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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.
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.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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.