I am 52 years old and was 8 in 1977 when the 2600 came out...so I guess you can call me a first generation video gamer. I can remember when a neighbor kid up the street from me got the 2600 and I played it with him and then told my parents I wanted one....it took a couple of Christmases, but I eventually got one around 1979-80. I can remember having friends come over for sleep-overs and they would each bring games that I didn't have and we would stay up all night playing video games. I would not trade my time in history for any other.
Same here I was 7 when the 2600 came out. I played the 2600 at a neighbor kids house. I had to wait almost 14 years later to afford one on my own. Its sad they were still selling them then and I still loved it at the time.
A lot of sites put Pong consoles as the 'first generation'. Did you have one of those? (we did and the thing leaked RF so bad we broadcast Pong TV to the entire town - or at least a massive chunk of it)
Nice, I feel the same about growing up during the 8-bit era, and later 16-bit. The early years of technology is always so much more fascinating at the time because it's novel.
I beat you lol born in 65 my first console was a coleco pong few years before the 2600 came out was most anticipated release for Xmas that year neighbors got that one then it started kids being inside all the time lol
Atari has a bit of a saga as a zombie company over the past decade or two, it's a fascinating subject in itself watching them constantly talking a big game but having no money to do anything.
@@sayvionwashington1939 Oh I dunno - I'm watching this video and typing a reply to you right now at less than 1/3 the price of a mac mini upgrade on Ubuntu - for less than the same price and use model of the Steam Deck that everyone's going ga-ga for. (protip - don't get the controllers if you want to save money for a nice mini PC to play Steam and retro titles)
For the family Christmas present (meant for the whole family), my technophile father bought us the 2600 when it first came out. No other family that we knew got one and that resulted in our household being swamped by my and my three brothers' friends. Many nights the entire living/dining room (a huge room) was packed. My dad had a rule then that those who never played it before got first play. Oh and adults (aka parents) ALWAYS got first play and could play as long as they like. Contrary to what you might think, all of us kids loved watching our dads and the VERY rare mom play. We would all be shouting advice and cheering. My mom played it ONCE on Christmas and that was it. What the moms really came for was the socializing around the dining table. The dads were there to compete against the other dads (not seriously ... more ribbing each other) and what we would call today bonding with their sons. This lasted all winter. My mom serving a never-ending stream of chips and soda pop. It was a complete blast. A great childhood memory.
That's awesome. While I was not born when the 2600 was around I had a similar experience with the NES. I used to beg my mom to play Super Mario Bros 3 as it was too hard for me. Too bad my mom later remarried someone who hates technology and actively lives in the past and doesn't consider a desk job working with computers "a real job."
"Contrary to what you might think, all of us kids loved watching our dads and the VERY rare mom play" Considering how big live streams and playthroughs are, I doubt many people would think kids wouldn't enjoy watching others play. I still remember bugging my older brother to let me watch him and his friend play their Genesis.
There's a lot missing here. The Atari computer division pretty much carried the company through the 80's and into the mid 90's, especially in the European market. Over there, the IBM PC wasn't the dominating force. It was a fight between Commodore's Amiga computers and the Atari ST computers.
@@austinreed7343 I've heard the master system &NES both sold about 8 million in Europe & then the megadrive sold similar numbers in yhe next generations
After RUclips finally goes full-corporate and he moves the channel to another hosting site, I'm sure he'll have some interesting insights. I'd love to hear what he has to say.....
HUGE oversight. You forgot how during the Tramiel purchase, the arcade division of Atari was split off as a separate division called Atari Games under Warner, focusing on developing games and arcade cabinets, whereas the company Tramiel acquired handled the home market (consoles and personal computers). Atari Games was later bought from Warner by Williams-Bally-Midway, but the company itself stayed intact under the "Midway West" name until 2003, still using the Atari brand name for its games. This is interesting as it means that Atari Games kept the original continuity of employees and studio up until 2003, long after the Atari corporation had been sold to JTS and its employees disbanded, thus making it the longest-lived part of the original Atari. Because Atari Games did not have home rights, they could only release games as "Atari" in arcades, so they created the "Tengen" brand to sell their games on home consoles.
Atari was split, spun off and changed into so many other companies it is hard to keep track of it. I think he wanted to just focus on the head and what happened to that to keep it easier to follow.
@@karlaskitties The Atari ST had a built-in MIDI port, yes. In fact most computers could do MIDI with a simple serial adapter with passive components (MIDI is just a serial interface running at 31250bps), but the convenient feature of the ST was that the plugs were right there in the case.
@@dacypher22 It really just followed two paths initially though. Arcade division that wound up with Midway, and was shut down in 2003. Home division that wound up with Jack Tramiel and shut down when JTS bought it in 1996. After those dates both entities just became intellectual property and began being licensed out piecemeal by whoever owned the main thread. In the case of the arcade division's IP, it went back to Warner in 2009. Meanwhile the home division went JTS -> Hasbro -> Infogrames and now exists as Atari, who are happy to license out rights to whoever wants them but still basically owns all the home rights to Atari. I'm very curious how the Atari casino idea played out since that's more amusement devices which would have been in the purview of the arcade division that Warner now owns the rights to.
You showed a clip of Pac-Man, but it should be mentioned that the customers' extreme disappointment with Pac-Man probably led to a lot of ill-will and loss of confidence in the company. It sold very well, but its high sales may have actually made Atari foolishly confident that they could produce other garbage like E.T. and expect it to sell well.
I was surprised he didn't mention that one as well. People were PISSED that it was so unlike both the cover art on the box as well as the arcade version of the game. The graphics and sounds were terrible, the gameplay was mucky and slow, and folks who pre-ordered it for $50 or waited in line for hours to buy it were straight-up angry. That was 40 years ago and I still remember how disappointed I felt when I first played it back then.....
I actually have the Atari 2600 Pac-Man. It's, well, definitely disappointing when you compare it to it's arcade counterpart, but from my impressions of Atari games very few of them could have amounted to what arcades were doing in the 80's anyway, and it's technically impressive just for what it does do. Not to mention how nowadays modern "gamers" will eagerly eat up shoddy, incomplete, buggy games. At least Atari Pac-Man wasn't necessarily in that third descriptor.
Yah, they'd learned their lesson by the time they made a Ms Pac-Man port (which looks _much_ more like the arcade original) -- but by then it was probably too little, too late.
@@cabbusses I mean I agree, the 2600 could never quite replicate the games in the arcades however a few years ago somebody remade Pac Man on the 2600 and proved the game could have been much better with this copy being a lot more like the arcade. Edit : Look up Pac Man 2600 4k
...Or the Crash of '83 could've still happened, and this time Nintendo would've gone down with them, making everything worse. On the other hand, the Sega Master System would've probably had record high sales, and Sega might still be making consoles today.
The Atari Jaguar had a fantastic version of Doom. Graphically great and the controller was absolutely perfect for the game. Switching weapons with that oversized telephone of a controller for Doom was like riding in a Cadillac.
@@sirBrouwer Currently a lot of those arcades are closing down. They do still have a hand in producing arcade games which is where they started and they have a few interesting branches but they aren't doing too hot in that anymore between Corona and the Move away from Arcades. But you're not wrong, they _were_ doing pretty well, those were certainly a draw
Particularly how Dreamcast had an insane development budget that sunk the company. Particularly when combined with the dev costs of Shenmue which as a single title had a dev cost that required everyone who owned a Dreamcast buy it to recoup costs. Which of course it never did.
I worked for a short time at Atari during the Infogrames years, around 2003. I was well aware it wasn't going to be the Atari of my youth, but my god. It was an absolutely miserable place where management hated everybody under them and let them know it. I got out of there quick and never went back into any game jobs.
I worked there in the early 90s. They genuinely wanted to build on the success of the ST and had at least two groups working on it, one the next generation ST and one working on a UNIX box. Alas, they were just a few years ahead of their time: Linux would arise a short time later but the UNIX project collapsed from underfunding, buggy hardware, and lack of appropriate management. And yes, each of those assertions is arguable. But the deficiencies that Brad mentions were not new to his generation. For example I have memories of managers yelling at the top of their lungs in open workspace, apparently thinking this is a business-like way to manage people.
@@derrick2476 No game credits under my belt, unfortunately, just tech support. I hung out with the testers for Backyard Baseball, though, and got to be Player 2 for a few sessions while they tried to break the game (which they did in hilarious fashion from time to time.)
Not really.. ATARI as it was back when it was started and then sold to Time Warner. Is gone. The game development teams basically went to Activision is now basically gone. The brand was auctioned off and bought and sold twice. The Hardware division went bankrupt. So yeah ATARI brand went unused for so long the rights was bought through crowed Funding. So today's ATARI has no ties to the ATARI of the past.
Minor correction on the naming being taken from Go, it is technically Chinese in origin. But the term of Go and Atari are both from the Japanese adaptations of the game. So the creators of Atari took the Japanese version of the game when they were taking inspiration. So it wasn’t too relevant to simply call it a old Chinese board game.
I was born in '72, and my older brother was born in '65. We wanted an Atari, but our first video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey II. Shortly afterwards, we got our Atari! Between Space Invaders, Asteroid, and Defender, that was my childhood! We also had E.T., Journey Escape, Pitfall, etc. Aaahhh, the memories...
I'd really like to see you do more videos like this on video game companies. There are a lot of fallen titans of the gaming industry that you could make these videos about like THQ, Eidos Interactive, Acclaim Entertainment, Midway Games, Hudson Soft and more than could make for great stories.
Not to mention, SNK. The Japanese video game company best known for the Neo Geo brand filed for bankruptcy not once, but twice. Company Man should definitely do a video on that!
My favourite Atari memory besides playing my 2600 as a kid is one day I saw that Nolan Bushnell started following me on Twitter. I highly doubt he personally runs his Twitter account but I’ll take it.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Atari got into the computer business and had the Atari 400, 800 and towards their demise, the Atari ST (Sixteen-Thirty-Two) and with the Blitter chip that Trammel had created, that computer was fast! With the ST you could plug in the ROM chip in a device called the Magic Sack that would turn the ST into a Mac and when Atari made a laptop, they called it Stacy and on the way to a convention, they had the Magic Sack and it became the first Apple laptop. When Trammel took over, he wanted to find a manufacturing facility and found an empty mall in Houston, TX which was absolutely perfect. He asked the mayor at the time, Kathy Whitmire, if she could make concessions on taxes in order to help out and she flat out refused so they had to find a factory overseas which took another year to work out all the details and get it up to speed. Production was on again, but there was a gap between what the stores had to sell and what could be delivered, so Atari sent the computer stores a letter suggesting that they sell other brands for the time being. Atari had even worked on selling an IBM Clone and actually had that in production. Finally, Atari got a container of computers in and wouldn't you know it, the truck overturned and everything was destroyed. That, my friend, was the end of Atari. The Atari ST was special - it did everything in memory which is why it was so fast. It booted from ROM rather than a disk or hard drive. When Atari got the license to use GEM for the operating system, the agreement was so much money per disk. When a ROM chip was used instead, Atari didn't have to pay a license! In the meantime, Apple was using a floppy to launch their OS and eventually HD. Check out the Atari ST
I started with the 2600 in 77. At some point I got the 800. I started out with a cassette to save programs on then the upgrade to the 7” floppy’s was a amazing thing. No more rewinding the cassette. then in 85 ish I moved to the 520st then a 1040 then a 1040ste. I remember upgrading my modem to 2400 bps and that was a big upgrade.
Right there with you, man. Got a 2600 for Christmas in '78, then my first home computer - the 800XL in '83. Used the HELL out of that little machine! Still HAVE it, along with 2 1050 disk drives. Still works great! Got my first 1040ST in '87. Loved it too, but the A8 holds a special place in my heart. Just bought an Atari VCS from sheer nostalgia. LONG LIVE THE KING!
I think you did a good job on this video. I was worried this would be the over 9000th discussion about the crash of 83, but you didn’t just focus on that. There was a string of wrong turns that ultimately made Atari fail. How long they lasted is beyond me. I’ve played some amazing Atari games that weren’t just 2600 crap (I actually don’t like the 2600).
They survived solely because the name Atari rings so many nostalgia bells for people who grew up in the 70's and 80's. The Atari 2600 was such a big part of our lives in the early 80's, way more than the arcades full of stand-up video games you had to pump quarters into, yet you rarely see people playing home consoles of any kind in period films and TV shows. No matter how badly the company failed, there are still tons of people who will take notice if a product has the name Atari on it.
@@Raskolnikov70 That being said, I think it's totally valid to say that Atari 2600 games didn't age well unlike NES or dare I say even some Master System games. We still see Mario and Zelda games coming out for example but not something like Yar's Revenge. Hell, even some Master System franchises such as Wonder Boy have games out today.
@@ashkitt7719 There were a few that I continued playing throughout my high school years, well after better systems came out. Asteroids, Berzerker, Galaga to name a few that are still considered classics today. They did alright with those types of arcade-style action games, but the system was too limited to spawn anything like a Mario franchise.
I just got done commenting how I feel like I'm the only 80s kid that hated the 2600. I guess I'm not as alone as I thought in that opinion. I'd much rather play games in my Apple IIe. Atari games were so damn boring. There so much nostalgia love for it and I just don't get it. They were bad games then and they did not age well.
That would've been one of the first games I discovered the "pattern" to. I think Pac-Man was the first. Once you learned the pattern, you could play forever and get very high scores.
I've been a life-long Atari fan, dating back to the 2600 days, so I was using their products all the way up to the bitter end. What should be worth mentioning is that while Atari is mostly known for video games, that view of them is mostly within the US. Jack Tramiel basically turned Atari into a computer-first company, with video game consoles being largely second fiddle, and in the early days of the ST, they did have some success, especially in Europe. In fact, a lot of modern software actually had its origins on the Atari ST computers, including Apple's Logic Pro music production software as well as the precursor to 3ds Max software package (CyberStudio). In short, Atari helped shape not just the video game market, but the computer market as well.
Yah, the ST never really went anywhere in North America, with the Commodore 64 dominating the low end of the market, and the Mac, the Amiga, and ever-cheaper IBM-compatible PCs* splitting up the higher end ... and Nintendo consoles dominating gaming. Though the ST did see some use in music production, much like how the Amiga found a home in video production and special effects. *The Tandy 1000 series in particular brought better graphics and sound to PC-compatibles, at least until VGA graphics and Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster sound took over. (And Tandy didn't invent those modes either; they cloned the 1000's graphics and sound off the PC Jr, IBM's failed attempt at a home computer. 🙂)
I still have a 800XL and have been messing around with it from time to time. Atari computers had some pretty elegant design features (particularly in the OS) and the documentation was outstanding as well. I miss some of that circa 1982-1986 era computing.
I agree. The Atari ST (together with the Amiga) were successful in Germany, displacing Home Computers like the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, C 64 or Atari 800. None bought a NES back in the day, because people started to use these maschines to perform other tasks. The era of these Home Computer ended around 1990 when PC became cheaper and more powerful. And then the handheld consoles like Gameboy were bought because they were a cheaper way just to play video games. And in my point of view the Playstation started the rise of consoles because it was cheaper then the usually gaming PC. This was around 1995 or 96...
They pushed computer hardware because they had contracts with the U.S. government up until the mid 90's. After that, Sega took over those contracts and still has those contracts.
Indeed, I run Logic Pro on Macs now, but the first version of Logic (at the time by Emagic, well before Apple purchased them) I used was on the ST back in 1993. I have very fond memories of those days. I would write code at work, then come home and make music until the early am. I still do both of these activities today 🙂
I discovered video games in the arcades and the idea of playing them at home was mind-blowing. My uncle had an Atari and about ten games. I couldn't stop playing those terrible experiences. A few years later, I got an NES and never looked back.
My cousin had an Atari 2600 console when we were kids. I'd go over to her house on Saturday mornings to play it. It was one of my best childhood memories.
I sold my 2600 to a 9-year old kid at my garage sale, the whole set. It was hilarious because he was into it even more than I was at his age. "OMG YOU HAVE ET! It's the worst game ever made!"
There was a documentary about the ET cartridge being the worst game and how a bunch of cartridges were dumped and ultimately dug up in a landfill in New Mexico..
Oh man, weekend parties with a bunch of friends, loud music and gallons of Dr. Pepper playing what are now primitive Atari video games on a blurry television until three in the morning are great memories. My friends got bored with them after Dungeons and Dragons became the new late night fad for nerds.
As a 51 year old guy, this video puts me pleasantly in the front seat of the way back machine. I had one neighbor who had pong on an Odyssey, while another friend had the Atari. I have many fond memories from 1978-1983 with Atari and Odyssey. Fantastic video!!
I had a lot of consoles over the years, one of the most fun was my Atari 400. It had most of the cool arcade games, like the PAC Man series, Donkey Kong series, Q-Bert, Defender, Galaxian, Centipede, River Run, the list goes on. They looked and sounded every bit as good as a top notch arcade box, not pixelated like the 2600. I probably had 50 cartridges, many bought for $5 or less at clearance places after the newer consoles like the NES came out. it wasn't cheap but it was a great game machine I played for years. I wish i had kept it. Simple games but fun.
My family had the 2600 when I was a kid in the early 80s, but for me, the name Atari brings back more memories of spending time in the arcade than it does playing a console at home. As a kid and teenager, I spent many hours and quarters at the arcade.
I think if he had to cover every wild Atari story (There's the E.T. landfill, rejecting the Atari AES/Nintendo collab, basically everything about the Jaguar but especially the defective CD add-ons and the Fight for Life development debacle...) then the video would lose sight of the company/business side of things.
I definitely grew up in arcades as a kid. Atari at that point was so dominant on seemingly every front. They had so much success in the console market, the arcade market, handheld market, and even computer market. Even into the late 80s and early 90s, the Atari ST was a popular rival to the IBM and Macs that were on the market at the time.
I thought E.T. was the worst game ever..... until the Atari Version of "Pac Man" was released. I guarantee that was the moment that triggered the Crash of '83.
(12:57) *Mike:* The Atari ST was worth a mention, being one of the competing systems at that time, along with the Commodore Amiga, and IBM PC plus its compatibles. Tandy was dropping out of the home PC market by this point, but was still a familiar name due to hobbyists and electronics shoppers.
The ST was also popular with music producers because it was the only home computer at the time with built-in MIDI. I'll bet that some of your favorite albums from the mid-80s were mixed on an Atari ST.
I once saw Nolan Bushnell doing a Q&A before a large audience. One thing he said was, "I've had six startups fail. I'm now doing my seventh. [turned to audience] Must Be Present To Win!" He also said, "I've been rich, I've been poor. [turned to audience] Rich is best." He's a lot of fun to watch speak. There's another story about the first arcade Pong machine. It was place in a bar in Sunnyvale. The next day, the bar owner called them and told them to get it out of there, it doesn't work. They came down and picked up the machine, and in the lab found out that the reason it stopped working is because the coin box had become so stuffed that it could no longer accept coins. This happened in one evening.
I was an Atari 2600 kid, and I rooted for the company until the day it essentially died. Although, by then, I'd long since stopped buying their consoles, as well. I had a 7800 for awhile, basically given to me on an extended loan for a year or two while a friend was away. It certainly didn't get close to the love my NES did, but I did enjoy playing it a fair bit. The 7800 did actually have a market, but Atari screwed themselves by trying to market like 4 or 5 different consoles at once, which all stole sales from each other as a result. And it was a marketshare already massively diminished by Nintendo and Sega. And I want to say the Lynx actually was modestly successful, at least for a few years.
I was born in 1982 and I grew up with having a Commodore 64 computer and a Atari 2600 I have such fond memories of those systems. Great video as always keep up the great work! 😁
Thank you so much for slowing down your narration, and taking a breath of air before you start a new sentence. It has made a difference to me. So now I can watch your videos from beginning to end.
And the list goes on. Some of the Arcade games they made in the late 70's were just strange and pointless, like "fire truck", "smokey Joe" (much the same thing, about aimlessly driving a fire truck around streets made of dotted lines, without really doing anything. Super Bug was another game that worked in much the same way. drive around aimlessly until fuel ran out. At the end of it all, they started making expensive video games, with custom IC's and strange overall electronic designs. Meanwhile the Japanese manufacturers were eating their lunch so to speak, with much cheaper games, that often earned very good money. Designers at Atari Pinball originally came up with the idea of a rising background tone sound effect on a pinball game. Atari Management wouldn't have a bar of it, and designer ended up leaving and going to Williams Pinball. The "rising tone" background sound ended up being used by him on Williams Flash in 1979, and this was one thing that made it one of the best sellers in Pinball history. Atari Pinball games were not as easy to service as other US brands, circuit designs were very unconventional and they seemed to use a different logic PCB set in each game, whereas others used the same boards for several years, which made them easier to service, swap etc. Atari did however make a jumbo sized pinball called "Hercules" which was the largest pinball machine ever made. The ball was a pool table cue ball. Then Atari who went into Jukeboxes in Europe, buying up the then bankrupt Jupiter/Electro-kicker jukebox manufacturer from the French government. The Jupiter jukes were at best, 1960's eastern european build quality, didn't sound great and painful to work on. Many parts of the underside of the mechanism would shock you if you touched them Atari, despite all its electronic and computer knowledge, kept using the outdated 1960's Electro mechanical Jupiter system - not computerized but used mechanical parts, solenoids, steppers etc, but in a more modern fancy looking cabinet. When Atari eventually made a solid state Jukebox, as I understand it, custom or other unobtainable parts were used, making it unrepairable down the line. The record playing mechanism was strange and looked like it had to be accessed from the back of the machine as well as the front, unlike almost every other major jukebox brand.
I've got a 2600. I *love* playing some of the games, particularly Yars Revenge and Kaboom. Also, there still exist companies that will refurbish the 2600 or sell you parts. Its a nice console to have; it doesn't get used as much as the other retro stuff, but im glad I have it.
I remember when the first Pong game came to the Woolco (like target or Walmart now) store and the store set the game up on a TV on an aisle end cap. It was so cool at the time and really fun to play. There had never been anything like it on the market at that time.
@@ckfinke7625 Not to mention, Discovery, Inc. They owned every cable channel other than their flagship Discovery Channel. They are the following: Animal Planet TLC Discovery Familia (the Spanish equivalent to Discovery Family) Travel Channel Science Channel Destination America Oprah Winfrey Network (95% stake while Harpo Productions owns the other 5%) Investigation Discovery Discovery Family (60% stake while Hasbro owns the other 40% stake) American Heroes Channel Discovery en Español Discovery Life Heck, they even owned some channels when they merged with Scripps Networks Interactive including the following: DIY Network Great American Country HGTV Cooking Channel (69% stake while the other 31% stake is owned by Nexstar Media Group) Food Network (69% stake while the other 31% stake is owned by Nexstar Media Group) Also, it was announced that they are about to merge with WarnerMedia to its own media entity. Company Man should definitely do a Bigger Than You Know video on Discovery, Inc. What do you think, CK Finke?
When I was 14 around 1985 me and my brother each got an Atari 130XE as our first computer ever. An experience I will never forget. Iwas actually waiting for you to mention the home computer side of Atari.
Friend of mine in elementary school, his dad still had his old 2600 hooked up down in their basement. This was mid-90's. I remember playing pitfall and that tank war game on it. What's nuts to think about is the Xbox 360 is now nearly as old as the 2600 when we were playing it back then.
Great video! My dad and his brothers got an Atari 2600 in the 80s, and my cousins and I still play it when we visit my grandparents’ house! The music for Pitfall II is always a crowd pleaser 😄
I still have my Atari 400 computer. I was so proud back in the day when I mod'ed it to 48k of ram (it only came with 8k). I thought I was the king of the world.
My gaming time line with Atari started on the year I was born: 1972: Born in NYC, Atari was open for the first time with Pong. 1976: Mom gave me Atari Super Pong. 1977: Got the Atari Video Computer System for my B-day from Mom, Same year she took me to see Star Wars. 1979: Uncle gave me all the Odyssey units he had from first to Odyssey 2. 1980: One of my mom's friend got me the Intellivision and 4 games. 1982: The first 2600 game I got was Barzerk. My aunt got me the 5200. 1983: The last two console mom got me was the Colecovision & Vectrex. 1984: Got a lot of used pong units from the flea market in Brooklyn. 1985: The first console I got by my self was the Nintendo NES with Rob. 1986: Found Famicom with 20 games in China town. 1987: Got Master System, Atari 7800 & XE. Also found more old consoles. 1989: Sega Genesis, Gameboy, Lynx, Plus got lots of 2600 games for .99 1990: Game Gear, dad and uncle got me the Neo-Geo and two game. 1991: Super NES, found more old units Arcadia 2001/Telstar/Channel F. 1992: CD-I , more And yes I got the Atari Jaguar - Of all the video gaming systems that ever released in my life time WHY THE HELL did it had to be the Atari Jaguar 64 that was launch on November 23rd, 1993 ON MY BIRTHDAY OF ALL THINGS! And only 4 games was launch with it one was a Cheap Knock Off Star Fox game Cybermorph as a packin. But it was Atari and the main reason I wanted THE JAG was in the back of the box and some magazine page ads was images of games and one of them was Tiny Toon Adventures for the Atari Jaguar but sadly it never was released. To this day Im still pissed off that Tiny Toon never saw the light of day. BTW still have the Jag complete in box^_^
I've been collecting Atari games. The Lynx and Jaguar are fun to play despite their limited library. Nowadays homebrew for the Lynx is massive and has more depth than the original library could ever muster. Currently making a video on the Jaguar and it's interesting that they essentially had this killer system on their hands but couldn't market it or court developers to save their life.
The hugest problem with the Jaguar was it being difficult to program for - at least program to take advantage of the Tom and Jerry chipset. That did not entice companies into wanting to develop for it and also the lack of support from Atari did not help either. From my understanding Atari's own developer support was handled by one person who took their sweet time in answering phone calls. Compare that to Sony with the PS1 who went above and beyond in developer support and you can see why Sony dominated that generation. For the record I still own my Jaguar to this day along with a handful of titles. Even with it being an failure it's still an fascinating system and I'm glad I own one.
I find it amusing how you stopped at the "Atari Casino" thing without going into the whole debacle with the "New" Atari VCS, as if you, like many other people, got disgusted with what they were doing with the brand and don't even want to acknowledge the currently-named "Atari" company as the real/same one. I've seen quite a few of your videos by now and this actually stood out to me, especially when compared to other "fallen" game companies. I kinda feel that way about Konami as game devs. Too bad they are too profitable to their other ventures to be considered a "fallen" company.
Let's not forget how shitty they are as a publisher, exhuming and exploiting old IPs. RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile got lots of hate for basically being a pay to win cash grab with tonnes of 24 hour long timers to build stuff and generally reeking of shit mobile game design. RCT has seen several bad entries since and has pretty much been overtaken by Parkitect and Planet Coaster. Blood got a pretty questionable remaster courtesy of Nightdive Studios and Monolith Productions. Problem is Atari didn't give Nightdive the funding to fix the remaster and just called it a day. Oh and the new Atari VCS... can't even run its own menu at full resolution without major lag spikes. And reportedly loads of people have been outright unable to boot up Linux or Windows using it, which was a heavy selling point of the console.
Yeah, I was one of those guys who went with the Jaguar over the SNES. (I actually went from 2600 to 800XL to 7800 to NES to Genesis then to Jaguar.) I was hooked back in the early 80's with the 2600 and with the Jaguar I was REEEEEEALLY hoping it would bring them back to prominence. But by 1993 there was just too much competition and Atari just didn't have the money to make it a success. Plus the developers got lazy and just ported their 16-bit games over giving the Jaguar a bad rap (Made a video about it called, "Is the Jaguar really 64-bit?") The REAL Atari was innovative and fun, nothing like what they are today. Did you know Atari developed a video phone? Or that they designed a Computer Network for Club Med? Or a Holographic video game called Cosmos? Or the Mindlink controller? THAT'S the Atari I miss the most. (BTW, thanks for not taking the low-road and blaming the entire video game crash on E.T. People who don't do their research do that.)
Same here I really wished it would have took off turned Atari around. I do believe the jaguar was technically on par the the original Playstation, Atari just had serious game developer support issues over their past failures. The Industry just wanted Atari gone.
It’s true Atari used to be a crazy R&D style company. Basically trying out all sorts of ideas because gaming was the Wild West, anything was possible. (Quick comment on the crash stuff, it’s true that E.T didn’t cause the entire crash, but I do believe it was the straw that broke the camels back, it was the last in a long line of quick cash grabs and poor, quality, enforcement of games on the system. It’s the reason the Nintendo seal of approval was created to try and guarantee some sort of quality of the games.)
@@ZapCannon5 ET was just the poster child. I blame the crash of over-saturation of crap games and retailers getting burned. Nintendo’s seal of quality is that in name only. (Have you played Ghostbusters or BTTF?) It was really just to show that the publisher was a Nintendo licensee.
'The fun is back Oh yes sir-ee With the 2600 from Atari It's a video system with classics galore from Space Invaders to cars that roar. A real hit joystick controls the screen Solaris is hot, Midnight Magic's mean. One more thing it's got a special low price, Under 50 bucks! 50 bucks?! Now isn't that nice? The fun is back Oh yes sir-ee It's the 2600 from Atari'
I still have the 2600 my Dad got me when I was a kid in '83. I had a Magnavox Odyssey before that, but the Atari opened up a whole new world for me. I thought it was the king of home video games until I played my buddy's NES in 1987. For my 8th birthday, I asked my Dad for an NES. Right there, on a Saturday afternoon in 1988, at a Pistol Pete's pizza in Phoenix, AZ, I opened up my birthday present... A brand new Atari 7800. (INSERT WONK WONK SOUND HERE)
My parents got a 2600 around 1980, a bit before I was born. My brother and I still have it in a box, along with a number of games and some decent aftermarket joysticks. (The original joysticks got sold off in a garage sale in the early 90s.)
I had a 2600 when I was a kid. I loved the hell out of it back in the day. Also, the Jaguar was awesome! Not the CD add-on, but the main system was definitely underrated.
Early '70s - I worked in a mall and a bar attached to the mall had a Pong game. I don't want to think of how many of my quarters that thing ate. Fast forward a decade or so and I had a 2600 - later replaced by a TI 99/4A and a series of Playstations. Memories.
Fun fact, Europe didn't have a gaming dip, they were much more invested in micro computers like the Spectrum. After that they were bigger into Sega master system over the Nes.
My grandparents kept my uncle's old 2600, so it was actually the first console I ever played back in like 91 and before I got a SNES. I was absolutely fascinated by it even if I was just 3 years old.
I started with a pong system from radio shack. The 2600 was like opening the door to a new universe. Missile Command, Berzerk, Atlantis, Defender, Pac man, these were all great games. The games with too much story, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, were there the real dogs. They just weren't suited to the technology at the time. I defy anyone to try and play just one game of Defender, you can't. Its just too much fun to stop.
I love these videos! They’re to the point they’re consisive and interesting. My only critique would be I wish that they were longer I sit and watch these videos for hours I need just one long video to satiate me lol
I work for Nolan bushnells son, Brent at his arcade as a tech, and once a month I get to talk to nolan and honestly, the coolest person to meet, extremely knowledgeable. We've talked about transistors on color vector to laserdisc games. He's very nice and quite a character.
You're not a true 70s/80s child unless you had a sibling that cheated at pong. My sister found out that you could adjust the size and speed of the ball and paddles so her's would be normal while all ours would be really tiny and fast. Also I think I demoed a jaguar at a video game shop but never owned one. Nostalgia nerd did a really interesting documentary on the jaguar.
My cousin was probably 23 and I was 7 or 8....he knew that if you hit the pong ball down real low or high on your onscreen paddle you got spin or different trajectory and he never told me that so I always lost because I was hitting it dead on. When somone showed me how to do that it was a life changer, lol. Those little things.....lol.
Had a 2600 and loved it as a kid until my NES. I did however own a Jaguar and while much of its library is underwhelming it’s a nice system that was poorly marketed and came out between console generations.
The Atari ST computers were used heavily in music production during their time. They also used a GUI when PCs and Apples were still running text based OSes.
I started with the 'Home Pong' in 1975, the 2600 was my 2nd console. I've literally been gaming almost as long as I've been alive - for better or worse. I actually almost bought the Jaguar but, like said in the video, that controller... yeesh.
The Atari computer division is full of Silicon Valley history too. Atari Program Exchange was a proto-app store of sorts. Small developers could sell their programs through the APX, appear in a periodic catalog and some dealers had pick racks with the more popular titles. The next generation Atari computer was the Amiga. Some of the team working on the Amiga came from the Atari hardware group. But Warner blinked and Commodore was able to get the Amiga team. As others have pointed out, Steve Jobs worked there for a time. Many other people from early days of Silicon Valley spent time at Atari.
Nothing much to say except just great great great memories to a 53 year old who saved his allowance and did all sorts of chores all those years ago to get a console. Played the heck out of it especially Yars Revenge and Defender.... just simpler fun times back then...
Atari was going to fail with their structure, it was a question of when. If it wasn't the video game crash of the 80s it would have been the next decline that would have destroyed them. They are looked on with rose tinted glasses, but they were a 1 hit wonder, the Atari 2600.
They actually did a lot of innovative things, despite most of their successes copying other people's work (Pong, Asteroids, the 2600). They spent a lot of money developing the 5200 and things like wireless controllers (in the '70s!) which were either failures or never made it to market. They had a lot of talented people that made some good hardware. Even the Jaguar was a decent piece of hardware for its time. It was just ill-timed and needed a bit more refinement. What really doomed the Jaguar was Atari's complete lack of quality control and failure to cater to (and pay) third-party developers for the system. They were constantly contracting developer milestones and not paying them when a developer delivered. They simply didn't have enough cash to run the business the way they were trying to. The 2600 sold for decades and should have made Atari a ton of money, but they were too busy pissing it away in all kinds of different ways.
Are you counting just consoles in that? Because loads of Atari Arcade cabinets and computers and such were huge in their own markets. And if you include consoles, the 7800 and Handheld Lynx were modest successes. I do think you are correct though in saying Atari wasn't likely to survive as a factor no matter what happened.
The 2600 was a curse in disguise. It sold so well that it came to bite them on the backside later on. Nobody wanted the 5200. Between 1977 and 1982 the 2600 sold 5 million units worldwide(I think that is roughly correct).
Their computers were actually not bad, I had a lot of fun and even learned a bit about programming on an Atari 800, but that was eventually beaten out in market share by Commodore and their Commodore 64, which game developers began to favor in the mid 80’s over the Atari line of computers and so the library of games for the C64 soon outgrew the Atari 8-bits.
When I was a kid my dad got a loan from his boss to buy an Atari 400 for me and my brother. We had a tape drive and did some basic BASIC (heh) programming, but mostly it just ended up being a video game machine that was better than the VCS we had. But a few years later, when I got my hands on the Atari 800XL it became a different story. I only did a bit of programming, but the potential of the machine to do other things sold me. Word processing, much better gaming, and accessing BBS systems via modem opened up a whole world. They were good computers, and it's a shame they never really took off.
@@Evil0tto Yeah, the BBSs were fun, we ran a FoReM bbs out of my grandfathers appliance store, also used that machine to track invoices (using synfile database, before the era of relational database engines) and of course, play games.
I didn't have a Atari computer, my first computer was a "Timex Sinclair' that taught me how to program and use :Basic'. The amazing thing is the computer cost me $9.99 . At least I had a cheap way of getting into comppiters.
I didn't have a Atari computer, my first computer was a "Timex Sinclair' that taught me how to program and use :Basic'. The amazing thing is the computer cost me $9.99 . At least I had a cheap way of getting into comppiters.
I didn't have a Atari computer, my first computer was a "Timex Sinclair' that taught me how to program and use :Basic'. The amazing thing is the computer cost me $9.99 . At least I had a cheap way of getting into comppiters.
The thing I didn't realize (the video game crash happened literally the year I was born in '83) was that Atari's mainstream success happened under the Warner years. I thought Bushnell was there at least for the beginning of its more mainstream rise and where they were first publishing consoles. Anyway, there's numerous stories on YT about the fallout of the crash. How Atari nearly snagged the global, non-Japanese rights to Nintendo's Famicom, how the crash not only put Warner's in debt but how that debt from Atari has dictated moves so extremely its affecting them and the companies that have acquired it since then and how Warner never truly lost Atari Games and that it somewhat lives on in WB Games.
Even in the very early 80s, my brother and I thought the graphics of the Atari 2600 were crap. We didn't own one and didn't really care. Thankfully, my step-father bought us an Intellivision console in 1982. The game controllers were more complicated than the Atari's, but the graphics were far superior. Still, I don't think it was until ColecoVision that home gaming systems had graphics anywhere near comparable to arcade games.
I grew up with the Atari brand. Christmas of 1979, if your family had the means, you got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. If you didn't have the means, you asked to spend the night with your friend who had one. Activision is interesting because the creation of cartridges that ran in the 2600 but weren't Atari brand was a two edged sword: Activision had better games which hurt Atari sales, but it gave the 2600 more and better game options, which helped keep Atari on life support. The guys at Activision were the "Rockstar Games"of their time. Best game ideas, best programmers. And Atari's marriage with Sears was smart. Back then everyone ordered stuff from Sears, especially the Wish Book (Christmas Catalog). Sears ( though bankrupt and basically non existent now) was the Amazon of their time. Order from home, get it delivered... They had great selection, good prices.. The only difference was the medium. Instead of the internet, it was paper catalogs
@@Jolt7800 I wonder what David thinks of Bobby kotticks habdlo of blizzardvision now? BTW blizzardvision is my name for Activision-Blizzard so I save my wrists
They have come a long way since the original activation. Late 70s and early 80s the best Activision game in my opinion was Pitfall (which today would not look like much of anything) but at the time put when you put it up against the offerings from Atari which were Battle zone tanks and those others, it was a better game. Now you have Call of duty, world of Warcraft, Diablo.... heck even Candy crush. Activision has gone a long way from their humble beginnings.
people who claim E.T. on the Atari 2600 was the worst game of all time have never 'played' 1977's Math for the Atari 2600 , when I was a kid and Atari came out I literally could not believe people would buy that over a real game, so expensive for the cartridge.
For those that didn't grow up as a kid in this time, getting an Atari 2600 was epic. I don't know what happened to my wood-finished Atari, but I still have my Atari and most of my games in a box. Last time I set it up I still remembered the pattern to my favorite games. There was a lot of competition and friends had different consoles ("Intellivision has better graphics"), Commodore 64, etc. The later games did have better graphics and more depth to them, but the story of "The Video Game crash of 1983" is fascinating and it's tie-in with the "E.T'" game. Video game consoles basically faded out until it was revived by Nintendo.
Let's see... You missed the Atari 5200 console released in 1982. It sold 1 million units (Per Wikipedia), but was largely regarded as a failure. It came shortly before the bubble bursting, and a lot of people had a 2600 and didn't see the need to upgrade to the 5200. Plus, companies, like Activision, were still pumping out games for the 2600. (Kind of Ironic, seeing that we now treat each console as a generational, throw away item.) The 7800 was more popular than the 5200, but it came out after Nintendo's console and right before the bubble bursting, so it was kind of doomed. Recently, Atari did release another console. It's a simple PC that can emulate past Atari games and run new titles (yes, they're oddly making a few games, but mostly relying on the content from the Hasbro/Infogram years.) It's an interesting device, but in the age of computers as a home theater device (that's what the latest PlayStation and Xbox units internals are), it doesn't make sense to buy one. (Gamer's Nexus did a review and teardown of one, if you're curious.) Because of Atari being Atari, there was initial excitement for it, then a lot of stuff going wrong and staff turnover... (repeatedly) to the point fans thought it was vaporware. Around that same time, Atari also tried getting into the Crypto currency game with their own cryptocoin. It, too, failed to find gold in the digital gold rush. Remember, while there is strong nastalgia for the brand, confidence in it's current leadership isn't.
My brother and I had an Atari 5200 and we loved it. There were a lot of decent games. We had a lot of fun with Pengo, Kangaroo, Pole Position and Realsports Baseball.
My first console was the Atari 5200, back in '83, which brought arcade level graphics to the home. The controllers wore out too easy though. Still, we played a ton of Missile Command, Pac-Man, Pitfall and Defender for a couple of years there.
I'll tell you why I bought a Jaguar in the 90's: it was $25, new, and came with an extra controller. I think I spent about $120 that day and ended up with a Jaguar, Jag CD, 6-7 games and 2 controllers. To be fair the Playstation and Saturn were newly out, but for that price, as a game collecting teenager in the 90's, I couldn't pass it up. Shockingly most of the games I bought were decent, even sort of hold up to this day, but boy was that library of games garbage overall. Unsurprisingly I bought a Virtual Boy that same summer. Same shop clearing them out at $25 new. I bought 10 games and went home to find out it gave me migraines to play. Haha.
Wasn't much of a console fan but I had both the Atari 800 and the 1040 ST computers. Was a fun time and the computers really worked well. Had the 800 until quite recently. Just love those old 8bit games!
I never had an Atari, we had the TI-99 because my dad wanted a computer. At the time I envied my friends that had all the popular games on the Atari while I was stuck with Munch Man and TI Invaders, but looking back, the TI wasn't so bad. Some of the original games like Blasto and Parsec were pretty descent. Actually, Parsec was quite advanced for its time and even had voice synthesizer.
The irony is that Atari owners envied the TI-99 owners. My buddy with a TI-99 used to always ask me to bring my Atari over. And I'd spend all night playing his PC while he played my Atari. :D
Big Foot and Q-Bert were also fantastic games on the Ti99/4a. Also, at least Pac-Man for the Ti99/4a looked similar to the Arcade version. I only wished Yar's Revenge and Berzerk would have been ported to that computer.
@@quentil That's so funny and so typical of kids...we always wanted what "the other kids had" and our own stuff was boring! Yet the other kids thought all our "boring" stuff they didn't have was great.
@@dbranconnier1977 Never played Bigfoot, but I had Q-Bert, and also Atari ports of Moon Patrol and Defender. The ports for the TI were actually quite descent. There was this fighter jet simulator that was cool too but I don't remember the name of it or what its parent system was...I don't think it was a TI original.
Atari made several poor business decisions almost from day one which are to numerous to mention. It's sad that Atari has become a footnote (a rather important part) in the history of the video game industry. Every video game player owes a great debt of gratitude to Atari because they got the ball rolling without them the industry wouldn't be nearly where it is today.
Let's not forget that the Atari's _Adventure_ made the first ever Easter Egg in history of video games which it's revolutionary at its peak. Even _Ready Player One_ made it as an important part of the story.
My mom always tells me about the Atari game called “Hide and Seek” and classics like Frogger and Pitfall (EDIT: Hide and Seek was actually called Sneak n Peak)
Heard of Hide and Seek, but never played it. Frogger and Pitfall are both Activision titles. I think Frogger started out as an arcade cabinet game and was ported to the 2600, while Pitfall was written for the 2600. (I think Pitfall was ported to other systems. Seemed to remember playing it on something "not Atari".) Played both a little.
Pitfall was one of our favorite games back then, it's definitely the one that put Activision on the map. The cool part about it is that it was a long game an kept changing as you played through it, unlike so many others that took place on static screens.
My first introduction to video games was the Atari 2600 in the late 1970s, and soon after that I got into the Atari computers. I've stayed with general purpose computers since then and have never had another console. I like video games, but I don't like the idea of a dedicated game system that doesn't do other things. Atari was great back in the day, but nowadays, the brand continues to exist as a zombie and has little to do with the original company. My Atari 800 still works, and I still play games on it.
I saw the documentary on the guy who made that ET game, “Atari: game over” is what it’s called… it was so sad because he worked around the clock fo4 that 5 weeks to make it, it’s style or concept was a very early version of say… Mario 64…. In the way you travel to other levels… anyways, there was a myth that all the unsold and returned copies of ET were dumped in a landfill and I think it was 2014 there was this big movement to dig it up… and tons of gamers showed up including the creator… they pulled out bulldozer shovels of copies and dumped them out… that man who made it, he saw all that and just broke down… 30 years later… his design, vision, and his hard work… just being dug up like it was trash…. I think he sells real estate now…. But yeah the story of the ET game is really really sad
6:39 That is not the original VCS/2600. What you showed there is called the light 6'er. That one came out during the second year of the Atari 2600 production. The Heavy 6'er was made in the USA (Sunnyvale, California). For the second year (and every year after that), the 2600 was made overseas. Search for pics of the Atari Heavy 6'er vs Light 6'er to see the differences.
@@tchitchouan If Chuck E Cheeses never existed, we wouldn't have Discovery Zone, Dave and Busters, Apex Entertainment, Scene75, Gamestop, and many other entertainment businesses.
@@tchitchouan I like CEC as a concept and never necessarily had a bad experience in one like the stories I heard. That said, it's a "bad thing" in that many of the bad business decisions Atari had bled over into and may have became bad business decisions CEC had.
I remember buying Pong at Sears with my Dad. I had the 2600 and the 5200. When I was kid I didn't even realize that games like Pitfall were from another company. I also had a Mattel Intelevison between the two Atari systems. Then I turned 14 and had other interests.
I am 52 years old and was 8 in 1977 when the 2600 came out...so I guess you can call me a first generation video gamer. I can remember when a neighbor kid up the street from me got the 2600 and I played it with him and then told my parents I wanted one....it took a couple of Christmases, but I eventually got one around 1979-80. I can remember having friends come over for sleep-overs and they would each bring games that I didn't have and we would stay up all night playing video games. I would not trade my time in history for any other.
Same here I was 7 when the 2600 came out. I played the 2600 at a neighbor kids house. I had to wait almost 14 years later to afford one on my own. Its sad they were still selling them then and I still loved it at the time.
A lot of sites put Pong consoles as the 'first generation'. Did you have one of those? (we did and the thing leaked RF so bad we broadcast Pong TV to the entire town - or at least a massive chunk of it)
Nice, I feel the same about growing up during the 8-bit era, and later 16-bit. The early years of technology is always so much more fascinating at the time because it's novel.
I miss the co op experience
I beat you lol born in 65 my first console was a coleco pong few years before the 2600 came out was most anticipated release for Xmas that year neighbors got that one then it started kids being inside all the time lol
Atari has a bit of a saga as a zombie company over the past decade or two, it's a fascinating subject in itself watching them constantly talking a big game but having no money to do anything.
I mean, they did release a console that everyone forgot about.
they are truly worthy of soulja boy, another zombie living off a name and a meme, shame it was never a thing
@Tong Zou so they are building a OUJA again? goddamn kek
@@D0NU75 See also The Simpsons.
@@sayvionwashington1939 Oh I dunno - I'm watching this video and typing a reply to you right now at less than 1/3 the price of a mac mini upgrade on Ubuntu - for less than the same price and use model of the Steam Deck that everyone's going ga-ga for. (protip - don't get the controllers if you want to save money for a nice mini PC to play Steam and retro titles)
For the family Christmas present (meant for the whole family), my technophile father bought us the 2600 when it first came out. No other family that we knew got one and that resulted in our household being swamped by my and my three brothers' friends. Many nights the entire living/dining room (a huge room) was packed. My dad had a rule then that those who never played it before got first play. Oh and adults (aka parents) ALWAYS got first play and could play as long as they like. Contrary to what you might think, all of us kids loved watching our dads and the VERY rare mom play. We would all be shouting advice and cheering. My mom played it ONCE on Christmas and that was it. What the moms really came for was the socializing around the dining table. The dads were there to compete against the other dads (not seriously ... more ribbing each other) and what we would call today bonding with their sons. This lasted all winter. My mom serving a never-ending stream of chips and soda pop. It was a complete blast. A great childhood memory.
That's awesome. While I was not born when the 2600 was around I had a similar experience with the NES. I used to beg my mom to play Super Mario Bros 3 as it was too hard for me. Too bad my mom later remarried someone who hates technology and actively lives in the past and doesn't consider a desk job working with computers "a real job."
The Xmas our house got ours, Space Invaders got an all-night till morning play by everyone. Holy crap that game was perfect for the VCS / 2600.
And now, parents are too busy working and then complaining their kids have their heads stuck in their computers/phones
"Contrary to what you might think, all of us kids loved watching our dads and the VERY rare mom play"
Considering how big live streams and playthroughs are, I doubt many people would think kids wouldn't enjoy watching others play. I still remember bugging my older brother to let me watch him and his friend play their Genesis.
@@Ironica82 This was WAY before the Internet even existed.
There's a lot missing here. The Atari computer division pretty much carried the company through the 80's and into the mid 90's, especially in the European market. Over there, the IBM PC wasn't the dominating force. It was a fight between Commodore's Amiga computers and the Atari ST computers.
The first computer I bought in 1989-ish was an Atari with an 8088 processor. I paid $2K for it which was significantly cheaper than IBM.
In fact, consoles couldn’t gain any ground until the Mega Drive.
@@austinreed7343 I've heard the master system &NES both sold about 8 million in Europe & then the megadrive sold similar numbers in yhe next generations
@@cryptocsguy9282
It took microcomputers to die for consoles to really take over.
I always preferred Amiga pcs
Maybe they were already a dead company by this time, but Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 was legendary.
That game was their chance out of the slums but failed with the sequel
To this day I can't get RCT3 to run smoothly with more than 15 rides in a park.
yoooo roller coast tycoon 2 was epic too
RCT2 actually, since I have OpenRCT2 to use to get it running.
Yooo what the hell, what's up CZ?? 😂👏
We are still waiting for that fan requested video...
*RUclips - Why They're Hated*
They became a conglomerate who no longer care about you and me who use their platform.
The platform is too big to satisfy anyones specific demands without pissing someone off and too big for any other platform to compete with.
After RUclips finally goes full-corporate and he moves the channel to another hosting site, I'm sure he'll have some interesting insights. I'd love to hear what he has to say.....
Yet here you are
@@willkosak Not because we want to yet because the people we watch are still here.
Duality of Man
HUGE oversight. You forgot how during the Tramiel purchase, the arcade division of Atari was split off as a separate division called Atari Games under Warner, focusing on developing games and arcade cabinets, whereas the company Tramiel acquired handled the home market (consoles and personal computers). Atari Games was later bought from Warner by Williams-Bally-Midway, but the company itself stayed intact under the "Midway West" name until 2003, still using the Atari brand name for its games. This is interesting as it means that Atari Games kept the original continuity of employees and studio up until 2003, long after the Atari corporation had been sold to JTS and its employees disbanded, thus making it the longest-lived part of the original Atari.
Because Atari Games did not have home rights, they could only release games as "Atari" in arcades, so they created the "Tengen" brand to sell their games on home consoles.
Woah
He said the arcade part was sold separately and that he wasn't going to cover it
Atari was split, spun off and changed into so many other companies it is hard to keep track of it. I think he wanted to just focus on the head and what happened to that to keep it easier to follow.
@@karlaskitties The Atari ST had a built-in MIDI port, yes. In fact most computers could do MIDI with a simple serial adapter with passive components (MIDI is just a serial interface running at 31250bps), but the convenient feature of the ST was that the plugs were right there in the case.
@@dacypher22 It really just followed two paths initially though. Arcade division that wound up with Midway, and was shut down in 2003. Home division that wound up with Jack Tramiel and shut down when JTS bought it in 1996.
After those dates both entities just became intellectual property and began being licensed out piecemeal by whoever owned the main thread. In the case of the arcade division's IP, it went back to Warner in 2009.
Meanwhile the home division went JTS -> Hasbro -> Infogrames and now exists as Atari, who are happy to license out rights to whoever wants them but still basically owns all the home rights to Atari.
I'm very curious how the Atari casino idea played out since that's more amusement devices which would have been in the purview of the arcade division that Warner now owns the rights to.
You showed a clip of Pac-Man, but it should be mentioned that the customers' extreme disappointment with Pac-Man probably led to a lot of ill-will and loss of confidence in the company. It sold very well, but its high sales may have actually made Atari foolishly confident that they could produce other garbage like E.T. and expect it to sell well.
I was surprised he didn't mention that one as well. People were PISSED that it was so unlike both the cover art on the box as well as the arcade version of the game. The graphics and sounds were terrible, the gameplay was mucky and slow, and folks who pre-ordered it for $50 or waited in line for hours to buy it were straight-up angry. That was 40 years ago and I still remember how disappointed I felt when I first played it back then.....
I actually have the Atari 2600 Pac-Man. It's, well, definitely disappointing when you compare it to it's arcade counterpart, but from my impressions of Atari games very few of them could have amounted to what arcades were doing in the 80's anyway, and it's technically impressive just for what it does do.
Not to mention how nowadays modern "gamers" will eagerly eat up shoddy, incomplete, buggy games. At least Atari Pac-Man wasn't necessarily in that third descriptor.
Yah, they'd learned their lesson by the time they made a Ms Pac-Man port (which looks _much_ more like the arcade original) -- but by then it was probably too little, too late.
Haven't we heard that enough by now?
@@cabbusses I mean I agree, the 2600 could never quite replicate the games in the arcades however a few years ago somebody remade Pac Man on the 2600 and proved the game could have been much better with this copy being a lot more like the arcade.
Edit : Look up Pac Man 2600 4k
Imagine if Atari actually took up that Nintendo deal for the NES. We could be talking about the Atari Entertainment System instead
What would the Wii would be…
...Or the Crash of '83 could've still happened, and this time Nintendo would've gone down with them, making everything worse.
On the other hand, the Sega Master System would've probably had record high sales, and Sega might still be making consoles today.
@@Alexs23743 In another reality they are playing the Atari Jaguar 7 instead of the PS5. =p
The Atari Jaguar had a fantastic version of Doom. Graphically great and the controller was absolutely perfect for the game. Switching weapons with that oversized telephone of a controller for Doom was like riding in a Cadillac.
Its probobly the best console version of doom
Also had the best version of Alien vs Predator
Lol
@@TradeMark2765 it had no music. At least during gameplay.
This really makes me want to see your thoughts about Sega's ups and downs.
Every studio and publisher! (Though Neversoft would be an amazing one, I swear this channel never fails to surprise me with info I didn't know)
Yeeeeees Sega is up and down heavily and down more now but... stock price is pretty steady and low
I think it's doing well in the Japanese arcade focused Market but that's about all.
@@sirBrouwer Currently a lot of those arcades are closing down. They do still have a hand in producing arcade games which is where they started and they have a few interesting branches but they aren't doing too hot in that anymore between Corona and the Move away from Arcades. But you're not wrong, they _were_ doing pretty well, those were certainly a draw
Particularly how Dreamcast had an insane development budget that sunk the company. Particularly when combined with the dev costs of Shenmue which as a single title had a dev cost that required everyone who owned a Dreamcast buy it to recoup costs. Which of course it never did.
I worked for a short time at Atari during the Infogrames years, around 2003. I was well aware it wasn't going to be the Atari of my youth, but my god. It was an absolutely miserable place where management hated everybody under them and let them know it. I got out of there quick and never went back into any game jobs.
They probably deserved to fail then. Serves them right.
I worked there in the early 90s. They genuinely wanted to build on the success of the ST and had at least two groups working on it, one the next generation ST and one working on a UNIX box. Alas, they were just a few years ahead of their time: Linux would arise a short time later but the UNIX project collapsed from underfunding, buggy hardware, and lack of appropriate management. And yes, each of those assertions is arguable. But the deficiencies that Brad mentions were not new to his generation. For example I have memories of managers yelling at the top of their lungs in open workspace, apparently thinking this is a business-like way to manage people.
@@ralphrod32 that and the fact there was two ataris
What games did you work on? I'm 47 so this was my youth!
@@derrick2476 No game credits under my belt, unfortunately, just tech support. I hung out with the testers for Backyard Baseball, though, and got to be Player 2 for a few sessions while they tried to break the game (which they did in hilarious fashion from time to time.)
I'm just shocked they're somehow still going in 2021
Not really.. ATARI as it was back when it was started and then sold to Time Warner. Is gone. The game development teams basically went to Activision is now basically gone.
The brand was auctioned off and bought and sold twice.
The Hardware division went bankrupt.
So yeah ATARI brand went unused for so long the rights was bought through crowed Funding.
So today's ATARI has no ties to the ATARI of the past.
TIL something very interesting in video game history. "Atari's rights bought through crowd funding."
The Atari of today is Atari in name only. Absolutely none of the Atari of the 70's, 80's or even 90's is present.
Yeah but it's ran by completely different people now after the name was tossed around. They're not even US-based anymore.
@@supernintendo182 I wonder, where are they now?
Minor correction on the naming being taken from Go, it is technically Chinese in origin. But the term of Go and Atari are both from the Japanese adaptations of the game. So the creators of Atari took the Japanese version of the game when they were taking inspiration. So it wasn’t too relevant to simply call it a old Chinese board game.
I was born in '72, and my older brother was born in '65. We wanted an Atari, but our first video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey II. Shortly afterwards, we got our Atari! Between Space Invaders, Asteroid, and Defender, that was my childhood! We also had E.T., Journey Escape, Pitfall, etc. Aaahhh, the memories...
I'd really like to see you do more videos like this on video game companies. There are a lot of fallen titans of the gaming industry that you could make these videos about like THQ, Eidos Interactive, Acclaim Entertainment, Midway Games, Hudson Soft and more than could make for great stories.
THQ and Hudson Soft still makes me sad.
@@absollum such a sad fate
I second this
Not to mention, SNK. The Japanese video game company best known for the Neo Geo brand filed for bankruptcy not once, but twice. Company Man should definitely do a video on that!
Telltale
My favourite Atari memory besides playing my 2600 as a kid is one day I saw that Nolan Bushnell started following me on Twitter. I highly doubt he personally runs his Twitter account but I’ll take it.
As a vintage video console gamer, my fiancé has been WAITING for this episode. Says he can’t wait to watch it!!
69😈
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Atari got into the computer business and had the Atari 400, 800 and towards their demise, the Atari ST (Sixteen-Thirty-Two) and with the Blitter chip that Trammel had created, that computer was fast! With the ST you could plug in the ROM chip in a device called the Magic Sack that would turn the ST into a Mac and when Atari made a laptop, they called it Stacy and on the way to a convention, they had the Magic Sack and it became the first Apple laptop.
When Trammel took over, he wanted to find a manufacturing facility and found an empty mall in Houston, TX which was absolutely perfect. He asked the mayor at the time, Kathy Whitmire, if she could make concessions on taxes in order to help out and she flat out refused so they had to find a factory overseas which took another year to work out all the details and get it up to speed. Production was on again, but there was a gap between what the stores had to sell and what could be delivered, so Atari sent the computer stores a letter suggesting that they sell other brands for the time being.
Atari had even worked on selling an IBM Clone and actually had that in production.
Finally, Atari got a container of computers in and wouldn't you know it, the truck overturned and everything was destroyed. That, my friend, was the end of Atari.
The Atari ST was special - it did everything in memory which is why it was so fast. It booted from ROM rather than a disk or hard drive. When Atari got the license to use GEM for the operating system, the agreement was so much money per disk. When a ROM chip was used instead, Atari didn't have to pay a license! In the meantime, Apple was using a floppy to launch their OS and eventually HD.
Check out the Atari ST
I started with the 2600 in 77. At some point I got the 800. I started out with a cassette to save programs on then the upgrade to the 7” floppy’s was a amazing thing. No more rewinding the cassette. then in 85 ish I moved to the 520st then a 1040 then a 1040ste. I remember upgrading my modem to 2400 bps and that was a big upgrade.
Right there with you, man.
Got a 2600 for Christmas in '78, then my first home computer - the 800XL in '83. Used the HELL out of that little machine! Still HAVE it, along with 2 1050 disk drives. Still works great!
Got my first 1040ST in '87. Loved it too, but the A8 holds a special place in my heart.
Just bought an Atari VCS from sheer nostalgia. LONG LIVE THE KING!
I think you did a good job on this video. I was worried this would be the over 9000th discussion about the crash of 83, but you didn’t just focus on that. There was a string of wrong turns that ultimately made Atari fail. How long they lasted is beyond me. I’ve played some amazing Atari games that weren’t just 2600 crap (I actually don’t like the 2600).
They survived solely because the name Atari rings so many nostalgia bells for people who grew up in the 70's and 80's. The Atari 2600 was such a big part of our lives in the early 80's, way more than the arcades full of stand-up video games you had to pump quarters into, yet you rarely see people playing home consoles of any kind in period films and TV shows. No matter how badly the company failed, there are still tons of people who will take notice if a product has the name Atari on it.
1984.
@@Raskolnikov70 That being said, I think it's totally valid to say that Atari 2600 games didn't age well unlike NES or dare I say even some Master System games. We still see Mario and Zelda games coming out for example but not something like Yar's Revenge. Hell, even some Master System franchises such as Wonder Boy have games out today.
@@ashkitt7719 There were a few that I continued playing throughout my high school years, well after better systems came out. Asteroids, Berzerker, Galaga to name a few that are still considered classics today. They did alright with those types of arcade-style action games, but the system was too limited to spawn anything like a Mario franchise.
I just got done commenting how I feel like I'm the only 80s kid that hated the 2600. I guess I'm not as alone as I thought in that opinion. I'd much rather play games in my Apple IIe. Atari games were so damn boring. There so much nostalgia love for it and I just don't get it. They were bad games then and they did not age well.
I loved Pitfall as it reminded me of "Indiana Jones". I loved being able to have the guy swing on the vine.
Same pitfall still remains the most difficult Game I've ever played
That would've been one of the first games I discovered the "pattern" to. I think Pac-Man was the first. Once you learned the pattern, you could play forever and get very high scores.
I've been a life-long Atari fan, dating back to the 2600 days, so I was using their products all the way up to the bitter end. What should be worth mentioning is that while Atari is mostly known for video games, that view of them is mostly within the US. Jack Tramiel basically turned Atari into a computer-first company, with video game consoles being largely second fiddle, and in the early days of the ST, they did have some success, especially in Europe. In fact, a lot of modern software actually had its origins on the Atari ST computers, including Apple's Logic Pro music production software as well as the precursor to 3ds Max software package (CyberStudio). In short, Atari helped shape not just the video game market, but the computer market as well.
Yah, the ST never really went anywhere in North America, with the Commodore 64 dominating the low end of the market, and the Mac, the Amiga, and ever-cheaper IBM-compatible PCs* splitting up the higher end ... and Nintendo consoles dominating gaming. Though the ST did see some use in music production, much like how the Amiga found a home in video production and special effects.
*The Tandy 1000 series in particular brought better graphics and sound to PC-compatibles, at least until VGA graphics and Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster sound took over. (And Tandy didn't invent those modes either; they cloned the 1000's graphics and sound off the PC Jr, IBM's failed attempt at a home computer. 🙂)
I still have a 800XL and have been messing around with it from time to time. Atari computers had some pretty elegant design features (particularly in the OS) and the documentation was outstanding as well. I miss some of that circa 1982-1986 era computing.
I agree. The Atari ST (together with the Amiga) were successful in Germany, displacing Home Computers like the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, C 64 or Atari 800. None bought a NES back in the day, because people started to use these maschines to perform other tasks. The era of these Home Computer ended around 1990 when PC became cheaper and more powerful. And then the handheld consoles like Gameboy were bought because they were a cheaper way just to play video games. And in my point of view the Playstation started the rise of consoles because it was cheaper then the usually gaming PC. This was around 1995 or 96...
They pushed computer hardware because they had contracts with the U.S. government up until the mid 90's. After that, Sega took over those contracts and still has those contracts.
Indeed, I run Logic Pro on Macs now, but the first version of Logic (at the time by Emagic, well before Apple purchased them) I used was on the ST back in 1993. I have very fond memories of those days. I would write code at work, then come home and make music until the early am. I still do both of these activities today 🙂
I discovered video games in the arcades and the idea of playing them at home was mind-blowing. My uncle had an Atari and about ten games. I couldn't stop playing those terrible experiences.
A few years later, I got an NES and never looked back.
My cousin had an Atari 2600 console when we were kids. I'd go over to her house on Saturday mornings to play it. It was one of my best childhood memories.
Success or failure, they did SOMETHING right to still have a recognized logo to this day.
True
They have maybe 1 or 2 good games out of the hundreds they have
@@flixs1353 which game is that ?
@@cryptocsguy9282 probably space invader
@@Soulfin Space invader is from Taito 😆😆
I sold my 2600 to a 9-year old kid at my garage sale, the whole set. It was hilarious because he was into it even more than I was at his age. "OMG YOU HAVE ET! It's the worst game ever made!"
Protect him at all costs
No. Indiana Jones was the worst game ever made.
There was a documentary about the ET cartridge being the worst game and how a bunch of cartridges were dumped and ultimately dug up in a landfill in New Mexico..
I still have my dad's original 2600. I have a lot of happy memories of staying up late to play games with him
NICCCCcCcCeEEEEe
Oh man, weekend parties with a bunch of friends, loud music and gallons of Dr. Pepper playing what are now primitive Atari video games on a blurry television until three in the morning are great memories. My friends got bored with them after Dungeons and Dragons became the new late night fad for nerds.
Enjoy it while you can. The games are going to stop working soon. They are deteriorating.
@@patrickgagnon4476 The cartridges?
@@scottlarson1548 that's what I was told. I just looked into it, that was not true. The 2600 and carts can last for the next 100+ years. Enjoy!
As a 51 year old guy, this video puts me pleasantly in the front seat of the way back machine. I had one neighbor who had pong on an Odyssey, while another friend had the Atari. I have many fond memories from 1978-1983 with Atari and Odyssey. Fantastic video!!
I had a lot of consoles over the years, one of the most fun was my Atari 400. It had most of the cool arcade games, like the PAC Man series, Donkey Kong series, Q-Bert, Defender, Galaxian, Centipede, River Run, the list goes on. They looked and sounded every bit as good as a top notch arcade box, not pixelated like the 2600. I probably had 50 cartridges, many bought for $5 or less at clearance places after the newer consoles like the NES came out. it wasn't cheap but it was a great game machine I played for years. I wish i had kept it. Simple games but fun.
My family had the 2600 when I was a kid in the early 80s, but for me, the name Atari brings back more memories of spending time in the arcade than it does playing a console at home. As a kid and teenager, I spent many hours and quarters at the arcade.
I think if he had to cover every wild Atari story (There's the E.T. landfill, rejecting the Atari AES/Nintendo collab, basically everything about the Jaguar but especially the defective CD add-ons and the Fight for Life development debacle...) then the video would lose sight of the company/business side of things.
I definitely grew up in arcades as a kid. Atari at that point was so dominant on seemingly every front. They had so much success in the console market, the arcade market, handheld market, and even computer market. Even into the late 80s and early 90s, the Atari ST was a popular rival to the IBM and Macs that were on the market at the time.
I can still vividly remember playing E.T. in the early 80's and thinking "god damn this game fucking sucks."
I thought E.T. was the worst game ever..... until the Atari Version of "Pac Man" was released. I guarantee that was the moment that triggered the Crash of '83.
Did you keep it? That’s a relic now
That game is so fucking bad, one of the worst games in history.
AVGN
I just thought I was crappy at it. It took many years for me to learn that it was the game, not me!
(12:57) *Mike:* The Atari ST was worth a mention, being one of the competing systems at that time, along with the Commodore Amiga, and IBM PC plus its compatibles. Tandy was dropping out of the home PC market by this point, but was still a familiar name due to hobbyists and electronics shoppers.
The ST was also popular with music producers because it was the only home computer at the time with built-in MIDI. I'll bet that some of your favorite albums from the mid-80s were mixed on an Atari ST.
@@AskDrannik And with the popularity of Vaporwave and similar genres, albums today are probably mixed on it.
Yeah, the Atari ST was definitely a popular PC for a number of years.
Great video !!!! The 2600 was my first console. Had countless hours of fun.
The Jack Tramiel era at Atari was really innovative. Apart from the awesome STs they also made the Portfolio, the first "palmtop" x86 computer.
I once saw Nolan Bushnell doing a Q&A before a large audience. One thing he said was, "I've had six startups fail. I'm now doing my seventh. [turned to audience] Must Be Present To Win!"
He also said, "I've been rich, I've been poor. [turned to audience] Rich is best."
He's a lot of fun to watch speak.
There's another story about the first arcade Pong machine. It was place in a bar in Sunnyvale. The next day, the bar owner called them and told them to get it out of there, it doesn't work. They came down and picked up the machine, and in the lab found out that the reason it stopped working is because the coin box had become so stuffed that it could no longer accept coins. This happened in one evening.
The bar was Andy Capp's, if I recall correctly.
I was an Atari 2600 kid, and I rooted for the company until the day it essentially died. Although, by then, I'd long since stopped buying their consoles, as well. I had a 7800 for awhile, basically given to me on an extended loan for a year or two while a friend was away. It certainly didn't get close to the love my NES did, but I did enjoy playing it a fair bit. The 7800 did actually have a market, but Atari screwed themselves by trying to market like 4 or 5 different consoles at once, which all stole sales from each other as a result. And it was a marketshare already massively diminished by Nintendo and Sega. And I want to say the Lynx actually was modestly successful, at least for a few years.
I was born in 1982 and I grew up with having a Commodore 64 computer and a Atari 2600 I have such fond memories of those systems. Great video as always keep up the great work! 😁
Thank you so much for slowing down your narration, and taking a breath of air before you start a new sentence.
It has made a difference to me. So now I can watch your videos from beginning to end.
And the list goes on.
Some of the Arcade games they made in the late 70's were just strange and pointless, like "fire truck", "smokey Joe" (much the same thing, about aimlessly driving a fire truck around streets made of dotted lines, without really doing anything.
Super Bug was another game that worked in much the same way. drive around aimlessly until fuel ran out.
At the end of it all, they started making expensive video games, with custom IC's and strange overall electronic designs. Meanwhile the Japanese manufacturers were eating their lunch so to speak, with much cheaper games, that often earned very good money.
Designers at Atari Pinball originally came up with the idea of a rising background tone sound effect on a pinball game. Atari Management wouldn't have a bar of it, and designer ended up leaving and going to Williams Pinball. The "rising tone" background sound ended up being used by him on Williams Flash in 1979, and this was one thing that made it one of the best sellers in Pinball history.
Atari Pinball games were not as easy to service as other US brands, circuit designs were very unconventional and they seemed to use a different logic PCB set in each game, whereas others used the same boards for several years, which made them easier to service, swap etc.
Atari did however make a jumbo sized pinball called "Hercules" which was the largest pinball machine ever made. The ball was a pool table cue ball.
Then Atari who went into Jukeboxes in Europe, buying up the then bankrupt Jupiter/Electro-kicker jukebox manufacturer from the French government.
The Jupiter jukes were at best, 1960's eastern european build quality, didn't sound great and painful to work on. Many parts of the underside of the mechanism would shock you if you touched them
Atari, despite all its electronic and computer knowledge, kept using the outdated 1960's Electro mechanical Jupiter system - not computerized but used mechanical parts, solenoids, steppers etc, but in a more modern fancy looking cabinet.
When Atari eventually made a solid state Jukebox, as I understand it, custom or other unobtainable parts were used, making it unrepairable down the line. The record playing mechanism was strange and looked like it had to be accessed from the back of the machine as well as the front, unlike almost every other major jukebox brand.
I've got a 2600. I *love* playing some of the games, particularly Yars Revenge and Kaboom. Also, there still exist companies that will refurbish the 2600 or sell you parts. Its a nice console to have; it doesn't get used as much as the other retro stuff, but im glad I have it.
I remember when the first Pong game came to the Woolco (like target or Walmart now) store and the store set the game up on a TV on an aisle end cap. It was so cool at the time and really fun to play. There had never been anything like it on the market at that time.
Could you perhaps do a video on Enterprise Rent-A-Car? They also own National & Alamo Rent-A-Car too.
Yeah - maybe a "Bigger than you know" video. Also do those "Bigger than you know" videos for Apple and Microsoft too.
@@ckfinke7625 Not to mention, Discovery, Inc. They owned every cable channel other than their flagship Discovery Channel. They are the following:
Animal Planet
TLC
Discovery Familia (the Spanish equivalent to Discovery Family)
Travel Channel
Science Channel
Destination America
Oprah Winfrey Network (95% stake while Harpo Productions owns the other 5%)
Investigation Discovery
Discovery Family (60% stake while Hasbro owns the other 40% stake)
American Heroes Channel
Discovery en Español
Discovery Life
Heck, they even owned some channels when they merged with Scripps Networks Interactive including the following:
DIY Network
Great American Country
HGTV
Cooking Channel (69% stake while the other 31% stake is owned by Nexstar Media Group)
Food Network (69% stake while the other 31% stake is owned by Nexstar Media Group)
Also, it was announced that they are about to merge with WarnerMedia to its own media entity. Company Man should definitely do a Bigger Than You Know video on Discovery, Inc. What do you think, CK Finke?
Backed by All State and a pink hair girl that's heavily sexualized
When I was 14 around 1985 me and my brother each got an Atari 130XE as our first computer ever. An experience I will never forget. Iwas actually waiting for you to mention the home computer side of Atari.
Friend of mine in elementary school, his dad still had his old 2600 hooked up down in their basement. This was mid-90's. I remember playing pitfall and that tank war game on it. What's nuts to think about is the Xbox 360 is now nearly as old as the 2600 when we were playing it back then.
Great video! My dad and his brothers got an Atari 2600 in the 80s, and my cousins and I still play it when we visit my grandparents’ house! The music for Pitfall II is always a crowd pleaser 😄
I still have my Atari 400 computer. I was so proud back in the day when I mod'ed it to 48k of ram (it only came with 8k). I thought I was the king of the world.
Star Raiders, what a great game. But that keyboard...
@@thohangst Oh god, just thinking about typing on that keyboard makes my fingers hurt.
Holy cow. Soylent Green is next year, and I think it might become real.
Deus Ex Human Revolution takes place in 5 years, so if we could please have robot arms.
@@theautisticguitarist7560 we already can have bionic arms
Food like substances. Instead of people all food is made from GMO 🌽 yuck.
Yeah that stood out to me too! Just snagged a DVD copy from ebay for a dollar!
“Tuesday is Green Day!”
You can pick up Soylent at most convenience stores. I know, not the same thing. Probably.
I got a 7800 for Christmas in 87! Pole Position 2! Great times!
My gaming time line with Atari started on the year I was born:
1972: Born in NYC, Atari was open for the first time with Pong.
1976: Mom gave me Atari Super Pong.
1977: Got the Atari Video Computer System for my B-day from Mom, Same year she took me to see Star Wars.
1979: Uncle gave me all the Odyssey units he had from first to Odyssey 2.
1980: One of my mom's friend got me the Intellivision and 4 games.
1982: The first 2600 game I got was Barzerk. My aunt got me the 5200.
1983: The last two console mom got me was the Colecovision & Vectrex.
1984: Got a lot of used pong units from the flea market in Brooklyn.
1985: The first console I got by my self was the Nintendo NES with Rob.
1986: Found Famicom with 20 games in China town.
1987: Got Master System, Atari 7800 & XE. Also found more old consoles.
1989: Sega Genesis, Gameboy, Lynx, Plus got lots of 2600 games for .99
1990: Game Gear, dad and uncle got me the Neo-Geo and two game.
1991: Super NES, found more old units Arcadia 2001/Telstar/Channel F.
1992: CD-I , more And yes I got the Atari Jaguar -
Of all the video gaming systems that ever released in my life time WHY THE HELL did it had to be the Atari Jaguar 64 that was launch on November 23rd, 1993 ON MY BIRTHDAY OF ALL THINGS! And only 4 games was launch with it one was a Cheap Knock Off Star Fox game Cybermorph as a packin. But it was Atari and the main reason I wanted THE JAG was in the back of the box and some magazine page ads was images of games and one of them was Tiny Toon Adventures for the Atari Jaguar but sadly it never was released. To this day Im still pissed off that Tiny Toon never saw the light of day. BTW still have the Jag complete in box^_^
I've been collecting Atari games. The Lynx and Jaguar are fun to play despite their limited library. Nowadays homebrew for the Lynx is massive and has more depth than the original library could ever muster. Currently making a video on the Jaguar and it's interesting that they essentially had this killer system on their hands but couldn't market it or court developers to save their life.
Where did you learn to fly?
The hugest problem with the Jaguar was it being difficult to program for - at least program to take advantage of the Tom and Jerry chipset. That did not entice companies into wanting to develop for it and also the lack of support from Atari did not help either. From my understanding Atari's own developer support was handled by one person who took their sweet time in answering phone calls. Compare that to Sony with the PS1 who went above and beyond in developer support and you can see why Sony dominated that generation.
For the record I still own my Jaguar to this day along with a handful of titles. Even with it being an failure it's still an fascinating system and I'm glad I own one.
@@DemoManMLS The fact that it was a failure makes it more rare and unique today. That's great you still have it!
They Lynx was a great system. I think Atari could have done better had they stayed in the handheld market instead of going with the Jaguar.
Where did you learn to fly?
I find it amusing how you stopped at the "Atari Casino" thing without going into the whole debacle with the "New" Atari VCS, as if you, like many other people, got disgusted with what they were doing with the brand and don't even want to acknowledge the currently-named "Atari" company as the real/same one. I've seen quite a few of your videos by now and this actually stood out to me, especially when compared to other "fallen" game companies.
I kinda feel that way about Konami as game devs. Too bad they are too profitable to their other ventures to be considered a "fallen" company.
Let's not forget how shitty they are as a publisher, exhuming and exploiting old IPs.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile got lots of hate for basically being a pay to win cash grab with tonnes of 24 hour long timers to build stuff and generally reeking of shit mobile game design. RCT has seen several bad entries since and has pretty much been overtaken by Parkitect and Planet Coaster.
Blood got a pretty questionable remaster courtesy of Nightdive Studios and Monolith Productions. Problem is Atari didn't give Nightdive the funding to fix the remaster and just called it a day.
Oh and the new Atari VCS... can't even run its own menu at full resolution without major lag spikes. And reportedly loads of people have been outright unable to boot up Linux or Windows using it, which was a heavy selling point of the console.
Atari casino isn't going to happen either.
@@prestontucker1687 I want to say "How disappointing."
Yet, I can't. Because I'm not actually disappointed.
Yeah, I was one of those guys who went with the Jaguar over the SNES. (I actually went from 2600 to 800XL to 7800 to NES to Genesis then to Jaguar.) I was hooked back in the early 80's with the 2600 and with the Jaguar I was REEEEEEALLY hoping it would bring them back to prominence. But by 1993 there was just too much competition and Atari just didn't have the money to make it a success. Plus the developers got lazy and just ported their 16-bit games over giving the Jaguar a bad rap (Made a video about it called, "Is the Jaguar really 64-bit?") The REAL Atari was innovative and fun, nothing like what they are today. Did you know Atari developed a video phone? Or that they designed a Computer Network for Club Med? Or a Holographic video game called Cosmos? Or the Mindlink controller? THAT'S the Atari I miss the most. (BTW, thanks for not taking the low-road and blaming the entire video game crash on E.T. People who don't do their research do that.)
Same here I really wished it would have took off turned Atari around. I do believe the jaguar was technically on par the the original Playstation, Atari just had serious game developer support issues over their past failures. The Industry just wanted Atari gone.
BIG MISTAKE
It’s true Atari used to be a crazy R&D style company. Basically trying out all sorts of ideas because gaming was the Wild West, anything was possible. (Quick comment on the crash stuff, it’s true that E.T didn’t cause the entire crash, but I do believe it was the straw that broke the camels back, it was the last in a long line of quick cash grabs and poor, quality, enforcement of games on the system. It’s the reason the Nintendo seal of approval was created to try and guarantee some sort of quality of the games.)
@@ZapCannon5 ET was just the poster child. I blame the crash of over-saturation of crap games and retailers getting burned. Nintendo’s seal of quality is that in name only. (Have you played Ghostbusters or BTTF?) It was really just to show that the publisher was a Nintendo licensee.
"Is the Jaguar really 64-bit?"
CPU is still a motorola 68000 so, no
In my country, arcade saloons are still known as "Atari saloons", like how "jeeps" is a brand but is synonymous with that car model.
'The fun is back
Oh yes sir-ee
With the 2600 from Atari
It's a video system with classics galore
from Space Invaders to cars that roar.
A real hit joystick controls the screen
Solaris is hot, Midnight Magic's mean.
One more thing it's got a special low price,
Under 50 bucks!
50 bucks?!
Now isn't that nice?
The fun is back
Oh yes sir-ee
It's the 2600 from Atari'
I still have the 2600 my Dad got me when I was a kid in '83. I had a Magnavox Odyssey before that, but the Atari opened up a whole new world for me. I thought it was the king of home video games until I played my buddy's NES in 1987. For my 8th birthday, I asked my Dad for an NES. Right there, on a Saturday afternoon in 1988, at a Pistol Pete's pizza in Phoenix, AZ, I opened up my birthday present...
A brand new Atari 7800.
(INSERT WONK WONK SOUND HERE)
My parents got a 2600 around 1980, a bit before I was born. My brother and I still have it in a box, along with a number of games and some decent aftermarket joysticks. (The original joysticks got sold off in a garage sale in the early 90s.)
I had the 2600 as an 80s kid and found the Activision games to be a lot of fun when they came out. Grand Prix, Enduro, ice hockey, tennis, you name it
I had a 2600 when I was a kid. I loved the hell out of it back in the day.
Also, the Jaguar was awesome! Not the CD add-on, but the main system was definitely underrated.
Early '70s - I worked in a mall and a bar attached to the mall had a Pong game. I don't want to think of how many of my quarters that thing ate. Fast forward a decade or so and I had a 2600 - later replaced by a TI 99/4A and a series of Playstations. Memories.
Omg! That Soylent Green movie made in 1973, set in 2022...food shortages, inflation, how did they know?
Fun fact, Europe didn't have a gaming dip, they were much more invested in micro computers like the Spectrum. After that they were bigger into Sega master system over the Nes.
My grandparents kept my uncle's old 2600, so it was actually the first console I ever played back in like 91 and before I got a SNES. I was absolutely fascinated by it even if I was just 3 years old.
I started with a pong system from radio shack. The 2600 was like opening the door to a new universe. Missile Command, Berzerk, Atlantis, Defender, Pac man, these were all great games. The games with too much story, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, were there the real dogs. They just weren't suited to the technology at the time. I defy anyone to try and play just one game of Defender, you can't. Its just too much fun to stop.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was a mess! I never understood what I was supposed to do and there was no continuity with the movie. Still, I loved my 2600 😊
@@ThePosrein I never figured that game out. Some of the graphics on Raiders were pretty funky, like that black market scene. What the heck? lol
@@josephgioielli i just watched a guy speed clear it in under 7 minutes. Nuts!
I love these videos! They’re to the point they’re consisive and interesting. My only critique would be I wish that they were longer I sit and watch these videos for hours I need just one long video to satiate me lol
I work for Nolan bushnells son, Brent at his arcade as a tech, and once a month I get to talk to nolan and honestly, the coolest person to meet, extremely knowledgeable. We've talked about transistors on color vector to laserdisc games. He's very nice and quite a character.
You're not a true 70s/80s child unless you had a sibling that cheated at pong. My sister found out that you could adjust the size and speed of the ball and paddles so her's would be normal while all ours would be really tiny and fast. Also I think I demoed a jaguar at a video game shop but never owned one. Nostalgia nerd did a really interesting documentary on the jaguar.
My cousin was probably 23 and I was 7 or 8....he knew that if you hit the pong ball down real low or high on your onscreen paddle you got spin or different trajectory and he never told me that so I always lost because I was hitting it dead on. When somone showed me how to do that it was a life changer, lol. Those little things.....lol.
Had a 2600 and loved it as a kid until my NES.
I did however own a Jaguar and while much of its library is underwhelming it’s a nice system that was poorly marketed and came out between console generations.
Agreed. Poor marketing (but they did try!) and 16-bit ports gave the Jaguar a bad reputation. It was far more capable than it looked.
The Atari ST computers were used heavily in music production during their time.
They also used a GUI when PCs and Apples were still running text based OSes.
That’s where Atari Teenage Riot got their name from
@@cranklabexplosion-labcentr8245 my daughter is named after Hanin Elias.
I started with the 'Home Pong' in 1975, the 2600 was my 2nd console. I've literally been gaming almost as long as I've been alive - for better or worse.
I actually almost bought the Jaguar but, like said in the video, that controller... yeesh.
The Atari computer division is full of Silicon Valley history too.
Atari Program Exchange was a proto-app store of sorts. Small developers could sell their programs through the APX, appear in a periodic catalog and some dealers had pick racks with the more popular titles.
The next generation Atari computer was the Amiga. Some of the team working on the Amiga came from the Atari hardware group. But Warner blinked and Commodore was able to get the Amiga team.
As others have pointed out, Steve Jobs worked there for a time. Many other people from early days of Silicon Valley spent time at Atari.
Nothing much to say except just great great great memories to a 53 year old who saved his allowance and did all sorts of chores all those years ago to get a console. Played the heck out of it especially Yars Revenge and Defender.... just simpler fun times back then...
Yars Revenge may be my favorite 2600 game. Great stuff.
I already know this whole story by heart but idgaf it's company man I'm still gonna watch it
Atari was going to fail with their structure, it was a question of when. If it wasn't the video game crash of the 80s it would have been the next decline that would have destroyed them. They are looked on with rose tinted glasses, but they were a 1 hit wonder, the Atari 2600.
They actually did a lot of innovative things, despite most of their successes copying other people's work (Pong, Asteroids, the 2600). They spent a lot of money developing the 5200 and things like wireless controllers (in the '70s!) which were either failures or never made it to market. They had a lot of talented people that made some good hardware. Even the Jaguar was a decent piece of hardware for its time. It was just ill-timed and needed a bit more refinement. What really doomed the Jaguar was Atari's complete lack of quality control and failure to cater to (and pay) third-party developers for the system. They were constantly contracting developer milestones and not paying them when a developer delivered. They simply didn't have enough cash to run the business the way they were trying to.
The 2600 sold for decades and should have made Atari a ton of money, but they were too busy pissing it away in all kinds of different ways.
Are you counting just consoles in that? Because loads of Atari Arcade cabinets and computers and such were huge in their own markets. And if you include consoles, the 7800 and Handheld Lynx were modest successes. I do think you are correct though in saying Atari wasn't likely to survive as a factor no matter what happened.
The 2600 was a curse in disguise. It sold so well that it came to bite them on the backside later on. Nobody wanted the 5200. Between 1977 and 1982 the 2600 sold 5 million units worldwide(I think that is roughly correct).
Their computers were actually not bad, I had a lot of fun and even learned a bit about programming on an Atari 800, but that was eventually beaten out in market share by Commodore and their Commodore 64, which game developers began to favor in the mid 80’s over the Atari line of computers and so the library of games for the C64 soon outgrew the Atari 8-bits.
When I was a kid my dad got a loan from his boss to buy an Atari 400 for me and my brother. We had a tape drive and did some basic BASIC (heh) programming, but mostly it just ended up being a video game machine that was better than the VCS we had. But a few years later, when I got my hands on the Atari 800XL it became a different story. I only did a bit of programming, but the potential of the machine to do other things sold me. Word processing, much better gaming, and accessing BBS systems via modem opened up a whole world.
They were good computers, and it's a shame they never really took off.
@@Evil0tto Yeah, the BBSs were fun, we ran a FoReM bbs out of my grandfathers appliance store, also used that machine to track invoices (using synfile database, before the era of relational database engines) and of course, play games.
I didn't have a Atari computer, my first computer was a "Timex Sinclair' that taught me how to program and use :Basic'. The amazing thing is the computer cost me $9.99 . At least I had a cheap way of getting into comppiters.
I didn't have a Atari computer, my first computer was a "Timex Sinclair' that taught me how to program and use :Basic'. The amazing thing is the computer cost me $9.99 . At least I had a cheap way of getting into comppiters.
I didn't have a Atari computer, my first computer was a "Timex Sinclair' that taught me how to program and use :Basic'. The amazing thing is the computer cost me $9.99 . At least I had a cheap way of getting into comppiters.
The thing I didn't realize (the video game crash happened literally the year I was born in '83) was that Atari's mainstream success happened under the Warner years. I thought Bushnell was there at least for the beginning of its more mainstream rise and where they were first publishing consoles.
Anyway, there's numerous stories on YT about the fallout of the crash. How Atari nearly snagged the global, non-Japanese rights to Nintendo's Famicom, how the crash not only put Warner's in debt but how that debt from Atari has dictated moves so extremely its affecting them and the companies that have acquired it since then and how Warner never truly lost Atari Games and that it somewhat lives on in WB Games.
Even in the very early 80s, my brother and I thought the graphics of the Atari 2600 were crap. We didn't own one and didn't really care. Thankfully, my step-father bought us an Intellivision console in 1982. The game controllers were more complicated than the Atari's, but the graphics were far superior. Still, I don't think it was until ColecoVision that home gaming systems had graphics anywhere near comparable to arcade games.
I grew up with the Atari brand. Christmas of 1979, if your family had the means, you got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. If you didn't have the means, you asked to spend the night with your friend who had one. Activision is interesting because the creation of cartridges that ran in the 2600 but weren't Atari brand was a two edged sword: Activision had better games which hurt Atari sales, but it gave the 2600 more and better game options, which helped keep Atari on life support. The guys at Activision were the "Rockstar Games"of their time. Best game ideas, best programmers.
And Atari's marriage with Sears was smart. Back then everyone ordered stuff from Sears, especially the Wish Book (Christmas Catalog). Sears ( though bankrupt and basically non existent now) was the Amazon of their time. Order from home, get it delivered... They had great selection, good prices.. The only difference was the medium. Instead of the internet, it was paper catalogs
You make a great point about Activision. David Crane, one of their original founders feels the same way.
@@Jolt7800 I wonder what David thinks of Bobby kotticks habdlo of blizzardvision now? BTW blizzardvision is my name for Activision-Blizzard so I save my wrists
Also in December 1979 I was almost a month old
They have come a long way since the original activation. Late 70s and early 80s the best Activision game in my opinion was Pitfall (which today would not look like much of anything) but at the time put when you put it up against the offerings from Atari which were Battle zone tanks and those others, it was a better game. Now you have Call of duty, world of Warcraft, Diablo.... heck even Candy crush. Activision has gone a long way from their humble beginnings.
The Taliban: The rise and fall ... and rise again
Lol
Let him circle back to that!
Smh 🤦🏾♂️. 😂
Well played 🤣 my friend, well played 🤣
He could also mention the time that Hamas got a positive rating from the Better Business Bureau.
people who claim E.T. on the Atari 2600 was the worst game of all time have never 'played' 1977's Math for the Atari 2600 , when I was a kid and Atari came out I literally could not believe people would buy that over a real game, so expensive for the cartridge.
For those that didn't grow up as a kid in this time, getting an Atari 2600 was epic. I don't know what happened to my wood-finished Atari, but I still have my Atari and most of my games in a box. Last time I set it up I still remembered the pattern to my favorite games.
There was a lot of competition and friends had different consoles ("Intellivision has better graphics"), Commodore 64, etc. The later games did have better graphics and more depth to them, but the story of "The Video Game crash of 1983" is fascinating and it's tie-in with the "E.T'" game. Video game consoles basically faded out until it was revived by Nintendo.
Let's see...
You missed the Atari 5200 console released in 1982. It sold 1 million units (Per Wikipedia), but was largely regarded as a failure. It came shortly before the bubble bursting, and a lot of people had a 2600 and didn't see the need to upgrade to the 5200. Plus, companies, like Activision, were still pumping out games for the 2600. (Kind of Ironic, seeing that we now treat each console as a generational, throw away item.) The 7800 was more popular than the 5200, but it came out after Nintendo's console and right before the bubble bursting, so it was kind of doomed.
Recently, Atari did release another console. It's a simple PC that can emulate past Atari games and run new titles (yes, they're oddly making a few games, but mostly relying on the content from the Hasbro/Infogram years.) It's an interesting device, but in the age of computers as a home theater device (that's what the latest PlayStation and Xbox units internals are), it doesn't make sense to buy one. (Gamer's Nexus did a review and teardown of one, if you're curious.) Because of Atari being Atari, there was initial excitement for it, then a lot of stuff going wrong and staff turnover... (repeatedly) to the point fans thought it was vaporware.
Around that same time, Atari also tried getting into the Crypto currency game with their own cryptocoin. It, too, failed to find gold in the digital gold rush. Remember, while there is strong nastalgia for the brand, confidence in it's current leadership isn't.
My brother and I had an Atari 5200 and we loved it. There were a lot of decent games. We had a lot of fun with Pengo, Kangaroo, Pole Position and Realsports Baseball.
Why wasn't the 5200 released in Europe and Japan?
@@daviniarobbins9298 I donno. I was like ten at the time. Didn't work for Atari, either.
My first console was the Atari 5200, back in '83, which brought arcade level graphics to the home. The controllers wore out too easy though. Still, we played a ton of Missile Command, Pac-Man, Pitfall and Defender for a couple of years there.
Had an Atari 130 XE as my first computer. Later I switched to an Atari 520 ST which I still own.
I have played on the VCS but I never owned one.
I'll tell you why I bought a Jaguar in the 90's: it was $25, new, and came with an extra controller. I think I spent about $120 that day and ended up with a Jaguar, Jag CD, 6-7 games and 2 controllers. To be fair the Playstation and Saturn were newly out, but for that price, as a game collecting teenager in the 90's, I couldn't pass it up.
Shockingly most of the games I bought were decent, even sort of hold up to this day, but boy was that library of games garbage overall.
Unsurprisingly I bought a Virtual Boy that same summer. Same shop clearing them out at $25 new. I bought 10 games and went home to find out it gave me migraines to play. Haha.
Wasn't much of a console fan but I had both the Atari 800 and the 1040 ST computers.
Was a fun time and the computers really worked well. Had the 800 until quite recently. Just love those old 8bit games!
I never had an Atari, we had the TI-99 because my dad wanted a computer. At the time I envied my friends that had all the popular games on the Atari while I was stuck with Munch Man and TI Invaders, but looking back, the TI wasn't so bad. Some of the original games like Blasto and Parsec were pretty descent. Actually, Parsec was quite advanced for its time and even had voice synthesizer.
The irony is that Atari owners envied the TI-99 owners. My buddy with a TI-99 used to always ask me to bring my Atari over. And I'd spend all night playing his PC while he played my Atari. :D
Big Foot and Q-Bert were also fantastic games on the Ti99/4a. Also, at least Pac-Man for the Ti99/4a looked similar to the Arcade version. I only wished Yar's Revenge and Berzerk would have been ported to that computer.
@@quentil That's so funny and so typical of kids...we always wanted what "the other kids had" and our own stuff was boring! Yet the other kids thought all our "boring" stuff they didn't have was great.
@@dbranconnier1977 Never played Bigfoot, but I had Q-Bert, and also Atari ports of Moon Patrol and Defender. The ports for the TI were actually quite descent. There was this fighter jet simulator that was cool too but I don't remember the name of it or what its parent system was...I don't think it was a TI original.
Sega was able to pivot to a games publisher after seeing the writing on the wall
And a billionaire forgave there debt and gave back his stock on his deathbed
How revisionist lol
@@TDMicrodork False.
Atari made several poor business decisions almost from day one which are to numerous to mention. It's sad that Atari has become a footnote (a rather important part) in the history of the video game industry. Every video game player owes a great debt of gratitude to Atari because they got the ball rolling without them the industry wouldn't be nearly where it is today.
They exist in name only today. Also, the word "Atari" is Japanese.
I loved that Atari Ghostbusters Wii game you showed at the end. One of my favorite third party games for the Wii to this day. I wish it got more love
I had a Atari 800 and a Atari 800xl. I thought the xl was a standout machine. Hands down better than it's competitors.
Let's not forget that the Atari's _Adventure_ made the first ever Easter Egg in history of video games which it's revolutionary at its peak. Even _Ready Player One_ made it as an important part of the story.
That's really cool! What was the easter egg?
@@noodlebanana7512 "Created by Warren Robinett"
That's an especially good one because it was snuck in.
My mom always tells me about the Atari game called “Hide and Seek” and classics like Frogger and Pitfall
(EDIT: Hide and Seek was actually called Sneak n Peak)
Heard of Hide and Seek, but never played it. Frogger and Pitfall are both Activision titles. I think Frogger started out as an arcade cabinet game and was ported to the 2600, while Pitfall was written for the 2600. (I think Pitfall was ported to other systems. Seemed to remember playing it on something "not Atari".) Played both a little.
never heard of it never played it
Pitfall was one of our favorite games back then, it's definitely the one that put Activision on the map. The cool part about it is that it was a long game an kept changing as you played through it, unlike so many others that took place on static screens.
My first introduction to video games was the Atari 2600 in the late 1970s, and soon after that I got into the Atari computers. I've stayed with general purpose computers since then and have never had another console. I like video games, but I don't like the idea of a dedicated game system that doesn't do other things. Atari was great back in the day, but nowadays, the brand continues to exist as a zombie and has little to do with the original company. My Atari 800 still works, and I still play games on it.
I saw the documentary on the guy who made that ET game, “Atari: game over” is what it’s called… it was so sad because he worked around the clock fo4 that 5 weeks to make it, it’s style or concept was a very early version of say… Mario 64…. In the way you travel to other levels… anyways, there was a myth that all the unsold and returned copies of ET were dumped in a landfill and I think it was 2014 there was this big movement to dig it up… and tons of gamers showed up including the creator… they pulled out bulldozer shovels of copies and dumped them out… that man who made it, he saw all that and just broke down… 30 years later… his design, vision, and his hard work… just being dug up like it was trash…. I think he sells real estate now…. But yeah the story of the ET game is really really sad
6:39 That is not the original VCS/2600. What you showed there is called the light 6'er. That one came out during the second year of the Atari 2600 production. The Heavy 6'er was made in the USA (Sunnyvale, California). For the second year (and every year after that), the 2600 was made overseas. Search for pics of the Atari Heavy 6'er vs Light 6'er to see the differences.
I have a "fake" Atari system that has about 100 built-in games. I still really enjoy those old games!!
The Atari ST were HUGE at least in Europe, and also in the music industry. Can't believe they aren't even mentioned in a 13 minute long video.
Typical, thats the one I had - thats the one everyone ignores in all their content. Brilliant. Twas ever thus.
If it wasn't for Atari, we also wouldn't have Chuck E Cheeses (which has also been featured on this channel).
I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing ?
Good job posting before watching the video
@@tchitchouan If Chuck E Cheeses never existed, we wouldn't have Discovery Zone, Dave and Busters, Apex Entertainment, Scene75, Gamestop, and many other entertainment businesses.
@@jakesteel2423 I did watch the video. I just wanted to point out many other businesses wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Atari.
@@tchitchouan I like CEC as a concept and never necessarily had a bad experience in one like the stories I heard. That said, it's a "bad thing" in that many of the bad business decisions Atari had bled over into and may have became bad business decisions CEC had.
I remember buying Pong at Sears with my Dad. I had the 2600 and the 5200. When I was kid I didn't even realize that games like Pitfall were from another company. I also had a Mattel Intelevison between the two Atari systems. Then I turned 14 and had other interests.
I still have my 2600. Don't play it that often but a few times a year I'll fire it up