How Atari Could Have Saved The 5200

[kool kitty89]

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.

Hmm, I thought Galaxy Game used a vector display.

 

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.

Ah, right. Having Key Games in there too for a while (albeit slightly later) sdoesn't make things less confusing either.

[Retro Rogue]

Hmm, I thought Galaxy Game used a vector display.

 

While it's been reported as Vector in many places, AFAIK it's a PDP-11 modified with custom display processors to output to multiple (though it wound up being two) raster displays (which were cheaper). Probably due to the confusion that the first single player version used a vector monitor (Hewlett Packard 1300A Electrostatic Display). Unless the few sources I was using were completely wrong, which could be the case.

 

If it is vector, then Galaxy Game would be the first "computer" coin-op and first vector display coin-op, and Computer Space would be the first actual video coin-op.

[atariksi]

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.

...

It's so easy to use Atari 2600 Paddles with Atari 5200 that any Atari supporting 3rd party could have done it like I did:

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 320501195109

[Lynxpro]

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

 

 

I have no problem with what Namco/Atari Games/Tengen did [they were the same company]. Nintendo played dirty and monopolized the industry. At least the games from Atari Games were creative and not the derivative toss Nintendo always markets even to this day.

 

 

 

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)

 

 

 

Nolan is a great idea and strategy guy. He's the Preston Tucker of Tech. Great hands-on businessman? Not really. Then again, I'd take Bushnell over Tramiel any day. At least the ride all the way to the crash would be enjoyable. Where Warner failed was in finding an executive that could handle Nolan and keep the biz floating. Manny Gerard may have been the closest to that goal although their relationship did end up flaming out. Although Nolan was right about pricing the 2600 at cost, how the pinball division would never be successful, how Atari should've kept buying up as much memory as possible to screw the competition, and how they still needed to spend funds on R&D for the 2600's successor. Nolan was wrong about the shelf life of the 2600.

 

 

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)

 

 

Distribution itself is no longer a problem in Japan but the Japanese are still highly nationalistic to this day in terms of the companies they buy from. Microsoft is a poor excuse because everyone hates them, regardless of nationality. At least "Atari" sounded Japanese. Microsoft does not sound Japanese; it just sounds like an English word for erectile disfunction [which is fitting because their products are generally disfunctional].

 

What I meant before is Atari should've licensed the 2600 to Sony, Matshushita, or some [or all] other Japanese company to market in Japan and take a cut of the profits, and done so back when the 2600 debuted. Hell, maybe they should've solicited money from Sony or others to develop the 2600 in the first place. Same goes with the computer line. Atari could've negated MSX by 4 years had they licensed the 400/800 to those same companies then.

 

 

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.

 

 

No, I meant that many of Atari's independent distributors were shady and they gave inaccurate figures to Atari about demand which then contributed to Atari creating a glut of product. "Game Over" covers that. Atari had asked Warner several times for WEA - probably the best run music distributor back then - to handle distribution but WEA staff thought video games were beneath them [and the kiss of death to the music industry too] and thus they did not actively get involved until 1984.

 

 

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

 

Source code is always useful when trying to figure out how a game ticks. See Jeff Minter for an example. He studied the original source code to Tempest before he even tried to make Tempest 2K. It helps to make more accurate conversions. The point is, Atari programmers asked for source code of the arcade titles they were porting but rarely got it. It was another grievance they had with Kassar.

 

 

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

 

To me, that explains why it is inferior right there.

 

 

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).

 

 

They still did not see the patents. It is infringement on the mechanics but Al did that on his own. If anything, that shows that either the patented methods were obvious or Al Alcorn was a friggin' genius for easily duplicating tech he had not seen in a record amount of time and improving it. And Nolan's/Atari's attorneys thought they could invalidate the patents but the lawsuit expenses would've been [estimated] at $1.5 million and Magnavox offered to settle for $700k.

 

Personally, I don't see it as duplication. Nolan and Al didn't copy it; Nolan basically described the game to Al, told him in all ways that it sucked, and instructed Al to go another way. That's not copying. That's the difference between Lensman and Star Wars, or the Diamond Rio MP3 Player and an iPod.

 

You are right in your other assertions that everything good that Steve Jobs does he learned from Bushnell. Apple's SOP in today's market seems to be analyzing how everyone else sucks at doing things and then making them coherent and useful. But that's just good design.

 

 

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.

 

 

The Odyssey had no real impact on the consumer. It was Atari's Pong in the arcades that created the frenzy and set up both the arcade and home video game industry. The Odyssey came first but it was like a new Kenny Loggins record no one's ever gonna hear.

 

Furthermore, it is hard to consider the Odyssey a game. A game without keeping score? Retarded. Sure, the controls - that looked like Spock should be peering through on the bridge of the Enterprise than serving as a "game" controller - controlled movement on the screen but it is a very liberal interpretation of what it is controlling is a game. It is barely a cut above shining a flash light on the wall in the dark and trying to create images or pretending they are light sabers.

 

The system isn't any fun either. It's as if a sadist [or a masochist, I'm debating which term to use as most appropriate] created it. No sound, plastic maps to trace things on the screen with, no nothing. It's the "Homer" of liberally acknowledged video game systems.

 

Ampex created the video cassette but it was VHS and Beta that brought the tech home. So who exactly created the home [motion picture] video industry? Ampex or Sony/JVC?

 

 

II 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.

 

 

No, all you have to do is watch any of the interviews Baer has given on G4 or anywhere else. He comes off as smug and pompous. Even with a comparison between the Odyssey "Pong" right next to Atari Pong one can see how much different they are and how much better the Atari version is. It's the difference between Lucy and modern Homo Sapien Sapien. So much so that one generally does not want to even credit the inferior earlier version and rather explain everything away with some god character [i.e. Nolan or Al] as having come up with the whole shabang on their own.

 

 

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 claimed in an interview he's a better engineer than his own son who did stuff for NASA. That's not humble and it is grandiose. Did he invent a way to manipulate a video image on the screen? Yes. Was his work an actual success? No. Others made it a success based upon their own modifications and nearly wholly independent of his work. Did he create a company that popularized all of this and is fondly remembered to this day by many? No. Was his most successful product stolen from Atari? Yes. Sinister? Mildly. Successfully sinister? No.

 

 

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.

 

 

He comes off as all of that in the interviews. It is all "Nolan, grrrrr, Al, grrrr, Pong, grrrr, Atari, grrrrrr." To me, the true test is can bitter rivals work with each other. Look at how much interplay there is in the industry. Atari, Amiga, Commodore, Apple, Sony, etc. over the years. Staff and personalities interchange all the time. Bitter rivals from competing platforms in a prior generation collaborating on current tech. Where's Ralph been? What has he done in the video game industry since then? Nolan is still around in a small capacity. So is Al. RJ Mical is at Sony.

 

As for the Ralph/Al stuff, that's good then. It seemed like from the videos it was the other way around. Besides, those classic game conventions, do people go to be nostalgic about the Odyssey or do they go there for Atari and their contemporaries?

 

 

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.

 

 

So you are saying it was justified and Ralph couldn't rise above said behavior. As for suing, it would've been Atari suing Milton Bradley. Considering Warner Atari was going to go into hand helds, they probably weighed the pros and cons over suing over that versus being counter sued for any IP Milton Bradley had already accumulated.

 

 

Completely incorrect. You'd have to have the first product out to create an industry.

 

Not if people don't buy it. That's like arguing MIPS created the personal computer and not Apple.

 

 

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.

 

No different than street musicians having their friends throw money into a guitar case to compel the crowd to start contributing tips. That's called marketing.

 

 

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.

 

 

Was Nolan Atari or Atari Nolan? Was it Nolan's idea to make arcade computer/video games? Can you separate Apple from Steve Jobs? It isn't uncommon for company founders to personify their company or refer to their company or themselves as the same. As for Nolan taking credit for what his employees did, how is that any different from the relationship between actors and directors [or producers]? You see that everywhere. Is a company an entity of its own or is its success due equally to individual staff?

 

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.

 

 

It isn't a stretch at all. Do you really think the masses would've embraced personal computers had video games not taken off first? Without Atari, there is no Apple and then there would be no "personal computers". We'd still have mainframes in business and in universities, research institutes, and hobbyists building their own. They would not be on every desktop in the world.

 

 

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.

 

If it is his company, then it is his. If he comes up with an idea, raises the money, and hires the staff that actually implements it, then it is his and his to receive credit from.

 

Whether a con man or not, he is a genius. I remember reading an interview with him from the mid 90s when he said the internet would ultimately kill shopping at malls and that experience would have to adapt with gimmicks like having people see the manufacturing of the products they buy on-site. That is now happening at VW in Germany. You tour the massive VW complex, you can learn to drive the vehicle, and then you get to watch it get assembled and then you can drive it home after paying for it.

 

 

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

 

How many companies has he founded?

 

 

I will say Ralph deserves full credit for creating the light gun. That is his contribution to video gaming, as well as the processes of manipulating video images on screen. But fathering the actual industry? No. Copying the look and feel of his alleged game(s)? No. Copying is what the other companies did to Atari's Pong. No real improvements, just straight cloning.

 

But that's how I see it.

Edited March 13, 2010 by Lynxpro

[kool kitty89]

It's so easy to use Atari 2600 Paddles with Atari 5200 that any Atari supporting 3rd party could have done it like I did:

Same goes for converting the 5200 controllers to work on the VCS (or 8-bit) as paddles.

[kool kitty89]

I have no problem with what Namco/Atari Games/Tengen did [they were the same company]. Nintendo played dirty and monopolized the industry. At least the games from Atari Games were creative and not the derivative toss Nintendo always markets even to this day.

I though Atari Games was already independent by the time the Rabbit chip came up. It looks like Namco only had them for about a year before dropping the company (rather like Warner). I suppose work could have started on the chip beforehand, but I think Tengen was still publishing licensed games at the time. (Namco dropped them in '86)

Kind of odd that they went though all that trouble when others (like Color Dreams and Camerica) simply used a voltage spiking mechanism to freeze the lockout chip instead. (apparently Atari was concerned about possible damage caused by this -and I do have a TV that goes out of sync for such games and the game genie)

 

 

Nolan was wrong about the shelf life of the 2600.

Perhaps he wasn't, hanging onto the VCS too long, or more specifically putting top resources into it continually, was one of Atari/Warner's problems. It may have been better if they'd planned to replace it (or succeed it) 3-4 years after release. Of course, it wouldn't have been suddenly discontinued, btu phased out, moved into a lower-end category of product before actually being discontinued, as later games systems have shown. (the NES, Genesis, SNES, and PSX were still selling about 10 years after their releases, and look at the PS2 -there's the evn more extreme example of the Game Boy, but that's a bit of a different market)

 

Distribution itself is no longer a problem in Japan but the Japanese are still highly nationalistic to this day in terms of the companies they buy from. Microsoft is a poor excuse because everyone hates them, regardless of nationality. At least "Atari" sounded Japanese.

That's because Atari is a Japanese word. The Xbox 360 seems to have sold noticeably in Japan though, but whether at a profit (including software), is another matter entirely.

 

What I meant before is Atari should've licensed the 2600 to Sony, Matshushita, or some [or all] other Japanese company to market in Japan and take a cut of the profits, and done so back when the 2600 debuted. Hell, maybe they should've solicited money from Sony or others to develop the 2600 in the first place. Same goes with the computer line. Atari could've negated MSX by 4 years had they licensed the 400/800 to those same companies then.

Not even full licensing necessarily, or not in the typical sense; perhaps more like the arrangement with Sears and their Tele-games label. (and once manufacturing moved overseas, importing the hardware wouldn't much matter either) Other companies licensed their hardware for foreign regions, th eCV was even sold under CBS electronics in Europe, and Bandai distributed the Intellivision, Playcadia 2001, and Vectrex in Japan.

 

 

 

 

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

To me, that explains why it is inferior right there.

Inferior to what, other Pong consoles?

 

They still did not see the patents. It is infringement on the mechanics but Al did that on his own. If anything, that shows that either the patented methods were obvious or Al Alcorn was a friggin' genius for easily duplicating tech he had not seen in a record amount of time and improving it.

No, it shows that Baer beat them to it, it's not about how difficult it is, it's about who did it first and filed for a patent. (not saying it was simple to accomplish, but that it's immaterial in context of the patent -hence why every other company with raster based game machines failed in court against those patents too, including Nintendo)

 

It's not about the tennis game, it's about the raster display. (and in that case Computer Space predates Alcorn's design too, though Computer Space could also have been sued over with Baer's patents)

 

No sound, plastic maps to trace things on the screen with, no nothing. It's the "Homer" of liberally acknowledged video game systems.

Note that a lot of that is due to Magnavox's decisions, not Baer's design. (Marty alreay listed additional features that got cut out -not sure about scoring, but definitely color and sound)

 

He claimed in an interview he's a better engineer than his own son who did stuff for NASA. That's not humble and it is grandiose. Did he invent a way to manipulate a video image on the screen? Yes. Was his work an actual success? No.

You mean, the manifestations which Magnavox chose to create based on his invention wasn't very successful, the design itsself is another matter... BTW, have you ever actually seen figures on profits, revenue, or sales of the Odyssey? (and again, the tennis game isn't the big deal of contention, rather the fundamental mechanism of producing graphics on a video -raster- display)

 

Considering Warner Atari was going to go into hand helds, they probably weighed the pros and cons over suing over that versus being counter sued for any IP Milton Bradley had already accumulated.

But was touchme ever even patented?

 

That's like arguing MIPS created the personal computer and not Apple.

???

[atariksi]

It's so easy to use Atari 2600 Paddles with Atari 5200 that any Atari supporting 3rd party could have done it like I did:

Same goes for converting the 5200 controllers to work on the VCS (or 8-bit) as paddles.

 

But there's a difference. Atari 2600 Paddles/joysticks were industry standard and used in many platforms as I listed before. 5200 controllers were attempts to imitate the crappy intellivision type controllers. Atari didn't realize their controllers were better when trying to mimic intellivision. Touchpads being optional and separate is a better way to go about it than dragging all buttons always all on one controller.

[DracIsBack]

They could have gotten a time machine, traveled into the future, and brought back Adventure II to be a pack-in game.

 

That should have done the trick then and there!

[Divya16]

They could have gotten a time machine, traveled into the future, and brought back Adventure II to be a pack-in game.

 

That should have done the trick then and there!

 

If they went a little further into the future, they could have gotten King's Quest 9 and used that as a pack-in game on a 64GB SD card. Then it would be the only system even to the present day with that game. A good selling point even for today.