What Nolan Said: Innovation

Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972, sold it to Warner Communications in 1976, and was eventually ushered out of the company in 1978.  The writing had been on the wall for awhile, for the man who had kept Atari alive by constantly innovating, by constantly swimming forward in a sea of ravenous competitors.  By then, Atari had gone from a company about innovating to a company about marketing past successes, and that attitude eventually helped sink the entire industry in 1983-84.  What Nolan Said:

Quote comes from a 2007 interview of Bushnell by Benj Edwards for Vintage Computing and Gaming.

Image is of Bushnell at the Campus Party Brasil Expo in Jan. 2013.  By Camila Cunha.

The Ad Game: Vanguard for Atari VCS/2600

Vanguard was an arcade game developed by "shadow" developer TOSE, and released in Japan by SNK in late 1981 and licensed for North America by Centuri.  It was an important intermediate step towards modern side-scrolling shoot-em-ups such as Gradius and R-Type, improving on a genre first formed by William's seminal Defender.

Today in the Ad Game we feature a TV commercial for the Atari 2600 port of Vanguard:

Vanguard was definitely a great arcade game, and the 2600 version a spectacular port that demonstrates the amazing things Atari programmers were able to pull off with the platform as it matured.  This ad, however, doesn't do any of that justice.

For instance, who trades off the joystick to their buddies in the middle of a game?  Hard to keep your concentration and momentum going with some jerk begging for the joystick.  Just wait until he crashes, it won't be long to wait.  Try shouting "The wall, the wall!" into his ear, that oughta speed up his destruction.

One of the big innovations touted in Vanguard was the ability to shoot in four directions, but in the ad the shooting looks pretty spastic.  The key to any successful shooter is the precision of your shots, and here it looks like the gunner is having a seizure.

Then, of course, we have the hulking Luthor, who's sole responsibility is to defeat the Gond, the boss at the end of the round.  A man of few words, it is rumoured that Luthor once, when a kid refused to give up the joystick to him, stuffed the poor bastard's hand completely into the cartridge slot.  We can only know his moods by his demented chuckling.

Perhaps Luthor is related to Beavis?

What Nolan Said: The 70th Birthday Edition

Today is Nolan Bushnell's 70th birthday.  Before co-founding Atari and the video game industry, a previous job had held while a student attending the University of Utah was as a carnival barker.  It was a job he ended up doing his whole life.  Today's What Nolan Said:

 Photo via kandinski's flickr photostream

Conan Mocks Atari Bankruptcy

Sure, the recent bankruptcy of what was left of pioneering video game company Atari was sad, but who says we can't kick 'em while they're down?  So thinks Conan O'Brien, with this jab from his TBS show.  The bit would be even more cutting, if it wasn't on TBS.  Zing!

What Nolan Said: Needs vs. Wants.

Nolan Bushnell founded Atari, and when he left the company he tried his hand at a myriad of start-up attempts.  He had a particular obsession with robotics, from developing the animatronic animals in his Pizza Time Theatre restaurant chain, to household robot company Androbot, to the Axlon company responsible for the oddball scheme he is shilling here in the picture used for today's What Nolan Said:

The picture is of Bushnell presenting a "Petster" to a crowd at the New York Toy Fair in 1985.  You can see the Catster version rolling around at the bottom of the image; they also released a dog, hamster and even spider edition of the toys.  The idea was to sell robotic animals to people who want to have a pet, but don't care for the shedding or the pooping or the bringing of dead mice to the door as an offering to the master.  At the time, Bushnell was barking up the wrong tree, and the prohibitively priced Petster line went nowhere.  Petster did, however, help sow the seeds for spatially aware household robotics such as the Roomba and other robotic vacuum cleaners.

In the picture, even Nolan seems perplexed he's standing there trying to sell the idea that people would have this particular want.  I'll leave you with a TV spot showing the Petster in action:

For more information on Bushnell and the foundation of Atari, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

source:  Computer Entertainment magazine, "Bulletin Board, Bushnell's Pet Project", pg. 8 June 1985

Atari Files for Bankruptcy Protection

Founded by Nolan Bushnell and the maker of PONG, the arcade video game that established the industry in 1972, the Atari brand has bounced around more than the ball from its first title.

The latest iteration of the company was established in 2001, when Infrogrames Entertainment from France picked up the remains of Atari from the Hasbro bankruptcy proceedings, with the parent company eventually changing its name to Atari S.A. in 2009, the initials after the company name standing for "Societe Anonym", the French equivalent of Ltd..

The new entity had some success with titles such as Rollercoaster Tycoon, some disasters with games like the remake of Alone In the Dark, and accrued a massive amount of debt in a seemingly endless series of acquisitions.  In recent days, the U.S. division of Atari found its stride by abandoning the retail sector and concentrating on the hugely profitable, digitally distributed casual and mobile game markets. Therein lies the crux of this latest filing:  detaching itself from the drowning-in-debt French holding company, and striking out on its own with renewed investment capital in order to exploit the new freemium gaming economy.

Expect Atari to bounce back.  For more information on the beginnings of the company that started it all, consult your local Dot Eaters article.

Monday Meme: New Games, Old Format

If it's Monday, it must be another video game retromeme:

via Cheezeburger

GDC Marble Madness Postmortem Talk With Mark Cerny

Available at the GDC Vault is a wonderfully informative video of a talk game creator Mark Cerny gave in 2011 about his greatest work, Atari Games' Marble Madness.  This was a game I fell in love with in the arcades in 1984, with its M.C. Escher-esque graphics and dangerous-feeling physics.  Cerney gives a frank and entertaining talk about the immense technical challenges and innovations required to produce the game in the dying days of the arcade.

You can view the video at the GDC Vault here:


Marble Madness arcade marquee via KLOV.com:

The Visual Cortex: Joust An Ad

Today the Visual Cortex hatches an ad for the Atari 2600 and 5200 versions of Williams' arcade hit Joust: 

Click to enlarge

Running in periodicals in 1984, it's short on actual screenshots of the game, and heavy on artist renditions of the action. I also find it humourous how it tries to sex-up the "beasts of the air" you fly in the game, the ostriches from the original arcade game.   The ad copy starts off with an unusual, confusing take on the classic opening words of the Star Wars movies:

Well, which is it?  Long ago, or a distant future?  Anyway, I don't think I want to purchase a game that spits eggs out of my TV screen, from whence evil, sharp-taloned dragons attack me.

Have You Referenced Atari In a Rap Song Today?

In recent days, popular Rap artists have discovered the ease of rhyming the word "Atari".  To wit:

Yeah I'm sorry, I can't afford a Ferrari
But that don't mean I can't get you there.
I guess he's an XBox and I'm more Atari
But the way you play your game ain't fair.
                                 Cee Lo Green - "Forget You"

She wanna go and party, she wanna go and party
Nigga, don't approach her with that Atari
Nigga, that ain't good game, homie, sorry.
                                 Kendrick Lamar - "Poetic Justice"

In a nice bit of synergy from the Atari company, they are taking advantage of this pop-culture phenomena to sell a line of headphones in the U.K..  Of course, the bad news is that every reference to the company name is in a negative light, playing on the obsolescence of Atari consoles.  But still, any pop-culture reference is a good reference, right?

Atari headphones page at HMV:

"I'm more Atari" T-shirt referenced in the social media hooks for this post available from Cee-Lo's website:

Witness an Ad for the Atari Jaguar Version of Doom

This is a holy-rolling TV spot from 1993 for id Software's seminal FPS game Doom, which I'm sure Atari had pinned as a system-selling port for their 64-bit Jaguar console.  I don't think you'd get away with selling a video game with such imagery these days.

The Visual Cortex: Intellivision Attacks!

Today the Visual Cortex is sporting an Intellivision magazine ad, featuring the system's well-heeled attack dog, author George Plimpton.

Plimpton featured prominently in a series of attack ads by Mattel that highlighted their system's advanced graphics capability, especially when compared with the anemic visuals of their chief rival, Atari's VCS/2600 unit.  You might be excused for thinking, "Why Plimpton?".   Well, Plimpton came to national prominence as a kind of high-brow intellectual for the Budweiser set, a sportswriter who would poke fun at his high-falutin' ways by attempting to play sports at the pro level and then write about his haplessness.  So he was a pretty good fit for the Intellivision, which specialized in sports games like NFL Football and MLB Baseball that blew away the Atari versions in terms of both graphical quality and realistic gameplay.  Here is the ad:

Plimpton lets Atari have it.

These hard hitting attack ads irked Atari president Ray Kassar so much that he complained about the "unfairness" of the comparisons to the TV networks airing them and threatened legal action.  Eventually Atari would come out with their own version of the highly intellectual pitchman; a child dressed up in a suit and glasses who would  point out the versions of popular arcade games that were absent on the Intellivision.  Of course, Mattel then struck back with Plimpton schooling their own version of the pint-sized pitchman.

As a couple of bonuses, here is John Hodgman's spoof on the Plimpton ad, used to shill his own book The Areas of My Expertise in 2006,  as well as a link to Newground's hilarious (and fun to play) fake web-based ColecoVision game George Plimpton's Video Falconry, created in 2011.

Hodgman plays ball.

Click to play.

For more information on the Intellivision and the Great Mattel/Atari Video Game Wars, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

Happy Birthday Atari 7800!

 With the 27th anniversary of the proper launch of the Atari 7800 this month, here is a little retrospective on the console.

While the Atari 7800 might be historically viewed as a misfire on Atari's part, we can at least appreciate the console for what it is. The console was intended to get a headstart on the NES as Nintendo had already approached Atari and asked them if they wanted to handle distribution rights in North America for the console for them. While in retrospect this was a boneheaded move times were different and Atari was a self sufficient company who wanted to remain that way.

After some legal tussling the proper launch of the console was delayed until 1986 and in a somewhat questionable strategic move the 7800 launched with games that were developed 2 years before and as such seemed dated.

The POKEY poking around.

What about the console itself? It's an interesting beast being capable of playing 2600 software in addition to 7800 games. The hardware was similar to Atari's earlier systems in that it rendered in between scanlines. The audio hardware was also identical to the 2600 in the console itself but developers could include a POKEY sound chip in the cartridge to enhance the soundtrack of a game. The POKEY was a flexible chip that could be used for a few different things but was mostly used for music generation in the Atari 8-bit family.

What about the games? Unfortunately due to limited developer support the 7800 library pales in comparison to the Master System and NES. That isn't to say the console doesn't have its fair share of great games though! The console featured a brilliant conversion of Commando which used the POKEY chip to enhance the sound. This game really stands out as one of the best on the console. 

Screenshot of Commando.

Another great game that used the POKEY was Ballblazer which was a fast paced 3D tank shooter with a great soundtrack.

This doesn't look like much here but it's actually quite amazing.

Other beloved games in the Atari 7800 library include the brilliant Ninja Golf which incorporates ninja combat into a traditional game of golf, Midnight Mutants, Desert Falcon and even Xevious!

Ninja Golf being both brilliant and incoherent.

The Atari 7800 really is a great little console. It's sleek, has a well designed controller and for collectors the library of games is definitely one that is within the realm of completing. The games themselves are fun to play as well with Atari staples like Joust and Centipede rounding out some great third party efforts. In honour of this somewhat forgotten gem from gaming past I highly recommend you pick one up on eBay as the 7800 really deserves another play for its birthday. 

Any Atariphiles out there want to weigh in on the 7800? It'd be great to hear memories from when you were younger or just some nice thoughts about the console!  For more information on the Atari 7800, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.  

The 12 Video Game of Christmas: Atari's Greatest Hits

Wrapping up an entire video game arcade is a little tough.  Today's entry in The 12 Video Games of Christmas makes it a whole lot easier.  The Atari's Greatest Hits app is a masterfully made collection of classic Atari arcade and VCS/2600 games, available for both iOS and Android.

"Options" is the operative word here, and Atari provides plenty of.  The app is available for free, and with that you get Atari's cold-war influenced arcade game Missile Command.  If you want to add to your classic collection, you can: download 4-game packs for $0.99 each, buy a pack of 15 tokens for $0.99 that lets you sample any games you wish, or buy the whole shebang of 100 games for $5.99.  What's even better, though, are the myriad of control options you get.  You'd be justified in worrying how a mobile app would handle the wide gamut of control options you get in the long history of Atari games, like the trak ball in Centipede to the thrust controller of Lunar Lander to the VCS paddles of Video Olympics and more.  The Atari's Greatest Hits app serves up multiple ways of playing the game, sometimes with 7 or more configurations; fixed joystick, touch-screen control, fire button on the right, fire button on the left, on the top, on the bottom... it's a given that you'll find some way to play the game comfortably, either in portrait or landscape mode.  What's more, this app was the first to offer support of the mini-arcade cabinet iCade, and Atari has since come out with their own official Atari Arcade joystick for the iPad.  It's not as retro-cool as the iCade, but it comes in lighter in weight as well as price, selling for $59.99 as opposed to $99.99 for the iCade.

All these options, plus 2-player simultaneous play via Bluetooth for some games.  The Atari's Greatest Hits app lets you defy physics by stuffing an entire arcade into the stocking of the retrogamer in your life.  Get it here from Apple's app store, or for Android at Google Play.

The 12 Video Games of Christmas: iCade

The arcade in your home!

Our entry today in The 12 Video Games of Christmas comes in its own beautiful wooden box:  the iCade.

This squat and sturdy mini-arcade cabinet started life as an April Fool's Day prank in 2010, part of a tradition at the ThinkGeek website that also spawned the tauntaun sleeping bag.  As the iCade joke post went viral, however, response for a real device was so strong that ThinkGeek teamed up with ION Audio to actually produce it.  ION Audio is the consumer brand of Numark Industries, makers of professional DJ equipment.  Also partnering with the project was Atari, and their classic game app Atari's Greatest Hits was the sole compatible game program with the iCade's launch on June 27, 2001.

As stated, the iCade is solidly built, a wooden cabinet into which one slides any generation of iPad.  The two devices connect via Bluetooth, after which compatible apps will display the iCade as a controller.  Since launch, the list of supported apps has been growing, including Midway Arcade and the recently released Vectrex Regeneration.  The iCade's joystick is professional grade, although its action could be a bit tighter.  The buttons, all eight of them, are rock solid and have a real arcade feel.  Overall, the iCade goes a long way to mitigating the control problems you generally find playing classic games on mobile devices.

The cabinet is available from ThinkGeek and various retailers, usually selling for $99.99.  Currently, however, ThinkGeek has them on sale for $69.99.  Recently ION has released the iCade Jr., a similar device for the iPhone, but I think this is delving a little bit into the ridiculous.  It is a bit cheaper, however, going for $49.99.  

Buy the retrogamer in your life an iCade, and you are truly giving them the gift of the arcade.

The 12 Video Games of Christmas: Atari Flashback 4

Just wrapped up with Pac-Man gift paper and stuffed into Santa's sack is our next retro video game present for our 12 Video Games of Christmas: the Atari Flashback 4 Deluxe.

Probably the next best thing to actually going on eBay and bidding on an authentic Atari VCS/2600 game console, the Flashback 4 is a stylized replica of the venerable Atari workhorse video game console.  It plugs into your TV inputs, and included are 75 built-in video games, Atari VCS/2600 classics like Night Driver, Asteroids and Adventure.  Unfortunately, most likely due to licensing issues, third-party games such as Activision's Pitfall are not on the list.

A nice inclusion, though, are wireless controllers in the style of the originals.  Ironic, considering Atari actually produced wireless 2600 controllers back in 1983, although the ones included in this package aren't nearly as monstrous.  Replica game paddle controllers also come bundled with the deluxe model, which should make playing games like Breakout and Video Olympics feel much more natural.

The Atari Flashback 4 Deluxe is made by AtGames and sells for $79.99, although at this writing they are currently sold out, so you should keep an eye out for replenished supplies, or you might have to do some searching to see if they are available online at various auction sites and the like.

Here is the AtGames online store page for the Flashback.

Have you gifted Atari today?

PONG Turns 40

The First Serve

On November 29, 1972, a recently incorporated company in California named Atari announced the release of its first product, an electronic video arcade game called PONG.  Two players would stand at the wood-grain and yellow cabinet, twiddling the control knobs that moved two paddles displayed on a B&W TV screen.  With the paddles they would play an electronically abstract game of table tennis, batting a little white blip back and forth in an attempt to "Avoid Missing Ball For High Score", as the simple gameplay instructions prompted.

Conceived by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and designed by Al Alcorn, Pong was a smash success, giving birth to the video game industry.  Fast-forward nearly 40 years later, in 2011 that industry was worth US$65 billion dollars.

Among other celebrations of Pong's 40th birthday, an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest game of Pong was made on Nov. 16, 2012.  A 22-story version of the game, complete with festive lighting, was played on the side of the Downtown Marriott hotel in Kansas City, MO.

In a lead-up to the anniversary, earlier this year Atari announced the Pong Indie Developer Challenge.  Offering a grand prize of up to $100,000, the company solicited independent app developers to submit their take on the venerable Pong.  The three winners were announced on Aug. 2, and they will participate in a profit sharing scheme divided between the three Pong apps that will see them collect royalties up to the winning prize amounts.  The top winner, the freemium-based PONG World by zGames, can be snagged at the iOS App Store here.

Pong put Atari on the road to becoming the fastest growing company in American history.  It's no stretch to consider that when you say Pong is 40 years-old today, you're also saying the video game industry is 40 years-old.  So like those tipsy patrons of Andy Capp's bar in Sunnyvale California, who played the original Pong prototype until it broke and convinced Bushnell and Atari to produce the game commercially, raise a glass to the grand-daddy of the video game industry.  Your serve, PONG!

You can play an updated version of PONG online at Atari.com for free.  For more information on the history of Pong and Atari, consult your local Dot Eaters article.

1983 - E.T.'s Final Home Recreated

ET Box Cover

Perfectly captured in forlorn sepia tones is the fate of the E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial game by Atari, infamous for helping sink the company and its flagship console the 2600, and thus the rest of the U.S. video game industry in 1983 - 1984.  Created by artist Pauline Acalin, these 6x6 digital prints feature the rejected 8-bit fugitive wandering a landfill, while the ghosts of slightly more popular electronic aliens look on mourning his fate.  The work is simply titled "1983".

The hand-signed prints can be purchased at the Yetee Gallery space on Storenvy, for $20.  For more information on the E.T. game and the great video game crash, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.

via Kotaku

Atari's Groove Tube

Smack dab between the release of home PONG in 1975 and the VCS in 1977 came the Atari Video Music in 1976.  The brainchild of home PONG creator Bob Brown, you would plug your stereo via RCA jacks into this piece of ordinance, and output to your TV via a RF connector.  Thusly, the Atari Video Music would display trippy graphical patterns on your TV, in time to your music.  The box is hard-wired analog, with nary a processor in sight.  Think of it as an early version of today's mp3 player visualizers.  You can grok the effect in this YouTube video:

Read more about the device here at Technabob.  What would your choice of "mind-enhancer" be when watching this thing?

AVGN Movie Trailer Released

I don't know if you've seen the videos from The Angry Video Game Nerd, aka James Rolfe, but you should.  In a vast web series, the AVGN tortures himself by playing the crappiest games ever made, and inevitably becomes enraged that such dross was ever foisted onto an unsuspecting public.

Just released is the trailer for a feature-length film made by and starring Rolfe, and it looks like it won't disappoint the fans.  The movie details the Nerd's attempt to uncover the fabled burial site where, as the bottom was falling out of the video game industry in 1983, Atari took millions of unsold cartridges of their excremental E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial game and dumped them into a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  They then covered the whole thing in concrete and walked away like nothing happened.

Rolfe and his team expect the movie to be released in 2013, but there's no promises.  You can check out the trailer here, and be sure to check out Rolfe's other tirades as well.  For more information on the crash, E.T. and the great video game dump, consult your local Dot Eaters entry here.