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Atari's 30th Anniversary
Atarian writes "Atari was officially incorporated 30 years ago. While many thought Atari started the video game business, that was not correct, it was Magnavox and its Odyssey console designed by Ralph Baer that would be the first. Atari would be the company that would put videogames on the map right from the start back in 1972 with the release of PONG, its coin-op arcade machine first setup in Andy Capps Bar in California, the game was a smash hit and people begin lining up first thing in the morning at Andy Capps just to get inside and play games on this magic box with a TV inside. Atari would then release its VCS (Video Computer System aka The Atari 2600) and launch Atari from its meager $500 starter capital beginnings into a $2 billion dollars in sales monster in 1982. Atari would later fall to the wayside to be replaced by Nintendo, then Sega, and othes that followed. Atari is still around in a small way, and still keeping the name and spirit alive to this very day, 30 years later. 'Have you played Atari today?'"
The Atari logo is on the Neverwinter Nights box. Feaky eh?
Oh yeah.
Pitfall.
Word.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Depends what's wrong with it. Cleaning it out usually works. Open it up and clean all the dust off all the boards and chips. We have a working 7800 here, and quite a few games. Trying to get the 2600 sticks though, they are so much better than 7800 sticks.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The golden age of 8-bit computers. What can you say? Not only was Atari the foremost console manufacturer at one point, but they produced a decent home computer. I still have my 800XL and run M.U.L.E. on it occasionally when I need a fix. Or 7 Cities of Gold.
Nothing like nostalgia to remind oneself of one's age.
Show of hands: How many Slashdotters remember seeing that first Pong game? I would have guessed it closer to 1975, but such is my fading memory. I read that Nolan Bushnell installed the first quarter-operated Pong machine in a Bay Area pizza restaurant, and the next day the owners called to complain that it was broken. He went to check it, and found that the reason it wouldn't work was that the coin box was absolutely stuffed full.
You young sprats today can't appreciate what a weird feeling it was to twist a knob and see, up on the black-and-white TV screen, something responding to the motion. It was one of those "everything has changed" moments.
Oh well. Time to order some Geritol.
can be found at Warren Robinett's Adventure here. Arguably the coolest Atari game of all time, it was one of the first games with an easter egg, and a "Zelda" type interface. Dragons, castles, goblets, and a bat, and it all fit in 4K of memory. The most telling thing about this, they paid him $22,000 a year, and they sold 1 million copies of the game, at $20 a pop.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
The Atari logo is also in Blade runner. Maybe Ridley Scott should get Lucas to go in and replace it with an sony logo.
Interestingly enough, most of the companies that were featured in the futuristic world of Blade Runner have since gone bankrupt. So many, in fact, that this observation has been dubbed The Blade Runner Curse
GMD
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I had an Atari ST (first series) with :
There were 1, 2 and 4Mb versions as well - studios all had at least 1Mb of RAM because Cubase wouldn't run in 512Kb (except the cracked versions).
Loads of great games were out for it, and some good cracking crews with much less of the pretension of the new WareZ k1dd1ez... they had to snail mail disks amongst themselves pretty much...
I learned a lot of my trade on that Atari ST. It was a 16 bit architecture, ahead of its time for its price, and trained my hands on a mouse, touch typing, and of course coding in STOS Basic and later 68000 assembler (remember devpac, anyone)?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
"...and there was this one time, at Atari computer camp...I took a WICO joystick and stuck it up my..."
Chris
Reissues of arcade classics (centipede, tempest, asteroids) for my PC.
Screw the reissues. Just download MAME and you get to play the EXACT SAME game you remember as a child.
I always thought a very underrated Atari game was Warlords which was kind of a 4-person cut-throat version of Breakout. You had to defend your "castle" against a bouncing ball and use it to destroy the castles of your 3 opponents. Cool game.
GMD
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A lot of musicians still have Atari ST computers in their studios. Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) often wears a t-shirt with an Atari logo on stage. And recently Infogrames bought Atari, so we'll probably be seeing a lot of games released under the Atari brand (Neverwinter Nights being the first of those).
RMN
~~~
eBay is your friend. About a year or two ago, I got two systems, a ton of controllers, and a big pile of games for about $45 or so.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Try looking at AtariAge.com. Either the site or their forums should be able to point you in the right direction on where to go.
Come, brothers, we shall burn the heretic!!!
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Considering the rough ride Atari has had in recent years, I was quite surprised when I got my copy of Neverwinter Nights last week and discovered that one of the prominant company names on the front (and in the opening credits) was... Atari!
I wish them well, as without the venerable Atari 2600, I might have never wandered down the home computer path, and then I'd have to find something ELSE to blame my lack of a life on.
I believe NwN is an Atari game. Am I mistaken? Atari doesn't do so much hardware anymore, but they still have a hand in many popular games.
Another source of joysticks are Commodore 64 joysticks, which can be up to ten years younger, and IMHO many of them were much better designed and more likely to last. They can make River Raid a lot more fun, since it's far less frustrating to crash when you feel more like it was your fault, and not your input device's fault.
Commodore 64 joysticks can do diagonal, but it doesn't seem to confuse the Atari's too much.
Also an option are the original Genesis controllers. Use "B" as the fire button, and the pad as the directions. Again, Genesis can do diagonal, but that's OK.