Engadget
written by James Trew
Wednesday June 27, 2012
Forty years. That's a long time in the tech industry and Atari knows it. Today it celebrates four decades in the game, and quite the tale it is. Highs, lows and everything in between, Atari has been there. As one of the most influential brands both in gaming and technology, it only seems right to take a look over the company's history and chart some of the more significant twists in its less than straightforward journey. After the break we speak to the man that started it all and the one currently at the helm, as well as some of the many people whose lives were irreversibly changed by its influence. Happy birthday to you, Atari!
"We've optioned Asteroids for a movie to Universal. We're being cautious about it, but we're optimistic something will get done there."
Jim Wilson, current CEO of Atari, is enthusiastically telling me about one of the many licensing deals Atari is exploring right now. Which, for a brand with 40 years in the technology business, and more than its fair share of ups and downs, is not bad going.
"The one thing that I've been astounded by since I've been here is the number of weekly requests that we get from filmmakers, TV producers, writers and musicians who want to incorporate some aspect of Atari, even just in the background of a TV show, or movie," he continues.
By now, there's a good chance you've already conjured up the image of that famous three-pronged "Fuji" logo. Unsurprising, really, given how many early, joyful encounters with technology in which it's had a cameo. While everyone's Atari story is unique, history tells us they often contain similar touch-points, creating an interwoven, yet collective affection for the gaming pioneer.
If you are of a certain age, for example, there is a good chance that your gaming cherry was lovingly taken by an Atari mistress. Younger generations, on the other hand, will be unable to ignore the impact of the brand, even if it's without them knowing it, like when they're finding their seats for Asteroids the Movie.
How, then, has a brand that's been through some pretty drastic changes, periods of innovation, invention, abundance, mishandling and, even, landfill in New Mexico, endured? And not only in as much as it's still trading, but in the sense that it continues to write stories, indoctrinate followers and inspire movie spin-offs.
The year is 1972, and a young Nolan Bushnell is working in an amusement park, surrounded by games. Pinball and air hockey machines pepper the floor. Unaware of just how right he was, Bushnell already thought that if he could somehow create a game with the technology he had been learning about, it might prove popular with the quarter-laden kids passing through his doors.
"I knew the economics of the arcade business well," Bushnell, Atari's co-founder, chuckles to me over the phone. He's affectionately recounting how the first seed for creating a video game took root. Roots that would grow deeper than even he likely imagined, starting in 1972 with Pong -- originally just a training exercise for the first engineer -- and persisting to the present day.
"Technologically, we created a methodology that allowed the video game to be introduced about eight years ahead of when it would have been done anyway. Remember that Atari started before the microprocessor was invented, and that wasn't strong enough to do anything until about '77, '78."
It's not until that anecdote really sinks in that you realize how ahead of its time Atari truly was -- it didn't even bother to wait for the microprocessor. But, and possibly more surprising than that, Atari's new creation was already having a surprising social impact.
"It turns out that women have better small muscle coordination than men do. Guys couldn't believe that this 105-pound woman could beat them [at Pong] in a bar. There were women Pong hustlers that made a lot of money wagering against these big jocks." Bushnell beams, almost proudly, before coyly adding, "Hundreds and hundreds of people have told me over the years that they met their husband or wife playing Pong in a bar!"
So there is, quite literally, an Atari generation, and Pong, it seems, is the rightful godparent. Remember, this was a time when video games were as prevalent in bars as amusement arcades, and as such they were a social affair, one that brought people together.
Of course, it wasn't long before Atari would practically invent the domestic gaming market as well with Home Pong, but it would have to wait until the release of the VCS (Video Computer System) in 1977 before we would start to see it's ubiquitous logo really pop up in living rooms and dens across the land.
Given the company's head start, it's easy to think that its rise to dominance was unburdened, but that would be doing a disservice to its creators. Even at the beginning, Bushnell and his colleagues understood the importance of brand, and by imbuing it with core values from the start, they would help set it aside from the ever-growing competition that was starting to show up from the likes of Coleco and Mattel's Intellivision.
"The brand started developing when I got a guy called George Opperman in. He developed the Fuji Logo. He taught me the importance of brand," says Bushnell.
From that point he would become a stickler for maintaining a look and feel, ensuring that Atari would stand for creativity and innovation; a decision that clearly paid off. After all, how many of you still see the Coleco logo? Or have an iPad accessory inspired by your Mattel console?
Of course, Atari's biggest legacy will always be its games, but there are other elements of today's technology industry that might not have happened without them, and we don't just mean the conception of future developers after a heated bout of Pong. In the early days, the company had what Bushnell calls a "party culture:" the workplace was fun, less formal than other technology set-ups. Something he thinks helped them along in the early years. By creating an egalitarian environment, he feels they were able to encourage loyalty and creativity, which ultimately trickled down into better products. This style of working, of course, would become the norm across the burgeoning Silicon Valley, and while it's hard to attribute this just to Atari -- Steve Jobs would do a spell at the firm, and in a less formal capacity Woz -- it's not hard to imagine this model permeating into the consciousness of those who experienced it.
Ultimately, Bushnell would sell a successful company on to the monolithic entertainment mainstay Warner, and a new chapter would be ushered in. But in another universe, Atari's reach might have spread much, much further than most companies, or even governments for that matter, could have hoped.
"We were all geared up to create a telephone-linked game system. In fact, Atari had the patents on the fastest modems at the time, and our plan was to put little closets in various cities, so it was only a local telephone call to modems, and then link them together with T1 telephone lines to make a quasi-national network. This was 1976!" Bushnell says.
The idea was to simply allow users to play together by sharing joystick data over the network. The truth of the matter is, when applied to other data, Bushnell believes this network bore a striking resemblance so something that would come later, and there's a good chance you're using it right now.
"It turns out that the packets look surprisingly similar to the IP stack of the internet," Bushnell says. "I've always been curious that, if we'd just launched that, and improved on it and improved on it, that it may have turned into the internet -- and Atari would have owned it! I'll never know."
Bushnell laughs at this near miss with a heartiness that suggests that it was no biggie. He would soon go on to see the company he started manhandled, and bent into completely different shapes, but that's not to say that Atari wouldn't still play a small part in his daily routine.
"I've got all the Atari titles on my iPhone; I still play those a lot. I still love Asteroids, I still love Battle Zone, and I still love Centipedes."
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