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Aug 18, 2022 · As Atari engineer Allan Alcorn recalls in his memoir, what frustrated Nolan Bushnell about how computers were used in video games at the time was that the entire machine was really just figuring out which way objects in the game were going. To reduce costs, Bushnell ditched the computer altogether and instead used a nearly obsolete vacuum tube TV to create his own.
- Elizabeth Rayne
Oct 24, 2023 · Sure, the game’s ancient now, but when Fire Truck came out, it introduced a concept of playing together with a friend — something that Atari wouldn’t really capitalize on until it began to ...
Fire Truck is a black-and-white 1978 arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. [2] Fire Truck is built on the technology created for Atari's Super Bug game also developed by Allen. A single-player version was released as Smokey Joe. It is internally identical to Fire Truck. [3]
- Atari in the Nolan Bushnell Era
- "We Never Had Enough Money"
- Atari's Legacy
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When you hear the name "Atari," if you're of a certain generation, you might think back to a period in the very late 1970s and early 1980s when the Atari 2600 home video game console seemed unstoppable. But prior to Warner Communications purchasing Atari in 1976, the young company experienced four wild years of uncertainty and success while its employees relentlessly innovated a brand new class of electronic entertainment.
The guiding creative force at Atari during that time was Nolan Bushnell, who co-founded the company with Ted Dabney on June 27, 1972 in Sunnyvale, CA. Bushnell and Dabney had already worked together on the world's first arcade video game, Computer Space, at Nutting Associates, and they were ready to take the business more fully into their own hands. They soon had a monster hit with the arcade game Pong in late 1972, which spawned copycats that spread video games all over the world. But Atari still faced an uphill fight as big names jumped into the market.
Related: The First Commercial Video Game: How It Looked 50 Years Ago
With that in mind---and the 50th anniversary of Atari at hand---we thought it would be fun to talk about lessons from Bushnell's early years at the pioneering company. Bushnell spoke over the telephone, and his answers have been edited for formatting.
Benj Edwards, How-To Geek: Do you think the video game industry has lost sight of any innovations from the early days of Atari?
Nolan Bushnell: A little bit. Remember that Atari was founded as a coin-op company. And coin-op has this requirement that a newbie has to get into the game almost instantly without reading instructions. So the simplicity of onboarding is lost by a lot of people right now.
When it came time to develop and release a more advanced home video game console with cartridges (the 2600), Atari needed capital, and Bushnell sold his company to Warner Communications. Bushnell stayed with Atari until early 1979---missing both the monster-hit years of the 2600 and Atari's spectacular failure just after that. (By then he was working on Chuck E. Cheese, but that's another story entirely.)
HTG: Do you regret selling Atari at the time you did?
Bushnell: Yes and no. I really liked my life after I sold it. I got married, I got my house, I kinda got my personal life in order. Atari was very, very hard. And we never had enough money. We were running it as if we were going to take it public, and then the market kind of went sideways.
If I'd have gone ahead and been able to take the company public, I would have had another three or four years in the rat race and probably would have never gotten married. So would it have been a good ride and would I have made gobspocks more money? Absolutely. But on my personal life basis, it was definitely a good thing to do.
HTG: What is your favorite Atari game ever published by Atari?
Bushnell: Tempest.
Over the decades, Bushnell has given hundreds of speeches, done thousands of interviews, and discussed almost every possible angle of the Atari story. But one thing still remains: 50 years is a long time. Bushnell himself will turn 80 next year.
HTG: How does it feel when someone says, "Hey, it's been 50 years since you started Atari." What comes into your head?
Bushnell: "Oh my god, am I that old?" [Laughs heartily.] My oldest daughter turned 50 a year ago, and I thought, "Boy, that says you've been on the planet a long time if you have kids that are 50."
HTG: And Atari's kind of like one of your kids.
Bushnell: Definitely.
HTG: I was just thinking how 50 is a huge milestone. I'm 41 now, so that's memory past my lifespan. I can't imagine trying to remember anything that happened 50 years ago. Is some of that stuff from the early 1970s still fresh? Do memories of that time come to you naturally?
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Nov 6, 2007 · The effect of this brainstorming could be seen in the games that Atari produced thereafter. The second half of 1974 showed a marked difference in game design from the first. Atari started with a redesigned version of Gran Trak 10 that fixed technical issues and added a second player. The game also offered the pinball-like feature of a free game ...
Jun 27, 2012 · That really didn't seem to be what Atari was represented as [when it was taken on from previous owner Infogrames]." So, while the values remain the same, the methodology, perhaps, is a little more ...
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Fire Truck is a Videogame by Atari (circa 1978). One or two players drive a fire engine through a maze of winding city streets, avoiding parked cars. In one-player mode, a person may drive the front or back of
