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The Last Days Of Atari - In Full Color
AtariKee writes "Scott Evans (famous to video game collectors as the sole owner of Army Battlezone and two Marble Madness 2 machines) stopped out at the former Atari's Milpitas, CA facility [most recently a Midway office] and took a large collection of pictures of what was once the mighty arcade giant's headquarters." The good news is that Scott "was able to obtain and preserve the majority of what you see here."
Marble Madness... Didn't they have this for Super NES? I spent many fun hours playing this game. Think I need to find a ROM I've completely forgotten about it.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
they just put out a little game under theyre new company name ....some game based on some movie series called "The Matrix".
Probably wont amount to much i hear the movies didnt do to well :)
its great to see people preserving out gaming heritage. I firmly believe that every game...yes even the dubious custer's rapin' rampage...deserves veneration as both an example for programmers and as a toy for me and all the kids people with real lives manage to turn out everyday
My company took over Atari's building on North First Street in San Jose. There was a whiteboard that still had a project status for porting various well-known arcade games to Apple, C64, etc. Very melancholy.
A friend of mine built his own arcade.
Go here for some instructions and photos: http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~akogler/mamelade/
Or does Marble man look like Pac man's illegitimate love child on serious amount of drugs
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
> and took a large collection of pictures of what was once the mighty arcade giant's headquarters And after a while that server will face the Atari's destiny.
...sure brings back some memories. The first time I saw one was while shopping in a drugstore and of course immediately dropped in a coin to try it out. The grapics were just white lines on a black screen but the game sure was addictive.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
'Large collection of pictures' and Slashdot.... hmmmm.... is that the aroma of the server melting?
... with all those photos, I'd be more worried about preserving his webserver.
[/obligatory slashdotting comment]
The company formerly known as Infogrames realised they were TEH SUCK and bought up the Atari name to use in the US. The old Atari we used to know has been dead for quite a while.
The new building?
I can still remember seeing the Atari logo on a building off of Winchester Blvd., in Campbell. Or, it may have been in Cupertino.
Alas, gone like the 'roids of yesteryear. Still, there is something pure in its annihilation, like a Silicon Valley marriage.
After seeing "Gauntlet" pictured, I am stuck with only one thought:
"Green Elf needs food BADLY."
Ah, sweet memories...
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
ok... so why is this so remarkable? I read both the pages and I understand that only two Army Battlezone machines exist and he went through a lot of trouble getting the marble madness board to work, but that still doesn't explain it.
Not like it's Spot with no Spot Beanie Baby or something...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I had a job interview there in 1998 - they were known as "Atari Games," which I think was to distinguish them from "Atari," which was the part of the company that had more to do with the original console hardware (and the Jaguar?) and had spun them off at some time. In any case, they were owned by Midway.
It was an interesting experience, walking the halls and seeing posters of so many classic games. They were still developing arcade hardware, and I was being interviewed about porting one of the arcade games to the N64.
I believe I actually sat at the table in this picture - I had one interview over lunch with someone who was quite humorless and clearly hadn't slept for far, far too long. Actually, I think they got him out of bed to talk to me. I also played the green SF Rush machine in that picture - quite the arcade they had there.
I guess I should be glad I took a job with another company. Still, sad to see them go. RIP Atari.
sig fault
Wow. Looking at all that art, games, machines, and history makes me so nostalgic I almost wept. The humanity!!! Good God how I loved those games, the joy they brought me in my youth, how much time I spent playing Asteroid and Pac-man. It's so sad to see all of those favorites collected in one spot like that.
Essentially when the original founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell sold it to Warner Communications in 1976, everything went downhill and Atari turned to crap because of lack of vision. (corporate bloodsuckers were running the show) What you see as Atari now is Infogrammes (that company with the rainbow-armadillo ribbon logo), which bought up Atari, and which now apparently is trying to capitalize on Atari's name by changing its name to Atari. Well, its got Unreal under its wing...
Wow... Ask Slashdot really came through this time. Answering the recent Ask Slashdot, the pictures below show how the pros store their "parts". I hope you're paying attention, OriginalSpaceMan. :-)
I don't remember the Gauntlet voice ever saying that. I do remember it saying (definitely in all caps):
"RED WIZARD IS ABOUT TO DIE"
"BLUE VALKYRIE IS ABOUT TO DIE"
"GREEN ELF IS ABOUT TO DIE"
But maybe I'm not very good at Gauntlet.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
I'm the admin of http://www.midway.com. I hope the low comment count and the buried link keeps us from getting slashdotted during our last days in Milpitas. It's been real...It's been fun...Can't say it's all been real fun. Big shouts to the final few. Special thanks to Jeff Bell...the oldest (not age wise) real Atari employee. See Jeff's fish at http://dickdafish.org. I'll be helping him close the doors after 31 years of service. Jeff, I'll buy you a beer for lunch tomorrow. Oh yeah, and everybody should buy the new SpyHunter2! WWIII
End of an era...
Thanks for hearing my plea...
Journal
It's important to make sure, though, that those 'plastic tubs' are proper containers for ESD-sensitive materials. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of fried parts.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
The game is called "Marble Man", not Marble Madness. It's an unreleased Atari prototype that he rescued from the brink of extinction. There are apparently only 3 or so in existence. So it's not quite as pedestrian as Marble Madness, which you can still find in a classic arcade from time to time.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
This game is legendary; I read about it 2 years ago and the word on the street was the MM2 was just lost to history.
Now we have what looks like 3 working games (or just 2?). It would a *crime* to lose this piece of history just because of a copyright that is worthless that can't even be pinned down with proper ownership.
The only thing that is going for the game is that the other guys are anonymous and could "quietly" release the game to usenet on alt.binaries.mame (or whatever). From there, history will be preserved.
..or being wheeled away, either works.
--- What
Marble Mania 2003
It's called Marble Man: Marble Madness II
Look at the screenshots.
READ, before you criticize.
Sweet, sweet classic Gauntlet. Is it possible to get a ROM of this guy? The arcade version I mean.
El riesgo vive siempre!
> Talking of game quality... isn't that why Atari went bust?
Not really. The reason Atari went under is that they were not so heavily into home systems as they were into arcade games (the big kind you see in the photos), and the money from that market dried up when people started getting home consoles and computer games. They were heavily invested in a market that died out from under them.
Virg
I noticed in the Army Battlezone article that Scott mangled the spelling of Ft. Eustis twice (in two different ways). Anyhoo, Ft. Eustis is an Army base located in Newport News, VA.
I realize that it probably isn't good, but I want to play it in Mame.
Its just the forbidden aspect.
I'm saying this guy should *not* release the roms. But like I said, there are several means for the roms to escape into alt.binaries.something.
And really, who is benefitting from the game being kept locked away? The commercial value is approximately 0.
It's one of those campy 70's throwbacks that appeals to Generation-X'ers. We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.
Are they really that sensitive? I typically store PC cards in cardboard boxes, and I've never had a problem.
I realize it isn't proper procedure, but like I said, its never been a problem.
I hope I will live to see a similar report on certain HQs in Redmond, WA... :-))
Actually (just to out geek you all):
Red Wizard only existed in Gauntlet II. Gauntlet I didn't allow you to choose your colour, only the character, and the Warrior was Red.
The game _does_ say "XXX needs food badly" (if you weren't joking).
-ShieldWolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Yep. Either you sucked or you were playing Gauntlet II which was specifically designed to suck you dry!
I played nothing but Elf on Gauntlet and the most memorable message was
"Elf has been eating all the food lately."
Made me quite the popular lad down at the student union.
One owner of a video parlour came over and unplugged the Gauntlet machine I was playing because I had spent the last 5-6 hours playing it on just one quarter having figured out that grabbing the food and running was a far more productive and survivable technique than battling it out.
"Remember, don't shoot food!"
5) The jaguar. Good concept, bad timing. They designed the 64 bit system but made one critical error - 64 bit games take more time and money than 16 bit games.
The Jaguar wasn't 64-bit. It didn't even make it to 32-bit. In fact, it is at heart a 16-bit machine with a 64-bit video chipset. To call the Jaguar a 64-bit machine as we know it is like going out and buying an Imagine 128 video card (remember those?), slapping it in your PC and convincing yourself you have a 128-bit machine.
The CPU inside the Jaguar is the Motorola 68000, the same plain-jane but versatile processor used in the Genesis and the (still kicking) Neo-Geo.
At the time the Jaguar came out, the 68k became a very familiar processor - a real cost-saver should the Jaguar have had been successful. The cost of the games, as you say, was not the critical error that killed the Jaguar. It was a bad concept (nothing truly next-gen about it), should it have been released two years earlier it might have had a chance. The software selection never got anywhere. Atari also committed the cardinal sin by thinking hardware would save the system - such as the CD-ROM add-on. By that time people were purchasing the newly-arrived Playstation and discovering Ridge Racer and not looking back.
The article didn't claim it was Marble Madness, it claimed it was Marble Man: MARBLE MADNESS II
MOD PARENT DOWN
Marble madness was awsome!
I can't wait to try out Marble Madness II in Mame with my new trackball.
I don't see any mention of it on the mame sites, but hopefully emulation won't take too long.
I don't know enough to have an opinion but a few people on usenet have commented on this topic and were not too happy.(yea I know what a surprise people on usenet were complaining).
Mostly they were not happy because if there is a fire or such then much of video game history as we know it goes away forever. Alos there is the point that without letting dumpers access those boards, those games will simply rot and never be recoverable. So basically the collective opinion was "what a waste" since most people felt it should be donated to a museum or have parts or it loaned out so that the data on those boards and such could be preserved.
Like I said I don't know enough to say if they are right. Maybe they were wrong and this stuff is actually going to be correctly preserved.t I do agree that the utmost care should be taken so that 20 years of rare and valuable gaming history are not lost or forgotten.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You're both right, sort of. Hasbro Interactive did pick up the rights to the Atari name as it pertains to game development (rather than consoles, which went to Midway). Hasbro Interactive was then, in turn, sold off to Infogrames. Infogrames started using the Atari brand for more than just Atari retreads last year with Neverwinter Nights, and changed the name of the company earlier this year. There's been a definite shift towards more AAA titles along with the name change.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I worked over there with a team of 3d animators to finish some work on the PC/console ports of Primal Rage.. I remember spending lots of time in their arcade! Playing T-Mek and Rampart! The current owners were Time Warner Interactive .. and they had just taken over and they had just stopped making Jaguars. I remember one of the producers explaining to me the structure of Time Warner's various companies.. i was baffled.. It was an interesting place, Lots of talented people being affected by poor business decsions and corporate management.
Usually when a new version of MAME is released (happened just a couple of days ago), somebody posts every ROM that MAME is able to play.
1972 - Nolan Bushnell co-founds the company named Atari, Inc. The genius Al Alcorn designs Pong. Pong becomes a big success and Atari essentially creates an entire industry. Atari gives birth to all sorts of interesting things and also employs Steve Jobs. Atari is primarily an arcade game company but wants in on the consumer market. It makes stand-alone home game systems that Sears sells in their stores. But Bushnell is trying to fund the development of the VCS (Atari 2600) and ends up selling out to Warner Communications (later Time Warner, AOL Time Warner, etc.) for $26 million. Bushnell had to pass up funding Jobs and Wozniak's Apple I prior. Warner pumps in a large amount of money but is under pressure to make the company profitable. In 1977, the Atari 2600 VCS hits the market. 1979 becomes an interesting year; Atari brings out the 400 and 800 8-bit computer line, cancels their failed pinball division, and Nolan Bushnell leaves the company. By 1982, Atari Inc. is the fastest growing company in American business history. It controls over 90% of the videogame industry and is the only company that makes arcade videogames and has a home console. But, Atari Inc. later collapses. From 1980-82, many talented programmers leave Atari to form their own companies, such as Activision and Imagic. Atari Inc. does not adequately control the third-party market for 2600 cartridges and cannot guarantee their quality. Atari itself botches up E.T., the 2600 version of Pac-Man, and many other titles that year. The 5200 is brought to the market but isn't backwards compatible with the 2600. Commodore is eating into everyone's 8-bit computer sales with the Commodore 64, which they can market cheaper (comfortably) than their other competitors such as Atari, Texas Instruments, and Apple because Commodore owns MOS Technologies, who manufacturers the CPU used in all of those machines, the 6502. Atari Inc.'s CEO, Ray Kasser ("Yar's Revenge" is named after him) leaves the company under suspicion of insider trading. The videogame (non-arcade) industry collapses in 1984 but is set for a rebirth. Atari is ready for a turnaround with the 7800 and a slew of computers their customers wanted to buy. However, Atari's spectacular losses drove Warner Communications stock in the toilet and management was fighting off a hostile takeover attempt from Rupert Murdoch, who eventually loses out and buys Twentieth Century Fox instead. But, the pressure on Warner stock forces the company to sell Atari just for good press. Warner sells the consumer division of Atari Inc. for $350 million in promissory notes to Jack Tramiel in 1984 (freshly ousted from Commodore) for a 75% stake (Warner retains 25% because Steve Ross knew videogames would come back - he also refused to sell Atari to Philips because Philips wanted 100% control). The figure is based upon the amount of Atari 800XL's in the warehouses valued at $80 a piece. Tramiel stupidly passes up purchasing the arcade division for a mere $10 million more. So Atari Inc. is split up in 1984 between newly renamed Atari Corp. under Jack Tramiel and Co. and Atari Games Inc. (later Atari Games Corp.) which is the arcade division. Atari Corp. has the rights to the brand "Atari" for computers and home videogames if they decide to return to the market. Atari Games had exclusive right to the brand for the arcade games (which later causes extreme confusion to Joe Consumer). Tramiel fires 9,000 employees and sets about creating the ST line of computers to revive Atari, and it works. But at the same time, Nintendo revives the home game industry in the U.S. in its own image. By 1986, Atari Corp. wants back in the industry and releases the 7800 game system which had been scheduled to be released in 1984 had the Tramiel takeover not happened. Unfortunately, Nintendo locked in all their third-party developers into exclusive contracts and it takes pressure from an anti-trust case from both Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. to cause Nintendo to relent (Atari Corp. lost the case, surprisingly). By this ti
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I remember when the Jaguar frst came out. This was when console games were first starting to be popular in video stores. After all how many folks were going to drop 30-60 bucks for a game without trying it out for 3 bucks first. For that matter back then you could rent consoles from the video store as well - trying to decide which console to buy? You could "test drive" an SNES or a Sega along with a few games for about 15 bucks, but not a Jaguar.
The folks at Atari slapped a TOS license on everything related to the Jaguar that said in essence:
You can only buy a license to use the Jaguar as an end user.
You may not resell, loan or rent this console.
You may only play games you have purchased on this console.
You may not play rented games on the Jaguar.
You may not play your friends games on the Jaguar.
If you think you found a way to use the Jaguar that does not involve paying Atari boatloads of money - you are wrong.
I picked up a Jaguar box and read that highly restrictive license. (It was printed on the box in a decent sized font). I gently put the box back down and backed away from the obviously terminally diseased Jaguar and never looked back.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
"I've never seen such bravery!" always gave us a chuckle, since it really meant someone was getting creamed (the message was triggered by losing an abnormal amount of health in a hurry, I think - or perhaps by killing a lot of monsters via hand-to-hand fighting, which would generally include losing a lot of health in a hurry ;). The game generally had a nice sarcastic edge (and twisted malicious level design).
Working at Midway's Chicago office, I was witness to the demise of many arcade titles. It was a sad, sad time, those of us fortunate enough to survive it will never be whole again. Midway's main development office is a labrynth of halls and cubicles, filled with blinking, bleeping arcade prototypes, their guts hanging out in bundles. And who can forget Rosyln Dugas? The goddess of hardware! Some still remain in those halls, slaving away on more modern titles, the sequels of successful franchises, maybe a few new concepts.
But anyway, too bad "The Grid" hasn't made it out of the arcade. The MK team built the whole thing in on a 60 some mhz TI DSP chip (in it's native microcode) and a voodoo 3 card, good luck porting that... its one of the best FPS games I've ever played.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Only time I heard "I've not seen such bravery!" in the game was when you killed one of those damn dragons.
If memory serves me correctly, Marble Madness (released in 1984/85) was programmed by a 16 year old, who later went on to create Crash Bandicoot. There was a good conversion of Marble Madness by EA for the Commodore 64/128. The Atari ST version wasn't so good. However, none of the console versions were as good as the arcade edition with that trackball. This was one of the first titles that ushered in the second golden age of Atari Games... Original and creative games (Gauntlet, Paperboy, 720 Degrees, Toobin', EPROM, etc.), unlike all the copycats of Streetfighter II that eventually destroyed arcade gaming in the States...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Anybody play Garrison on the Amiga? A great Gauntlet clone, added the Valkyrie as a character - almost as fast as the elf, but the best armor of the bunch. She could actually take a Death pounding on her for a little while. Get some of the scrolls/potions that boosted abilities to get speed up to the elf, and I could last forever. All my high scores were definitely with her.
The write-up correctly refers to the game as Marble Madness 2. The full title of the game is "Marble Madness II : Marble Man". See it here.
The write-up also correctly points out that Mr Evans is the *sole* owner of the two MMII's in existence. There aren't "only 3 or so in existence" - he has the only two.
Although I think the whole 64/32 bit debate is silly, I read an interview with the creator of NBA Jam:TE for Jaguar where he pointed out the lack of cpu cache as a critical flaw in the system, saying you could've doubled performance with just a little cache. I also remember him saying NBA Jam:TE was pushing the envolope on what could be done on the Jaguar. That motorola 68k didn't help either. Companies got in the bad habit of porting Genesis titles using the 68k and just sprucing up the color. While I'm not a hardware engineer, going by this it doesn't seem the hardware was particularily well designed.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Remove global read permissions to slashdotted files.
John Hancock
The ataritrip URL is giving a 403 now...
If Atari is gone, why is their logo on Neverwinter Nights and its sequels. How does this all fit together?...
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
So *that* is what happened to him. Cool.
What was really neat was working directly under the guy who developed Missile Command.
The most bizarre things about the company when I worked there in 1987 were:
No, nobody realized that we were going to become part of history.
Tech Public Policy stuff
actaully, that would have been a gauntlet 2 quote. in gauntlet, each joystick was locked to one character and each character was locked to its own color. red warrior, blue valkyrie, green elf, yellow wizard and purple horseshoes. so the booming voice in gauntlet said:
Elf needs food BADLY
whereas in gauntlet 2, each joystick could be any character you wanted to be. you could have 4 elves if you wanted to. hence the distinction:
Blue Elf needs food BADLY
my livejournal is interesting and worth reading - I swear. I know everyone thinks their blog is interesting. mine is.
I don't know about you but I always had a liken for Crystal Castles
No, Atari Games was the original operation -- Atari started out as an arcade game company, then branched out into consumer electronics. Time Warner spun off the consumer division as Atari Computer.
THE COLORS!! Oh jesus fucking christ that's a bright purple. sorry.
:)
As for atari's shop, I wish it wouldn't get shut down. Rush is one of my favorite arcade games, and I play it religiously whenever I go out to an arcade, movie theatre, etc.
Just remember 911 for copcar
I think that if instead of those normal notifications like it did say, such as
"BLUE VALKYRIE NEEDS FOOD BADLY"
the game would have been much more fun if it threw in a couple like
"BLUE VALKYIRIE IS ABOUT TO CRY"
"BLUE VALKYRIE IS HAVING A BAD DAY"
"BLUE VALKYRIE NEEDS TO TIE HER SHOE"
etc. or maybe i've just got no attention sp--
ooh! shiny!
Take a look at the dates on the Marble Madness 2 part of the guy's site, then read the text: he's had the MM2 prototype and boards for well over two years now, and he hasn't shown any interest in dumping the ROMs or letting anyone else do it.
I guess he figures he'll be in much less demand as a guest of honor at CAExtreme if people can actually play the game themselves.
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