Some errors/discrepencies in atariages trivia section

[carmel_andrews]

They are as follows...with corrections

 

After leaving Atari, Nolan Bushnell went on to start Chuck E. Cheese Pizza.

 

Wrong, Chuck E Cheese was started well before Atari and Nolan went their separate ways, infact Warners sold chuck e cheese to Bushnell for 500,000 USD

 

2600 Asteroids was the first game to use 'bank-switching' that doubled its ROM space.

 

Wrong, there was a 2600 game prior to that (the name of which escapes me), which lays claim to the first game to employ bank switching techniques

 

Nintendo suggested selling the NES under the Atari label in the US, Atari declined.

 

Wrong, Atari didn't decline they just couldn't afford it as after Kassar was asked to quit atari (something to do with allegations of insider share trading) Atari's hold of the gaming industry started to crumble

 

Atari was not even present at the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show.

 

Incorrect, The organisers actually offered Atari a free stand and exhib. space, it's even mentioned in American computing mag's like Antic and Analog magazines editions of that time

 

Columbia House Record Club offered a 2600 clone called the Columbia Home Arcade.

 

It was actually the 'Gemini' system originally designed (but not released) by Coleco

 

Amiga was founded by former Atari employee Jay Miner in 1982.

 

Incorrect, Amiga was already established by David Morse (it's founder) and Morse approached Miner after he quit Atari to head up a new team to build a high end computer system

 

 

Here's a few you can add

 

During the Bushell Atari sell out to Warners, Nolan's first wife 'Paula', contested his claim to Atari, Warner's Lawyers struck a separate deal with her

 

Atari's Original name was 'Zyzygy'

 

Atari's first location or offices was originally an ice skating rink

 

Atari's coin op hit 'Asteroids' was based on a game that Atari engineer and programmer Lyle Rains was working on for Atari's unreleased 'cosmos' game system

 

Atari's 'Touch me' handheld game was Atari's first venture into the handheld electronic games market

 

The M&B electronic gaming smash hit 'simon' is actually based on an old Atari coin op game 'Touch me'

 

Atari's original name for the Atari lynx was called (the rather long winded) 'Atari colour portable, or portable colour entertainment system'

 

The Atari 7800 was the first games system to use 'data encryption algorythm's' hardware

 

Flare 2, the team responsible for developing the custom IC hardware for the Atari Jaguar, also had a hand in the first officially recognised and endorsed (by sinclair) ZX spectrum compatible computer, MGT's Sam Coupe, they designed the sound, graphics and blitter hardware

 

The Apple 2 version of 'Breakout' was the first Atari coin op game ever to be ported/converted to a non Atari platform

 

The Apple 2 version of 'breakout' was co programmed or programmed by none other the steve jobs, who designed and programmed the original Atari coin op version

 

Fernando Herrera, who co programmed the popular 'boulderdash' series of A8 and c64 games, also had a hand in programming Atari's famous VCS/A8 game 'Star Raiders'

 

The 7800, Lynx and Jaguar Have never received a conversion or port over (officially or otherwise) of the classic VCS/A8 game 'Star Raiders'

 

Atari Dos (for the A8) was originally co developed on an Apple 2

 

Star Raiders 2 (Aka last starfighter) was the first Atari released and designed computer game (non coin op) to be converted or ported over to a non Atari computer system (released on the spectrum, amstrad and c64 by electric dreams (one of activisions sister labels of the 80s))

 

Activision's Dragster, a game for the vcs/2600, was the first vcs game that could be restarted by simply pressing the joystick button

 

Games by Appolo/Apollo was the first non californian registered company to develop/design and market 2600/vcs compatible software

 

The original name for Amiga corporation was 'Hi Toro'

 

Atari UK's present Chairman is none other then the founder and former owner of Ocean software (a very famous UK software house in the mid late 80's) David Ward, who's own company (ocean) was snapped up by infogrammes in the late 90's

 

Infogrammes (Atari) is partly owned by Phillips (the dutch electronics giant), who also owned (at one time) magnavox, who were the original rights owners for the sanders associates designed 'oddysey 1/100' tv game system

 

Atari's 400 and 800 computer systems were the commercially available home/personal computers to use the graphics technique (thru hardware) called 'Display List'

 

The Operating systems manual and listing, published by Atari for the 400/800 was the first time that a computer company willingly published and released proprietary systems source code to the general public/public domain in this fashion

 

ADOS was the internal codename Atari had for DOS XE (for the Atari xf551) during it's development stage

 

During the last dark month/day's for the Warners Administration, Atari were going to launch a freestanding input device very similar to Mattel's Power Glove (for the NES), Atari called it the data glove

[rolenta]

Nintendo suggested selling the NES under the Atari label in the US, Atari declined.

 

Wrong, Atari didn't decline they just couldn't afford it as after Kassar was asked to quit atari (something to do with allegations of insider share trading) Atari's hold of the gaming industry started to crumble

 

It's not that they couldn't afford it. Nintendo offered Atari the NES for distribution everywhere except Japan because they felt they couldn't compete against Atari. Atari decided to sign the contracts at CES. However that year, Coleco unveiled the Adam. At the show, Coleco had Donkey Kong playing on the Adam. Coleco owned the home console rights to Donkey Kong but Atari owned the computer rights to the game and Adam was technically a computer. Atari demanded that Nintendo straighten the problem out before they signed on for the NES. This took several months and by that time the crash occurred and Atari was no longer the powerhouse that it previously was. Nintendo decided at that time they didn't need to be afraid of Atari any longer and were able to market the NES themselves worldwide.

 

Columbia House Record Club offered a 2600 clone called the Columbia Home Arcade.

 

It was actually the 'Gemini' system originally designed (but not released) by Coleco

 

It was called the Columbia Home Arcade and it was a renamed version of the Gemini, which WAS released.

 

 

Atari's Original name was 'Zyzygy'

 

First of all , the name was Syzygy. And it never was the official name of Atari. Dabney and Bushnell came up with the name but when they went to register it with the state of California, they learned that it had already been used by a roofing company.

[Christophero Sly]

Activision's Dragster, a game for the vcs/2600, was the first vcs game that could be restarted by simply pressing the joystick button

The button is the accelerator. Pushing the joystick to the right resets the game.

[Dan Iacovelli]

Double post

Edited August 10, 2006 by Dan Iacovelli

[Dan Iacovelli]

Atari's original name for the Atari lynx was called (the rather long winded) 'Atari colour portable, or portable colour entertainment system'

 

Actually Epyx designed the Lynx and it was orignaly to be called the Handy.

[Atari-Jess]

And then Stan jr came and put it all under his hat.

[carmel_andrews]

A few more you can add

 

Atari coin op game 'Gauntlet' is actually based on an old A8 APX game 'Dandy dungeons'

 

The first A8 computer game (non cartridge) to employ 'Bank switching' techniques was the follow up to miner 2049r, Bounty bob strikes back

 

Thunderfox was the only original UK programmed Atari corp. designed/released game to appear on cassette, disk and cartridge at the same time

 

Atari had plans to launch both a 64 and 256k memory module for the 800 to counteract the numerous unofficial 800 ram upgrades on the market in the US, suffice it to say, it was not released

 

Starpath's 'supercharger' cartridge was the first ram upgrade or non keyboard/input device hardware upgrade for the vcs/2600

 

Starpath, orignators of the supercharger upgrade for the vcs/2600 was co-founded by Bob Brown, who's better known as the person that conceived, designed and headed up the team behind Atari's first consumer product, Home Pong

 

The original name for starpath was Arcadia

 

Due to the lack of memory in a 2600/vcs, it's graphics system can only scan or view half a tv screen of graphics

 

According to one of the 2600 designers, the 2600 got it's name, not from it's serial/product number but the number of 'clock cycles' the graphics system uses to scan in or draw a line

 

The Atari software label APX was the computer industries first and only successfull attempt at selling/marketing user written/PD quality software through the retail market

 

According to the standard APX contract it issued to aspiring contributors to the APX software library, Atari would only retain the sales, marketing and distribution rights, any gaming, conversion/port over or programming/coding rights still remain it the original author

 

Only 3 APX titles ever succeeded in making it to Atari's mainstream inhouse software label, Eastern front, Cavern's of Mars and Typo Attack

 

The APX game Dandy dungeon, was the first APX game (and only) to be converted or ported over to a non Atari platform (Dandy, by Activisions sister label Electric Dreams, released on the spectrum, c64, amstrad etc

 

The Monitor/debugger part of the popular A8 assembler cartridge MAC 65 originally started life as a stand alone program contribution on the APX label called DDT (Dunion's Duggin Tool)

 

The software label Atari used to sell software on non Atari platforms in the early/mid 80's (atarisoft) was Also used for the Atari computer software, to distinguish them from the other non Atari platform games, they used red packaging instead of green

 

In the UK, Star raiders, Asteroids and Centipede and two others would eventually be re released on cassette format as a compilation on the Atarisoft label (initally a 'free' giveaway with bundled 800xl and cassette drive packs)

 

Stella And PAM are unique in codenames Atari used for hardware/software projects, Stella was a American manufacturer/brand name for bicycles and PAM was an Acronym/Abreviation for Personal Arcade Machine (the 5200)

 

The name Atari was chosen for Nolan by an office worker working for the californian company and patent registrations office, whilst he was trying to register 'Syzygy' (which had already been taken)

 

The codename used for the original Amiga computer (pre CBM) was 'Lorraine'

 

Commodore was originally established by Tramiel in the early 50's in New York as 'Everest Business machines' and only became commodore once they had relocated north of the border to Canada

 

In the mid/late 80's Atari tried to do a 'commodore' by marketing and selling it's own 'cheapo' range of calculators, unfortunately that doesn't last too long in the marketplace, apparently they were manufactured and designed (unsurprisingly) by a Canadian company

 

The original design for the amiga computer was set around a MOS 650x series of CPU's, only to to later adapted for Motorola 68xxx processor family

 

The Atari graphics chip 'Antic' is actually a programmable graphics microprocessor

 

The first coin op game 'computer space' was designed, programmed and developed in the bedroom of the Daughter of computer space's designer

 

Cinematronics rejigged version of 'computer space' was the first time a coin op game used vector or X/Y graphics

 

Computer space by Nolan Bushnell is adapted from Steve Russell's original text game 'space war'

 

In order to keep the cost of manufacturing the Atari 800 down, Atari had considered using an 'all in one' motherboard (which encompassed, sound, graphics, cpu and personality boards) called collete or colette, it was never used, but the concept at least was the inspiration behind the XL series design

 

Along with the other expansion cards planned for the 1090XL expansion box, Atari had already designed a 'VCS compatibility' card (for the said expansion box) also there were rumour's of an Apple 2 compatibility card

 

Atari's planned CPM add on for the A8 was originally going to housed in the same casing as the 1050, until atari decided to use the CPM add on as part of the 1090 xl expansion box

 

The Atari 1050 and vcs 2600 are connected, they both feature 128 bytes of memory (unmodified) and a 6507

Edited August 11, 2006 by carmel_andrews

[rolenta]

According to one of the 2600 designers, the 2600 got it's name, not from it's serial/product number but the number of 'clock cycles' the graphics system uses to scan in or draw a line

 

I would dispute this one. While the original product number CX-2600 may have derived from the 'number of 'clock cycles' the graphics system uses to scan in or draw a line', there is no doubt that when the Marketing Department at Atari needed a name for the Super System, they doubled the product number CX-2600 and came up with 5200 (and by an added boost of imagination added 2600 again to come up with 7800).

[carmel_andrews]

Actually Epyx designed the Lynx and it was orignaly to be called the Handy.

 

If you read the original posting, i was not referring the the handy, pre atari, i was referring to what the machine was called by atari prior to it's name change (to the Lynx)