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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?'"
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.
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Freaky eh?
No, actually it is not freaky. Atari has decended down and been purchased, acquired, or something along those lines by Infogrames. Infogrames is a big software player in Europe but has small brand recognition in the States. They figured for marketing that they would be better of using the Atari name and logo in the U.S. where it would be more recognized than Infogrames.
So when Neverwinter Nights was going to be released by Publisher Infogrames, what name did they use? Atari of course. Not freaky. Just a sound business decision for those that have never heard of that particular European company.
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
watch this
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
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
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Atari now is nothing more than just another brand used primarily to capitalize on the nostalgia associated with the Atari corporation of yore. The only connection Infogames has with Nolan Bushnell's Atari is that they happen to be the latest in a long line of companies since Warner Bros(Jack Tramil, JTS, Hasbro etc) that have bought and sold the intellectual property/trademarks associated with the Atari name.
Incidentally June 25th marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner. Atari's long decline, which began after the great video game crash of '83, has long been associated with the so called 'Blade Runner Curse'. Atari, along with Pan Am, Cusinart, and Ma Bell were just a few of the companies whose logos were prominantly featured in the film only to suffer a complete financial collapse in the 1980s. Other companies, such as Coca Cola, suffered minor setbacks(i.e. New Coke) while others such as Budweiser and TDK emerged unscathed.
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.
So you're saying some companies did poorly, some did OK, and some did great. SPOOKY!!!