Category Archives: Atari

Atari Buys Intellivision: What Intellivision Used to Think of Its New Owners

If you’d like to see how the mighty Intellivision was developed and how it impacted the industry, you can check out our history of the console, a history you can read, listen, watch and even play, here at The Dot Eaters: https://thedoteaters.com/?bitstory=console/intellivision

Big game developer acquisitions like Sony buying Bungie, or Microsoft buying… everything (Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, etc. etc. etc.) understandably shake-up the video gaming landscape. The announcement of Atari buying up the Intellivision brand and game rights might not quite set off such big earthquake alerts in a monetary sense, but it certainly is a monumental event in the realm of retro video games.

The Mattel Intellivision console video game — More top-down view of the Intellivision Master Component, controller overlays and cartridges, 1980 Mattel Catalog

The Mattel Intellivision was released by Mattel Electronics in 1979 as a higher-tech challenger to what was by then, by far the most popular video game system available, the Atari VCS or Video Computer System, later renamed the 2600. The Intellivision was a bleeding-edge game console at the time, featuring a 16-bit CPU and dedicated GPU, and the games Mattel put out for it, especially sports games like Major League Baseball, NFL Football and NBA Basketball, were demonstrably better than similar sports on the Atari.

The glorious sports game of the Mattel Intellivision

So demonstrably better, in fact, that Mattel put out a series of commercials comparing its video games to those on the Atari, featuring the gently condescending tones of author and actor George Plimpton, who had made a name for himself a few years earlier by trying out for professional sports teams and writing about his hapless attempts to play at the pro level. In these ads, Plimpton would display, say, Atari Home Run baseball next to Mattel’s Major League Baseball and politely ask which the viewers might find more realistic: Atari’s flickering four blocky players moving around a solid background with four white dots for bases, or the fully-teamed, animated ball-players running around a rendered ball diamond and pitching mound of MLB. The answer was obvious.

A collection of Intellivision attack ads aimed at Atari

So, to “commemorate” the biggest name in video game history finally buying up their strongest challenger, I’ve put my collection of attack ads Intellivision put out maligning the aging graphics capabilities of the Atari VCS into a YouTube video for you to i) enjoy if you were a smug Mattel Intellivision owner back in the day, or ii) fume about if you were an Atari VCS owner in 1980, like me. As a bonus I threw in a response commercial from Atari, as well. This is what, at the time, Intellivision thought of their new owners, and now you can’t say “I didn’t know!”.

Arcade1Up and Atari Team Up for the 50th Anniversary Arcade Cabinet

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If you’ve ever yearned to play Atari arcade games like Missile Command, Crystal Castles, Major Havok and more in an affordable arcade cabinet format, Arcade1Up and Atari have teamed up to release a new arcade cabinet to celebrate Atari’s 50th anniversary. The Atari 50th Anniversary Deluxe Arcade Machine is a must-have for any retro gaming fan, with a curated selection of 14 arcade classics and 50 Atari 2600 games.

The cabinet features a 17-inch color screen, four control panels (one for each game type), and two speakers. It also has upgraded joysticks and on-off light-up buttons, a light-up marquee, and even a 3D molded light-up coin door, although you don’t actually have to insert quarters to play. All done in the iconic profile of the classic Atari Asteroids cabinet.

Speaking of which, here is a list of some of the games included in the cabinet:

Arcade classics: Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Space Duel, Tempest and more!
Atari 2600 games: Adventure, Battlezone, Breakout, Canyon Bomber, Crystal Castles, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Gravitar, Haunted House, Millipede, Missile Command, Pac-Man, Pole Position, River Raid, Space Invaders, Sword Quest, Yars’ Revenge, the list goes on.

The cabinet also has built-in Wi-Fi, so you can connect to online leaderboards and compete with gamers from all over the world.

The Atari 50th Anniversary Deluxe Arcade Machine is available now for pre-order on the Atari website and other retailers for $499.99. It is scheduled to ship in October 2023.

To read about the rise and fall of Atari, and the many games they published, and even watch and play them, start with my article on The Dot Eaters, here: https://thedoteaters.com/?bitstory=bitstory-article-2/pong-and-atari

3D Depth Artwork Released by Atari and Artovision

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Atari and Wisconsin-based Artovision have collaborated to make shadowbox and desktop versions of 3D artwork based on the classic arcade game Asteroids, along with a piece based on their 2600 game Adventure and another one featuring the Atari logo splash screen that appears in front of games for the 2600 sequel, the 5200 SuperSystem. The Asteroids art has the original arcade bezel with an image of gameplay set back from it to create the 3D effect. The original arcade marquee design tops the artwork, with a representation of the arcade button controls below.

You can head on over to Atari.com and pick up your own three-dimensional classic game artwork. You can also read, watch, listen and play the history of Atari here at The Dot Eaters.

Atari Star Wars Arcade Game 40th Anniversary

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Trying to figure out what is the “best” of any genre is kind of a fool’s errand. What makes something the best is a highly subjective thing, and it’s very rare to find consensus. But the decision is pretty much in when it comes to arcade video games: Atari’s Star Wars, released 40 years ago on May 5, 1983, is a sure bet for the greatest arcade game ever made.

Atari Star Wars arcade game — Atari Star Wars gameplay. Use the… well, you know

Game designer Mike Hally worked on a lot of other classics at Atari, including producing the deviously difficult Gravitar (1982) and the raster graphics classic Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the best thing associated with the movie). He also directed the Atari System 1 graphical extravaganza Road Runner in 1986, and designed the lightgun shooter Area 51 for Atari in 1995, among other works. It’s to the great credit of his Star Wars arcade game that it lives up to the original material. The project was based off an earlier unfinished game titled Warp Speed by Battlezone creator Ed Rotberg. With a working title like that, one thinks that maybe Rotberg was thinking Star Trek other than Star Wars. Utilizing Atari’s colour Quadrascan vector graphics hardware, Hally’s game totally immersed players in a galaxy far, far away… especially if they were playing the sit-down cockpit version. The game covered the action that takes place in the film’s final reel: Luke Skywalker as Red Five, joining the attack against the dreaded Imperial Death Star. Controlling Luke’s X-Wing fighter, gamers fended off a wave of enemy TIE fighters, then swooped down into the famous Star Wars trench scene in a race to deliver the final shot into the exhaust port, then out in time to watch the great conflagration as the deadly technological terror explodes. Then rinse and repeat, as the TIE fighters became more numerous and active, and the surface defenses of the Death Star increased in complexity and difficulty, all while digitized voices of R2-D2, Luke, Han Solo and Obi Wan urge on the gamer, accompanied by snippets of John Williams’ iconic score.

Just one interesting story about the game is when, on August 10, 1983 Atari unveiled the game for George Lucas at his Marin County, California HQ. The gathered designers and Atari and Warner Bros. (mother corp. of Atari) execs looked on as Lucas sat down in the cockpit version of the game and played it for the first time. With his trademark taciturn demeanor, the Atari people started to sweat as Lucas stayed stone-faced, showing little enthusiasm as he played. Lucas finally emerged from the cockpit saying “That was great!”, and everyone started breathing again. BTW, this special version of the cockpit Atari Star Wars cabinet had a plaque mounted on it, reading: “A special thanks for creating the Force behind so much fun.”

Onlookers watch George Lucas play Atari's Star Wars arcade game, 1983 — Onlookers watch George Lucas play Atari’s Star Wars arcade game, 1983.

If you’d like to find out more, you can read, watch, listen and play the history of Atari here at The Dot Eaters: https://thedoteaters.com/?bitstory=bitstory-article-2/pong-and-atari

PONG Announced 50 Years Ago

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It’s hard to believe that PONG is a half-century old. But it was 50 years ago, on Nov. 29, 1972, when an upstart company in Santa Clara, California called Atari announced a crazy product: a ping-pong game played on a TV screen, mounted inside a wooden cabinet.

It was the second attempt by the company to carve out a new entertainment genre: the first was Computer Space, a video coin-op game the company had produced the previous year under the uncomfortable business name Syzygy. Sketched out by co-founder Nolan Bushnell and assembled by Al Alcorn, PONG would go on to massive success, creating an entire industry that, within a decade, would be worth $3.2 billion dollars.

For more information on Atari and its revolutionary PONG, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

Atari’s Epic Dig Dug Commercial of 1982

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As part of a marketing push (an area where CEO Ray Kassar excelled at), Atari created a two-minute ad for arcade game Dig Dug. The funny thing about all this hoopla is that Atari hadn’t actually made the game: it was licensed by the company from Namco for release in North America.

Dig Dug, an arcade video game by Atari and Namco, 1982 — Dig Dug gameplay

Taking five days to film, the full ad ran in theatres during the summer of 1982, while a shorter 30 second version ran on TV. Originally, 60’s singing and dancing sensation Chubby Checker (The Twist) was to sing the catchy theme song in the ad, but Atari ultimately went with a younger singer, perhaps for reasons of demographics. You can hear Chubby’s version here on the Atari Museum Public Group on Facebook. The song was posted by Matt Osborne, the son of Don Osborne, who was Atari’s VP of Marketing at the time. Upon listening to it, I’m sure you’ll agree that Atari made a huge mistake not going with Chubby.

As for the visuals, the various special effects in the ad were handled by production designer Jim Spencer and crew, who among other projects had the effects-laden movie Poltergeist under their belt. They would subsequently work on films like Innerspace and Gremlins.

Created by advertising agency Young & Rubicam and directed by Manny Perez, the spot would go on to snag a 1983 Clio award in the Cinema and Advertising category. It might not be high art, but at least it reflects the most important aspect of the video game it’s shilling: it’s a lot of fun. It also got the job done for Atari; by their estimations the theatrical ad and shortened TV spots had by August of 1982 increased public awareness of Dig Dug by a whopping 227% over markets without the ads. This converted into 30% higher coin drops for the arcade game in those same markets. I can Dig that!

For more information on the history of Atari, consult your local Dot Eaters Bitstory.

Sources:

Atari Coin Connection, “Dig Dug Meets Clio”, pg. 2, Aug 1983
Atari Museum Public Group, Facebook
1982 Entertainment Tonight segment on the making of Dig Dug ad
Cash Box. Industry News – Atari ‘Customer Day’ Stresses Closer Ties With Distributors”, pgs. 38 – 39, Feb 19 1983, retrieved from Internet Archive Sept 15, 2019
Cash Box, Nov. 13 1982 article “Atari Launches National TV Push for ‘Dig Dug’

A Completely Bonkers TV Ad for Pole Position

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A lot of people might remember the manic ads that Sega put out in the 90’s (SEGAAA!), and consider them the apex (or nadir) of video game advertisements.

But Atari kind of created the mold here, with this insane 60 second spot that aired in 1983, announcing the crossing of their arcade hit Pole Position over to the 2600 and 5200 video game systems. You know that any ad which starts with a giant hand reaching down and shaking the douche-bag corporate executive “who keeps interesting things from happening” and family out of their VW Rabbit and into Formula One racecars is DEFINITELY a keeper.

Please enjoy the mayhem, and remember: THIS WAY, CLARENCE!

Connecting the Dots: How Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak Break Out

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After he dropped out of Reed College in Oregon, in 1974 Steve Jobs joined a small tech company by the name of Atari, working at their Los Gatos facility in California. Legend has it that he showed up in their lobby, scruffy and lacking in perfect bodily hygiene, and stated to the receptionist that he wouldn’t be leaving the premises until he got a job. Instead of calling the police, she brought Al Alcorn to talk to him, and was eventually hired. In spite of being brash and over-confident (or perhaps, BECAUSE of those traits), Atari CEO Nolan Bushnell took a liking to young Steve. One day he approached Jobs with a game idea. We break into the TDE archives to continue the story:

In 1976 Nolan Bushnell offers the young Jobs $750 to put together the hardware for Breakout, a variation on PONG designed by the Atari founder, but instead of knocking the ball back and forth the player uses the paddle to send the ball at a wall of bricks across the top of the screen. The game is black and white, utilizing the old pre-1979 chestnut of overlays on the screen to simulate colour. The main mission is to reduce the amount of dedicated chips used in the construction of the game, thereby greatly reducing the cost to mass manufacture it. Bushnell promises Jobs a bonus of $100 for every chip he eliminates from the design. Even though he is not much of an engineer or ace programmer, Jobs promises to finish the game in four days, when a typical game’s development time would be several months. It is his ace-in-the-hole Wozniak who actually builds the machine, spending four consecutive nights assembling the hardware and still holding down his daytime job at Hewlett-Packard. The two meet the four day deadline, with Woz shaving the number of required chips down to 45. Jobs receives his money, and setting the tone for their business relationship, he fails to tell his friend about the now $5000 bonus. He pays Wozniak his share of $375 from the original $750 payment and furthermore takes all the credit when Breakout becomes a hit 15,000 unit seller for Atari. But Woz receives far more than simple currency with his fling with Breakout…for instance, one night as he watches technicians apply the overlays onto the Breakout screen in order to simulate coloured bricks, Woz starts thinking about how he could have a computer generate real colours on the screen. The way his later computer designs would introduce colour to the world of personal computers stems directly from his work on the arcade game, as well as his love for gaming in general. His work with Breakout also gives him a valuable education in logic design and its integration with a TV signal. And he uses his version of BASIC language to manipulate his computer version of Breakout, and is amazed how powerful a tool software is in creating games. Woz’s amazingly tight design for Breakout baffles Atari engineers, and it has to be redesigned with more chips added to actually allow it to be manufactured.

Jobs would later approach Bushnell with the idea of Atari producing a new computer he and Woz had developed, but the Atari boss passed on the offer. Atari would end up competing against that product with their 8-bit 400 and 800 computer lines. Woz and Jobs did just fine with their own computer: the venerable Apple II, by the Apple Computer Company.

For more information on Breakout!, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

The Atari Lynx Handheld – 30 Years Old Today

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The story of the Atari Lynx handheld console is another one for the “Squandered Chances by Atari” file. You find a lot of these in the later years of the company. 30 years on, let’s take a look at this ill-fated marvel.

Heading into the final stretch of the 80’s, product sales are failing to meet the projections of computer game company Epyx. The C64 is dropping off the scope as a gaming platform, and a hardware project is draining resources, called Handy. It is designed by Dave Needle and R.J. Mical, of the Amiga computer development team at Commodore. Handy is to be the world’s first colour hand-held game device but is proving to be an elongated drag on Epyx, with two years and a reported $8 million sunk into its development.

Image of the Atari Lynx handheld game unit, 1989

The ill-fated Atari Lynx

Another problem for Epyx is that its games are some of the most pirated computer titles around, with practically everyone with a C64 playing Summer Games and Impossible Mission but few actually paying for the privilege. The Handy project is eventually sold to Atari, via a deal that makes the video game and computer company a part owner of Epyx. Announcing the colour handheld system as the PCES or Portable Color Entertainment System at the Summer CES in 1989, Atari eventually renames the system as the Lynx. Meanwhile, Epyx reorganizes, dropping the distribution part of the company to focus on game development for consoles. They also lay off 85% of their workforce, along with the departure of Mical, Needle and company head David Morse.

Atari/Tengen arcade port of Rampart, one of the better games for the Lynx

The new name of Atari’s handheld device highlights the fact that up to eight of the devices can be linked together via a cable, for head-to-head play. It also sports a 3 1/2-inch colour LCD screen with a resolution of 160×102 pixels, capable of displaying 16 colours at a time out of a palette of 4,096. A powerful screen indeed, but also responsible for the reputation of the Lynx as a notorious battery-killer. Inside the case also resides a 16mHz 65C02 processor.

Lynx sees a limited rollout, first hitting the New York City area on September 1, 1989. In the early part of 1990, the system begins selling in five more markets: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston. It is available nationally through 1990. While technically superior to the recently released Nintendo Gameboy portable game system, the $149.95 Lynx and its games lineup ultimately fail to compete against Nintendo’s juggernaut.

Another “What Might Have Been” for the books.

For more information on the history of vaunted computer game maker Epyx, consult your local Dot Eaters entry here.

For more on the history of industry giant Atari, click here.

Ad for Lynx, a hand-held video game system by Atari

1994 ad for the Atari handheld gaming system Lynx.

The Visual Cortex: Intellivision Attacks!

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Today the Visual Cortex is sporting an Intellivision magazine ad, featuring the system’s well-heeled attack dog, author George Plimpton.

Plimpton featured prominently in a series of attack ads by Mattel that highlighted their system’s advanced graphics capability, especially when compared with the anemic visuals of their chief rival, Atari’s VCS/2600 unit. You might be excused for thinking, “Why Plimpton?”. Well, Plimpton came to national prominence as a kind of high-brow intellectual for the Budweiser set, a sportswriter who would poke fun at his high-falutin’ ways by attempting to play sports at the pro level and then write about his haplessness. So he was a pretty good fit for the Intellivision, which specialized in sports games like NFL Football and MLB Baseball that blew away the Atari versions in terms of both graphical quality and realistic gameplay. Here is the ad:

Magazine attack ad for the Intellivision, a home video console by Mattel

George lays into Atari

These hard hitting attack ads irked Atari president Ray Kassar so much that he complained about the “unfairness” of the comparisons to the TV networks airing them and threatened legal action. Eventually Atari would come out with their own version of the highly intellectual pitchman; a child dressed up in a suit and glasses who would point out the versions of popular arcade games that were absent on the Intellivision. Of course, Mattel then struck back with Plimpton schooling their own version of the pint-sized pitchman.

As a couple of bonuses, here is John Hodgman’s spoof on the Plimpton ad, used to shill his own book The Areas of My Expertise in 2006, as well as a link to Newground’s hilarious (and fun to play) fake web-based ColecoVision game George Plimpton’s Video Falconry, created in 2011.

An ad for John Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise, meant to spoof the George Plimpton Intellivision ads 2006

A spoof of the Inty ad featuring John Hodgman, 2005

Click to play.

For more information on the Intellivision and the Great Mattel/Atari Video Game Wars, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

This article was originally posted to The Dot Eaters on Jan. 9, 2013