I met an engineer who worked at Atari

[SwampFox56]

Almost 5 years ago (hard to believe), I made a post on here talking about the time I'd met an engineer who worked at Atari during their heyday.

When I originally posted THIS thread, I was either 15 or 16 at the time, had no sense of spelling (although as someone who's dyslexic, that's not really my thing anyways), and I came off as more of a troll than someone who was trying to have a legitimate discussion. So let me redact that, and start that thread over so I can properly recall the time I met an engi from Atari. (Get it? Engi? Atari? Yeah that was dumb...)

At the time I posted that I might have been able to tell you his name. But I can't, for the life of me, remember today. Adam? That kind of rings a bell...

Anyways, I was on a return flight from Miami to Minneapolis. My family and I were coming back from a vacation at Disney World. At the time I already had a decent vintage game collection, and was actually a lot more into it then, than I am today. I was (if I remember correctly) playing Centipede on an Atari 5200 emulator for PSP. The gentleman sitting next me, sometime during the flight, happen to see the flashy Atari logo at the beginning of the game (I think) and I'm pretty sure he recognized it as the opening on all 5200 Games.

He said something to me like "Ya know, I used to work for Atari."

Being the disinterested teenage version of myself, I was "oh cool" and kept playing. I never took interest at what he said at the time, but my dad who was sitting to my right (I was in the middle seat) took interest in this. He said something like "Oh really!? What did you do there?" He proceeded to talk about his endeavours at Atari and his outlook on the Atari company as a whole.

As for what I said before I don't believe this segment was legitimate. I'm pretty sure I made this up.

 

 

[...]recived a whole bunch of prototypes, including a COMPLETED Atari Jaguar 2, along with 1 prototype testing cartridge that had a whole bunch of sound tests, and graphics tests on it. It wasnt in a case, but the board was completed. He also said that he has everything Atari EVER made. He has over 12000 Atari Cartridges, and every single system/computer Atari made.

 

 

 

As for what I said about what he said... was pretty accurate. I'll revise it a bit from what I remember today.

 

The Atari 5200 was our best console. The thing that didn't do it justice was the controller, and lack of games for it. The Atari 5200 was almost identical to the Atari 800 computer. However, the console had been centered around emulating an arcade machine, and therefore had a more powerful series of circuity dedicated to improving the graphics as much as possible but that made it much harder for anyone to make games for it. What the 5200 should of had was a keyboard, and a floppy drive attached to it. It was more powerful than any of our computers at the time and died too young.

 

I'm not sure if this statement is true. I do remember him talking about Commodore a lot... the problem is, I wasn't paying attention to the conversion all that well. He may of said this, he may not have. I don't remember.

 

"The Atari 7800, was just a slightly modified version of the 2600, that had updated graphics, and thats it. The private party that bought Atari saw the success of the 2600, and wanted to just resell it under a different name. This disgusted me, so I left Atari to go work for Commodore."

 

 

One thing I know for sure was that he DID say this (quote has been revised to exactly how I remember it). Which contradicts him possibly working for Commodore (which is why I question the above comment).

 

The Atari Jaguar was the most powerful console in that generation, but no developers would take advantage of it power because it was so hard to develop software for it. Which is really to bad, because the Jaguar was an amazing system, and the power was there... but even Atari didn't take advantage of it's processing power.

 

 

In the original thread I said.

 

These thing are what an exengineer from Atari said, now this was 3 weeks ago,

 

In reality, this conversation took place sometime in August of 2010. However, being a narcissistic teenager - I wanted to impress people and make it seem "as cool" as possible. Which is now embarrassing to think that I exaggerated just to get attention on the internet so people I don't even know would think I'm cool...

Anyways, that's the real unimpressive story. I laugh at myself for the original post today

[fujidude]

A name would have been great. But then ya never know, the guy could have been as full of shit as you anyway. Like, maybe he was a janitor their, but wanted to impress strangers on a plane?

[+save2600]

Might have been a sanitation or custodial engineer.

[SIO2]

Be sure to come back and update the post when you are the 50 year old grumpy old man version of yourself.

[SwampFox56]

double post

Edited November 12, 2015 by SwampFox56

[SwampFox56]

A name would have been great. But then ya never know, the guy could have been as full of shit as you anyway. Like, maybe he was a janitor their, but wanted to impress strangers on a plane?

 

To be honest, aren't most teenagers full of shit?

 

Might have been a sanitation or custodial engineer.

 

In all seriousness - I'm certain he wasn't full of himself. I just did, and I'm still doing a pretty bad job of quoting what he said. Although, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he did talk about the plumbing at Atari HQ

 

 

Be sure to come back and update the post when you are the 50 year old grumpy old man version of yourself.

 

 

If the website is still up then - I'll make a whole new thread about that time I made a new thread about that thread where I once talked to an Atari engineer.

Edited November 12, 2015 by SwampFox56

[flashjazzcat]

Does this unprecedented karmic unburdening have anything to do with the mod/repair service you're simultaneously promoting? Is it safe to assume that's not a social experiment?

Edited November 12, 2015 by flashjazzcat

[SwampFox56]

Does this unprecedented karmic unburdening have anything to do with the mod/repair service you're simultaneously promoting? Is it safe to assume that's not a social experiment?

 

Good observation I was looking through my post history yesterday and was horrified when I looked at it. Indeed it is safe to assume that all the mods I'm offering on consoles is being done by someone who knows what they're doing and not the 15 year old version of me that doesn't know how to spell.

[snicklin]

At LeAsT yOu WeRe NoT wRiTiNg LiKe ThIs

[MikeFulton]

He had a "completed Jaguar 2" ? Why was he flying commercial when his flying unicorn could have gotten him there twice as fast?

[TPA5]

Well you admitted you were wrong, which is better than most people so I'd say you're doing pretty good.