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The Last Days Of Atari - In Full Color

Posted by simoniker on from the amazing-ancient-artefacts dept.

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."

37 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe im wrong but Atari isnt really dead by BorgxXx · · Score: 4, Funny

    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 :)

    1. Re:Maybe im wrong but Atari isnt really dead by fm6 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, Atari disappeared a long time ago. Exactly when is hard to pin down -- the history is convoluted. The current Atari is just a French video game company that acquired the name pretty much by accident when they bought up Hasbro Interactive.

  2. thanks to this guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  3. Atari in San Jose by fm6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Build your own arcade. by Einherjer · · Score: 3, Informative

    A friend of mine built his own arcade.
    Go here for some instructions and photos: http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~akogler/mamelade/

    1. Re:Build your own arcade. by filenabber · · Score: 2, Insightful
      No, he didn't build his own *arcade*. He built his own arcade game or video arcade game (actually, it's a MAME machine). An arcade is a place that houses arcade games - AKA a gameroom.

      My garage is my arcade and I have 20 arcade games in it: http://thebrokenjoystick.com/pictures/gameroom

      Brian

      --
      Are you a Candy Addict?
  5. Is it just me by Timesprout · · Score: 3, Funny

    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
  6. Man, that old asteroids machine... by EzInKy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...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.
    1. Re:Man, that old asteroids machine... by JAYOYAYOYAYO · · Score: 3, Informative

      Also attributing to the success of Asteroids was the fact that it was the first machine that let people enter their initials for high scores. Its sad that Atari couldn't last, I think their decline was in large part due to Yu Suzuki's incredible arcade innovation over at Sega. They just couldn't keep up.

  7. Screw preserving the old atari building... by EvilCabbage · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... with all those photos, I'd be more worried about preserving his webserver.

    [/obligatory slashdotting comment]

  8. Milpitas? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:Fun Game by Deusy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or you could try the Free Software equivalents, of which there are 2 that I know of:

    * Neverball
    * Trackballs

    One of the common misconceptions with Free Software is that there are not many high quality games. There are many, many high quality Free Software games.

    Talking of game quality... isn't that why Atari went bust? If you don't make good games or good games hardware packaged with good games any more, people won't pay for them.

    --

    Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary

  10. After seeing "Gauntlet" pictured, I am stuck...ARR by neitzsche · · Score: 3, Funny

    After seeing "Gauntlet" pictured, I am stuck with only one thought:

    "Green Elf needs food BADLY."

    Ah, sweet memories...

    --
    "God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
  11. I was there once... by kreyg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  12. Infogrammes bought Atari by naztafari · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

    1. Re:Infogrammes bought Atari by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 4, Interesting
      No. Atari went downhill when Jack Tramiel failed to compete with Amiga. The Atari ST (FM/E) was not a big deal in the US but it was HUGE in Europe, especially Germany. I remember most of the software available, especially apps, was German at the time, including an amazing DTP software (Calamus), an EXCELLENT Mac Emulator (Aladdin?) and most, ahem, disk copying software.

      Amiga was better than the Atari ST in one crucial thing: games. It had both stereo sound and a hardware blitter chip. It was designed for multimedia, whatever that meant at the time. However, most people, myself included, who would choose the ST did so because of the Hi-Res 640x400 monochrome mode that was AMAZINGLY good on Atari's excellent mono white phosphore monitor. Mac emulation, for example, was a joy since you could run Mac programs both faster and at a better resolution than a Mac classic which, frankly, was good enough for almost everything at the time.

      Atari lost it first with the STE. It was too little, too late. I don't remember specifically any games that used the advanced capabilities of the STE except for a couple that required it for paralax scrolling. Playing Shadow on the Beast on the ST was painful, for example, while it was a joy on the Amiga. Although I do remember tears of joy when I came upon a demo that managed to replicate perfectly the well-known and amazing, for the time, bouncing ball demo that sold more Amigas than people can imagine.

      Then, they lost it with Falcon and the 68030 machines that were too expensive AND sported a TOS (operating system) that was mostly incompatible with past versions. Even though they were great machines TOS and GEM could not compete with Windows any more and many people, myself included, migrated to Wintel. But don't kid yourself, Europe was 66% Amiga, 33% ST at the time for computer games. PCs were few, they were very expensive and had ugly, UGLY CGA games. How could an EGA PC compare with the beauty that was Defender of the Crown and all the other beautiful Cinemaware games? ST was a force over here and I have not regretted any hardware sale in my life except the sale of my 1040 STE and monitors.

      The Atari 800 was also a great computer, so I really have to disagree with you that Atari went downhill after '76. Arguably, what destroyed Atari was the overhyping and underperforming of the Jaguar, as well as Tramiel's grandiose figurehead management.

      --
      Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
    2. Re:Infogrammes bought Atari by Bendebecker · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually what really killed Atari can be linked to several factors:
      1) The 2600 cartridge glut. This is the prime error Atari made. Back in the day, they let everyone make carts for the system. At first this was great becuase it quickly built up a game base for the console. However, by 1982-83 things were out of hand. There was rampant piracy (look at Pitfall by Activision and Tomboy by Imagic), companies that had no business making games were making some of the shittiest games of all time, and no one could tell if any one game was better tahn another. Eventually the market reached saturation and then became over saturated reulting in no company with the exception of a few stars like Activison (which still took a hit) being able to make money. Among the biggest losers was the part of Atari that made the games (remember ET?).

      2) The console remained on the market too long. They didn't update the things oon enough. What you want to do is get people hooked on the first console and then come out with another while taht interst is peaked. Atari sat on its ass until sometime around late 83-84.

      3) Tramiel's bumbling. Jack Tramiel proved in 1983 that he was the worst manager in recorded history. He took a company that controlled 95% of its market and flushed it down the crapper. In 1983, Atari lost over 500 million dollars (and the whole industry at the time was only worth about (3 billion at best). At some points Atari was losing millions of dollars a day. This can be associated with a lot of his decisions, among them complicating the atari buecracy to a rdiciulous degree. You could never get things done if you tried to follow his rules and if you didn't you were fired. People who had been working for the company since '74 were being fired for the mere fact that they bent the rules in order to actually get work done.

      4) Tramiel's late '80's policies. Atari was dying by '85 but Jack Tramiel's main poilicies were what drove the nail in the coffin. Jack Tramiel had, I believed, designed one of the odesseys in the late 60's and he had based his market policies on that experience. Back in the 60's the press had gone to him for news about his game system. As a result Tramiel in the mid to late 80's decided that a good a product sells itself and so, while other companies like Nintendo and Sega were dropping fortunes into advertising, Atari was basically eliminating advertising. By the tiem Jaguar came out, the kids didn't even know Atari still existed.

      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 developement process for a single game was about 6 months (with a massive team) where Nintendo was coming out with games by the truckload and since no one else wanted to make games for it (or could afford to with cash geysers liek Nintendo games), Atari was left with a system that they could not possibly make profitable. It's software library was never going to be more than a couple dozen titles and in order to offset developement costs each would have had to cost 200-300 a piece. Through almost no advertising and you get a flop.

      6) Tiem warner. Atari during Bushnell had a monopoly on the type of chips that made the Atari 2600 as good as it was. There were about 9 companies that made the chips that could compete with Atari's systems and Bushnell had the foresight to go and make exclusive deals with them all. Bushnell understood the game business. Time warner did not. They tried to sell video games like they did records. They saw these deals and didn't understand that there was a monopoly, only that they were overpaying for supply and so they dropped the contracts. Result: those businesses went out and sold the chips to Atari's competitors.

      In the end, Atari made a couple dozen mistakes taht we would say are obvious now but back then when the market was relatively new were not nearly so apparent. Even as late as '85 people though Atari was indestructible. But they got c

      --
      There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
      most of us won't be able to afford it.
      -- Lemmy
    3. Re:Infogrammes bought Atari by Talinom · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wrong.

      Atari went out of business as a preemptive counterattack to an imminent slashdotting. After all, who would put a link to a bunch of pictures on the web unless it was meant to kill the target?

      --
      "Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
    4. Re:Infogrammes bought Atari by sunspot42 · · Score: 2, Informative

      How on earth did this post get modded up to "informative"???? Practically everything in it is either partially or wholly inaccurate.

      >This is the prime error Atari made. Back
      >in the day, they let everyone make carts
      >for the system.

      Eh? The VCS was one of the first home gaming system with interchangeable games. I don't think anyone had given the slightest consideration at that point to locking down the system so that only the manufacturer could produce games for it. Atari didn't, "let everyone make carts for the system." The VCS came out in '77, and didn't have a huge hit until 1980, when Atari licensed Space Invaders. That was the same year the 1st 3rd party developer came online - Activision.

      Check out this site for a capsule history of the VCS.

      >The console remained on the market too long.
      >Atari sat on its ass until sometime around late 83-84.

      Huh? The 5200 came out in early-mid 1982. It was a huge improvement on the VCS, being based on Atari's line of 8-bit computers. Probably its only major failing - and this helped killed the system in the market - were the large, non-centering joysticks that were difficult to use in many games (Pac-Man being a fine example) and prone to failure.

      Again, check out the same site for a capsule history of the 5200.

      >Tramiel's bumbling. Jack Tramiel proved in 1983 that
      >he was the worst manager in recorded history. He took
      >a company that controlled 95% of its market and flushed
      >it down the crapper. In 1983, Atari lost over 500 million
      >dollars (and the whole industry at the time was only worth
      >about (3 billion at best). At some points Atari was losing
      >millions of dollars a day.

      How could you be MORE wrong??? Warner Communications unloaded Atari on Jack Tramiel *because* it was losing $500 million and they had no idea how to stop the bleeding. Tramiel didn't even arrive at Atari until July of 1984, after he'd lost a fight with the board of directors at Commodore and left the company he'd started. It's a little hard to blame him for Atari's losing $500 million in 1983 . . .

      Actually, maybe you CAN pin the blame on him, since a lot of Atari's home videogame and computer sales were probably being lost to a little personal computer Tramiel's Commodore made. Perhaps you've heard of it. It was called the Commodore 64.

      Again, here's yet another site, this one detailing the history of Atari's 8-bit computers, that brings up Tramiel's role in all of this (and some of the stuff he really did probably do wrong at Atari).

      There are several other factual errors in your post, but I don't have the time this morning to correct the remainder. If Atari had made as many mistakes as your post did, they'd have gone out of business in the mid-'70s and we'd have never heard from them again.

  13. Re:why is he famous? by kfg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess for the same reason that the Louvre is famous among art collectors when all they do is hang pictures on the wall.

    But they've got the only Venus thingy and Mona thingy.

    Some people find this remarkable. Go figure.

    KFG

  14. ANSWERED: PC Parts Storage Storage Solution? by DCowern · · Score: 2, Informative

    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. :-)

  15. Re:why is he famous? by jonathan_ingram · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a fairly long-winded story, which boils down to this:

    These prototypes had been rumoured to exist for a long time, but no-one had actually confirmed that they owned one. When Mr. Evans did announce that he owned one, there was enormous interest among ROM-collects and MAME programmers, who wanted to get their hands on the ROMs to 'preserve' the game for humanity (and, as a nice side-benefit, enable everyone to play them on their home computer). Scott said that he would be happy to sell them for $10,000, expecting that this would put the emulation horde off. However, a campaign started on emulation sites to raise the money, and Scott very quickly realised that they would actually reach the asking price, so he pulled the offer. Much muttering ensued.

    --
    -- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
  16. Mirrored In case it overloads. by OdanTheAncient · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. http://www.thexdershome.com/ataritrip
  17. Re:After seeing "Gauntlet" pictured, I am stuck... by funwithstuff · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  18. Add trackball by lightbuddy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...
  19. Marble Man Roms by Xenolith · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Could some fine ex-Atari employee please release the ROMs for Marble Man (Marble Madness II), so it could be emulated for the PC? I don't see any reason to withhold the ROMs at this point in the game. I can't see anyone profiting, etc.

    Thanks for hearing my plea...

    --

    Journal
  20. Re:ANSWERED: PC Parts Storage Storage Solution? by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 2, Informative

    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]
  21. Writeup isn't quite right... by w.p.richardson · · Score: 2, Informative

    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!

  22. I'm thinking the same thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  23. Marble Madness for Unreal Tournament by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Marble Mania 2003

  24. Re:why is he famous? by filenabber · · Score: 3, Insightful
    He is famous in the arcade video game collecting world. He has done more to preserve old arcade games and related material than probably anyone else (Well, except Al Kossow maybe). For further info, check out the Google archives of rec.games.video.arcade.collecting.

    My arcade game collection

    Brian

    --
    Are you a Candy Addict?
  25. Re:Fun Game by Chasing+Amy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why not just download the original arcade ROM and MAME? :-) It's the most faithful to the arcade original, for obvious reasons...

    --

    Chasing Amy
    (We all chase Amy...)
    "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
  26. Atari by virg_mattes · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > 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

    1. Re:Atari by Saige · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No. Atari was split apart, with "Atari" referring to the home computer and console part, while "Atari Games" referred to the arcade division that was bought up and passed around and such for years.

      After the Jaguar, which died due to a combination of lack of development tools making development difficult on the unusual architechure, weak third-party support, and mainly the horrible managment of the Tramiels (they hired someone to turn the company around, who promptly quit when Jack Tramiel continued to insist that he approve every Fed Ex package sent out). They merged with a low-quality disk drive manufacturer, and I'm not sure what happened to them after that.

      Atari Games became part of Time Warner, who sold them to Midway at some point, and they ended up eventually under Infogrames which them became part of Hasbro, who seems to want to be using the name again.

      Honestly, I'd love to see them pick up all the rights and property and whatever for all the Atari home stuff and combine it all back together again. Might help keep the name alive.

      --
      "You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
  27. But are they really preserving it correctly? by bogie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  28. Re:Marble Madness... by mahlen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, the kid who wrote Marble Madness was Mark Cerny. He and I had been close friends when we were 8-11 years old, but I've lost contact with him since. Google reveals that he's done a lot of game design work since. He now has a game consulting company, Cerny Games (http://www.cernygames.com/).

    He was incredibly smart as a kid (skipping two elementary school grades). I recall him describing the book _1984_ to me, which he read when he was eight years old, if I recall correctly. Also him trying in vain to explain fractional exponents to me.

    mahlen

    Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
    crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference between this
    and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the the difference
    between life and death.
    You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there in
    Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport, fly to New
    York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street Borough Hall, transfer to an uptown
    F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the park), make your
    first left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees
    left, and stop. Say to the man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
    Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
    --Arthur Naiman

  29. ancient history by alizard · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The 16 year old was still there when I worked for Atari Games briefly in 1987... he was a senior programmer. (he was the only 21 year old senior programmer at the company at the time, had to be him. No, I don't remember his name, but he was very helpful to me when I was trying to figure out the guts of the developmental prototypes.

    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:

    • Every game had customized hardware running lots of TTL glue chips, games were generally kludged versions of each other which were turned into production model. Weird stuff, at best, obsolescent technology for the time. Made for great fun when trying to troubleshoot prototypes. I was a development tech (hardware) at the time.
    • No, I don't know why this stuff wasn't consolidated into a single vector model and a single raster model whose only differences were firmware and hardware user interfaces.
    • The company was already running out of ideas, our latest and greatest stuff was out of Japan, like Pole Position ... ever see it with the original Japanese graphics?
    • The giant hot tub roughly in the middle of the building that nobody (well, except me) ever used.

    No, nobody realized that we were going to become part of history.

    --
    Tech Public Policy stuff