How Atari Could Have Saved The 5200

[kool kitty89]

i agree the cx40 joystick stunk as to teh analog joystick it was ahead of its time they just needed to make the buttons freaking last more than about a month

 

back in the day my friend had the 5200 and we had to hit start with a penny

 

analogness was just fine hell apple used one ibm used one(thank goodness cause it is so fun trying out different ones on my adapter

Yes, but int he IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

 

I persoanlly think the CX-40 is pretty good, I do like the feel of the original CX-10 better, but I can't remember what the difference is. (different centering springs?) It's reasonably comfortable to hold on your lap, against the flor, or on a tabletop, or (if you have big enough hands) hold it in your hands and use your right thumb on the top of th estick like a joypad and left thumb for the button. (that's what my mom, her brothers, and father did with their VCS most fo the time -and still do on occasion)

 

they could have easaly offered an optional digital stick that just used the directions with a disclaimer about not being able to use it on missile command,starwars,gorf,superbreakout,kaboom

I dissagree, there are far more games designed to use a digital joystick, the analog stick, liek the trackball should have been an accessory, preferably offered with a game packed-in. (plus, you could have games support the standard joystick, as well as paddles/anlog joystick or tracball -as was the case with some 2600 titles)

 

it was just too early to get a gamepad joystick and trackball was all we knew and ergonomics was just comming out remember that crazy kneeling chair i think that set back the ergonomic movement a decade[/img]

Look at the vectrex controller, it's kind of a hybrid of a gamepad, remote control transmitter (for RC car/boat/airplane) with the analog thumbstick, and mini arcade console with joystick+buttons layed out as such. It's not quite a gamepad (and a bit bulky for one as well), but it's a significnat note that it was int he wors the same time the 5200 was and slightly earlier than the famicom. (and unlike the 5200 controller, has good self centering, high quality buttons, and reasonable ergonomics -plus the stick has a much shorter throw, so even with worn out springs it's much more managable than the 5200's control stalk)

 

 

Couple problems - 1) They tried the multiple investors route, it wasn't going anywhere. 2) Without Warner, you would have never seen a lot of the industry innovations (both in product and marketing) that we did. Remember, they were able to leverage being a large media and communications company. There was a lot of good with the bad. 3) Getting rid of Namco and the Japan operations made sense. They were literally at death's door, and had no business trying to be international at the time. In contrast, the spin-off Key was having hit after hit. It made much more sense to bring them back in the fold and cut the Japanese portion out.

OK, thanks for pointing that out.

 

But you're talking about a relatively small market at that time, when Warner was busy building up Atari's presence on the rest of the world market (Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, etc.) And 2600's were imported in Japan before the 2800.

Hmm, would it have possibly helped if they'd licenced it out in a sort of partnership with one of the Japanese game companies prominent at the time? (Taito, NAMCO, etc)

 

It was still being pushed at the Summer '82 CES (June) as being compatible. Sometime between then and the November launch something was decided against it. So I don't believe it had anything to do with the dropping of the 3200 as to why. And in regards to the quickly thrown together, I wouldn't exactly call it that - unless you're repeating Curt's old page on the 3200?

That's really intersting, I wonder if it was a last minut cost-cutting measure. (I doubt it was related to the cartridge conntector or anything like that, the 7800 expanded that nicely; most likely due to the larg number of chips you'd need onboard for 8-bit and VCS compatibility)

As to it being thrown together, that was alittle bit of an exaggeration, but I had gotten that impression, more from previous discussions on the AA boards, soem stuff from Amuseum, and also from the 1 hr talk on the 7800 with Steve Golson and commentary from Curt. (perhaps that's got some outdated info as well though as it implied the 5200 was rushed out with Atari knowing about the impending launch of the CV and being "scared to death" over it)

 

The odd changes to the 8-bit architecture I guess were done to make the computer department happy. (it certainly didn't facilitate conversionf of A8 games) If they wanted to convert the 8-bit chipset to a console, with 2600 compatibility as a key feature in addition to cost effectiveness, it would seem to make the most sense to have RIOT+TIA onboard, a 6502C CPU (with switchable clock speed), substitute PIA's I/O with RIOT, and maybe even lacking POKEY (though for pot reading and the sound enhancement, you propably do need it) and use modified cartridges using a connector like the 7800 has, plus standard DE-9 controller ports. (and digital joysticks compatible with 2600 ones, possibly with an added button ot 2 via the pot lines)

 

Ideally, it would seem like some kind of hybrid GTIA/TIA chip encorporating TIA compatibility and GTIA's (or at least CTIA's) added features and ability to work with ANTIC (with a stock TIA being too limited to really take advantage of an ANTIC type chip), then use RIOT in place of PIA, add POKEY, 16 kB of DRAM, compatible cartridge slot and you're good. (probably with distinctive cartridges -possibly shaped such as to not even fit into a 2600 -like Sega did with the 32x carts, so as to make this clear to consumers)

Perhaps that's what might have happened had they gone that route in the first place rather than the 3200 prior to 5200.

 

By '83-'84 they were already working on the next gen graphics chips, plus the Amiga chipset console, etc. So they were keeping up with the demand. Remember, the 5200 was designed to kill the Intellivision. They had no idea that it would instead become part of a next generation/wave of 8-bit consoles with the Colecovision.

Again, that recording of Steve Golson and Curt gave me a different impression on Atari's knoledge and motives involving the 5200. Edited December 22, 2009 by kool kitty89

[VectorGamer]

 

Fourth, quit releasing old 2600 rehashes as 5200 games. Go for previously unreleased titles like Joust, Moon Patrol, Galaga, etc.

 

 

Some of those worked like Missile Command which was more true to the arcade. Space Invaders was a step backward and is my least favorite version.

 

Then there is Super Breakout, the pack-in title, which had no reason to be ported to the 5200 unless it was for the purpose of having something quick and dirty to get the 5200 onto the sales floor. I say "no reason" because as a hardware upgrade to the 2600 Atari should have been showcasing the capabilities of the system and not something lame like Super Breakout. Pac-Man would have been a better choice in an attempt to eradicate the failure of the 2600 port.

[bohoki]

inthe IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

 

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

 

 

 

vectrex controller, it's kind of a hybrid of a gamepad, remote control transmitter (for RC car/boat/airplane) with

 

oh man you just game me a great idea for my next joystick project radio controller conversion i just have to find one cheap enough to gutt i dont want to wreck my futabas

[SoundGammon]

...Space Invaders is what sold the 2600. Atari should had done that to push the 5200. Not with Space Invaders, old game now, but with Pac-Man as a pack-in game. Then release it in the spring of '82 and HOLD OFF the release of the 2600 version by 3 months. Anyone wanting to play the NEWER arcade games NOW would have to trade up to the 5200, and continue the same marketing idea with Defender, Centipede, Vanguard with the 2600 versions coming 3 months later. Atari was in a bind having to "compete" with itself. I know the idea of holding back the release of 2600 could have hurt sales, but would help Atari saturate the market with 5200s and then creating more demand and games for it and less for the 2600, therefore retiring that system...

[kool kitty89]

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

But that was with the DA-15 gameport, right? (usually on the sound card -even noted as a major reason for Creative's success over Adlib)

The unrealiable ones were the early analog joystick ports from the early 80s. I've got a digital gameport joystick that my dad use to use (really stiff though) and my old 2-button analog one around soewhere. (not jittery, but had the fine tuning wheels a bit loose/funky, so it could sometimes get out of whack if you moved the joystick abruply -maybe it was due to dirt as I don't remember that originally being a problem)

Gravis Xterminator was an awsome gameport gamepad, probably my favorite gamepad of all time. (and part of the reason for wanting to build a win9x gaming box) There were usb versions (and some trasitional models using passthrough gameport to USB adaptors via the midi pins), but they seem rather scarse, I suppose I could try and see if my model works with one of those adaptors though. (we got it aroung '98 or '99)

 

oh man you just game me a great idea for my next joystick project radio controller conversion i just have to find one cheap enough to gutt i dont want to wreck my futabas

I think the vectrex controller is a bit larger than necesary as well, sure the pots and spring mechanism would be bulky, but it could still have been shorter at least (smaller buttons placed closer together, or in 2 rows/stagared -either square, diamond or rhomboidal pattern could work)

 

...Space Invaders is what sold the 2600. Atari should had done that to push the 5200. Not with Space Invaders, old game now, but with Pac-Man as a pack-in game. Then release it in the spring of '82 and HOLD OFF the release of the 2600 version by 3 months. Anyone wanting to play the NEWER arcade games NOW would have to trade up to the 5200, and continue the same marketing idea with Defender, Centipede, Vanguard with the 2600 versions coming 3 months later. Atari was in a bind having to "compete" with itself. I know the idea of holding back the release of 2600 could have hurt sales, but would help Atari saturate the market with 5200s and then creating more demand and games for it and less for the 2600, therefore retiring that system...

However, Pac Man is one of the most problematic games to play with the analog joystick. (though Pac Man did later become the standard 5200 pack-in) Definitely a good improvemtn over the mediocre VCS conversion. (less dramatic compared to Ms Pacman on the VCS though)

Edited December 23, 2009 by kool kitty89

[bohoki]

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

But that was with the DA-15 gameport, right? (usually on the sound card -even noted as a major reason for Creative's success over Adlib)

 

not familiar with the pc in the 80s although i did mess around with an 8088 in high school mostly playing a cga version of gauntlet using u,d,l,r and space i also loved this game called sopwith it was so good

 

yes i mean the 15 pin joystick port on the soundblaster i miss dr sbaitso he helped me through some rough times

 

 

i dug out all my pc controllers cause i made an adapter to use them with the 5200 and it is so awesome how ive given new life to these old sticks

[atariksi]

inthe IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

...

That digital joystick through the analog sampling gameport never really caught on. Mostly games either used keyboard or the analog joystick.

 

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

...

It took like 1 millisecond to read the joystick directions. Buttons were easily readable though by just one instruction like IN AL,DX. I think they used the buttons to make a digital joystick interface by using the 4 buttons of two joysticks as one digital joystick. However, then you have to read the buttons through the analog interface. That was one home-made project I have seen. Do you have some other digital joystick in mind for PC?

[VectorGamer]

 

...Space Invaders is what sold the 2600. Atari should had done that to push the 5200. Not with Space Invaders, old game now, but with Pac-Man as a pack-in game. Then release it in the spring of '82 and HOLD OFF the release of the 2600 version by 3 months. Anyone wanting to play the NEWER arcade games NOW would have to trade up to the 5200, and continue the same marketing idea with Defender, Centipede, Vanguard with the 2600 versions coming 3 months later. Atari was in a bind having to "compete" with itself. I know the idea of holding back the release of 2600 could have hurt sales, but would help Atari saturate the market with 5200s and then creating more demand and games for it and less for the 2600, therefore retiring that system...

However, Pac Man is one of the most problematic games to play with the analog joystick. (though Pac Man did later become the standard 5200 pack-in) Definitely a good improvemtn over the mediocre VCS conversion. (less dramatic compared to Ms Pacman on the VCS though)

 

I agree. I had a retrocade party in the spring where someone was playing Pac-Man on the 5200 and swearing at it because the controllers just didn't cut it.

 

Also, I noticed that the ghosts in Pac-Man speed up as they move downwards in the maze which is not "proper." Did Atari think the maze was actually vertical opposed to being flat?

 

It's arguable whether Pac-Man for the 5200 being released ahead of the 2600 port would have been more profitable. After all, the 2600 had the large install base and you're talking $35 a cart versus trying to stimulate sales of a brand new console at an overall higher cost to the consumer.

 

With all that, we know how it all played out with gamers being duped into getting on a waiting list to buy this POS 2600 cart.

 

So, with Super Breakout not making any sense as a pack-in (strictly from the perspective as not being a title that would best display the console's potential) and not wanting to use Pac-Man as the pack-in because of the controllers, which title would you then use as the pack-in? BerZerk? Centipede?

 

Defender may be a good choice.

[atariksi]

 

...Space Invaders is what sold the 2600. Atari should had done that to push the 5200. Not with Space Invaders, old game now, but with Pac-Man as a pack-in game. Then release it in the spring of '82 and HOLD OFF the release of the 2600 version by 3 months. Anyone wanting to play the NEWER arcade games NOW would have to trade up to the 5200, and continue the same marketing idea with Defender, Centipede, Vanguard with the 2600 versions coming 3 months later. Atari was in a bind having to "compete" with itself. I know the idea of holding back the release of 2600 could have hurt sales, but would help Atari saturate the market with 5200s and then creating more demand and games for it and less for the 2600, therefore retiring that system...

However, Pac Man is one of the most problematic games to play with the analog joystick. (though Pac Man did later become the standard 5200 pack-in) Definitely a good improvemtn over the mediocre VCS conversion. (less dramatic compared to Ms Pacman on the VCS though)

 

I agree. I had a retrocade party in the spring where someone was playing Pac-Man on the 5200 and swearing at it because the controllers just didn't cut it.

 

Also, I noticed that the ghosts in Pac-Man speed up as they move downwards in the maze which is not "proper." Did Atari think the maze was actually vertical opposed to being flat?

 

It's arguable whether Pac-Man for the 5200 being released ahead of the 2600 port would have been more profitable. After all, the 2600 had the large install base and you're talking $35 a cart versus trying to stimulate sales of a brand new console at an overall higher cost to the consumer.

 

With all that, we know how it all played out with gamers being duped into getting on a waiting list to buy this POS 2600 cart.

 

So, with Super Breakout not making any sense as a pack-in (strictly from the perspective as not being a title that would best display the console's potential) and not wanting to use Pac-Man as the pack-in because of the controllers, which title would you then use as the pack-in? BerZerk? Centipede?

 

Defender may be a good choice.

 

I would say there's a lot of games that work better with digital joystick than just pac-man. However, I would still take the A5200 analog sticks over the PC gameport analog joystick.

[kool kitty89]

inthe IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

...

That digital joystick through the analog sampling gameport never really caught on. Mostly games either used keyboard or the analog joystick.

 

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

...

It took like 1 millisecond to read the joystick directions. Buttons were easily readable though by just one instruction like IN AL,DX. I think they used the buttons to make a digital joystick interface by using the 4 buttons of two joysticks as one digital joystick. However, then you have to read the buttons through the analog interface. That was one home-made project I have seen. Do you have some other digital joystick in mind for PC?

 

Firstly, that first quote's of bohki quoting me (without him using the quote feature apparenlty), so I made that comment initially. Anyway, he established in a more recent post that he never had experience with the 1980s early PC gameports, only the later digital ones using the DA-15 conntector usually on a sound card. (so any jitters would be from a cheap joystick with crappy or, dirty pots)

 

I agree. I had a retrocade party in the spring where someone was playing Pac-Man on the 5200 and swearing at it because the controllers just didn't cut it.

 

Also, I noticed that the ghosts in Pac-Man speed up as they move downwards in the maze which is not "proper." Did Atari think the maze was actually vertical opposed to being flat?

 

It's arguable whether Pac-Man for the 5200 being released ahead of the 2600 port would have been more profitable. After all, the 2600 had the large install base and you're talking $35 a cart versus trying to stimulate sales of a brand new console at an overall higher cost to the consumer.

 

With all that, we know how it all played out with gamers being duped into getting on a waiting list to buy this POS 2600 cart.

 

So, with Super Breakout not making any sense as a pack-in (strictly from the perspective as not being a title that would best display the console's potential) and not wanting to use Pac-Man as the pack-in because of the controllers, which title would you then use as the pack-in? BerZerk? Centipede?

 

Defender may be a good choice.

 

I'd rather just have digital sticks. (and old, dirty controllers are worse as the pots get screwy and need cleaning -even paddles do this) THe vectrex, with short throw thumbstick with good centering could be OK in place of a digital stick. (probably better than the Intellivisions funky 16-way disc)

And you can have crappy digital pads/sitcks as well of course, the CX-40 is OK, but the CX-10 seems to get more praise, then there's examples like these crappy Sega clone controllers:

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And, either way an analog joystick could be offered as an accessory (possibly packed in with centipede, missile command, Star Wars, etc), and a cheaper (and smaller) alternative to the trackball.

 

I wasn't suggesting Pac Man on the 5200 first over the VCS, but that Atari could capitalize on their mediocre VCS port to emphesize the 5200's advantages. (at least something good coming from that snafu, of course the excessive number produced added insult to injury, 5 million might have been more reasonable -although had it been Ms Pac Man quality, the high number could have been reasonable as well, and made it an excellent pac-in for the 2600)

And even with a good port on the VCS, a 5200 version could still promote the improvements. (especially with digital control as with the A8 computer release) There's also the option of using arcade realistic aspect ratio (like Ms Pac man on the 7800), but then there's the trade off with screen size. (or if you could use narrower pixels for a less blocky display -more like a 320x192 picture clipped to ~160x192 with squarish pixels)

Edited December 24, 2009 by kool kitty89

[zylon]

I aggree on the pack-in not being a system seller. However, I did have a ton of fun playing thSuper Breakout (and fwiw, I must be the only person who liked the Space Invaders port)

 

 

Space Dungeon would havbe been a good launch title, but I agree that Tempest would have been the killer app.

Nope. My fav port of Space Invaders was the 5200 one.

[atariksi]

inthe IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

...

That digital joystick through the analog sampling gameport never really caught on. Mostly games either used keyboard or the analog joystick.

 

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

...

It took like 1 millisecond to read the joystick directions. Buttons were easily readable though by just one instruction like IN AL,DX. I think they used the buttons to make a digital joystick interface by using the 4 buttons of two joysticks as one digital joystick. However, then you have to read the buttons through the analog interface. That was one home-made project I have seen. Do you have some other digital joystick in mind for PC?

 

Firstly, that first quote's of bohki quoting me (without him using the quote feature apparenlty), so I made that comment initially. Anyway, he established in a more recent post that he never had experience with the 1980s early PC gameports, only the later digital ones using the DA-15 conntector usually on a sound card. (so any jitters would be from a cheap joystick with crappy or, dirty pots)

 

But standard gameport is only analog using port 201h. Any digital joystick interface via the gameport is more of a custom device and not something common. If you go buy a gameport based joystick, it's going to be analog and the standard type. They even overloaded MIDI on the gameport later on but it was also something that didn't really catch on.

[bohoki]

inthe IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

...

That digital joystick through the analog sampling gameport never really caught on. Mostly games either used keyboard or the analog joystick.

 

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

...

It took like 1 millisecond to read the joystick directions. Buttons were easily readable though by just one instruction like IN AL,DX. I think they used the buttons to make a digital joystick interface by using the 4 buttons of two joysticks as one digital joystick. However, then you have to read the buttons through the analog interface. That was one home-made project I have seen. Do you have some other digital joystick in mind for PC?

 

Firstly, that first quote's of bohki quoting me (without him using the quote feature apparenlty), so I made that comment initially. Anyway, he established in a more recent post that he never had experience with the 1980s early PC gameports, only the later digital ones using the DA-15 conntector usually on a sound card. (so any jitters would be from a cheap joystick with crappy or, dirty pots)

 

But standard gameport is only analog using port 201h. Any digital joystick interface via the gameport is more of a custom device and not something common. If you go buy a gameport based joystick, it's going to be analog and the standard type. They even overloaded MIDI on the gameport later on but it was also something that didn't really catch on.

 

 

well the competition pro used fixed resistance and microswitches and even had a list of games that were incompatible with the stick (sbreakout,starwars,gorf,kaboom,missilecommand) but the main problem aftermarket sticks had is that they required a working 5200 stick for "start" and the other buttons and those were the main freakin problem

 

 

 

when the angry nerd got the wico he was pissed that it had a different plug than the 15 but what would have been more funny is if he found out that he would have had to plug in his busted stick and it still wouldn't have worked

[atariksi]

inthe IBM case the analog joystick port was unreliable/problematic (from everything I've heard/read), not until the digital DA-15 midi/gameport (sonethign creative integrated with their Sound Blaster as a key selling point) was there a really good joystick interface for the PC. (of course analog joysticks and gamepads were quite often used in this interface, with onboard logic to convert that to digital signals)

...

That digital joystick through the analog sampling gameport never really caught on. Mostly games either used keyboard or the analog joystick.

 

yea pc joysticks had a tad bit of jitter there was so many makers out there but i started out with a 386 in the 90s and enjoyed lots of different joysticks the main problem is that the pc joystick system took a chunk out of the processing speed like up to 20% for joystick position polling

...

It took like 1 millisecond to read the joystick directions. Buttons were easily readable though by just one instruction like IN AL,DX. I think they used the buttons to make a digital joystick interface by using the 4 buttons of two joysticks as one digital joystick. However, then you have to read the buttons through the analog interface. That was one home-made project I have seen. Do you have some other digital joystick in mind for PC?

 

Firstly, that first quote's of bohki quoting me (without him using the quote feature apparenlty), so I made that comment initially. Anyway, he established in a more recent post that he never had experience with the 1980s early PC gameports, only the later digital ones using the DA-15 conntector usually on a sound card. (so any jitters would be from a cheap joystick with crappy or, dirty pots)

 

But standard gameport is only analog using port 201h. Any digital joystick interface via the gameport is more of a custom device and not something common. If you go buy a gameport based joystick, it's going to be analog and the standard type. They even overloaded MIDI on the gameport later on but it was also something that didn't really catch on.

 

 

well the competition pro used fixed resistance and microswitches and even had a list of games that were incompatible with the stick (sbreakout,starwars,gorf,kaboom,missilecommand) but the main problem aftermarket sticks had is that they required a working 5200 stick for "start" and the other buttons and those were the main freakin problem

 

 

 

when the angry nerd got the wico he was pissed that it had a different plug than the 15 but what would have been more funny is if he found out that he would have had to plug in his busted stick and it still wouldn't have worked

 

Actually I was talking about the PC Gameport. Are you talking about a Competition Pro joystick for PC? Is that a different one from the 5200 one?

[Lynxpro]

Looking at the point another way though, there were other possible investors that might have handeled Atari better than Warner did. (an electronics company perhaps, or Mattel maybe, or better, split between a few partners to avoid the direct influence Warner had over atari, a Japanese associate might have been a good idea as well, others than NAMCO to considder as well, like Taito) Perhaps avoidign some of Atari's important personell levaing (engineers and programmers like Miner and the Activision guys), not to mention the other management issues that fed into the problems culminating the the 1983 crash.

 

Couple problems - 1) They tried the multiple investors route, it wasn't going anywhere. 2) Without Warner, you would have never seen a lot of the industry innovations (both in product and marketing) that we did. Remember, they were able to leverage being a large media and communications company. There was a lot of good with the bad. 3) Getting rid of Namco and the Japan operations made sense. They were literally at death's door, and had no business trying to be international at the time. In contrast, the spin-off Key was having hit after hit. It made much more sense to bring them back in the fold and cut the Japanese portion out.

 

 

First, with Kool Kitty's part. The only other international investor I could think of would have been Philips. It could've been part of the settlement agreement between Atari and Philips over Atari allegedly infringing on Baer's design [even though Bushnell saw it but there's no indication that he really shared much info of that with Al Alcorn, from what I've read; and Alcorn's version stomped Baer's krap into the ground].

 

Second, I agree with Wgungfu on Warner. However, from the bio on Steve Ross, it sounds like Warner low-balled Bushnell and they would've paid a whole lot more than $28 million for the entire company. The book makes it seem like Ross was able to woo Bushnell by having him fly in the Warner jet. Maybe Bushnell should've held out for $28 million for a 25% stake. He never should've give up more than 49% to them. Granted, Bushnell was wrong in trying to get the 2600 cancelled early, although his reasoning was sound. Warner on the other hand should've sold the 2600 for cost like Bushnell suggested.

 

I would like to see someone ask Bushnell in an interview if he had considered junk bonds as an alternative to selling the company outright. They were taking off at the time and that's how Ted Turner - a contemporary - financed the rise of Turner Broadcasting during that decade. Maybe junk bonds could've financed a takeover of MOS before the Warner buyout, not to mention giving Steve Jobs the $50k he was asking for to get Apple off the ground in exchange for a controlling interest in that company.

 

On Japan, Atari should've never tried releasing the 2600/2800 there. The distribution system was too damn complicated back then and totally nationalistic. Atari should've licensed the design to Sony or some other Japanese company for Japan-only rights. Even with making just a percentage on the profits, they probably still would've made more that way than they ultimately did going it alone.

 

Another thing that would've prevented Atari's implosion... Had Warner greenlit building the proposed Atari Campus. It would've cost $500 million but that would've kept a tighter lid on Atari resources and staff versus spreading them out across 78 buildings which proved to be a disaster on all fronts.

 

And Ray should've got the source code from all the arcade titles he acquired the home rights to.

Edited March 11, 2010 by Lynxpro

[Retro Rogue]

Working your way through older threads I see.

 

 

First, with Kool Kitty's part. The only other international investor I could think of would have been Philips.

 

By the Ross "bio" and "book" you mention below, I'm assuming you mean the Master of the Game book. If that's the case, it's spelled out in there pretty clear. Nolan already had investors involved with Atari. Gordon Crawford from Capitol Group had invested in both Warner and Atari in 1972. There was Don Valentine as well of course, and a few others. He approached Gordon in early '76 looking for help in either going public to gain capital, or sell it outright to someone that would allow him to remain in charge. Gordon though Warner would be a perfect fit and started setting things in motion for that. In the meantime Nolan started looking at possibly reaching a deal with Synertek (though the name isn't mentioned in the book). That's when the whole jet thing you mention below happened.

 

It could've been part of the settlement agreement between Atari and Philips

 

No. 1) It was a suit and settlement with Magnavox not Philips, filed in April of '74 against Atari, Bally, Chicago Dynamic Industries, Allied Leisure, and Empire Distributing. Philips didn't purchase the 85% stock of Magnavox until October of '74. 2) The agreement with Magnavox was for a one time licensing fee and access to any products released by Atari for the next year (the settlement was in June of '76).

 

over Atari allegedly infringing on Baer's design

 

There's no alleged. Besides an infringement from a patent standpoint (which all the other companies lost on after Atari bolted), he literally copied the tennis game (which was actually by Bill Rush, not Ralph). See below.

 

even though Bushnell saw it but there's no indication that he really shared much info of that with Al Alcorn, from what I've read;

 

There's every indication. He testified in later court cases (where he was called as a witness for other companies). Likewise, here's a direct quote from a recent interview with Al Alcorn: "And Nolan got the idea from that (the Odyssey), but it's like the movie The Producers, because he figured we'd rip off the idea for a game, but so what? It's no good, we're not going to sell it, we'll throw it away, so what harm is there, right? So, it didn't work out that way… they sent us a letter. "

 

Curt and I were at Ralph's in January (I was staying there for a few days) and we took possession of over 40 years worth of legal documents (boxes and boxes of them) for archiving. That includes original patent filings, court documents (notes, testimony's, updates, law firm memos, etc.), invention notes, and more.

 

 

and Alcorn's version stomped Baer's krap into the ground.

 

You must be joking, right? The Odyssey was a full console, you're talking about a single game. And it originally contained full color, synced video backgrounds, synced interactive audio, and a host of other advanced interactions. Even just taking the Tennis game in to account, in Ralph's you could move the paddle in all directions, add spin, etc. Both were digital, and Al's added on screen scoring, which was about the only advancement - everything else was actually dumbed down.

 

If anything, it was Nolan's usual PR that tried to downplay everything (and that's changed almost every time he gives an interview), including the ridiculous attempt at painting PONG as digital and the Odyssey as analog.

 

Second, I agree with Wgungfu on Warner. However, from the bio on Steve Ross, it sounds like Warner low-balled Bushnell and they would've paid a whole lot more than $28 million for the entire company. The book makes it seem like Ross was able to woo Bushnell by having him fly in the Warner jet. Maybe Bushnell should've held out for $28 million for a 25% stake. He never should've give up more than 49% to them. Granted, Bushnell was wrong in trying to get the 2600 cancelled early, although his reasoning was sound. Warner on the other hand should've sold the 2600 for cost like Bushnell suggested.

 

Very simply put, Atari was in constant threat of bankruptcy from 1973 until the Warner purchase. Back and forth on the brink. And nobody pulled anything over on him like some country bumpkin in the city for the first time. Nolan has always been about self promotion and pumping up his image and money. You know what the first thing he did when they started marketing PONG? Hire a PR agent for himself. Not for Atari, for himself. With Warner, he got the deal of a lifetime, the employees got deals as well (which was not something commonly reported), everybody made out. And Warner actually got screwed in the deal initially, the earnings and value actually started going down! From $40 million in profits in '77 to $2.7 million in '78. It only raised to $6 million in '79, and finally climbed back up after Nolan left. He didn't want to work, he wanted to play tech mogul. By his own admission he had one foot out the door, placed firmly on his yacht. Then he gets canned and tries to come crying back.

 

And what the book states is not that it was because of the jet, but because of the one on one all night negotiations between Nolan, Ross, and Valentine.

 

On Japan, Atari should've never tried releasing the 2600/2800 there. The distribution system was too damn complicated back then and totally nationalistic.

 

It was released in Japan in '83, which was after the Famicom. To little to late.

 

Atari should've licensed the design to Sony or some other Japanese company for Japan-only rights. Even with making just a percentage on the profits, they probably still would've made more that way than they ultimately did going it alone.

 

Six of one, half dozen of another. Whether they did it themselves or through another company, they should have done it in the late 70's. That was the reason for the failure.

 

Another thing that would've prevented Atari's implosion... Had Warner greenlit building the proposed Atari Campus. It would've cost $500 million but that would've kept a tighter lid on Atari resources and staff versus spreading them out across 78 buildings which proved to be a disaster on all fronts.

 

That had nothing to do with the implosion. Their implosion was caused by greed, pure and simple. They had evidence of the coming problem as far back as '81, when their own financial firm that backed the put together the buyout of Atari in the first place was warning about the overinflated value of the stock and changing market place. Nobody listened, and that investment firm actually started selling off their stock. Then in June '82 Jac Holzman (former owner of Elektra records and a director of then consultant to Atari via Warner) personally wrote a letter to Ross mentioning the problems of excess inventory and that they should consider selling Atari because he thought the business was going to fall apart. And the inventory report that August also reflected that, $65 million worth and almost all cartridges. This caused a revised budget report, and earnings losses that they tried to hide. They added an extra week, inflated the fourth quarter projection, and then you have the mess of that December where the truth started coming out and Kassar and the bunch had done their stock shenanigans. That actually caused a ripple effect in the industry as other company's stock prices fell as a result, foreshadowing what was to come. That lead to the layoffs of 1,700 workers that February and the manufacturing movement to Taiwan, but no real changes in any of the practices, the issues of dual management, etc. The downward spiral continued until January of '84 when Warner hired a company to evaluate all it's assets, and they promptly recommended selling Atari as well. Which they actively began looking to do throughout the Spring.

 

 

And Ray should've got the source code from all the arcade titles he acquired the home rights to.

 

I'm not sure what that had to do with anything? Can you explain that further?

Edited March 11, 2010 by wgungfu

[kool kitty89]

Atari should've licensed the design to Sony or some other Japanese company for Japan-only rights. Even with making just a percentage on the profits, they probably still would've made more that way than they ultimately did going it alone.

 

Six of one, half dozen of another. Whether they did it themselves or through another company, they should have done it in the late 70's. That was the reason for the failure.

Even in 1980 or '81 it might have had a decent impact (and be early enough to gain some momentum prior to the Famicom) By '82 it made more sense to skip the VCS and bring the 5200 over.

When was the VCS introduced to Europe? (I seem to remember 1979)

 

 

The downward spiral continued until January of '84 when Warner hired a company to evaluate all it's assets, and they promptly recommended selling Atari as well. Which they actively began looking to do throughout the Spring.

Did any of Morgan's efforts start to produce noticeable results prior to Atari getting sold off? (they way you've described his efforts previously sounded fairly promising -perhaps they took more time to really start paying off though) Too bad things hadn't started changing (ie Ray replaced) a year earlier, if not before that.

Edited March 11, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Retro Rogue]

Even in 1980 or '81 it might have had a decent impact (and be early enough to gain some momentum prior to the Famicom)

 

True, but remember even then it would also be competing against other Japanese programmable consoles already on the market. Bandai's Super Vision 8000, Sega's SG-1000, and the Epoch Casettevision.

 

By '82 it made more sense to skip the VCS and bring the 5200 over.

When was the VCS introduced to Europe? (I seem to remember 1979)

 

Not sure, someone put in 1978 at the Wikipedia entry.

 

 

Did any of Morgan's efforts start to produce noticeable results prior to Atari getting sold off? (they way you've described his efforts previously sounded fairly promising -perhaps they took more time to really start paying off though) Too bad things hadn't started changing (ie Ray replaced) a year earlier, if not before that.

 

Well, his idea was the trim Atari Inc. down to just focus on profitable divisions and products. To streamline everything, which makes sense. That's why he froze everything to evaluate it in the Fall of '83, and why by the Spring he was trying to do the NATCO thing. Truth be told, I'd say he had maybe 6 months or less before Warner secretly looked in to selling things. They wanted a miracle from him, since he was known for turning bankrupt companies around supposedly. The problem is, like with a drug addict, they need to want to help themselves otherwise it's not going to work. I don't see anything that denotes Warner stopping it's dual management and interfering during the entire time. They continued on making their ownd deals and dumping them on Atari, swooping in and killing projects that were ready to go, and even the underhanded thing of letting Morgan think he had a chance to complete the reorginzation when they were shopping it around since February of '84. As I mentioned, Morgan didn't even know about it all until he was asked to walk in to the boardroom where the Warner execs and Jack were waiting, to sign the sale papers.

[kool kitty89]

Even in 1980 or '81 it might have had a decent impact (and be early enough to gain some momentum prior to the Famicom)

 

True, but remember even then it would also be competing against other Japanese programmable consoles already on the market. Bandai's Super Vision 8000, Sega's SG-1000, and the Epoch Casettevision.

Wiki lists the SG-1000 as being released on the same day as the famicom (July 15, 1983). It looks like the Cassette Vision didn't come out until 1981, so the 1979 SuperVision would have been the longest on the market.

[Lynxpro]

Working your way through older threads I see.

 

Very much so. Been sick from work and I've always found the subject massively fascinating. I used to read "Zap - the Rise and Fall of Atari" all the time when I was 10.

 

 

By the Ross "bio" and "book" you mention below, I'm assuming you mean the Master of the Game book. If that's the case, it's spelled out in there pretty clear. Nolan already had investors involved with Atari. Gordon Crawford from Capitol Group had invested in both Warner and Atari in 1972. There was Don Valentine as well of course, and a few others. He approached Gordon in early '76 looking for help in either going public to gain capital, or sell it outright to someone that would allow him to remain in charge. Gordon though Warner would be a perfect fit and started setting things in motion for that. In the meantime Nolan started looking at possibly reaching a deal with Synertek (though the name isn't mentioned in the book). That's when the whole jet thing you mention below happened.

 

 

I read it once around 1995 or so. I thought it had "lightning" in its subtitle. I found it fascinating that Ross's Disneyland story was a creative fabrication according to it.

 

But I brought up junk bonds because it sounds like it was never discussed or evaluated. Since Ted Turner had such luck with them around the same time, I would think any type of financial advisor would bring up the subject.

 

 

No. 1) It was a suit and settlement with Magnavox not Philips, filed in April of '74 against Atari, Bally, Chicago Dynamic Industries, Allied Leisure, and Empire Distributing. Philips didn't purchase the 85% stock of Magnavox until October of '74. 2) The agreement with Magnavox was for a one time licensing fee and access to any products released by Atari for the next year (the settlement was in June of '76).

 

Did they nab Coleco? I've seen a Coleco Pong game. I had a childhood friend whose father seemed to reflexively by anything but Atari. Instead of Atari Pong, they had a Coleco unit, then an Odyssey 2 - decent controllers - and finally a Commodore 64 and 128.

 

There's no alleged. Besides an infringement from a patent standpoint (which all the other companies lost on after Atari bolted), he literally copied the tennis game (which was actually by Bill Rush, not Ralph). See below.

There's every indication. He testified in later court cases (where he was called as a witness for other companies). Likewise, here's a direct quote from a recent interview with Al Alcorn: "And Nolan got the idea from that (the Odyssey), but it's like the movie The Producers, because he figured we'd rip off the idea for a game, but so what? It's no good, we're not going to sell it, we'll throw it away, so what harm is there, right? So, it didn't work out that way… they sent us a letter. "

Curt and I were at Ralph's in January (I was staying there for a few days) and we took possession of over 40 years worth of legal documents (boxes and boxes of them) for archiving. That includes original patent filings, court documents (notes, testimony's, updates, law firm memos, etc.), invention notes, and more.

 

 

What I meant was Nolan saw the unit once [and signed the log book]. It's not like he copied the schematics or went down to the patent office and grabbed the materials under false pretenses like Atari Games/Tengen did over the later Nintendo lockout chip.

 

 

You must be joking, right? The Odyssey was a full console, you're talking about a single game. And it originally contained full color, synced video backgrounds, synced interactive audio, and a host of other advanced interactions. Even just taking the Tennis game in to account, in Ralph's you could move the paddle in all directions, add spin, etc. Both were digital, and Al's added on screen scoring, which was about the only advancement - everything else was actually dumbed down.

 

What? Had the Odyssey been the only game in town - pun intended - video games as an industry never would've happened. It sucked. Plastic masks across the tv screen? No thanks.

 

And the scoring and adding the distinct pong noises made the game fun which is what Al's version has. The Odyssey version is a travesty in comparison. I fully support Al on that. Sure, you could add "English" in the Odyssey version but the ball didn't ramp up speed like Al's version. Al did a hell of a job "stealing" Baer's work for not having seen it before and improving upon the play mechanics just from how Nolan described it him.

 

Plus, is it truly a ripoff? Atari had not intended to make Pong into a consumer device. Had that been the original goal, then yes, but it was meant to be a test project for Al and then later as an arcade game.

 

What I dislike about Baer is his grandiose claims that he created video games. Space War far predates his efforts, plus the prior game that was made even before that at the universities. He also has such a chip on his shoulder against Nolan and Al that I find sickening, especially when considering his most successful invention - Simon - is a rip off of Atari's "Touch Me".

 

Atari created the video game industry, period.

 

 

Very simply put, Atari was in constant threat of bankruptcy from 1973 until the Warner purchase. Back and forth on the brink. And nobody pulled anything over on him like some country bumpkin in the city for the first time. Nolan has always been about self promotion and pumping up his image and money. You know what the first thing he did when they started marketing PONG? Hire a PR agent for himself. Not for Atari, for himself. With Warner, he got the deal of a lifetime, the employees got deals as well (which was not something commonly reported), everybody made out. And Warner actually got screwed in the deal initially, the earnings and value actually started going down! From $40 million in profits in '77 to $2.7 million in '78. It only raised to $6 million in '79, and finally climbed back up after Nolan left. He didn't want to work, he wanted to play tech mogul. By his own admission he had one foot out the door, placed firmly on his yacht. Then he gets canned and tries to come crying back.

 

Wasn't Nolan's hero PT Barnum?

 

Regardless of Nolan's exploits, he assembled quite a team and launched probably one of the most important tech companies of all time. Had video games not taken off, the home computer would not have happened either, and our world would be much much different today.

 

Plus, Baer never opened up a nation-wide pizza parlor! Ha! Nor did any technology he worked on became the basis for Google Maps.

 

 

It was released in Japan in '83, which was after the Famicom. To little to late.

 

True, but Japan had a byzantine distribution system back then. It is amazing they even tried such an attempt.

 

 

Six of one, half dozen of another. Whether they did it themselves or through another company, they should have done it in the late 70's. That was the reason for the failure.

 

 

Agreed. Had they done so then, Nintendo wouldn't be where they are today. It's a total crime how all these other companies became massive successes because of minor mistakes Atari committed.

 

 

That had nothing to do with the implosion. Their implosion was caused by greed, pure and simple. They had evidence of the coming problem as far back as '81, when their own financial firm that backed the put together the buyout of Atari in the first place was warning about the overinflated value of the stock and changing market place. Nobody listened, and that investment firm actually started selling off their stock. Then in June '82 Jac Holzman (former owner of Elektra records and a director of then consultant to Atari via Warner) personally wrote a letter to Ross mentioning the problems of excess inventory and that they should consider selling Atari because he thought the business was going to fall apart. And the inventory report that August also reflected that, $65 million worth and almost all cartridges. This caused a revised budget report, and earnings losses that they tried to hide. They added an extra week, inflated the fourth quarter projection, and then you have the mess of that December where the truth started coming out and Kassar and the bunch had done their stock shenanigans. That actually caused a ripple effect in the industry as other company's stock prices fell as a result, foreshadowing what was to come. That lead to the layoffs of 1,700 workers that February and the manufacturing movement to Taiwan, but no real changes in any of the practices, the issues of dual management, etc. The downward spiral continued until January of '84 when Warner hired a company to evaluate all it's assets, and they promptly recommended selling Atari as well. Which they actively began looking to do throughout the Spring.

 

 

And what about the role of the shady independent distributors who contributed to the collapse? "Game Over" covered that and the fact that some people within Atari wanted WEA to actively distribute Atari titles but most of WEA bucked that all the way up to 1984. Infighting not only within Atari but Warner itself contributed massively to the problem. Infighting within Time Warner later ruined the AOL merger. Had Time Warner Cable not resisted attempts at making AOL the default front end to the ISP, it wouldn't have collapsed. Same goes for AOL's plans to sell Warner Music titles online, an idea resisted by Warner Music until Apple later made a success out of it.

 

 

I'm not sure what that had to do with anything? Can you explain that further?

 

 

Kassar negotiated many arcade licensing agreements so Atari would have home video game rights but the agreements rarely involved the original arcade company sharing source code with Atari so the VCS programmers could better understand how the arcade games worked. They had to figure out how to reproduce the game mechanics on their own which added cost and delayed the creation of the carts.

Edited March 12, 2010 by Lynxpro

[kool kitty89]

What I meant was Nolan saw the unit once [and signed the log book]. It's not like he copied the schematics or went down to the patent office and grabbed the materials under false pretenses like Atari Games/Tengen did over the later Nintendo lockout chip.

From what I understand, that's not what happened with Tengen... they had already reverse engineered the rabbit chip when a separate groupe at Atari Games looked in on the pattent doccuments unfortunely. Anyway, it doesn't seem to have mattered ans the cout case seems to have settled, no over copying the chip, but copying the entirely of the lokout coude used rather than only that necessary for th echip to function. (apparently done so that it would be forward compatible if Nintendo decided to increase security later on or something like that)

 

 

 

Regardless of Nolan's exploits, he assembled quite a team and launched probably one of the most important tech companies of all time. Had video games not taken off, the home computer would not have happened either, and our world would be much much different today.

 

Plus, Baer never opened up a nation-wide pizza parlor!

Both of which were on the verge of collapse frequently wheile managed by Bushnell. (not unil after merging with Shobiz Pizza did Pizza Time Theater become a stable enterprise -and indeed seems to have been even more unstable than pre-warner Atari Inc)

 

True, but Japan had a byzantine distribution system back then. It is amazing they even tried such an attempt.

You make it sound like Japan would become more freindly in the video game market later on. (certianly didn't see to do so with the Xbox, not quite as extreme with the 360, but then again it's not facing as strong competition from Sony as previously)

 

Agreed. Had they done so then, Nintendo wouldn't be where they are today. It's a total crime how all these other companies became massive successes because of minor mistakes Atari committed.

Perhaps, or perhaps not. Nintendo still had a good product and it seems like the Japanese console market didn't pick up as fast as the US one did (then again, perhaps popularization of the VCS could have changed that) Plus, Atari would still be in similar trouble if Warner didn't do things significantly better. Having stronger foreign markets -Europe and/or Japan- could have helped with stability though, with the Crash limited to North America. (plus Japan would use NTSC units too, albeit with RF modulators tuned to different channels)

 

And what about the role of the shady independent distributors who contributed to the collapse? "Game Over" covered that and the fact that some people within Atari wanted WEA to actively distribute Atari titles but most of WEA bucked that all the way up to 1984. Infighting not only within Atari but Warner itself contributed massively to the problem. Infighting within Time Warner later ruined the AOL merger. Had Time Warner Cable not resisted attempts at making AOL the default front end to the ISP, it wouldn't have collapsed. Same goes for AOL's plans to sell Warner Music titles online, an idea resisted by Warner Music until Apple later made a success out of it.

Do you mean the 3rd parties contributing to the "glut" of games on the market? I think that was a much lesser problem than Atari itsself, especially as the most prominent 3rd parties, were not those churning out crappy, cheap titles, but quality tiles, often quoted ahead of Atari's own games, like Activision and IMAGIC.

Plus, Atari contributed significantly to the so-called glut themselves, but not only flooding the market with games, but hurting themselves due to the masses of unsold merchandise. Had they started pulling away from the 2600 though, both in marketing and 1st party software, that could have had a significant impact across the board. (but Atari/Warner's internal problems were the key -and hanging on to the 2600 too long was related to that too) Of course, they'd keep supporting the VCS, just liek Nintendo with the NES and Sony with the PSX and PS2, as lower-en budget consoles, cheaper, estabilshed libraries, but fewer new releases and limited advertising.

 

 

 

Kassar negotiated many arcade licensing agreements so Atari would have home video game rights but the agreements rarely involved the original arcade company sharing source code with Atari so the VCS programmers could better understand how the arcade games worked. They had to figure out how to reproduce the game mechanics on their own which added cost and delayed the creation of the carts.

How often would the sourse code have been useful with games using completely different hardware architectures.

[Retro Rogue]

Very much so. Been sick from work and I've always found the subject massively fascinating. I used to read "Zap - the Rise and Fall of Atari" all the time when I was 10.

 

To bad it was such a crappy book in it's factual content.

 

Did they nab Coleco? I've seen a Coleco Pong game. I had a childhood friend whose father seemed to reflexively by anything but Atari. Instead of Atari Pong, they had a Coleco unit, then an Odyssey 2 - decent controllers - and finally a Commodore 64 and 128.

 

No, Coleco was a valid licensee of Magnavox. Ralph actually helped Coleco with their Telstar.

 

What I meant was Nolan saw the unit once [and signed the log book]. It's not like he copied the schematics or went down to the patent office and grabbed the materials under false pretenses like Atari Games/Tengen did over the later Nintendo lockout chip.

 

If someone sees a game, admittedly copies and tweaks it, and then releases it - that's an infringement. Regardless of how many times they originally saw it or whether they directly copied it from its schematics. And that doesn't even cover the patent infringement, which the most important of which had to do with generating and manipulating symbols on a raster display via RF (video) signal through the antenna (which is the only way in to a TV at the time).

 

 

What? Had the Odyssey been the only game in town - pun intended - video games as an industry never would've happened.

 

It was initially the only game in town. It was the consumer industry. It created the consumer industry. Atari's PONG came later and certainly helped ramp things up and improve sales.

 

It sucked. Plastic masks across the tv screen? No thanks.

 

That's completely hind site in opinion, at the time it was high tech and there was nothing like it. As far as the overlays, that was Magnavox's problem. As stated Ralph came to them with a full color machine with a ton of options (even using cable TV and video as a live background). He also had extensions for adding sound and more, and they later turned that down as well.

 

And the scoring and adding the distinct pong noises made the game fun which is what Al's version has.

 

See above.

 

Plus, is it truly a ripoff? Atari had not intended to make Pong into a consumer device. Had that been the original goal, then yes, but it was meant to be a test project for Al and then later as an arcade game.

 

Regardless of what the claimed intent was (which was Nolan's BS), it was released as a commercial product, period. That nullifies any claimed "intent" by any stretch of the imagination. And the actual timeline denotes any "test project" intent. Remember, Nolan was even lying to Al back then about other things such as them having a GE contract to get him on board. Just as Nolan's lied all these years trying to take credit for Ted Dabney's work.

 

 

What I dislike about Baer is his grandiose claims that he created video games.

 

I see you're falling claim to Nolan's PR. There's nothing "grandiose" about it. He pioneered doing games via video technology. That's precisely why every one of his patents was upheld against numerous attempts to discredit them over a 30 year period (including the main patent labeled as the "pioneer patent of the industry"), why he's been honored by just about every major institution, why his work is in the Smithsonian, etc. These aren't in the context of ridiculous mouse click patents being handed out today. This was legitimate pioneer work that being done at a time when no one else was doing it - interfacing with a video signal, generating symbols, and having the user manipulate them.

 

 

Space War far predates his efforts, plus the prior game that was made even before that at the universities.

 

*Sigh* here we go again (this has been discussed here many times in the past). Space War is not a video game, it is a computer game though. Or more accurately it would certainly be an example of an earlier electronic game. You're going by the later evolved pop culture definition of "video game" which labels every little thing with a display as a "video game" - which is now incorrectly being applied in hind site to everything in the past. The term is actually a technical descriptive, i.e. the "video" in "video game" is there for a reason. There is no video involved in Space War, it uses a vector display. That's precisely why it was thrown out of court multiple times in attempts to invalidate Ralph's patents. A vector display is not a video display - the confusion comes from the fact both use a CRT. Vector displays work like an etch-a-sketch, you're directly controlling the CRT's beam with your device (in this case a computer running a program with directives for the beam's manipulation). There is no video signal. In a video display (which is tied to a raster display device) you are finding a way to insert and manipulate and interact with objects via the display's video carrier signal. That is where the term "video game" (also used interchangeably with "TV Games") came from. This whole Space War thing came about during a weak attempt to discredit Ralph's patents in court - it failed for precisely that reason. Higginbotham's did as well for that reason (and for the fact there were no actual symbols on the screen directly manipulated by the players). If anyone has grandiose claims, it's Nolan constantly trying to claim himself as the father of video games, or a host of other claims he's thrown on to it.

 

And I get tired of people trying to paint Ralph as some sort of sinister lawsuit hungry mongrel making grandiose claims. The man is one of the most humble people I've ever met, still lives in the same little ranch house he lived in since he bought it with his now deceased wife back in the early 50's (in fact the inside looks like a museum of 50's architecture and furniture sorely needs remolding), and at 88 is still down in his little lab room inventing stuff every single day. The guy made next to nothing on his video game related inventions, any real money he's made was in the toy industry. All the lawsuits were done by Magnavox, they made all the money along with his employer Sanders. He was simply called as a witness for his patents.

 

He also has such a chip on his shoulder against Nolan and Al that I find sickening,

 

No, that's been the other way around - that's really misinformed. It's been Nolan who's gone out of his way since his earliest days to downplay and discredit Ralph while propping himself up, it's been Nolan that was putting out all the PR, it was Nolan whose gone out of his way in press since the 70's to discredit Ralph, and it's been Nolan who still has a chip on his shoulder. In fact I've seen the sickening emails Nolan has sent Ralph. And that's wrong, he's had nothing against Al, in fact the two are friends now and Ralph's gone out of his way to get him involved in different appearances and get Al more credit as the designer of PONG.

 

especially when considering his most successful invention - Simon - is a rip off of Atari's "Touch Me".

 

Which was done as a touche for PONG, and that was Bristow's game. They certainly could have sued for the game if it had been patented, copyrighted, etc. But then Magnavox's original lawsuit to Atari wasn't over a game, it was over display technology and interaction with video itself.

 

Atari created the video game industry, period.

 

Completely incorrect. You'd have to have the first product out to create an industry. Atari solidified the industry and certainly expanded it. They did not create it. You could give that honor to Nutting, but even then you'd have to limit it to the video coin industry. The consumer industry was started by Magnavox, and that's usually what most people are referring to when they talk about the "video game industry" today.

 

Wasn't Nolan's hero PT Barnum?

 

That's been a claim. Nolan basically learned all his carny tricks at Lagoon. That includes stuffing coin boxes to try and make games look more successful than they are (think Andy Capps and Pong), promotion tricks, etc.

 

Regardless of Nolan's exploits, he assembled quite a team and launched probably one of the most important tech companies of all time.

 

There's the PR at work again. It was him and Ted. He and Ted basically took people from their former employer Ampex. All the early engineers involved with Atari were from there, Al Alcorn, Steve Bristow, the guys from Cyan, etc.

 

That's one thing Curt and I have been concentrating on as well as of late is cutting through all of his PR and ever changing stories from over the years and getting to the actual facts. Ted was really helpful with a lot of the bubble popping of the early years. Some of Nolan's old partners and personal aids have been very helpful as well, including providing documents, etc.

 

I mean his latest BS that Missile Command was his and he was involved in it is completely asinine.

 

Had video games not taken off, the home computer would not have happened either, and our world would be much much different today.

 

That is a complete stretch. Personal computers have a different time line, and there's no direct link between the Altair, IMSAI, Cromemco, Northstar, Commodore Pet or any of the other personal computers and the video game industry. They were more tied to the tech industry itself and more specifically of Silicon Valley, as well as the tech counter culture movement of the late 60's and early 70's. The single computer company you could make that argument with is Apple. But to say the personal (or home) computer would not have happened is way off.

 

Plus, Baer never opened up a nation-wide pizza parlor! Ha!

 

I'm assuming that's a joke and taking it in that context.

 

Nor did any technology he worked on became the basis for Google Maps.

 

Neither did Nolan. You're confusing investing in a company (Etak) and taking credit for their work (his entire MO even during his time at Atari) with actually being involved with or working on something. It's a common theme throughout his career, Nolan pushing aside the guys who actually did the work and taking credit for it in his PR. Androbot is another example, everything at Atari (which was all both proposed executed by the actual engineers at Atari), even going back to Computer Space which was all Ted.

 

Do you really have any exposure to the long list of patents and inventions of Ralph's?

 

Kassar negotiated many arcade licensing agreements so Atari would have home video game rights but the agreements rarely involved the original arcade company sharing source code with Atari so the VCS programmers could better understand how the arcade games worked. They had to figure out how to reproduce the game mechanics on their own which added cost and delayed the creation of the carts.

 

That wasn't just a Kassar deal, that was pretty common at the time. That's how they got Night Driver for instance (which was a licensed game as well created from just a description of the original).

 

And truthfully, that's how most ports were done in the 80's home console industry as well. By reproducing via actual playing of the game vs. assembly code listing. Quite often they'd have the full coin-op right there in the office or accessible to them.

Edited March 12, 2010 by wgungfu

[CV Gus]

By releasing some decent DIGITAL controllers, for starters. Maybe an adapter to allow use of 2600 paddle controllers on the 5200? It's incredibly easy to build.

 

By releasing games like Super Pac-Man, Xevious, Galaga, Millipede, and of course, TEMPEST!!!

 

Not to mention an RPG or two.

 

Why not Space Duel, too?

 

 

And improving on what the 5200 could do. They did it with the 2600, after all.

 

Would it have been cheaper to program improved versions of Dig Dug and Joust, and then maybe allow a good discount in exchange for the old copies? Sort of give the 5200 what the 7800 was starting with, maybe.

 

And...

 

Most Importantly...

 

NOT LISTENING TO A BUNCH OF MORONIC KNOW-NOTHING EXPERTS WHO CLAIMED VIDEO GAMING WAS DEAD IN 1984, AND STILL WON"T ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG IN SPITE OF THE X-BOX 360 AND PLAYSTATION 3 IN 2010!!!

Edited March 12, 2010 by CV Gus

[kool kitty89]

What I dislike about Baer is his grandiose claims that he created video games.

 

I see you're falling claim to Nolan's PR. There's nothing "grandiose" about it. He pioneered doing games via video technology. That's precisely why every one of his patents was upheld against numerous attempts to discredit them over a 30 year period (including the main patent labeled as the "pioneer patent of the industry"), why he's been honored by just about every major institution, why his work is in the Smithsonian, etc. These aren't in the context of ridiculous mouse click patents being handed out today. This was legitimate pioneer work that being done at a time when no one else was doing it - interfacing with a video signal, generating symbols, and having the user manipulate them.

 

[snip]

 

Space War far predates his efforts, plus the prior game that was made even before that at the universities.

 

*Sigh* here we go again (this has been discussed here many times in the past). Space War is not a video game, it is a computer game though. Or more accurately it would certainly be an example of an earlier electronic game. You're going by the later evolved pop culture definition of "video game" which labels every little thing with a display as a "video game" - which is now incorrectly being applied in hind site to everything in the past. The term is actually a technical descriptive, i.e. the "video" in "video game" is there for a reason. There is no video involved in Space War, it uses a vector display. That's precisely why it was thrown out of court multiple times in attempts to invalidate Ralph's patents. A vector display is not a video display - the confusion comes from the fact both use a CRT. Vector displays work like an etch-a-sketch, you're directly controlling the CRT's beam with your device (in this case a computer running a program with directives for the beam's manipulation). There is no video signal. In a video display (which is tied to a raster display device) you are finding a way to insert and manipulate and interact with objects via the display's video carrier signal. That is where the term "video game" (also used interchangeably with "TV Games") came from. This whole Space War thing came about during a weak attempt to discredit Ralph's patents in court - it failed for precisely that reason. Higginbotham's did as well for that reason (and for the fact there were no actual symbols on the screen directly manipulated by the players). If anyone has grandiose claims, it's Nolan constantly trying to claim himself as the father of video games, or a host of other claims he's thrown on to it.

 

Ted Dabney's Computer Space was the first Video Game hardware (or any description) to make it onto the commercial market though, wasn't it? I'd imagine Baer's patent still predates that by a fair margin though (given when he started that work), so they could have been sued over Computer Space on similar grounds. (if Baer's patent coincided with that of computer space though, that would have been a point of contention)

 

I'd imagine the reason Atari never got sued over Computer Space was due to its very limited popularity.

 

 

 

All other companies with video games had to pay royalties for that patent as well, until it expired, right? (or at least in North America, internationally I'd imagine it's a bit different)

Edited March 13, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Retro Rogue]

Ted Dabney's Computer Space was the first Video Game hardware (or any description) to make it onto the commercial market though, wasn't it?

 

To the coin market, yes. But technically, Galaxy Game was even before that though it wasn't a commercial product. To the general consumer market, Odyssey was the first.

 

 

I'd imagine Baer's patent still predates that by a fair margin though (given when he started that work),

 

Yes, his (and the rest of the group's) patents were filed during the late 60's.

 

so they could have been sued over Computer Space on similar grounds. (if Baer's patent coincided with that of computer space though, that would have been a point of contention)

 

Yes, but by the time Magnavox brought suits against the main companies in '74, Nutting was already gone.

 

 

I'd imagine the reason Atari never got sued over Computer Space was due to its very limited popularity.

 

That would be Nutting Associates, not Atari, which folded in 1973. People often get it confused with the other Nutting company as well, Dave Nutting Associates (Bill Nutting's brother Dave) based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

 

All other companies with video games had to pay royalties for that patent as well, until it expired, right? (or at least in North America, internationally I'd imagine it's a bit different)

 

Correct, they either had to agree to licensing terms or they could try and take it to court to try and invalidate the patents. Anyone that did lost - Bally, Activision, Nintendo, etc. - over a good 30 year period. That's where the whole introduction of both Spacewar and Tennis for Two came out of, as well as Nolan's misrepresentation of the Odyssey as an analog system during one of his testimonies for those companies (I think it was Bally or Activision).