplaced - it seems that they are trying to emphasize Tramiel's direction of Atari as a computer manufacturer but that was a poor place to place that excerpt) however...

 

I have read before that Atari had first dibs on the Genesis... in fact, I always assumed that to be the truth. IIRC, one of the reasons the article cited for Atari turning down the Genesis was that they were already in discussions with Epyx regarding the Lynx...

 

Anybody know anything about this...

 

Cheers!

 

Joey

[ussexplorer]

I read something about sega not being happy with their supplier in the U.S. for the Sega Master System. Probably got it from this group. Reminds me of when IBM went to DEC (Digital Equipment) for a operating system for their soon to be new PC.

 

Another stange note. I cried when I found out Atari was sold to JTS for a small amount. I wanted so badly to purchase what was left. If I only made some few wise stock market choices. It would have been easy. To bad I don't like to take risks and never invested into stocks. For instance I was told about the IOMEGA zip drive. Way before hit the maket. Believe me that wasn't the only product. Then again you have syquest that died and at one time I heard great things about that company too.

 

Later,

 

Josh

[AtariDude]

Tonka was the distributor for the Sega Master System. When the Genesis was going to be released, Sega decided that they could do a better job themselves than with Tonka distributing the system for them.

[jsoper]

in fact the Atari 2100 project (one of the final product #'s for the 2600jr) was being ramped back up and "JAN" a 3 in 1 chip combining the TIA, 6507 and 6532 was being reinvestigated to do a cost reduced version of the 2600jr and was into heavy talks within Atari about progressing forward with it.    

Curt

 

Curt, do you know anything more about a 1-chip 2600jr? Ben Hendrickson at http://www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/ claims to have found a couple and talks about it at the end of his FAQ section. It seems like some units made it out the door, but they're very rare.

[Curt Vendel]

Hi John,

 

Yes I do... originally called "JAN" a 3 in 1 chip was in the works, but had numerous issues, I have some later notes that are from March 92' detailing a PAL 3 in 1 chip 2600jr with 32 built in games, it has 4-5 sheets with some technical details of the chip with some timing and pin assignments, but nothing on the gate level details or anything else... I will see what else I may have and if I can find anything that is more indepth from an engineering level I will scan and post it for you guys...

 

 

 

Curt

[Lauren Tyler]

The only part of the story that I could be sure is real is that Jack Tramiel yelled. My understanding is that guy had a problem with his temper. He also had a problem with being stingy with money.

 

Oh yeah, Tramiel definetly had an anger problem. He yelled in his employees faces, banged his fist on his desk, and even did mass-firings.

 

 

Does not seem any different from my boss today.

318167[/snapback]

 

 

Pure and simple, he's a piece of crap! What do you expect?!

Edited August 18, 2005 by LarcenTyler

[Mindfield]

And the award for "most dated thread response" goes to...