Atari Turns 40 Today

harrymcc writes "On June 27, 1972, a startup called Atari filed its papers of incorporation. A few months later, it released its first game, Pong. The rest is video game history. I celebrated the anniversary over at TIME.com by chatting with the company's indomitable founder, Nolan Bushnell. From the article: 'Like everyone else who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, I played them all: Pong, Breakout, Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Battlezone, Pole Position, Crystal Castles and my eternal favorite, Tempest. The first computer I bought with my own money was an Atari 400. So when I chatted with Bushnell this week to mark Atari’s 40th anniversary, I felt like I was talking with a man who helped invent my childhood.'" I spent my fair share of time playing Warlords with friends on my 2600.

Comments

Happy birthday Atari!

[multiben]

I still remember the sense of pride I got when I figured out the Space Invaders strategy of shooting through my own shield to create a one bullet wide gap which could be used to pick off the invaders while staying relatively protected.

I always like to point out that

[NotSoHeavyD3]

if you took all the ram used in every 2600 that was ever made you'd have less than 4GB of space. (128 bytes per system and about 30 million systems were made. Pretty much 4gb is standard on a laptop these days.)

Re:I always like to point out that

[C_amiga_fan]

Never thought of it that way. You think we'll see a Linux distribution that fits on 128 bytes? ;-)

Of course the Atari didn't actually run on just 128 bytes. It was hard-programmed with 4K of internal ROM commands, plus the 2 or 4K in the cartridge that the programmer had full control over. The biggest cartridge ever made was 32K (Jr.PacMan; a great game). ----- The 128 byte RAM limitation meant the background was only 40 pixels wide! That same resolution was later used in their 1979 computers: 40x240, 80x240, and so on.

Re:I always like to point out that

[toejam13]

Agreed. The Atari 2600 was an incredibly memory restricted device. It was perhaps its greatest fault. I've done some programming for the 2600 and it is a very difficult system to develop software for because of it.

I can only imagine what the platform would have been like if they had included 512 bytes of memory (zero page plus stack) instead of the stock 128 bytes included in the MOS Technologies RIOT chip. Having all 13 address lines of the CPU going to the cartridge slot would have also made a huge difference. Bank switching around the ROM when it is larger than 4KB really sucks.

Heck, I wonder what things would have been like if MOS Technologies would have released a 28-pin package 650x variant that multiplexed the address and data bus to expose all 16 address lines. With the latch pin, you'd only need to dump one signal line (or the phase2 clock line) from the 6502. Heck, it could have replaced ever other 28-pin variant in the 650x series.

Re:frosty

[mc6809e]

Atari > Commodore

Until Commodore produced the Amiga.

Of course the Amiga really had Atari blood running through it, having been designed by Jay Miner -- the same man that help design previous Atari machines.

I can't believe Atari let the Amiga design get away from them.

Instead they came out with a machine that had a dumb frame buffer and simple syth chip attached to a CPU. The ST was more Radio Shack Color Computer than a next generation Atari machine.

I guess I can blame Commodore for that since they gave Atari Jack Tramiel. That guy seemed obsessed with undermining his old company. He basically helped Atari and Commodore destroy each other while IBM PC compatibles slowly took over.

At last

[amiga3D]

Real News for Nerds!

Re:Another winner from the 6502 family

[C_amiga_fan]

I upgraded to an Atari 7800 "prosystem" which also had a Commodore Semiconductor 6502.

Ordered it online! (Yes kids Atari had an online store in the 80s.) That was a really nice system with great near-arcade perfect games..... 128 sprites (no damn flicker)..... 256 colors at 320x240..... too bad it barely sold.

Re:frosty

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

As much as I was a chickenhead in my youth, I gotta say that the Atari 8 bit family had better video. I think. I haven't thought much about it in ages. If I had the room, I'd get an Atari 800 to play with.

I don't know how the Atari 800 compared to the Commodore 64, but when I was a kid my parents got me a used 800XL originally owned by possibly the biggest pirate ever. I've yet to find a video on Youtube of a game on that machine that I haven't played!

It was great machine to have at the age of 10. I remember some of the games I had were written in BASIC, I had fun going in and editing them. Heh.

Recently I went on a Youtube spree to check out some of the games I used to play, and I gotta say I was impressed with what I found. Check out this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKh5b8jcwLk&feature=related

This is Goonies, I suppose you'd call it either an adventure or possibly a puzzle game. I remember firing that one up over and over again and spending all this time trying to figure out how to progress to the next screen. I can't think of a modern day equivalent of that game.

Fun stuff. I really don't regret that this is the machine I had while all my friends had NES. (Although I was perturbed at the time...)

Re:frosty

[Brad1138]

And don't blame Atari. Blame the idiots at Warner Communications who decided in 1983 to sell-off the company on the belief that videogaming was a "fad" whose time had passed.

Interesting, I remember when laser disc arcade games like "Dragon's lair" came out. They were supposed to revitalize a slumping arcade industry. I just looked it up and Dragon's Lair came out in 1983. I was an arcade addict at the time and remember it well, arcade games had stagnated and computers lacked the "horse power" to get to the next level of visual effects. I believe it was Gauntlet that was one of the first big hits, post laser disc, that really "rescued" video games. It didn't need great graphics (although we all thought it was really cool at the time), it just needed to be massively addicting and awesome to play. I couldn't count how many hours I spent shoving quarters into that game.

Re:frosty

[hairyfeet]

I don't think it was a case of them "destroying each other" as much as it was the clones and ISA giving everyone a stable platform on which to build, combined with some serious disasters such as the 7800 at Atari and of course the big crash of 83.

I know that I hung onto my VIC for longer than most but in the end it was the abundance of ISA cards and software for IBM PC compatible that ended up getting me to take my first Compaq all those years ago, there really wasn't anything at either Commodore or Atari that got supported as well as ISA or X86. With both Commodore and Atari basically you got what was in the box and that was it, sure there were a few add ons but nothing like the huge explosion of ISA cards, not to mention the flood of games that came out for DOS. Anybody else remember those shareware discs? man those were fun, dozens of games on a floppy, later CDs with over 100, man you just can't pack 'em away like that anymore.

So happy BDay Atari, its really a shame your gone but between the 7800 and the Jaguar not really surprising. Like Sega who came after you you had a hell of a run and gave many of us some great times, I can still remember trying to sleep with a pillow over my head because when i was done gaming and had to get some sleep before school my mom would plop down in the living room for some Yar's Revenge until the wee hours. Even the Wii never got the whole family involved like the old 2600 did, hell of a machine.