birdie3 Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 ---YAWN!!!!---- Either way, Atari is gone. There now is only the spirit of nostalgia thriving in a sterilite box, waiting for us to relive our memories of Atari games we only dreamed of owning in the eighties. If Atari would have survived, is it totally uniformed to assumed that the XBOX would merely be called the Atari XBOX today?? This argument is strange to me. Why are there these so called retro-gaming hobbists trying to figure this trivial history out. What is the goal of attempting to set the record straight? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 As someone who was borderline to being a double major in history AND journalism, I would never call the investigation or accurate recordation of history "trivial." It's actually fairly amazing to me that events which in hindsight are recognized for their profound importance to the gaming industry almost got lost for all time because no one realized just how groundbreaking they were. That's why it's so invaluable to hear from people like Al Alcorn, who were actually there at the time, and get their take on it for posterity's sake so that future generations will know what it was all about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdie3 Posted April 25, 2003 Author Share Posted April 25, 2003 Knowing what actually happened. Where does that leave me? I don't really appreciate my Atari games any more because I know the truth about why they went out of business. It doesn't make the games any more fun to play because I know that the NES was a factor in the demise of the Atari 2600. Maybe it is just the essence of the relationship between humans and machines to have a natural tendancy to gravitate towards what we feel is the more useful machine. People loved Atari at the time and there was definately a video game culture circles mainly around Atari for a while back in the eighties. They were pioneers of the machines that created a video game sub-culture/lifestyle. Nintendo became the machine of choice for some strange reason. They did not force this machine down our throats..... Simulatneously, as this post is typed, in a distant body of water, a fish, foreign to the waters it inhabits, devours an old fish reaching the end of it's life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 Some people find history fun and fascinating. I enjoy reading about who did what when and why. If that's not your cup of tea, nobody's forcing that down your throat either. I enjoy the games with or without knowing the history behind their consoles or their production, but I would also enjoy reading about that history even if I had never played a single game. It doesn't do well to be derisive and dismissive of other people's interests just because they don't happen to match your own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdie3 Posted April 25, 2003 Author Share Posted April 25, 2003 I just went to the cafeteria and got an orange pecoe. I was not trying to offend you. As you may have guessed, I am interested as well or I would not be here. I am facinated by the notion that people are coming here to decide how it all went down. I own 300 or so Atari 2600/7800 games and collect the stuff like devil just like the rest of us. I was there in the seventies playing the stuff as it came out like many of us. I am just trying to find out what all of this is about. Why do people need to know the historical facts regarding the fate of Atari? Is there some underlying facts that have yet to be determined. What strain of canibus were they smoking at Atari in the infancy of it all? This discussion implies that ther is more to the story than what is public knowledge. Sheesh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 I just went to the cafeteria and got an orange pecoe. I was not trying to offend you. What does one of those things have to do with the other? Unless I should be happy for both. Well I'm happy you're not trying to offend me, and I'm happy you got an orange pecoe. For the record, I'm not trying to offend you either. I'll go to the fridge now for a diet soda... ... okay I'm back. As you may have guessed, I am interested as well or I would not be here. I am facinated by the notion that people are coming here to decide how it all went down. I own 300 or so Atari 2600/7800 games and collect the stuff like devil just like the rest of us. I was there in the seventies playing the stuff as it came out like many of us. I am just trying to find out what all of this is about. Why do people need to know the historical facts regarding the fate of Atari? Is there some underlying facts that have yet to be determined. What strain of canibus were they smoking at Atari in the infancy of it all? This discussion implies that ther is more to the story than what is public knowledge. Sheesh. I think the reason a lot of the stuff involved becomes questionable or unknown is precisely because of huge botch jobs like the "Gameheadz" documentary on TLC, such as the infamous "courthouse steps" meeting between Nolan and Magnavox that most people who know the true historical facts say never happened. Yet, because this "fact" was aired on television and seen by millions of people, and will be over and over again as the show repeats, this will take on an "urban myth" quality and quite possibly distort the truth because more people will accept this dramatic tale as what really happened instead of the more vanilla truth that it was hashed out by lawyers holding meetings on the phone. That's why history is fascinating. There really IS more to the story than what is in public knowledge, because if you check the public knowledge against the carefully researched historical fact it usually tends to be completely different. I rarely accept "public knowledge" as factual; after all if I did I'd also believe that dinosaurs and cavemen lived together. As you'd say, sheesh! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdie3 Posted April 25, 2003 Author Share Posted April 25, 2003 Aside from that, I think that it is kind of neat that there are a small amount of people who know the facts and a whole bunch of people who do not. It keeps people like us more "in the fold" so to speak and at the same time, it serves as a form of protection for the hobby because this type of information could be commercialized and blown way out of proportion. Maybe Nintendo paid to have that documentary made to boost public opinion of their company. We don't want everyone raiding our secret Atari spots out in the wild. Let them settle for the wanna be video game finds like PS1 and SNES etc.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 Aside from that, I think that it is kind of neat that there are a small amount of people who know the facts and a whole bunch of people who do not. It keeps people like us more "in the fold" so to speak and at the same time, it serves as a form of protection for the hobby because this type of information could be commercialized and blown way out of proportion. Maybe Nintendo paid to have that documentary made to boost public opinion of their company. We don't want everyone raiding our secret Atari spots out in the wild. Let them settle for the wanna be video game finds like PS1 and SNES etc.... Atari does still exist, you know, even if it is just an Infogrames brand name now. You can't doubt, therefore, that Atari's history is still being made today. It's also easy to forget that Atari had many different owners from 1972-1998, and that several different organizations emerged during this period of time; I think that you'd have to examine each separate manifestation carefully to truly gauge the impact of Atari on video gaming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsoper Posted April 26, 2003 Share Posted April 26, 2003 I enjoyed reading Game Over by David Sheff just as much a playing a game, the difference in business practices between Atari and Nintendo was night and day. In the new foreward, Sheff mentions that some business professors were using it as assigned reading for their classes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdie3 Posted April 26, 2003 Author Share Posted April 26, 2003 Yes. I totally agree with this. So, after all that has happened, there is now a serious "Atari gap" in the world of video games. Infogrames is cool but there is definately no comparison to the days of Space Invaders and Pitfall. Obviously there will not be a time like that to come for quite a while. To me, it seems as though there was a deliberate destruction of Atari. It is hard to imagine that the original spirit of the VCS or Pro-System lived on in the console offerings that followed. Atari could have lived on but it did not seem as though enough people wanted that to happen. In it's infancy, video game creators were constantly trying to improve themselves - and they did - over and over again. I compare it to being a musician, there are players that are technical and there are players that are soulful. To be both is to be a master of your craft. Take Jimi Hendrix for example. A pioneer, soulful emotion like no other player from his time, considered a master by all of his peers, generations ahead of his time. Where the hell are the game makers that are like this today? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted April 26, 2003 Share Posted April 26, 2003 Where the hell are the game makers that are like this today? I've played plenty of innovative games that broke new ground in the last decade, from Tomba! to Grand Theft Auto 3 to Resident Evil 2 to Super Monkey Ball to Metroid Prime to Star Wars (PC) to Madden 2001 to.. well I could go on and on but my point is that innovation is wherever you look for it. Realistically if you think about it this is all pixels on a screen no matter how many "polygons" of pixels the objects on it are made out of; so you could argue that NOTHING has been innovative since Ralph Baer made his big brown box if you really wanted to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted April 27, 2003 Share Posted April 27, 2003 Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted April 27, 2003 Share Posted April 27, 2003 Those who spend too much time studying history are doomed to repeat the phrase, "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it." desiv :-) Personally, I think some people are fully aware of history when they repeat it.. And others woefully ignorant of it when they don't... I think it's more likely people who study history INTENTIONALLY repeat it. i.e. If we keep creating the same game OVER AND OVER AND OVER, we'll eventually KILL the genre and be reduced to producing CR@P.. And if history serves, we'll make alot of money along the way.. LET'S DO IT!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdie3 Posted April 27, 2003 Author Share Posted April 27, 2003 I feel like I have to admit that I am a poseur or something here. There really will never be anything like the originals. That IS my point (I think). I really don't delve into the new games too much. Too expensive. Call me ignorant if you wish. It is definately by choice. I used to hate video games. My friends would all sit there for hours and just get fat as they improved their hand eye coordination while I peferred other things. Then I found an old VCS at Value Village last summer..... I started collecting the old stuff for nostalgia purposes and also because I want my 5 year old son to appreciate the history of video games. This has become a good way for us to bond. The old games didn't have much to work with so they had to be exceptionally fun to play (as opposed to 200 seperately moving sprites with extreme realism and no flicker sacraficing fundamentalism fun and $100 million advertising budget). This minimalism works to our advantage. You could say that I am deliberately trying to repeat history for him so that he can have as much fun as I did when I was growing, if not more. He loves Atari and I suppose he could have a PS2 if he could conceive of it but I want him to avoid the commericalism of the state of video games today. To him.. the story of Jack Trameil, Coleco, and Nintendo are useless. He likes games that are fun. Remember the old Atari 2600 boxes with the pictures of the kids sitting there with their parents playing games as a family?? It seemed as though they were trying to say that it was meant to be a family experience. The games were intended to be family oriented with less emphasis on hedonism. Video games just don't seem to be like that now. The significance of what happened to Atari and the overall commercialism in video games now becomes more rellevant. A family oriented concept suffers major permanent setbacks because it cannot commercially compete. This is why I ask "where are these types of game makers today?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted April 27, 2003 Share Posted April 27, 2003 This is why I ask "where are these types of game makers today?" The spirit of those programmers...and their dreams never fullfilled...live on in our Homebrewers...of today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted May 1, 2003 Share Posted May 1, 2003 hehe... I have a 5 year old son as well and he will play anything as long as it is fun. He has no pre-conceived notions about technological advances. Notice the latest resurgence of mini-games within games. Just more proof that sometimes simplicity is better. I like complicated games, but I don't have the spare time like I did before I grew up and moved into the real world. The rest of my life will be spent trying to avoid reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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