A History of Atari — the Golden Years 170
simoniker writes "Over at Gamasutra, Steve Fulton has published a massive 23,000-word history of Atari from 1978 to 1981, encompassing '... some of the most exciting developments the company ever saw in its history: the rise of the 2600, the development of some of the company's most enduringly popular games (Centipede, Asteroids) and the development and release of its first home computing platforms.' Best quote in there for Slashdot readers, perhaps: 'Atari had contracted with a young programmer named Bill Gates to modify a BASIC compiler that he had for another system to be used on the 800. After that project stalled for over a year Al was called upon to replace him with another developer. So ... Al is the only person I know ever to have fired Bill Gates.'"
who would of thought (Score:5, Interesting)
that today they sue their fans [techradar.com] and anybody who gives a negative review of their games [techspot.com]
oh how the mighty has fallen
How Atari Failed (Score:5, Interesting)
My father was a die-hard Atari user back in those days. I remember asking him why Atari was not as popular as it used to be as the years went by, and I'll never forget his answer:
"Because Apple went to lunch with the schools, IBM went to lunch with the companies, and Atari didn't go to lunch with anybody."
I never learned how much truth there was in that answer, but I really liked his response! That, and his "Join the Revolution! Buy an Atari!" stamper.
Re:And what's best (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only that, but nowadays anyone can use free tools to write a semi-decent Atari game.
Batari Basic is a good example, although "free as in beer":
http://bataribasic.com/ [bataribasic.com]
Another old guy reminiscing... (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember getting my first Atari 800... Then after that the 800XL, 130XE, 520ST, 1040ST, etc.. The 800XL was my first real chance to learn to program. Previously it had been on a Commodore Vic-20 at a cousin's house. I actually owe my career to those days spent writing little BASIC programs to do simple things.
At the time there was a magazine called Compute!. It had program listings for multiple machines including the Atari, Commodore, Apple IIe, and later on, the PC, ST and Amiga lines. Many of the programs were written in BASIC, but as the magazine progressed more and more were written in 6502 assembler. It was tedious to key in those listings (essentially typing in HEX dumps with a checksum) but we managed.
In middle school I was in one of the first programming classes in the school and district. The computers were all Apple IIe and Franklin Ace 1000s, but the instructor had a soft spot for the Ataris. For the end of term project I wrote a little quiz program that flashed a question on the screen in one of the Atari graphic modes, then read the 8-bit joystick port to see which answer was selected. I also tried to write an Infocom-like game, but it proved much harder than I had anticipated. I did get the user to be able to navigate a map though :D
For a long time I missed those days... Luckily Linux came along and all is well again...
Re:Help me find an old 2600 game (Score:3, Interesting)
I was just about to say exactly that. I remembered Atari 800 Star Raiders from my childhood, and got the 2600 port as an adult hoping it would be as good. Not even close. So I just play it in emulation instead.
Someday I'll find that deal on an atari 800 Ive been looking for. My dad gave ours away many years ago.
Re:I was addicted to Atari 2600 (Score:3, Interesting)
I too was addicted to the Atari. Both the 2600 and later the ST when we had one. But for me it was always the deeply held belief that if I could just last a bit longer, I might reach the end. Or at least 'something special' would happen.
I wanted to beat Pitfall. I wanted to see if there was an end to River Raid.
Cosmic Ark, Riddle of the Sphinx, the Swordquest games. These all surely had to have some sort of ending... and I wanted to know what it was. The 'stories' that came with the games certainly implied they did.
Of course, when the ST came along many of those games actually had endings. But I still wanted to see how deep the game went. I played Dungeon Master for months, well after my party had gotten to the end and trapped Lord Chaos. I ran them daily and repeatidly up and down the dungeon from the level that had reliably spawning 'food' creatures and water to the levels where monsters that could actually be leveled against were. And I did it simply because I wanted to see if anything happened if you leveled your party up to "ArchMaster" in every class. After all, according to the novella that came with the game, that's what the Grey Lord was. So what would happen if my party got to that level?
That's a bit of what's missing in today's games. Yes, they all have some sort of depth. But there is very little 'side story' depth to them.
I loved my Atari ST... (Score:2, Interesting)
my... girl Atari ST ;)
Actually, I had the Atari ST when I was in college... I really liked it and I could do my assembly projects on it (our assembly and hardware classes were all based on the M68K).
atari mail (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.textfiles.com/games/ATARIMAIL/ [textfiles.com]
Description from the site:
Jed Margolis got his hands on something precious: a decade of internal mail from the now-defunct Atari Games corporation, makers of some of the more beloved arcade games in history and one of the more amazing stories in computer history. Buried among these large collections of e-mails from the Atari Corp. VAX are discussions of programming, trivia, jokes, and some real insights into the day-to-day concerns of this company.
It's computing, Jim, but not as we know it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps if Bill Gates hadn't been fired... he wouldn't have ended up creating Microsoft.
How would a world without Microsoft be? Would we have the internet as we know it? Less viruses, probably. But now that I think about it... the internet may have not had the same popularity... Linux would still be for hobbyists... would we have a browser war? What would have happened to specs made by the W3C? Maybe Netscape would still be alive... AND buggy.
Most people are idealistic and want to believe that Bill Gates was the ONLY evil in computing - but what about the "patches welcome" attitude in programming?
Sometimes I'd like to start a contest on "how the world would have been without Microsoft". Would we have social networking sites? CSS 2? Ubuntu? And would the Mac have adopted a Freebsd-based Operating System?
How would the 80x86 computers run, for starters? Would they run Unix? CP/M? Would videogames use even worse copy protection schemes? Would the PC be an actual competitor against Nintendo and Sony? Or maybe, Atari would take the place that the XBOX has now?
I'd love to see the possibilities with my own eyes. Just to satisfy my curiosity.
Re:It's computing, Jim, but not as we know it. (Score:3, Interesting)