Have You Played the Atari VCS Today?

Atari’s infamous entry in the programmable home video game system race, known as the Atari VCS or Video Computer System, begins in the latter part of 1975, as the company’s PONG (and its myriad knock-offs) are ruling the arcade and home TV’s. The first prototype the soon-to-be-famous device begins development this year by Steve Mayer and Ron Milner, of the Atari consulting firm Cyan Engineering. Cyan is part of the company’s far-out Grass Valley, CA think tank, located northeast of Sacramento. It is from this wellspring of innovative thinking that the basic design of what will be known as the VCS, Atari’s 8-bit computers and the QuadraScan vector monitor seen in games like Asteroids will be born, among other marvels. A further prototype of the programmable system is then further refined by Cyan employee Joe Decuir, with Jay Miner (who later designs the ground-breaking Amiga computer) further refining the hardware at Atari’s Los Gatos plant. When Decuir is developing software for the system, he is required to create a password for the time-sharing computer Atari is leasing time on to compile the code. Thinking of his trusty bicycle with the label of its French bike manufacturer Stella printed upon it, he uses that for the password. This is then co-opted by Miner as the name of the chip that is the centre of the system, and then used for the overall project name, and thus solidifies a long tradition of naming Atari systems with women’s names (never mind that it was really Joe Decuir’s bike). Miner would eventually rename the chip the TIA or Television Interface Adapter. It is responsible for generating on-screen graphics, sound effects, and handling joystick control inputs. Miner would also lead design on the chipset for the Atari 400 and 800 computers, as well as the groundbreaking Amiga computer sold by Commodore.

The finished casing holding all this hardware for Stella measures 23.5″ by 13.45″, constructed of plastic with a simulated wood grain panel on the front to help the machine fit in next to family TV console sets.  Two banks of three silver toggle switches perch near the top of the device, controlling power, B&W or colour display, difficulty levels for each player, game select to navigate through the various modes offered by some games and a reset switch to restart an inserted game. Named the Video Computer System (VCS), it barely arrives in stores in time for the 1977 Christmas season.

Click the button to play Combat on the Atari VCS

The Atari VCS comes with the pack-in cartridge Combat, designed by programmer Larry Kaplan, along with DeCuir and Larry Wagner. Under the initial design of the console, Combat had been planned to be integrated right into the ROMs of the machine as a built-in game. The included cartridge combines two early Atari arcade games, Tank by the Kee Games subsidiary, as well as Atari’s Jet Fighter, released to the arcades in 1975. A dedicated home version of Tank, the name of which vacillates between just Tank and Tank II, is also announced by Atari for release in 1977. The console comes with two joysticks, rounder variations of the controllers that will eventually ship with the VCS, with a single fire button and a flared tip. These sticks can be placed into two holders in the Tank II unit, allowing one player to control the left and right treads of the tank separately.  In two-player mode, the sticks can be taken out for each player. Tank II is quietly canceled by Atari after the release of the VCS and its Combat game. With the VCS setup, there are two rheostat paddle controllers included as well, to facilitate comfortable play of the various PONG-type games to be sold for the console. Along with the included Combat, the library of nine launch titles to accompany the console is composed of: Air-Sea Battle, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Video Olympics, Blackjack, Surround, and Basic Math. The VCS is also sold by huge department store chain Sears, as the Sears Video Arcade.

Nolan Bushnell, Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry?

Running a 1.19 MHz 8-bit MOS Technology 6507 microprocessor, the designers of the system initially figure that it would only be playing tank battle games and PONG–esque titles, so the allocated ROM memory for the programs is 2K. It is eventually decided to bump that to 4K, even though Combat itself is only 2K and there is little hope that any program would ever need as much as the allowed maximum. Upon release, nine cartridges are introduced along with the system. With an initial retail price of $249.95, there is very little markup on the machines due to the high price of the components, although the game carts cost very little to produce and sell for around $40 each. Sound is sent through the speakers of the television hooked up to the device, allowing users to hear the action as loud or as soft as they like.

Spurred on by the money injected into the company from new owners Warner Communications to the tune of about $120 million, Atari mass produces about 800,000 VCSs in 1977, and manages to sell 400,000 of them. For two years the VCS struggles to reach sales goals in comparison to the budget for marketing the device, and Atari profits drop precipitously, substantially dragging down Warners stock price. There are major production problems, including defective chips and cases, and the easy-going Zen attitude of Atari co-founder and CEO Nolan Bushnell, who describes himself as “a bizarre manager”. This extends to throwing big “kegger” drinking parties for employees every Friday in the company parking lot, and even going so far as having an oak beer tap in his office. The Coors would flow freely everyday after work, during informal manager meetings where the gang would peruse the latest game prototypes. Bushnell’s antics at Atari starts to wear out his welcome even with Warner head Steve Ross, himself a chairman noted for having a laissez-faire management style. Things get so rough with sales numbers for the  VCS that Bushnell dramatically stands up during an Atari/Warner board meeting and suggests that the console has its price slashed, in order to increase market share and enlarge the market for the games the company also sells.  Dismayed by the direction the company has decided to take, and himself increasingly absent from Atari offices as he loses interest in running things the way they are, Bushnell steps down from formal duties as chairman in late 1978, with a multimillion-dollar package. When his successors are named in early 1979, with former Burlington textile executive Raymond Kassar as president and Joe Keenan as CEO, the company announces that Bushnell will “continue to serve Atari in the development of coin-operated games,” but that he also will “devote more time to his personal affairs, investments and other interests, including politics.” His ultimate exit package comes with strings attached: a 5-year “no-competition” clause that prevents Bushnell from operating within the video game space. This aspect of his agreement with Atari is later cited by the company for a lawsuit launched against Bushnell and Sente Technologies, a video game company he introduces to the public in October of 1983. Atari and Bushnell eventually reach an agreement in the fall of that year, with his former company gaining the consumer rights to any arcade games released by Sente.

After Bushnell’s exit, the work atmosphere changes perceptively as disciplinarian Ray “The Czar” Kassar cracks down on the relaxed attitude towards dress and work hours that the ‘hippies’ at Atari had previously enjoyed. Following a $120 million infusion of cash from Warner, in 1978 Atari produces 800,000 VCS units. The console is selling; Atari moves over a million units between 1977-1979. Still, that’s only on the cusp of the kind of mass-market penetration Atari is looking for to be a real success. Indicating his allegiance to marketing over technical innovation, Kassar quickly halts funds for R&D and pours $6 million into an advertising campaign to help move VCS consoles off the shelves. As a whole, 1979 sees about 1-1.5 million U.S. homes with some kind of game console. These systems require games, so somewhere between 3-4 million cartridges are sold for them this year. The projected explosive growth of the VCS market also spawns an industry for third-party video games for the system, starting with Activision in 1979. Founded by disgruntled former Atari game programmers Alan Miller, Bob Whitehead, David Crane and Larry Kaplan, their venture is quickly followed by others entering the lucrative  market, including Imagic in 1981.

Space Invaders on the Atari VCS

By 1980, there are 36 cartridges available for the Atari VCS, including a simplified version of soccer featuring three players to a side, plus goalies. After signing Brazilian football superstar Pele in 1980 to a five-year contract as spokesman, Atari quickly changes the name of the game from Soccer to Pele’s Soccer, resulting in one of the earliest celebrity athlete video game endorsements. But the company is about to make a move that will truly blow the lid off the home videogame industry: Atari becomes the first home videogame company to license an arcade game. It is Warner executive Manny Gerard who realizes the enormous home potential for arcade hit Space Invaders, originally made by Japanese game maker Taito and then licensed for North American release by Midway. He persuades Kassar to enter into an agreement with Taito for exclusive non-coin-operated, personal computer and handheld video game licenses for Space Invaders, and the January 1980 release of Atari’s home video game version becomes the killer app for the VCS; people rush out and buy the system just to play the game. There are 112 different variations on gameplay available, including invisible aliens, moving bunkers and simultaneous two-player action.

Selling over a million cartridges in its first year, the arcade adaptation rakes in over $100 million for Atari, as well as moving tonnes of VCS consoles to people who want to play the game. The designer of the game, Rick Maurer, was one of a few, if not the only, early programmer for the VCS with previous video game design experience: he had created Pinball Challenge, Hangman and Pro Football for the Fairchild Channel F game console. As an Atari employee, he only earns his $11, 000 salary that year in the wake of Space Invaders. He eventually moves to the Atari arcade division and their more favourable bonus program. Looking at the market overall, dealers buy 1.7 million video games in 1980.

Atari’s attitude towards the authors making all these games for their company is that they should remain anonymous and that the games are identified as a corporate creation rather than the effort of individual employees. In a response to that, Warren Robinett hides his name within his VCS game Adventure, a graphical version of Will Crowther and Don Woods’ text adventure Colossal Cave, aka Adventure. This is widely recognized as the first hidden “Easter Egg” within a video game, and it initially attract the ire of upper management. Eventually, however, Atari relents and understands the possible draw of hidden features of video games. In 1981 Software Development Director Steve Wright invites gamers to keep an eye out for a plethora of easter eggs the company will hide in its games, and even floats the idea of a contest to find them, perhaps inspiring the idea for Atari’s later Swordquest games and related treasure hunting contest. Robinett would leave Atari and, with Leslie Grimm, design the educational program Rocky’s Boots for The Learning Company. The program teaches kids simple boolean logic circuitry by having them manipulate circuits and complete tasks within a simulated world.

Over the next two years, the Atari VCS completely dominates the home videogame market, its only rival of any significance being Mattel’s Intellivision unit. Profits for the company jump from $6 million in 1979 to $145 million in 1981, on sales of over $1 billion. In November of 1981, Atari announces a deal with Namco for exclusive rights to license, build and sell their new arcade games for North America and elsewhere, along with home game rights for the company’s Galaxian and Pac-Man. This paves the way for Atari’s dubious version of the latter arcade game for the 2600 in 1982. Bucking industry convention, the idea of keeping toy promotion only to the end-of-year Holiday season is thrown out the window; Atari begins pushing the VCS and all of its games throughout the year, including a $75 million ad campaign through 1982. The company also spends $334,000 for a commercial spot during Super Bowl XVI. Combined with $25 million in cooperative ad dollars spent by Atari dealers, Atari figures this makes them the biggest spender in advertising for a single brand in America. 

Atari was the sole sponsor of the first episodes of PBS series Discover: The World of Science, 1983

1983 also sees Atari provide full sponsorship of a prime-time science education series of TV specials produced by two alumni from the PBS series Nova, Graham Chedd and John Angier. Titled Discover: The World of Science, it is produced in association with science magazine Discover, and airs on around 75 stations across the U.S, covering more than 80% of American homes. Hosting duties for the show are carried out by Peter Graves, of Mission: Impossible and Airplane: The Movie fame. Atari co-produces some episodes at a cost of $1 million each which promote computer use and literacy, a nice bit of synergy with the company’s 8-bit home computer line. After the video game market evaporates in 1983-1984, the science series finds a home at PBS. The VCS monopolizes family use of the television set to such an extent that TV pundits start referring to the “Big Four” networks: CBS, ABC, NBC, and Atari. Over the course of its production run, over 200 games are produced for the VCS/2600 by 40 manufacturers. Approximately 120 million cartridges are sold, and there are 55 different compatible videogame systems eventually released worldwide. Atari, the company that had shrunk Warner Communication’s market share during the early days of the VCS is now responsible for half of the mother corporation’s profits, with sales for Atari in 1981 at over $600 million, and total revenues for Warner amounting to $1.23 billion. But despite this success, perhaps sensing something in the wind, perhaps tired of toiling under Kassar, perhaps just tired… Al Alcorn, hardware designer of the Atari arcade game PONG, in 1981 is one of the last of the originals to leave Atari.

Atari VCS Peripherals

The Atari VCS, however, remains as a cottage industry for third-party developers of hardware add-ons for the system. One of the most significant and successful of these is the SuperCharger by Arcadia Corporation and designed by former Atari engineer, home PONG co-creator and VCS developer Bob Brown, who also serves as executive vice-president of Arcadia. Another former Atari employee, Craig Nelson, is also involved in the venture. Initially offered at $69.95 and eventually dropped to $49.95, the SuperCharger is an outsized cartridge that plugs into the VCS and adds an extra 6K of RAM memory available to the system. It also boosts the graphics capability, allowing for more objects onscreen at a time and hi-res output. A cable comes out the side of the SuperCharger and ends in a 1/4 inch audio jack, which users plug into the headphone jack of any regular cassette recorder. They can then play games sold by Starpath on audio cassette tape, with each priced at an attractive $14.95. Loading a game in via this procedure usually takes about 30 seconds, and a clean duplicate version of the game is offered on the other side of the cassette if something goes wrong with the original. Putting games on cassette tape has another advantage: programs for the SuperCharger typically have relatively complex multiple levels, that the system can load in off the tape as play progresses. Phaser Patrol is the tape packed in with the SuperCharger, a graphically advanced version of the popular game Star Raiders for Atari’s 400/800 computers, then ported later for the 2600.

When the SuperCharger is shown at the 1982 Summer CES, Arcadia ends up getting five times the orders for the device than they had planned to sell over the whole year. This causes scuttlebutt to swirl around the show that Atari is ready to sue or buy out Arcadia, although the makers of the SuperCharger firmly state the company is not for sale. The unit itself though is released in August of 1982, and others games are eventually follow the system, such as Escape From the Mindmaster (working title: Labyrinth), Rabbit Transit (working titles: Harebrain and Hopalong Catastrophe) and Communist Mutants From Space. The company is also actually able to produce an official version of the arcade classic Frogger for the 2600, in the face of another version released for that system by Parker Brothers. This is because Parker Brothers only has the cartridge rights for the game from Sega, opening the door for Arcadia’s version on magnetic media. The company is eventually forced to change their company name to Starpath after threats of litigation from Emerson Electronics, maker of the Arcadia 2001 home game console.

Click button to play Escape from the Mindmaster, 1982

12 games in all are eventually sold for the SuperCharger, including two sold via mail order after Starpath declares bankruptcy. The company is eventually merged with computer game maker Epyx. One prototype product never released by Starpath, called Sweat: The Decathlon Game, ends up as the basis for Epyx’s hugely popular sports extravaganza Summer Games.

Following on the heels of the SuperCharger is the Power Module, part of The Power System line from Amiga. The company might be better known as the maker of the Joyboard, a 2600 controller that one stood on to use. Well, I suppose they might be more well-known as the maker of the Amiga computer for Commodore. Their Power Module plug-in cartridge memory expander for the 2600 would also run games off cassette, as well as add 6K of memory to the 2600. What’s more, it would hook up to other Power Modules over a phone line for multiplayer games, AND have the capability to play in real 3D. This last bit is proved by one of the two cassette games included in the package being 3-D Ghost Attack. The other is to be Depth Charge, featuring the online capability. Announced in early 1983, Amiga’s Power Module is ultimately cancelled; Amiga reasons that since cartridge prices are dropping like a rock, the main cost benefit of putting out games on cassette has been undercut. Their 3-game Power Play cartridges also in development for the 2600 similarly never make it to store shelves.

In the Key of Atari

A few companies also try to make good on the “computer” part of the name Video Computer System, developing prototype computer add-ons with keyboards and storage devices. In 1983, Atari announces an under-$90 attachment that fits easily into the 2600 cartridge slot, offering users a 56-key, chiclet-style keyboard and 8K of RAM, expandable to 32K with add-on modules. Inside the add-on is the vaunted 6502 microprocessor, also seen in Atari’s 8-bit computer line. The system will output a 192×160 graphics resolution and a text screen format of 32 columns by 24 rows. It also has two sound generators. Initially called My First Computer, built into the system is the Microsoft BASIC programming language, combined with specialized graphics and sound statements from Atari BASIC. There is also a connection to allow any regular cassette tape recorder to provide data storage. Atari’s add-on can also accept standard 2600 game cartridges through a slot on its side, as well as a planned library of around 20 new cartridges at launch, featuring entertainment and educational programs. some enhanced to take advantage of the keyboard. In addition, the expansion module will also be able to accept Atari’s planned storage system utilizing high-speed, 1/16 ” wafer-tape ‘stringy floppy’ cassettes holding 128K of data. Eventually renamed The Graduate, other peripherals are announced for the keyboard, such as a 40-column thermal printer, as well as a modem. Instructional software such as  Introduction to Programming and Typo Attack, as well as home productivity programs The Home Filing Manager and Family Finances are announced with the add-on. It’s not all serious stuff though; adaptations of Donkey Kong, Robotron: 2084 and Caverns of Mars are also touted for the system. The whole shebang is promised by Atari for September of 1983, with Atari president of consumer electronics Michael Moore introducing the system with Drew Barrymore during a press conference, but the Atari 2600 computer add-on is ultimately postponed indefinitely that month by the company after the introduction of their XL computer line, and also “in light of the turmoil in the under-$100 home computer market”, according to Atari. At $150, the 600XL home computer is priced only slightly higher than the projected cost of the Graduate.

The planned Entex Piggyback Colour Computer add-on stands out by sporting 70 keys that travel when pressed like a real computer keyboard. In spite of the name, the unit sits in front of the VCS as opposed to neatly on top of it. The keyboard contains nine function keys, as well as four cursor keys to control movement. The computer add-on contains a Z80A CPU, along with 8K of ROM to hold the internal instruction set. Only a meagre 2K of RAM is available for the Piggyback out of the gate, although an expansion module is offered for boosting the unit through 16K memory cartridges to a respectable 32K of RAM, as well as an access port to allow a cassette tape for program storage. Onboard the Piggyback will be 8K of BASIC. With a price tag of at or below $125, for an additional $7 users will be able to purchase an adapter to allow the system to connect to the Intellivision, ColecoVision, or the Atari 5200. RS-232 and parallel ports promise connection to peripherals such as printers.

Other keyboard attachments for the 2600 are announced, such as Unitronics’ Expander (16K RAM), but only Spectravideo’s membrane keyboard Compumate (2K RAM), with its included music composition and Magic Easel drawing programs, makes it past the prototype stage and onto store shelves in 1983, only to disappear along with the videogame market by the end of the year.

Reach Out and Play Someone on the Atari 2600

One of the more interesting and far-reaching of the third-party companies servicing the 2600 market is Control Video Corporation (CVC) out of Vienna, Virginia, with a service called Gameline. The company is created by online information technology visionary William F. Von Meister, who had founded the first commercial online service The Source in June of 1979. He was eventually forced out of ownership of The Source that year by financial supporter Jack Taub in a power struggle, although receiving a million dollar payout for his trouble. In 1980, a controlling interest in the online service itself is eventually sold to Reader’s Digest for $3 million.

What would eventually become Gameline had originally been developed for Home Music Store, which had hoped to offer song selections to cable services via satellite. Audio music channels later become standard offerings on Cable TV, but at the time music retailers balked at the idea of this kind of distribution and lobbied the music industry to refuse participation in such a scheme. Von Meister, with support from high-tech financial investors like Hambrecht & Quist and Kleiner Perkins, heads back to the drawing board and turns to video games as a venue for the technology. Targeting the 14 million installed Atari 2600 consoles (although probably only several million are actively used by this time in its life-cycle), Gameline offers downloadable games for the 2600 over conventional phone lines through a modem which operates from between 900 – 1200 baud, in order to compensate for varying connection quality. This versatile yet inexpensive-to-make modem was the key to a viable dial-in video game service, and a large part of CVC’s $2 million R&D budget is devoted to building it, developed by vice president of engineering Ray Heinrich, as well as Hartsville, AL-based consultants Seven Systems. The games are stored on the 8K memory bank inside a special, $49.95 cartridge called the Master Module, which connects to the phone line. After dialing into the system via a local or toll-free number, the phone line is typically tied up for about a minute while retrieving a choice from the rotating roster of 30 games to be offered each month. Customers get a free subscription to Gameliner magazine, where currently available games are listed. There is a one-time hook-up fee for the service of $15, with a $10-$12 annual fee coming into play in the second year of membership. Charges are approximately $1 for up to an hour of play, and the system offers on-screen instructions for the chosen game, as well as a library of instructions for other games on the system. Parents can also set a weekly or daily limit, to prevent kids from overindulging.

With a promise that GameLine is to be compatible with Atari’s announced My First Computer keyboard add-on for the 2600,  the online service is the first stage of a planned comprehensive online BBS type of system for  Atari’s console. This is to include MailLine, offering text messages pecked off an onscreen keyboard with a joystick at 15 cents per 8,000 characters, sports news and scores via SportsLine, and home banking and financial management through StockLine. The two-way nature of the data connection also allows large, nation-wide video game tournaments. High scores are recorded by the system if the customer pays an additional 50 cents, and tournament prizes such as college scholarships, sports-cars and $100,000 in gold bullion are promised for the winners of Gameline’s World Video Game Championship. Downloading of games also comes to the Intellivision via PlayCable, and Coleco announces a partnership with AT&T to deliver games over the phone lines to their ColecoVision console. Also touted is The Games Network, where players would rent a special box from their cable providers with a $20 deposit. With this equipment, an initial catalog of 20 games from various manufacturers would be available to gamers.

Gameline launches wide by mid-1983, but licensing disagreements with most of the big cartridge makers such as Atari, Mattel and Coleco prevent many of the biggest 2600 hits from appearing on the system. At launch, Imagic is the sole major manufacturer of games available on the system, as well as a reported financial backer of the project. Product from Fox, TigerVision and Spectravision are also planned, as well as games from defunct game houses like Data Age and Games by Apollo.. In a repeat of what had happened at The Source,  CVC President Von Meister again is eventually relieved of his duties, but not before he brings Marc Seriff and Jim Kimsey into the company. Steve Case, another key member, had been lured over to CVC in 1982 from PepsiCo Inc. The Gameline system eventually shuts down in early 1985, after spending $12 million operating the network and now carrying a debt load of $500,000. The remaining execs and venture capitalists reform CVC into Quantum Computer Services. The company develops a telecommunications network package dedicated to the Commodore C64/128 computers, with a system based on tech licensed from an already existing online entity called PlayNET. QuantumLink is set for launch on October 1, 1985, and the system is operated jointly with Commodore International, who bundle QuantumLink products with their computers and modems. QuantumLink offers connectivity for a flat fee of $9.95 a month, and a registration charge of $25 is put into place at the beginning of 1986. A disk drive is needed to load the system software, and if you already have a modem for your 64/128, you get a month of free service. If you need a modem, you are provided one free if you sign up for a four-month term. After logging on, services available free to users include news updates from USA TODAY, access to the Academic American Encyclopaedia, online courses in the Electronic University, trivia games, a software store and an electronic mall for other shopping needs, among other services. Users are also billed six cents a minute to access “Plus” features such as online chat, electronic mail, head-to-head games like Chess and Hangman, and the ability to download demo programs and public-domain software. You do get an hour of “Plus” time free every month, however. Operating hours for the service are 6pm to 7am on weekdays and 24 hours a day through the weekend and holidays. Users, or Q-Linkers as they’re called, can use up to five different accounts on one computer; great for parents, who can set time limited profiles for their kids. Q-Linkers can also change their online handles at their whim; a boon for those who want to juggle a few different online personalities. Q-Link eventually adds support for Apple computers under the AppleLink banner, and PC Link for IBM compatibles in a partnership with Tandy. An online service for IBM’s PS/1 operating system is also made by Quantum and called Promenade.

If you thought emojis or emoticons were a fairly recent Internet invention, then :p. They actually show up in email and chat room communications on QLink, such expressive symbols known there as QShorthand graphics or QGraphics for short. Hang around long enough and you’ll see happy :), a wink (;)), somebody angry (>:(), a glasses-wearing nerd (8)), or as I demonstrated above, someone sticking their tongue out… among many others. Things get even more visually expressive when the first virtual online graphical community ever is set up on QuantumLink, with the superbly-named Chip Morningstar as project leader, programmer and principle designer. LucasFilm initially pitches the service as MicroCosm to Steve Case in September of 1985.  It is eventually made available to Commodore 64 users in a beta phase on QuantumLink between 1986 and 1988. Renamed Habitat, it allows users to create graphical avatars and walk around, chat and barter for items in a real-time animated environment, including potentially hundreds of different areas, along with user-created rooms. Laws and acceptable behaviours are created by the users, including the robbing and killing of each other. At the end of the pilot period in 1988, Habitat is scaled down and opened wide to users as a simple graphical chat room called Club Caribe. In this form the service continues until 1994. In 1989, Case, Kimsey and Seriff morph QuantumLink and all its sundry services into another little online company…America Online. Von Meister does not share in the billion-dollar success of AOL, and succumbs to cancer in 1995 at the age of 53.

From Gameline to AOL – America Online announces version 4.0 of their software, 1998

As an alternative to the delivery of videogames through a phone line like with Gameline, in 1984 Atari and Activision join forces with an experiment to stream games via FM radio. Via a FM receiver cartridge with circuitry designed by Larry Karr of SCA Data Systems, Inc., an FM subcarrier signal of 12 kbits/s sending game data would originate from a local radio station and be received by either the 2600 console or an Atari computer. Tests in the field are successful, but the public has turned the dial away from video games, and the scheme to send Atari and Activision games over radio waves loses its signal. This technology would eventually rise from the static, with Karr and SCA Data helping to shrink the technology for Microsoft’s SPOT smart watch tech in 2003.

End of the Line for the Atari 2600

Atari itself  has been milking the VCS for all it’s worth, trying to stave off the obvious obsolescence of the console by redesigning the same basic technology into smaller or more gimmicky versions, as well as sundry peripherals to “improve” gameplay. One such attempt is the CX-2700 Remote Control VCS, sporting wireless hand units with a radio connection to the game console, allowing gamers to control the onscreen action as well as pause or reset games without getting off the couch. The controllers also feature a combination joystick and paddle configuration similar to what will show up on the later 5200 Supersystem, along with heat sensitive, finger-touch buttons. The 2700 is unveiled at the 1981 Winter CES pegged with a hefty suggested retail price of $299.95, and it is given a release date of August. The game console ends up quietly shelved by Atari, after reports of the radio signals from the wireless controllers opening people’s garage doors. Voice recognition and voice synthesis for the 2600 is also dabbled with, via a device called the Voice Controller, manufactured for Atari by Milton Bradley. Surfacing at the Summer CES in 1983, the module plugs into the controller port of the 2600, with a headset attached to it. With this headset, players will then be able to speak commands and hear voice prompts in supported games such as RealSports Baseball, Star Raiders, Battlezone and Berzerk. Sporting a proposed retail price of $100, the system only supports one player; the other must use a regular joystick in the other port, and hopefully will refrain from shouting false commands and screwing his more technically advanced “friend”. Perhaps because of this fatal flaw in human gamesmanship, the Voice Controller does not make it to store shelves in October as planned. Even a system that is strongly inferred by Atari to allow players to control games by mind-control is prototyped, called Mindlink. Most media who check out the controller at the 1984 Summer CES comment that it appears to respond to mere pressure from the eyebrows. The dubious system is prototyped,  but never released.

In 1982 the original VCS is remodeled in an all-black version referred to unofficially as the Vader console, the first to be given the new official name the Atari 2600 Video Computer System. The new title is based on the console’s model number and done to put the name in line with the new 5200 console, also released that year. This name is popularly just condensed down to the 2600. The pack-in cartridge becomes Pac-Man, an arcade license that the company figures will send the 2600 back into the top-sellers list. With Pac-Man in the title, the game sells over 10 million copies, but it is apparent the arcade adaptation is a rush job and critics declare it a creative disaster.

It takes the development of Coleco’s graphically advanced ColecoVision to prompt Atari to offer more advanced technology with their 5200 Supersystem machine, although even this new unit is only a repurposing of Atari’s 8-bit computer line in console form. Groping for avenues to shoring up their market share Atari announces a series of signed deals with content companies: in early 1983 Atari announces deals with United Feature Syndicate and Charles Shultz Creative Association to create games based on the Peanuts characters; an agreement with Destron, Inc to create software around their coin-operated biorhythm and astrology machines; and an arrangement with the Children’s Television Workshop to make Sesame Street games under the label Children’s Computer Workshop. They also tout a long-term deal with Williams Electronics for first refusal of their arcade works for home video and computer games. Having previously made Defender, Atari also lands games like Moon Patrol and Joust out of this deal, and begins planning home versions while the arcade games are still in the R&D stage at Williams.

In early 1984, Atari releases 12 original and licensed games for competing computer and video game systems, under the Atarisoft label. The games include Centipede, Defender, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Robotron, Stargate, Picnic Paranoia, Protector, Shamus, and Galaxian. They are released for systems such as the Apple II  and IIe, IBM PC, C64, VIC-20, TI 99/4A, ColecoVision and Intellivision.

 

After the surprise announcement on Friday, January 13, 1984, that Jack Tramiel is stepping down as the President and CEO of Commodore, he and a cadre of investors acquire the ailing consumer division of Atari in a cashless deal that has the group assuming the company’s $240 million debt, with Tramiel taking the reins of the newly renamed Atari Corp. as CEO on July 2, his son Sam Tramiel landing as Atari president. The next day Atari presents its new CEO, holding a press conference at the 1984 Summer CES in Chicago and billing it as “The Day the Future Began”.  The future of Atari’s coin-op division is that it is spun off the next year to Atari’s old arcade game partners at Namco America, and is renamed Atari Games, Corp…. makers of such arcade games as Gauntlet (1985), 720° (1986),  and Cyberball & Cyberball 2072 (1988-1989), among many others. On the consumer side, Tramiel remodels the 2600 into the even smaller $50 2600jr in 1985. Production of the Atari 2600 ends in 1991; its 14-year run marks it as the longest lasting home video game system in history.

Nolan Bushnell: King Pong Rebounds

Rewinding back to 1976, Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell is getting tired of the day-to-day operations at the company, and his constant run-ins with the suits at mother corp. Warner are wearing him down. He finds his interest drawn to a new project within the company, to develop a national chain of pizza parlours/arcades that intends to be a more family-friendly place to play video games than seedy bars or bowling alleys. He convinces Atari to set up a new department called the Restaurant Operating Division, headed by Gene Landrum. On May 16,  1977, they open a 5,000 sq. ft. prototype restaurant at the Town and Country Village in San Jose, the grand opening of which is attended by local dignitaries, including San Jose Mayor Janet Gray Hayes. Getting as close as Bushnell ever will to realizing his youthful dreams of becoming a Disney Imagineer, the restaurant concept includes a cast of animatronic characters playing in a musical band for the customers. Over 30 video games and other mechanical attractions surround the dining area in an enclosed environment to keep sound at a sane level. Controls are also in place to ensure only restaurant patrons are playing the games. Bringing in his former Atari partner into the venture, Bushnell has Ted Dabney design a system to let patrons know when their food is ready.

 

Atari is wary of expanding the restaurant experiment further, so Bushnell purchases the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre concept from Warners for $500,000 in June of 1977, and after he leaves the company the following year, Bushnell furthers expansion of PTT, with Joe Keenan joining him soon after. After a successful IPO at $15 a share, share prices rise to over $27 per share by April of 1982. Restaurant franchises are offered at a buy-in of $20,000 at the start, with a set of the animatronic characters, with maintenance and programming training thrown in, costing prospective operators $40,000. By late 1981, there are over 100 Chuck E. Cheese restaurants going, both corporate-run and franchised.

As stated previously, Atari launches a lawsuit against Bushnell over his formation of Sente, claiming that he has breached the spirit of his non-compete agreement by vociferously promoting and securing funding for his new venture before the clause’s 5-year deadline, as well as for his purchasing of Videa, Inc., a video game development outfit made up of former Atari powerhouse game designers Ed Rotberg, Roger Hector and Howard Delman. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent Bushnell from competing in the marketplace for at least a further year, as well as any profits realized over the contract breach. Undeterred, Bushnell presses ahead when his non-compete clause from his departure from Atari in 1978 officially expires and he forms new video game company Sente Technologies in 1983 under the Pizza Time Theatre umbrella. The launch of the new venture is heralded in a press party with typical Bushnell showmanship, including Bushnell himself emerging from wrappings made to look like a shipped arcade cabinet, along with a brass band, elephants, snakes, camels and monkeys. Like his former company, the name of his new gaming venture comes from the game Go, this time the term meaning to make the first move. Plans for the new company include arcade games called SAC or Sente Arcade Computer, which would allow operators to change their offerings with just a swap of a cartridge and some decal changes on the cabinet. To satisfy Atari’s lawsuit, he enters into a contract giving his former company exclusive home video game first-look rights to any coin-op made by Sente or Pizza Time Theatre, starting on Oct.1 1983.

On January 31 of 1984, Nolan Bushnell steps down as chairman of Pizza Time Theatre, while retaining 1.2 million shares of the company, or 19% of available notes. Bushnell moves to a chairmanship position at Sente, and Joe Keenan steps up as chairman of the restaurant chain the next month. Sente manages to roll the roller-ball controlled Snake Pit into arcades, allowing gamers to assume the role of hero Outback Jack, using a joystick and roller-ball controller in a bid to whip deadly snakes to death through 13 waves. After the game’s release, Pizza Time Theatre declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy, triggered by a bank creditor’s demand for the company to immediately pay a $50 million note. As part of the process, an announcement is made in May,1984 that Sente is being sold to Bally/Midway for $3.9 million, a price somewhat lower than what Bushnell had sold his first video game company for 8 years previous.

The game company manages to release a couple dozen other conventional arcade games, such as Hat Trick, Chicken Shift, Snacks’N Jaxon and Stocker. Sente introduces the 2nd generation SAC system, SAC II that same year. Hoping to energize the sagging arcade market by combining video games with motion control technology, SAC II puts gamers in a moving cockpit driven by hydraulic actuators to create a sense of actual flight in the first game for the system, Shrike Avenger, announced in 1984 but not released until 1986. One of the first games to charge $1.00 a play, with powerful actuators causing the motion it was also known to have flipped over and nearly injured a rider. Riding on the coattails of smash laser game arcade hit Dragon’s Lair, the planned model III SAC games are to be laserdisc machines. Pizza Time Theatre ends up going bankrupt in 1984, done in by the crashing videogame market and mounting debts via overzealous expansion and acquisitions. Bushnell’s company is then picked up by competitor Showbiz Pizza Place, and the two entities eventually merge into the modern Chuck E. Cheese franchise.

1993 ad for the modern Chuck E. Cheese’s franchise, after merger with Show Biz Pizza

Doing the Robot. Androbot, That Is

Bushnell engages in a myriad of other comeback attempts of varying success, including Androbot, a San Jose-based consumer robotics company headed by Tom Frisina that in 1983 produces Topo, the “world’s first personal robot”. A stripped down version is initially made available at a within-reach price tag of $495; this model is eventually replaced with a more advanced version with all the bells and whistles at $1595.  Sporting dimensions of 36.5″ x 24″, the 33-lb, battery operated Topo can move and speak via a remote IR interface card inserted into an Apple IIe or II+ computer, controlled by either joystick or keyboard. Interfaces for the IBM PC, C64 and Atari 8-bit computers are also promised by Androbot. Topo’s speaking ability uses text-to-speech, to simplify the programming process. The robot comes with TopoBASIC, which includes intuitive movement commands such as TFD (forward) and TRT (turn right) and TLT (turn left).  Programmed distances are measured in Topo Steps, with one step equalling a centimetre. Also made available is TopoSoft, a programming language based on Forth,  and a TopoLOGO programming package can be purchased for $125. This simplified language allows users without programming skills to easily input directional commands for the robot. The computer needed to program your new electronic buddy is not included in the price, but there is an emergency stop switch on the top of his head in case his programming goes wonky. Topo‘s name is derived from the word “topology”, meaning the study of spaces or surfaces.

Part of an overall incubation think-tank for high-tech start-ups called Catalyst Technologies that Bushnell had founded back in December of 1980, Androbot only manages to sell a few thousand robots. These include Topos, as well as B.O.B.s (Brains On Board), Topo‘s 43 pound, nearly four-foot high big brother that doesn’t require an external computer and runs about $4,000. The brains referred to in his name are represented by three onboard 16-bit CPUs, as well as 3M of RAM. Available options include the Androwagon and Androfridge, which BOB can pull behind him, weaving in and out between party-goers offering pretzels and beers. BOB has a certain amount of autonomy in comparison to his cousin, in that he contains five ultrasonic sensors, such as the autofocus sensors found in cameras, which allow him to move around freely while mapping the dimensions of his environment and the objects within it. He also has two infrared sensors to help him identify living things. Utilizing this feature, programming BOB‘s movements can be simplified using his Follow Me mode, where the unit will follow the user and remember the path and repeat it on command. Voice synthesis seems out of reach to its designers, so instead, he draws on a pool of over 100 pre-recorded, digitized phrases. Cartridges are to made available for BOB soon after his release, such as AndroSentry, which turns the robot into a mechanical night watchman for your house.

At the Summer 1983 CES Androbot announces a cheaper robot version called Androman, a 12-inch robot buddy for your 2600. Controllable by joystick, a cartridge for the 2600 would put obstacles on the screen for the device to avoid, and interact with an included 6’x8′ cardboard game playing field and set of data coded game pieces. Androbot also announces a $350 robot named F.R.E.D. (Friendly Robotic Educational Device) that includes a drawing pen attachment and a keypad for programming. It can also talk and sense drop-offs so it won’t roll off a desk. Androbot, however, eventually rolls off the edge and goes bust,  along with the idea of personal robots running households. After incurring huge losses, the company has been shuttered by September of 1985, with assets sold off to Robotics International.

Bushnell tries again with the company Axlon, that had originally gotten its start making add-ons for the Atari 8-bit computers, including the RAMCRAM memory expansion module. They retool F.R.E.D. into a new robot named Andy, selling for only $120. A kind of pint-sized version of TOPO, ANDY also allows users to plug in a cable into their home computer and control the robot with a joystick, or use a LOGO-like language to issue a series of commands for ANDY to follow. It also has onboard sensors to detect light, sound and touch, and can detect and move around objects it encounters in its path.  Also from Axlon comes a line of robotic pets initially called MicroPets until renamed Petster, critters that move around on their own, make appropriate animals sounds, and will come on command…. although a set of random numbers in their programming will prevent them from ALWAYS listening to their owners, much like real pets. Axlon also puts out a stuffed animal named A.G. Bear, which responds to the emotion in a child’s voice in gibberish “bear language” that mimics the same emotional response, as well as converse with others of its kind when in close proximity. The company also makes Party Animals, a line of six hand puppets with a light sensor in the mouth that triggers noise as the child makes them “talk”. Selling for around $25 each, kids can pick such animal pals as Silly Goose, Tetrazzini Turkey, and Dippity Dolphin. In 1985 Axlon sells over $15 million of its talking  stuffed  toys. There is ultimately meritless talk in early 1986 of Bushnell merging Axlon with CL9, a company started by Apple Computers co-founder – and designer of Atari game Breakout –  Steve Wozniak to develop a universal TV remote. It is thought at the time that Axlon might use the CL9 tech for possible remote control toys… and thereby having Woz swap one carnival barker evangelist partner, Steve Jobs, with another. 

Nolan Bushnell Navigating His Way with Etak

Bushnell also gets in on the ground floor of in-car navigation systems, bankrolling the founding of Etak for $500,000.  A pioneering company in the field, the idea behind Etak comes to electronics whiz Stanley Honey while navigating aboard Bushnell’s racing yacht Charley. The Etak system uses the old-school nautical navigation method of “dead reckoning”, using the vehicle as a static point and considering the relative speed over time through the landscape around it to determine its position. Since the Polynesians had used dead reckoning to travel large swaths of the Pacific Ocean, Honey appropriates the Polynesian navigational term etak for his invention. The company produces two versions of the first practical in-car navigational systems made available on the market, called Navigator and released in July of 1985 to the San Francisco area. Coverage for Southern California is to go on sale in September. Licensed to General Motors, model 700 features a 7″ screen meant for commercial vehicles, selling for $1,595, and also a $1,395 model 450 system for consumers that contains a 4.5″ display. Streets, with zoom functions, are displayed on the screens, with the vehicle position represented as an arrow. As the vehicle moves, the map scrolls and rotates live to match. Information on direction and vehicle speed is fed to a shoebox- size computer in the trunk via a roof-mounted magnetic compass and magnetic sensors placed near the wheels. Various EtakMap videotape cassettes featuring coverage areas are sold for $35. Drivers can input their destination via twelve buttons placed around the edge of the CRT display. The dead reckoning system can provide accuracy up to 50 feet, but errors accumulate over time which requires a position reset at the touch of a button. The system also displays distance to the destination set as you drive, although this is “as the crow flies”. Users can also set up to 16 different destinations in memory, to retrieve quickly later. By the latter part of 1987, Etak has also signed deals with Clarion Co.of Japan, makers of in-car sound systems, as well as West German automotive audio equipment company Blaupunkt-Werke. The latter company plans on releasing a version of the technology in Europe called Travel Pilot that utilizes CD storage technology over the map cassettes used by the system in its California trials. Future map coverage is to include restaurants and points of interest. After being installed in about 2,000 vehicles by 1987, Etak hardware is eventually rendered obsolete by satellite GPS navigation systems, whereby the company starts selling its electronic map data. But the firm’s dead reckoning system has paved the way for the later ubiquity of in-car map devices. After a series of acquisitions, Etak ends up being sold to Tele Atlas in 2000.

Bushnell later gains a minority stake and title Director of Strategic Planning in Aristo International Corp. in 1996, with a plan to build Internet-connected music streaming, messaging and video screens for installation in bars and other entertainment venues. Renamed Playnet Technologies, the enterprise eventually sinks. From this, started on July 1, 1999, is a new company called uWink.com, developing Internet-linked physical gaming kiosks. The focus of uWink moves to developing dining bistros featuring monitors at every table with which patrons will order food and play games against other diners, with the initial restaurant opening in the Woodland Hills area of California in October, 2006. After the opening and closing of several restaurants in the California area, in 2010 uWink as a dining experience is shut down and the underlying kiosk technology is to be put on offer to other restaurants under the name Tapcode. As for Bushnell’s former partner-in-crime at Atari and Pizza Time Theatre, Joe Keenan eventually ends up back in the game industry as president of Data East USA in 1990.

Bushnell’s contribution to the modern videogame landscape via the company he created and the console that company produced cannot be overstated, even though we now look back at the blocky graphics and limited colour palette of the VCS/2600 with nostalgic wonder that such a system could be the wellspring of today’s powerhouse monstrosities. It’s not often that a game console, or the company that produces it, penetrates the public consciousness to such an extent that a powerful Hollywood actor produces and stars in a film about its history. However, such a rumour is floated, concerning fervent video game player Leonardo DiCaprio producing and starring as Bushnell in Atari, developed by DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company and optioned in 2008 by Paramount. It makes sense to put the breakneck, roller-coaster story of Atari to film, since the company and its VCS console marked the ascendancy of video games to the top of the entertainment market, along with the programmers that wrestled with the restraining technology to produce some of the greatest games of all time. It also makes sense that the creative and out-there ‘burning with ideas and ambition’ engineering hippie behind the business, Nolan Bushnell, takes a road-trip to the salt-swept desert flats of Nevada every year to avant-guarde technology-hedonist festival Burning Man.