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Question about Atari Canada and its (if any) relation to Atari Corp.


BIGHMW

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I was just wondering, since ever since I found out about Atari Canada (after watching episodes of the Toronto-produced Jackpot on USA Network in the 80's where they gave away Atari 130XE computers as some of the prizes on that show) existed and that they produced their own commercials as I saw (like their "Along Came Atari" ad promoting their XE and ST computers) back in November 1986 on CBC on a trip here to Port Townsend before moving up here the following July, if they could've come out with any in-house (Canadian-market-exclusive) games for Atari systems such as my idea for RealSports Hockey since Hockey IS Canada as well as the greatest sport on the planet IMO (L.A. Kings fan since 1975 speaking here). Also, are they at all related to Atari Corp. by any chance???

 

 

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2 minutes ago, OldSchoolRetroGamer said:

I NEED a Bob and Doug McKenzie STRANGE BREW 2600 game ! ?

C'MON <tags seven people> THEY ASKED FOR IT NOT ME, THE PEOPLE DEMAND IT SO NOW YOU HAVE TO DO IT, MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT FOR BOTH 5200 AND ATARI 8BIT OR WE WILL HAVE TO ASK SEVENTEEN THOUSAND MORE TIMES

 

I'd play a Strange Brew game. Basically a mix of Tapper and Hockey. LOL

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10 minutes ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

C'MON <tags seven people> THEY ASKED FOR IT NOT ME, THE PEOPLE DEMAND IT SO NOW YOU HAVE TO DO IT, MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT FOR BOTH 5200 AND ATARI 8BIT OR WE WILL HAVE TO ASK SEVENTEEN THOUSAND MORE TIMES

 

I'd play a Strange Brew game. Basically a mix of Tapper and Hockey. LOL

? I can see it now.......

 

2019641700-main.thumb.jpg.41b1a4f20fe5b7625948d34157bf0646.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/1/2021 at 6:07 AM, tripled79 said:

I was about to ask the same thing. There's an Atari Canada?

Yes. (Ya know, CPUWIZ was joking, right?)??

 

Fun fact: Some Atari US dealers actually imported CDAR504 units from Atari Canada because they were available there, but not in the US. Yeah, go figure. ?

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On 7/6/2021 at 4:13 AM, atarian1 said:

Yes. (Ya know, CPUWIZ was joking, right?)??

 

Fun fact: Some Atari US dealers actually imported CDAR504 units from Atari Canada because they were available there, but not in the US. Yeah, go figure. ?

Yeah, and that's also were the first STe's in North America came from because there were still problems getting FCC apporvial.

 

I guess Atari Canada is like the rest of the other Atari subsideries that Jack Tramiel ran, just like he did with Commodore before.  He'd give them a product and a general direction but they would sell the computers themselves while sending the money back.  It's only the US division that Jack micromanaged, hence why ST's were more successful in Europe.

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Atari Canada made all the games that start with A (Eh).

 

It was great whenever you contacted customer service because they'd immediately start off with apologizing.

The Usa Atari they would start off bragging that they have an uncle in the FBI and their cousin worked for NASA also ending every sentence with huh.

The whole time in their forrest gump voice(normal american voice) 

 

"Weeel yer Ataray iiiis not woorkin huuh? 

Maa Cuzin would fixer up. What iiiz wraaang weeth yur Canadiuns? They caant fixem cuz it is too caaald? "Huh? 

? Saay Abooot again fer ma buddie.  

 

 

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On 7/19/2021 at 6:26 AM, Jinks said:

The Usa Atari they would start off bragging that they have an uncle in the FBI and their cousin worked for NASA also ending every sentence with huh.

The whole time in their forrest gump voice(normal american voice) 

 

"Weeel yer Ataray iiiis not woorkin huuh? 

Maa Cuzin would fixer up. What iiiz wraaang weeth yur Canadiuns? They caant fixem cuz it is too caaald? "Huh? 

? Saay Abooot again fer ma buddie.  

 

 

Look, we're too busy stuffing ourselves full of burgers and shooting guns to fix it ourselves.

 

Canada is all "oh I'm too busy eating my back bacon sandwich from Timmie's to help out, don't be a hoser"

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On 7/19/2021 at 8:27 AM, hwrd said:

Atari Canada had a little maple leaf at the top (?) of the Fuji logo.

 

Both the Atari and Commodore subdivisions were excellent to deal with in the late 80's.

 

 

That it did, finally someone confirms my knowledge about Atari Canada, but I didn't know it was Jack Tramiel who founded it mainly to distribute Atari computers and systems within Canada, so my guess is if it weren't for him there might not have been a dedicated Canadian distributor before he bought Atari's home division from Warner.

 

And yes, Atari Canada DID use a small Maple Leaf at the top of the famous Fuji logo, IIRC, over the middle stem of it. I even thought that since Hockey IS Canada and Canada IS Hockey that maybe they would've had a Canada-exclusive release of RealSports Hockey, since they did every other sport besides it.

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20 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

That it did, finally someone confirms my knowledge about Atari Canada, but I didn't know it was Jack Tramiel who founded it mainly to distribute Atari computers and systems within Canada, so my guess is if it weren't for him there might not have been a dedicated Canadian distributor before he bought Atari's home division from Warner.

 

And yes, Atari Canada DID use a small Maple Leaf at the top of the famous Fuji logo, IIRC, over the middle stem of it. I even thought that since Hockey IS Canada and Canada IS Hockey that maybe they would've had a Canada-exclusive release of RealSports Hockey, since they did every other sport besides it.

If I remember correctly, Hasbro Canada sold the Atari products in Canada in the Warner days.

(sounds wrong though eh? As Hasbro Interactive eventually bought Atari...)

 

It definitely was some other company selling Atari in Canada in the Warner days...

?

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6 hours ago, hwrd said:

If I remember correctly, Hasbro Canada sold the Atari products in Canada in the Warner days.

(sounds wrong though eh? As Hasbro Interactive eventually bought Atari...)

 

It definitely was some other company selling Atari in Canada in the Warner days...

?

 

It was Irwin Canada.    ?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/22/2021 at 2:31 PM, BIGHMW said:

That it did, finally someone confirms my knowledge about Atari Canada, but I didn't know it was Jack Tramiel who founded it mainly to distribute Atari computers and systems within Canada, so my guess is if it weren't for him there might not have been a dedicated Canadian distributor before he bought Atari's home division from Warner.

 

And yes, Atari Canada DID use a small Maple Leaf at the top of the famous Fuji logo, IIRC, over the middle stem of it. I even thought that since Hockey IS Canada and Canada IS Hockey that maybe they would've had a Canada-exclusive release of RealSports Hockey, since they did every other sport besides it.

It was located at 90 Gough Dr. in Markham! I use to make a pilgrimage there every few months after the XEGS was released to check our their upcoming A8 releases on their price lists. Which were filled with vapourware, of course, but that's nothing new.

 

Atari Canada was very active in Southern Ontario and held many promotional campaigns for the ST line. They repeatedly had crossover campaigns with Nestle Canada: you could win a ST computer by buying a box of Smarties. They also sponsored contests held by a number of local radio stations. 

 

I'm not sure how closely Atari Canada was controlled by the Tramiels, but someone working there certainly leaked WIPs to the local users' groups. I played MIDI Maze on the A8 at TAF meetings in 1988 -- years before pirate carts became widely available in the community. I just kick myself now for not pestering the workers for every little thing they had on the A8 and the Lynx.

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On 8/6/2021 at 9:25 PM, davidcalgary29 said:

It was located at 90 Gough Dr. in Markham! I use to make a pilgrimage there every few months after the XEGS was released to check our their upcoming A8 releases on their price lists. Which were filled with vapourware, of course, but that's nothing new.

 

Atari Canada was very active in Southern Ontario and held many promotional campaigns for the ST line. They repeatedly had crossover campaigns with Nestle Canada: you could win a ST computer by buying a box of Smarties. They also sponsored contests held by a number of local radio stations. 

 

I'm not sure how closely Atari Canada was controlled by the Tramiels, but someone working there certainly leaked WIPs to the local users' groups. I played MIDI Maze on the A8 at TAF meetings in 1988 -- years before pirate carts became widely available in the community. I just kick myself now for not pestering the workers for every little thing they had on the A8 and the Lynx.

 

I assume that being Markham, Ontario at that, and yes you stated that they were very active in Southern Ontario, in which was why the Global TV Network Toronto-based game show Jackpot (hosted by the late Mike Darrow, I used to watch it religiously on USA Network when it was on every afternoon, hardly missed an episode) gave away Atari computers (I forgot if they gave away XE or ST line computers) but I definitely do remember them being a bonus prize on that show (one of them, sometimes it would be a CD player or a watch or even a trip to the Rockies) for whomever hits it and correctly solves the riddle, that that was what they won, and I always assumed that maybe they themselves would've come out with RealSports Hockey since we Yanks were already spoiled with RealSports Football, Soccer (the other football), Baseball, and Tennis (and later RealSports Basketball), it would've been cool for a hockey game of that nature to come from north of the 49th.

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2 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

 

I assume that being Markham, Ontario at that, and yes you stated that they were very active in Southern Ontario, in which was why the Global TV Network Toronto-based game show Jackpot (hosted by the late Mike Darrow, I used to watch it religiously on USA Network when it was on every afternoon, hardly missed an episode) gave away Atari computers (I forgot if they gave away XE or ST line computers) but I definitely do remember them being a bonus prize on that show (one of them, sometimes it would be a CD player or a watch or even a trip to the Rockies) for whomever hits it and correctly solves the riddle, that that was what they won, and I always assumed that maybe they themselves would've come out with RealSports Hockey since we Yanks were already spoiled with RealSports Football, Soccer (the other football), Baseball, and Tennis (and later RealSports Basketball), it would've been cool for a hockey game of that nature to come from north of the 49th.

They didn't have anything in the way of an in-house software development team: Atari Canada simply distributed and marketed products for a slightly (ie. partially French-speaking) market. AFAIK, all Canadian commercial software development for Atari products ended with Time Warner's involvement with the company. There were a number of companies, of course, like DataQue, which did do some development at the end of the '80s, but they were always more involved with the hardware side of things.

 

And the emphasis was on its home computers division until it closed: I don't recall seeing advertising for any Atari game consoles in Canadian media...but that was probably due to the fact that the vast majority of Canadians lived in markets which had an American television presence. No point in wasting advertising money in the local market when it would have been already covered by American stations.

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It appears that things were very regional here in Canada.

 

I grew-up in Halifax, and I am only aware of one independent dealer that sold the Atari ST line -- and that firm did not last very long. I certainly do not recall any contests or significant advertising (print, radio, or television).

 

When I became involved with the local BBS scene in about 1989, there was only one local ST-focused board and a very small handful of dedicated users.  I have no idea where they purchased hardware (or software); presumably mail-order.    

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