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[b] The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
The period of 1979 to 1983 remains known as the golden age of arcade video games. The experience of playing games with your friends started here, and some things, like competing for leaderboard high scores, can be attributed to Atari’s lasting influence.
Mar 23, 2024 · By 1976, Atari would release over 15 different arcade game designs to feed surging popularity. Powered by public fascination with Atari‘s entertaining and addicting arcade game concepts, coin-operated video games took off as a booming sector.
Oct 25, 2024 · Q: What does the word "atari" mean? A: The word atari comes from the game of Go, perhaps the world oldest board game. Nolan Bushnell described it as a polite way of saying you're about to be engulfed.
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Atari was already flying high by the mid-1970s, having launched the coin-op video game industry with Computer Space and Pong. But it had nothing in the home yet—that fell to Magnavox, which was selling Ralph Baer's brilliant Odyssey. Originally designed in 1967 and launched in 1972, the Odyssey played 12 different games on your television; it didn'...
Thanks to the 2600’s cartridge slot, you could never get bored of the system—all you had to do was buy another game, or ask your parents to. Some early cartridges were mediocre (anyone out there love Basic Math?), but other games were fun despite their simplicity. It’s tough to beat two friends shooting up the carriages, and each other, in Outlaw. ...
Mattel tried to compete by launching the Intellivision, a solid system with numerous hardware advantages over the 2600 that especially helped in sports and strategy games. Mattel secured licenses from all the major sports organizations such as the NBA, NFL, and NHL. It eventually sold several million units, but it never threatened the 2600’s lead. ...
Famously, Atari kept its formulas secret—and even its employees, refusing to give them credit in games. In response, the Adventure cartridge contained the first popular Easter Egg, a hidden feature that showed programmer Warren Robinett's name in a special room if you executed exactly the right steps, a wonderful protest in retrospect. Four other k...
Then it all went south. Many people erroneously blame E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial as the reason the market sank. It certainly wasn’t a great game, with its crude graphics and frustrating pits. Anything less than perfection would have made a mockery of Atari’s $20 million deal with Steven Spielberg, but it wasn’t a terrible cartridge. Still, it fuel...
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the 2600 is how much has happened since. The homebrew scene lit up in the 1990s with excellent titles such as Oystron (1997) and Conquest of Mars (2003). All kinds of people began hacking existing titles, such as “fixing” the original 2600 Pac-Man release in various ways, or adding the missing voices to Berzerk ...
- Jamie Lendino
- Editor-In-Chief, Extremetech
Jun 27, 2022 · Atari also broke into the home console market like Magnavox, but not until 1975 with Home Pong, a dedicated unit that played selectable variations of its first hit arcade coin-op.
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Mar 27, 2002 · Popular software titles, some of which were based on Atari's own arcade games, included Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pac-Man (see entry under 1980s—Sports and Games in volume 5). By 1982, Atari was a $2 billion company. Eventually, Atari's competitors began to catch up.
