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Atari Games (1984–1999) [a] Hasbro Interactive (1998–2001) Website. www.atari.com. Atari (/ əˈtɑːri /) is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames). [b] The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, United ...
Atari, Inc. All operating divisions sold off in 1984–85. Merged into parent company in 1992. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry. The company was founded in Sunnyvale ...
List of Atari, Inc. games (1972–1984) Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and video game console and home computer development company which operated between 1972 and 1984. During its years of operation, it developed and produced over 350 arcade, console, and computer games for its own systems, and almost 100 ports of games for ...
Atari's products and design principles span 50 years of gaming, consumer electronics, and digital art. Some of the most influential engineers and creatives in the world credit their time with Atari games for sparking their imaginations. Discover a story of heroes and teamwork in this timeline of company history.
- Beginnings
- Computer Space
- Avoid Missing Ball For High Score
- Birth of Atari, and Arcades
- Have You Played Atari Today?
- Computers For People
- Atari Becomes A Household Name
- The (Video Game) Music Stops
- Atari Corporation: Power Without The Price
- Sputtering and Last Gasps
When I grew up, two common tropes were that the first video game was Pong and that Nolan Bushnell invented it. Although Bushnell and Pong both deserve plenty of credit, the real story is more nuanced. It evolved over the course of the 20th century, as amusement parks led to penny arcades, Skee-Ball, pinball, and other electromechanical attractions ...
After Bushnell earned his electrical engineering degree and went to work for videotape company Ampex, he began designing his own Spacewar!-like electronic coin-op game with his coworker Ted Dabney. They mocked up a prototype, and along with fellow Ampex employee Larry Bryan, they started a partnership called Syzygy Engineering. They soon joined for...
The Magnavox Odyssey was the world’s first home video game console. The late Ralph Baer conceived the Odysseyway back in 1966 and built several prototypes of it. In 1971, Magnavox agreed to manufacture and sell Baer's system. Bushnell saw an early version of it at a Magnavox dealer demonstration later in 1971. He played the built-in table tennis ga...
Once the game was finished, Bushnell and Alcorn installed a prototypeof Pong in a local tavern to see how it did, only to get a call a couple of weeks later that it had broken. It turned out so many people played it that the coin box was already overflowing and had jammed. The new Atari, Inc. began manufacturing and distributing Pong cabinets later...
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. Other copycats followed this effort, too, and 1976 marked a brief wave of popularity for these devices. Soon, the microprocessor-based Fairchild Channel F arrived, a cart...
In 1976, Warner Communications had purchased Atari for $28 million, giving it the cash infusion necessary to properly launch the VCS. This move also proved problematic; in 1978, Warner installed Ray Kassar, a textile executive, as CEO of Atari. The ground immediately shifted, as Kassar and Bushnell battled over the company’s direction, most notably...
If you were a kid in the early 1980s, you had to have an Atari console, or at least know a close friend with one—particularly after Atari's conversion of Space Invaders arrived. Excellent conversions of Atari's own Asteroids and Missile Command arrived the year after, plus new hits such as Yars' Revenge. After a highly publicized break with managem...
All three new consoles launched in 1982, but fizzled out within a year. So did everything else related to video games. An oversaturation of arcades, consoles, cartridges, and increasingly poor quality cartridges led to a massive video game crash in 1983. Atari was hit particularly hard, thanks in part to the colossal bungling of its home Pac-Man re...
In January 1984, Tramiel and his sons had a falling out with other Commodore management. They left the company, entered negotiations with Warner, and then struck a deal to split off and buy Atari Computer from Atari Coin. The coin-op division became Atari Games. Tramiel bought everything else and named the new company Atari Corporation. Tramiel imm...
By 1990, it was clear Atari wasn’t doing well—especially in the US, where sales had reached a near standstill. Atari's upgraded 1040STE model launched in late 1989 with support for 4,096 colors, digital sound, and hardware scrolling, which better positioned it against the Commodore Amiga 500, but it was two years late. Otherwise, the operative word...
- Jamie Lendino
- Editor-In-Chief, Extremetech
Sep 11, 2021 · The aforementioned is a high-resolution mono monitor and an internal SCSI hard disk. While the system wasn’t compatible with its predecessors, it featured a unique touch called software-switch CPU. This feature allowed the CPU to operate at 16 MHz for faster processing or 8 MHz for better compatibility with old software. Atari Falcon030 (1992)
Nov 6, 2007 · The History of Atari: 1971-1977. Atari is the pioneer in the history of video games, yet its comprehensive history has never been compiled - until now. Gamasutra is delighted to present the first of Steve Fulton's canonical three-part history of the company, taking us from Computer Space to the VCS. Steve Fulton, Blogger.
