Category Archives: VCS/2600

Logo for Atari, a video game company

Atari Is Born, 40 Years Ago Today

Out of the ashes of Computer Space, an unpopular first attempt at an arcade video game which was  released by Nutting Associates in 1971, 27-year-old Nolan Bushnell, along with partner Ted Dabney, incorporated Atari, Inc. today in 1972.  Their next attempt, the first game released by the new company, would be a slightly bigger success: PONG.

Bushnell and Dabney had created Computer Space under the auspices of an informal company they dubbed Syzygy, pronounced siz-eh-jee, a term meaning the Earth, Moon and Sun in perfect alignment.  Thankfully a candle-making commune had already registered that name, so Bushnell took a term from the Japanese game Go he liked to play, and Atari was born.

Atari co-founders Ted Dabney (left of PONG) and Nolan Bushnell (right of PONG), with Al Alcorn far right

 

PONG was an instant success, a quicky paddle-ball video game hammered out by Atari employee Al Alcorn, the immense profits of which would carry the company for years.  Five years later Atari would create the Video Computer System (later renamed the 2600) home console, which initially struggled but would eventually come to define home video games after the licensing of the Taito/Midway hit arcade game Space Invaders for the games machine.  Bushnell eventually sold Atari to Warner Communications, and was muscled out by management in 1978.  The name Atari became synonymous with home video games, with the company ruling the roost until the great video-game crash of 1983-1984 would utterly destroy the entire industry.

Atari was eventually split into two companies: industry stalwart Jack Tramiel, fresh off his departure from Commodore, would pick up the consumer division of Atari in 1984 to form Atari Corporation, with Warner continuing the arcade division separately as Atari Games, Inc..  They would eventually sell to Namco in 1985.  The Tramiel-led Atari would move more deeply into computers with the Atari ST line, while Atari Games made such arcade games as Marble Madness (1984), Super Sprint (1986) and Hard Drivin’ (1989).

Logo for Atari Games, a video game company

Atari Games logo, 1998

 

Tramiel eventually merged Atari Corp with hard drive manufacturer JTS, who in turn sold remaining assets to Hasbro in 1998 for a paltry 5 million dollars.  French software maker Infogrames would end up purchasing Hasbro in 2000, and rebrand the entire company using the Atari, Inc. name in 2001.  Coming around in a neat circle, Nolan Bushnell eventually joined the board of Atari in 2010.

So raise a glass to the company that created the video game industry, 40 years young today.

As always, for more history of Atari and the games that helped define it and the rest of the video game landscape, consult your local The Dot Eaters article.

Logo for Atari, a video game company

Have You Played Atari On iOS Today?

Atari and Vancouver developer Code Mystics have dropped a metric tonne of retro joy onto the Apple App Store with Atari’s Greatest Hits, for iOS devices. The app allows you to play up to 100 classic Atari games; a few of their most famous arcade entries, but the majority of games come from the catalog of games released for the VCS/2600 home console. Only a small sampling of games are available for free, with 4-pack game downloads available for .99 cents, or you can get the whole 100 game enchilada for 15 bucks.

The app is universal, and I’d recommend playing it on the iPad, as the arcade games feature a representation of the original screen bezel, which shrinks down the playfield a bit too much on the iPhone. The games offer both landscape and profile mode, but not every one has that option to switch. The control methods on offer vary as well, and some work decidedly better than others. On the whole, however, I find the sliding controls that invariably represent dials or trackballs to be too sluggish, and their speed is not configurable. This definitely needs to be addressed by a patch to make these games workable. As for joysticks, the small virtual button that stands in for the stick is small, and I find my thumb constantly sliding off of it, or worse: pressing a different direction or multiple directions as once, deadly for games like Asteroids that put different, drastic actions like thrust or hyperspace on the up and down joystick positions.  Classic video game emulation is often slagged for missing that intrinsic satisfaction that comes from holding a joystick in your hand while playing. Since precise control is sometimes the only thing going for these games, in particular those for the VCS/2600, the sluggishness on offer here is pretty close to a deal-breaker.

Sometimes the controls work, however, as evidenced by the sliders that control the paddles in PONG.  But if you really want to capture that arcade feeling, the iCADE, set for release in June, will scratch that itch.  Originally a clever 2010 April Fool’s joke perpetrated by Think Geek, intense user demand has actually made the crazy idea reality.  Greatest Hits has support for the iCADE built right in, and makers ION will be releasing an API that will allow other games to support the mini-cabinet.

Even without the iCADE, however, Greatest Hits is a wonderful app for classic video game aficionados.  They will also be jazzed about the extras that come with some games, such as game artwork, scanned colour manuals, and more.  Some, however, are concerned that the package is infringing on iTune rules about apps downloading and running external code, represented by the ROM code downloaded in the game packs in order to play these classic gems.  A double-standard does seem to have been set with the acceptance of Atari’s Greatest Hits into the app store.  So perhaps games looking for a little nostalgia had better grab this baby fast.

Yar's Revenge, a video game for the Atari 2600 console

Yar’s Return

A remake of Yars’ Revenge, a classic from the Atari 2600 library, is due soon on Xbox Live and PSN.  Originally released for the 2600 in 1981, Yars’ Revenge had started out as a home game licence of Cinematronics’ successful arcade game Star Castle.  Atari programmer Howard Scott Warshaw juggled the play mechanics around when the deal with Cinematronics fell through, and Yars’ Revenge was born.

The sequel boasts updated graphics, of course, but loses the free-wheeling feeling of the original by being a rail-shooter, keeping the player on a straight track from which there isn’t much deviation.  In this regard, it appears much less original than its 2600 brethren.  Expect it to hit consoles soon.

Screenshot of Pong

My Gaming History

Here’s my path through gaming history. It most likely started with me and my sister in the lobby of a motel my family was staying at on vacation one year, probably in Miami or Fort Lauderdale. They had a sit-down PONG machine, and we spent a lot of time batting that little white dot back and forth. On another Florida vacation, I remember being at the heels of my mother, shopping at a grocery store that almost certainly Winn Dixie. I saw a tall machine with a big scope standing off to the side, with an apple box conveniently placed so little ones could reach. This was, of course, Sea Wolf. I drifted over to climb up and peer into the scope, and after hitting a few buttons on the console to my surprise the game started up; someone had left a credit in it. Sweeping left and right with the scope, I did my best to sink ships while avoiding the floating mines, trying to line up a shot on that pesky, speedy PT boat.

One day in the back seat of the car one fall, thumbing through the real Christmas bible, aka the Sears Wish Book, I saw the Atari VCS. And all those games! “Mom, can I have this for Christmas?”, I asked. The answer was unexpected. Instead of a “Heck no!”, I got a “maybe”. My parents had to drive a couple of hours to over the border, and pay 400 bucks for it, but I got an Atari under the tree that year.

A couple of years later I sold it at a huge loss for a ColecoVision, the epiphany of which I describe in this article on the site, here. Then I migrated to computer gaming, selling the Coleco at another big loss to buy a Commodore Vic-20. It would be over 20 years until I tried console gaming again. Next, of course, came the C-64. Then I got an Amiga 500. The Amiga was an amazing computer, which I will talk about in an article coming soon. Then an Amiga 600, and as Commodore and the Amiga regrettably went bust, I went dormant for awhile, until picking up a Pentium II somewhere along the line, then moved up the rank building ever-increasingly faster PCs.

The Wii Mini, a video game console by Nintendo

Big things, small packages

 

I finally broke my console exile with the Wii… I was fascinated by the control scheme. From there, I picked up a PS3 and fell in with a great group of gamers over at The Beautiful Peoples Club, an organization for gamers over 30. These days, if I do gaming on the computer it’s with the sorry selection available for my 27″ iMac, although with Steam now supporting the Mac things have gotten better on that front. But still, mostly Team Fortress 2.

So that’s my long, strange trip. Hopefully I’ll live long enough to take a run through a holodeck someday.