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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

The Last Days Of Atari - In Full Color 143

Posted by simoniker from the amazing-ancient-artefacts dept.
AtariKee writes "Scott Evans (famous to video game collectors as the sole owner of Army Battlezone and two Marble Madness 2 machines) stopped out at the former Atari's Milpitas, CA facility [most recently a Midway office] and took a large collection of pictures of what was once the mighty arcade giant's headquarters." The good news is that Scott "was able to obtain and preserve the majority of what you see here."
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The Last Days Of Atari - In Full Color More

The Last Days Of Atari - In Full Color

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  • Marble Madness... Didn't they have this for Super NES? I spent many fun hours playing this game. Think I need to find a ROM I've completely forgotten about it.
    • not on the super nes, on the regular nes (and several other platforms)
      • Oh ok, I was thinking that while I typed, SNES and NES sometimes run together in my mind. It's been too long.

        I guess I'll start to look for a NES rom then.
    • You want the Genesis version, which has better graphics, sound, and control.

    • Re:Fun Game (Score:4, Informative)

      by Deusy ( 455433 ) <<charlie> <at> <vexi.org>> on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:32AM (#6877388) Homepage
      Or you could try the Free Software equivalents, of which there are 2 that I know of:

      * Neverball [happypenguin.org]
      * Trackballs [happypenguin.org]

      One of the common misconceptions with Free Software is that there are not many high quality games. There are many, many high quality Free Software games [happypenguin.org].

      Talking of game quality... isn't that why Atari went bust? If you don't make good games or good games hardware packaged with good games any more, people won't pay for them.
      • Talking of game quality... isn't that why Atari went bust? If you don't make good games or good games hardware packaged with good games any more, people won't pay for them.

        *sigh* i wonder how long will take until EA Games gets the message. People never learn.

      • Atari (Score:3, Insightful)

        by virg_mattes ( 230616 )
        > Talking of game quality... isn't that why Atari went bust?

        Not really. The reason Atari went under is that they were not so heavily into home systems as they were into arcade games (the big kind you see in the photos), and the money from that market dried up when people started getting home consoles and computer games. They were heavily invested in a market that died out from under them.

        Virg

        • Re:Atari (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Saige ( 53303 )
          No. Atari was split apart, with "Atari" referring to the home computer and console part, while "Atari Games" referred to the arcade division that was bought up and passed around and such for years.

          After the Jaguar, which died due to a combination of lack of development tools making development difficult on the unusual architechure, weak third-party support, and mainly the horrible managment of the Tramiels (they hired someone to turn the company around, who promptly quit when Jack Tramiel continued to ins
          • But still, Atari?
            Pac-man, Joust, and all the others?
            Gone? Forever?
            Except ROMs and remakes?
            What a cruel world.
            Of course, those games were only slightly better than X-box. I know this from experience. :-(

    • Re:Fun Game (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Marble Madness was also THE killer app of the Amiga 1000 when it was released back in 1984.

      Later on Defender of the Crown for Amiga stunned everyone with even more unbelievable gfx, sound and music ...
    • The game is called "Marble Man", not Marble Madness. It's an unreleased Atari prototype that he rescued from the brink of extinction. There are apparently only 3 or so in existence. So it's not quite as pedestrian as Marble Madness, which you can still find in a classic arcade from time to time.

      • The write-up correctly refers to the game as Marble Madness 2. The full title of the game is "Marble Madness II : Marble Man". See it here. [klov.com]

        The write-up also correctly points out that Mr Evans is the *sole* owner of the two MMII's in existence. There aren't "only 3 or so in existence" - he has the only two.

    • Re:Fun Game (Score:3, Informative)

      by Chasing Amy ( 450778 )
      Why not just download the original arcade ROM and MAME? :-) It's the most faithful to the arcade original, for obvious reasons...

  • Maybe im wrong but Atari isnt really dead (Score:4, Funny)

    by BorgxXx ( 704450 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:02AM (#6877299)
    they just put out a little game under theyre new company name ....some game based on some movie series called "The Matrix". Probably wont amount to much i hear the movies didnt do to well :)

    • Re:Maybe im wrong but Atari isnt really dead (Score:4, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:19AM (#6877360) Homepage Journal
      No, Atari disappeared a long time ago. Exactly when is hard to pin down -- the history is convoluted [slashdot.org]. The current Atari is just a French video game company that acquired the name pretty much by accident when they bought up Hasbro Interactive.

      • Infogrammes bought Atari (Score:5, Informative)

        by naztafari ( 696863 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:18AM (#6877490) Homepage
        Essentially when the original founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell sold it to Warner Communications in 1976, everything went downhill and Atari turned to crap because of lack of vision. (corporate bloodsuckers were running the show) What you see as Atari now is Infogrammes (that company with the rainbow-armadillo ribbon logo), which bought up Atari, and which now apparently is trying to capitalize on Atari's name by changing its name to Atari. Well, its got Unreal under its wing...

        • Re:Infogrammes bought Atari (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Dot.Com.CEO ( 624226 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:45AM (#6877778)
          No. Atari went downhill when Jack Tramiel failed to compete with Amiga. The Atari ST (FM/E) was not a big deal in the US but it was HUGE in Europe, especially Germany. I remember most of the software available, especially apps, was German at the time, including an amazing DTP software (Calamus), an EXCELLENT Mac Emulator (Aladdin?) and most, ahem, disk copying software.

          Amiga was better than the Atari ST in one crucial thing: games. It had both stereo sound and a hardware blitter chip. It was designed for multimedia, whatever that meant at the time. However, most people, myself included, who would choose the ST did so because of the Hi-Res 640x400 monochrome mode that was AMAZINGLY good on Atari's excellent mono white phosphore monitor. Mac emulation, for example, was a joy since you could run Mac programs both faster and at a better resolution than a Mac classic which, frankly, was good enough for almost everything at the time.

          Atari lost it first with the STE. It was too little, too late. I don't remember specifically any games that used the advanced capabilities of the STE except for a couple that required it for paralax scrolling. Playing Shadow on the Beast on the ST was painful, for example, while it was a joy on the Amiga. Although I do remember tears of joy when I came upon a demo that managed to replicate perfectly the well-known and amazing, for the time, bouncing ball demo that sold more Amigas than people can imagine.

          Then, they lost it with Falcon and the 68030 machines that were too expensive AND sported a TOS (operating system) that was mostly incompatible with past versions. Even though they were great machines TOS and GEM could not compete with Windows any more and many people, myself included, migrated to Wintel. But don't kid yourself, Europe was 66% Amiga, 33% ST at the time for computer games. PCs were few, they were very expensive and had ugly, UGLY CGA games. How could an EGA PC compare with the beauty that was Defender of the Crown and all the other beautiful Cinemaware games? ST was a force over here and I have not regretted any hardware sale in my life except the sale of my 1040 STE and monitors.

          The Atari 800 was also a great computer, so I really have to disagree with you that Atari went downhill after '76. Arguably, what destroyed Atari was the overhyping and underperforming of the Jaguar, as well as Tramiel's grandiose figurehead management.

          • it was HUGE in Europe, especially Germany

            It's true that the multimedia capabilites of the Amiga were better (although that didn't help Commodore or Amiga, their brands pretty much suffer the same fate as Atari). The ST on the other hand had a MIDI interface. Several recording studios today still have a ST with the Steinberg software and the "Tape Operating System" (SCRN).

            The Atari 800 was also a great computer

            Ah, yes, those were the days. Games and software were sparse, esp. when compared to the C64
            • Yes, I forgot the MIDI interface. What was amazing about it was that in some games, specifically Sierra On Line adventures you could connect a MIDI keyboard and have unheard-of sound quality. Simply amazing... I remember a lot of people at the time complaining that the ST had a MIDI in and out, but no MIDI through, I guess the good outweighed the bad and the ST remained king in this area...
              • The ST's MIDI interface helped create one of the coolest games of all time - MIDIMAZE! Up to 16 player FPS, all conntected via MIDI, a big maze (design your own!) and you're hunting smiley faces!

                Damn! That was fun!

          • Re:Infogrammes bought Atari (Score:5, Informative)

            by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @07:59AM (#6878405) Journal
            Actually what really killed Atari can be linked to several factors:
            1) The 2600 cartridge glut. This is the prime error Atari made. Back in the day, they let everyone make carts for the system. At first this was great becuase it quickly built up a game base for the console. However, by 1982-83 things were out of hand. There was rampant piracy (look at Pitfall by Activision and Tomboy by Imagic), companies that had no business making games were making some of the shittiest games of all time, and no one could tell if any one game was better tahn another. Eventually the market reached saturation and then became over saturated reulting in no company with the exception of a few stars like Activison (which still took a hit) being able to make money. Among the biggest losers was the part of Atari that made the games (remember ET?).

            2) The console remained on the market too long. They didn't update the things oon enough. What you want to do is get people hooked on the first console and then come out with another while taht interst is peaked. Atari sat on its ass until sometime around late 83-84.

            3) Tramiel's bumbling. Jack Tramiel proved in 1983 that he was the worst manager in recorded history. He took a company that controlled 95% of its market and flushed it down the crapper. In 1983, Atari lost over 500 million dollars (and the whole industry at the time was only worth about (3 billion at best). At some points Atari was losing millions of dollars a day. This can be associated with a lot of his decisions, among them complicating the atari buecracy to a rdiciulous degree. You could never get things done if you tried to follow his rules and if you didn't you were fired. People who had been working for the company since '74 were being fired for the mere fact that they bent the rules in order to actually get work done.

            4) Tramiel's late '80's policies. Atari was dying by '85 but Jack Tramiel's main poilicies were what drove the nail in the coffin. Jack Tramiel had, I believed, designed one of the odesseys in the late 60's and he had based his market policies on that experience. Back in the 60's the press had gone to him for news about his game system. As a result Tramiel in the mid to late 80's decided that a good a product sells itself and so, while other companies like Nintendo and Sega were dropping fortunes into advertising, Atari was basically eliminating advertising. By the tiem Jaguar came out, the kids didn't even know Atari still existed.

            5) The jaguar. Good concept, bad timing. They designed the 64 bit system but made one critical error - 64 bit games take more time and money than 16 bit games. The developement process for a single game was about 6 months (with a massive team) where Nintendo was coming out with games by the truckload and since no one else wanted to make games for it (or could afford to with cash geysers liek Nintendo games), Atari was left with a system that they could not possibly make profitable. It's software library was never going to be more than a couple dozen titles and in order to offset developement costs each would have had to cost 200-300 a piece. Through almost no advertising and you get a flop.

            6) Tiem warner. Atari during Bushnell had a monopoly on the type of chips that made the Atari 2600 as good as it was. There were about 9 companies that made the chips that could compete with Atari's systems and Bushnell had the foresight to go and make exclusive deals with them all. Bushnell understood the game business. Time warner did not. They tried to sell video games like they did records. They saw these deals and didn't understand that there was a monopoly, only that they were overpaying for supply and so they dropped the contracts. Result: those businesses went out and sold the chips to Atari's competitors.

            In the end, Atari made a couple dozen mistakes taht we would say are obvious now but back then when the market was relatively new were not nearly so apparent. Even as late as '85 people though Atari was indestructible. But they got c
            • The moral of the story kids is that today's indestructable technology monopoly can be tomorrow's bankrupt and forgotten company. Remember that Microsoft.

            • Re:Infogrammes bought Atari (Score:4, Funny)

              by Talinom ( 243100 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @09:48AM (#6879508) Homepage Journal
              Wrong.

              Atari went out of business as a preemptive counterattack to an imminent slashdotting [midway.com]. After all, who would put a link to a bunch of pictures [safestuff.com] on the web unless it was meant to kill the target?
            • This is an excellent assessment of the fate of Atari. I remember reading somewhere on the net about the ups and downs of the videogame era, the fortunes that were made and lost. The hardware (especially the Atari 2600) was extemely difficult to program for so anyone with any skill whatsoever was worth their weight in gold and was given free reign during design. There were a lot of stinker games made during that period and people lost their jobs, careers and in a number of cases their lives (to suicide) w
            • How on earth did this post get modded up to "informative"???? Practically everything in it is either partially or wholly inaccurate.

              >This is the prime error Atari made. Back
              >in the day, they let everyone make carts
              >for the system.

              Eh? The VCS was one of the first home gaming system with interchangeable games. I don't think anyone had given the slightest consideration at that point to locking down the system so that only the manufacturer could produce games for it. Atari didn't, "let everyone m
            • I remember when the Jaguar frst came out. This was when console games were first starting to be popular in video stores. After all how many folks were going to drop 30-60 bucks for a game without trying it out for 3 bucks first. For that matter back then you could rent consoles from the video store as well - trying to decide which console to buy? You could "test drive" an SNES or a Sega along with a few games for about 15 bucks, but not a Jaguar.

              The folks at Atari slapped a TOS license on everything relate
              • ... I picked up a Jaguar box and read that highly restrictive license. ...

                Interesting. Now I've got to go and read that box.

                I bought a Jaguar about three months after it was discontinued. Got a console and about 10 games for $200. A great deal, IMO, since I still play some of those titles on a regular basis (I think Tempest 2000 [atariage.com] is a great game even by today's standards.)

                It's a real pity that Atari was never able to market their way back into the mainstream. While the 5200 had its share of problem

            • Although I think the whole 64/32 bit debate is silly, I read an interview with the creator of NBA Jam:TE for Jaguar where he pointed out the lack of cpu cache as a critical flaw in the system, saying you could've doubled performance with just a little cache. I also remember him saying NBA Jam:TE was pushing the envolope on what could be done on the Jaguar. That motorola 68k didn't help either. Companies got in the bad habit of porting Genesis titles using the 68k and just sprucing up the color. While I'm n
        • I basically agree with your rant, but I have to pick one little nit: Infogrammes didn't buy Atari, they bought Hasbro Interactive, which had previously bought the Atari name from JTS, which had merged with Atari Computer, which was created when Warner spun off Atari's consumer division. There was also Atari's arcade division, which they renamed Time-Warner Interactive, and which eventually became Midway West, which is (I think) the division Midway shut down last May.

          I guess Atari Computer has the biggest

      • Atari died on July 30, 1996 when the Tramiels sold Atari to some obscure hard drive company. I remember it well, as did most of my compatriots on GEnie. I switched over to Apple a year later.
        • Actually, it was more like a merger. I think that the Tramiels saw how PCs were squeezing out competing platforms (strange to remember how many there were: Amiga, Commodore, TI, Acorn... and that's just in the consumer market), and it was time to switch to businesses. Not the first computer company to do that: Data General also became a storage vendor, Control Data became an integrator...

          And I think the old Atari Arcade division (called Midway West when it was finally shut down this year) also has some cl

    • Did they not also have the Atari name and logo plastered all over Neverwinter Nights as well ?
    • Short form:

      Warner bought Atari, and split it into two divisions, home and arcade. When Atari stopped being profitable, Warner sold the divisions separately. Arcade eventually wound up as part of Midway (Who you may remember publishing games like Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, and other capitalizations on Atari licenses), which closed out that division, effectively ending that half of Atari. The parent article is about the end of the arcade branch of Atari.

      Home, on the other hand, through a long chain of purchases

  • thanks to this guy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:04AM (#6877305)
    its great to see people preserving out gaming heritage. I firmly believe that every game...yes even the dubious custer's rapin' rampage...deserves veneration as both an example for programmers and as a toy for me and all the kids people with real lives manage to turn out everyday
    • I don't know enough to have an opinion but a few people on usenet have commented on this topic and were not too happy.(yea I know what a surprise people on usenet were complaining).

      Mostly they were not happy because if there is a fire or such then much of video game history as we know it goes away forever. Alos there is the point that without letting dumpers access those boards, those games will simply rot and never be recoverable. So basically the collective opinion was "what a waste" since most people f

  • Atari in San Jose (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:06AM (#6877314) Homepage Journal
    My company took over Atari's building on North First Street in San Jose. There was a whiteboard that still had a project status for porting various well-known arcade games to Apple, C64, etc. Very melancholy [umd.edu].

  • Build your own arcade. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Einherjer ( 569603 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:06AM (#6877315) Homepage
    A friend of mine built his own arcade.
    Go here for some instructions and photos: http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~akogler/mamelade/ [uni-klu.ac.at]

  • Is it just me (Score:3, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:07AM (#6877316)
    Or does Marble man look like Pac man's illegitimate love child on serious amount of drugs
  • > and took a large collection of pictures of what was once the mighty arcade giant's headquarters And after a while that server will face the Atari's destiny.

  • Man, that old asteroids machine... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:12AM (#6877338)
    ...sure brings back some memories. The first time I saw one was while shopping in a drugstore and of course immediately dropped in a coin to try it out. The grapics were just white lines on a black screen but the game sure was addictive.
  • 'Large collection of pictures' and Slashdot.... hmmmm.... is that the aroma of the server melting?

  • Screw preserving the old atari building... (Score:3, Funny)

    by EvilCabbage ( 589836 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:23AM (#6877371) Homepage
    ... with all those photos, I'd be more worried about preserving his webserver.

    [/obligatory slashdotting comment]

  • Milpitas? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:32AM (#6877387)
    The new building?

    I can still remember seeing the Atari logo on a building off of Winchester Blvd., in Campbell. Or, it may have been in Cupertino.

    Alas, gone like the 'roids of yesteryear. Still, there is something pure in its annihilation, like a Silicon Valley marriage.

  • why is he famous? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by iamhassi ( 659463 )
    "Scott Evans (famous to video game collectors as the sole owner of Army Battlezone and two Marble Madness 2 machines)..."

    ok... so why is this so remarkable? I read both the pages and I understand that only two Army Battlezone machines exist and he went through a lot of trouble getting the marble madness board to work, but that still doesn't explain it.

    Not like it's Spot with no Spot Beanie Baby or something...

    • Re:why is he famous? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      I guess for the same reason that the Louvre is famous among art collectors when all they do is hang pictures on the wall.

      But they've got the only Venus thingy and Mona thingy.

      Some people find this remarkable. Go figure.

      KFG

    • Re:why is he famous? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jonathan_ingram ( 30440 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:31AM (#6877524) Homepage
      There's a fairly long-winded story, which boils down to this:

      These prototypes had been rumoured to exist for a long time, but no-one had actually confirmed that they owned one. When Mr. Evans did announce that he owned one, there was enormous interest among ROM-collects and MAME programmers, who wanted to get their hands on the ROMs to 'preserve' the game for humanity (and, as a nice side-benefit, enable everyone to play them on their home computer). Scott said that he would be happy to sell them for $10,000, expecting that this would put the emulation horde off. However, a campaign started on emulation sites to raise the money, and Scott very quickly realised that they would actually reach the asking price, so he pulled the offer. Much muttering ensued.
    • He is famous in the arcade video game collecting world. He has done more to preserve old arcade games and related material than probably anyone else (Well, except Al Kossow maybe). For further info, check out the Google archives of rec.games.video.arcade.collecting.

      My arcade game collection [thebrokenjoystick.com]

      Brian

  • I was there once... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kreyg ( 103130 ) <(kreyg) (at) (shaw.ca)> on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:01AM (#6877454) Homepage
    I had a job interview there in 1998 - they were known as "Atari Games," which I think was to distinguish them from "Atari," which was the part of the company that had more to do with the original console hardware (and the Jaguar?) and had spun them off at some time. In any case, they were owned by Midway.

    It was an interesting experience, walking the halls and seeing posters of so many classic games. They were still developing arcade hardware, and I was being interviewed about porting one of the arcade games to the N64.

    I believe I actually sat at the table in this [safestuff.com] picture - I had one interview over lunch with someone who was quite humorless and clearly hadn't slept for far, far too long. Actually, I think they got him out of bed to talk to me. I also played the green SF Rush machine in that picture - quite the arcade they had there.

    I guess I should be glad I took a job with another company. Still, sad to see them go. RIP Atari.
    • No, Atari Games was the original operation -- Atari started out as an arcade game [pong-story.com] company, then branched out into consumer electronics. Time Warner spun off the consumer division as Atari Computer.
  • Wow. Looking at all that art, games, machines, and history makes me so nostalgic I almost wept. The humanity!!! Good God how I loved those games, the joy they brought me in my youth, how much time I spent playing Asteroid and Pac-man. It's so sad to see all of those favorites collected in one spot like that.
    • >It's so sad to see all of those favorites collected in one spot like that.

      Why is it sad? You should be happy that they are in the hands of a collector who will preserve them and not destroy them by making MAME machines.

      If you love the classic arcade games that much, go get yourself one (though they are like Lay's - you can't have just one). You can find some REALLY good deals on them if you know where to look. I now have 20 (give or take) full games and LOTS of parts. My garage is my personal arcade

      • "You should be happy that they are in the hands of a collector who will preserve them..."

        True, but him having them locked-up in his basement does not do the collecting "scene" any good. I see that the guy got most of the paperwork and other goodies from that building. That is the kind of thing that needs to be shared (scanned-in and posted) since we (collectors and arcade-history fanatics) cannot just go buy them (like I did with my machines). The behind-the-scenes workings, design documents, company me

  • ANSWERED: PC Parts Storage Storage Solution? (Score:3, Informative)

    by DCowern ( 182668 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:28AM (#6877509) Homepage

    Wow... Ask Slashdot really came through this time. Answering the recent Ask Slashdot [slashdot.org], the pictures below show how the pros store their "parts". I hope you're paying attention, OriginalSpaceMan. :-)

  • Mirrored In case it overloads. (Score:3, Informative)

    by OdanTheAncient ( 682225 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:37AM (#6877549) Homepage
    1. http://www.thexdershome.com/ataritrip

  • Add trackball (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lightbuddy ( 689498 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:00AM (#6877641) Homepage
    I'm the admin of http://www.midway.com. I hope the low comment count and the buried link keeps us from getting slashdotted during our last days in Milpitas. It's been real...It's been fun...Can't say it's all been real fun. Big shouts to the final few. Special thanks to Jeff Bell...the oldest (not age wise) real Atari employee. See Jeff's fish at http://dickdafish.org. I'll be helping him close the doors after 31 years of service. Jeff, I'll buy you a beer for lunch tomorrow. Oh yeah, and everybody should buy the new SpyHunter2! WWIII

    • It's sad to see times change like this. The pictures of all those machines reminded me of the good times we had in the arcades in the '80s when I was in College. PS2s and such are great, but the whole arcade "experience" (meeting up with friends after classes and seeing the new high scores) is gone. Now, the last mall arcade in our area is closed -- the end of an era. Good luck in the future.

    • Oh yeah, and everybody should buy the new SpyHunter2!

      Sorry, but nobody should have to play Spy Hunter 2 [klov.com] It's pretty awful.

      ;)

  • Marble Man Roms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xenolith ( 538304 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:01AM (#6877643) Homepage
    Could some fine ex-Atari employee please release the ROMs for Marble Man (Marble Madness II), so it could be emulated for the PC? I don't see any reason to withhold the ROMs at this point in the game. I can't see anyone profiting, etc.

    Thanks for hearing my plea...

    • I'm thinking the same thing (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This game is legendary; I read about it 2 years ago and the word on the street was the MM2 was just lost to history.

      Now we have what looks like 3 working games (or just 2?). It would a *crime* to lose this piece of history just because of a copyright that is worthless that can't even be pinned down with proper ownership.

      The only thing that is going for the game is that the other guys are anonymous and could "quietly" release the game to usenet on alt.binaries.mame (or whatever). From there, history will
      • It is preserved. I've long heard the roms are copied and there is no way this game will be 'lost'. It just will not be available to the masses anytime soon. Part of this guy's agreement in getting these games was that he would not release the roms. I for one applaud him for sticking to that.

        BTW, I've played this game on 3 different occasions, and it isn't that great. That is why it wasn't released. It's only the lure of what-you-can't-have that makes this game great. :)
    • Could some fine ex-Atari employee please release the ROMs for Marble Man (Marble Madness II), so it could be emulated for the PC? I don't see any reason to withhold the ROMs at this point in the game. I can't see anyone profiting, etc.

      No? [midway.com] Granted, MMII isn't there (MM1 is) but publishers release stuff like this all the time. The ROMs are not public domain and the games are still commercially viable when packaged like this. Publishers occasionally even put out previously unreleased stuff on compilatio

  • Marble Madness for Unreal Tournament (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05, 2003 @07:17AM (#6878111)
    Marble Mania 2003 [marblemania2003.com]
  • It's one of those campy 70's throwbacks that appeals to Generation-X'ers. We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.
  • Marble madness was awsome!

    I can't wait to try out Marble Madness II in Mame with my new trackball.

    I don't see any mention of it on the mame sites, but hopefully emulation won't take too long.
    • Take a look at the dates on the Marble Madness 2 part of the guy's site, then read the text: he's had the MM2 prototype and boards for well over two years now, and he hasn't shown any interest in dumping the ROMs or letting anyone else do it.

      I guess he figures he'll be in much less demand as a guest of honor at CAExtreme if people can actually play the game themselves.

  • Fans of classic arcade gamining who live in Texas would probably enjoy visiting the

    Videotopia [utsa.edu]exhibit in San Antonio. It's an interactive museum exhibit of classic arcade games from the 80s through to the mid-90s. They've got all the important games of this era on display for people to play. You have to pay one token per game, but they have a trivia terminal that allows you to earn free tokens if you've studied the text at each display.

    It's running until November, so you've got time to check it out. Th

    • Reminds me of an exhibit at the American Museum of the Moving Image [ammi.org] in New York that I visited many years ago. It was all about the history of video games and featured an arcade of games showcasing the evolution of the genre. All but two of the games (Computer Space and Pong) were playable (for quarters, of course.)

      Although that exhibit is no longer in place, much of the content still exists in the form of a web page [ammi.org].

  • 1972 - Nolan Bushnell co-founds the company named Atari, Inc. The genius Al Alcorn designs Pong. Pong becomes a big success and Atari essentially creates an entire industry. Atari gives birth to all sorts of interesting things and also employs Steve Jobs. Atari is primarily an arcade game company but wants in on the consumer market. It makes stand-alone home game systems that Sears sells in their stores. But Bushnell is trying to fund the development of the VCS (Atari 2600) and ends up selling out to
  • Working at Midway's Chicago office, I was witness to the demise of many arcade titles. It was a sad, sad time, those of us fortunate enough to survive it will never be whole again. Midway's main development office is a labrynth of halls and cubicles, filled with blinking, bleeping arcade prototypes, their guts hanging out in bundles. And who can forget Rosyln Dugas? The goddess of hardware! Some still remain in those halls, slaving away on more modern titles, the sequels of successful franchises, maybe a fe
    • I think it's really too bad The Grid hasn't made it into many more arcades, nevermind a PC port!

      Thinking about it though.... oooohhhhh man would I love to get a PC port of that game for some LAN-party action!

      It's like a Quake gameshow!

  • If memory serves me correctly, Marble Madness (released in 1984/85) was programmed by a 16 year old, who later went on to create Crash Bandicoot. There was a good conversion of Marble Madness by EA for the Commodore 64/128. The Atari ST version wasn't so good. However, none of the console versions were as good as the arcade edition with that trackball. This was one of the first titles that ushered in the second golden age of Atari Games... Original and creative games (Gauntlet, Paperboy, 720 Degrees, T

    • Re:Marble Madness... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mahlen ( 6997 )
      Yes, the kid who wrote Marble Madness was Mark Cerny. He and I had been close friends when we were 8-11 years old, but I've lost contact with him since. Google reveals that he's done a lot of game design work since. He now has a game consulting company, Cerny Games (http://www.cernygames.com/).

      He was incredibly smart as a kid (skipping two elementary school grades). I recall him describing the book _1984_ to me, which he read when he was eight years old, if I recall correctly. Also him trying in vain to ex

    • ancient history (Score:3, Interesting)

      by alizard ( 107678 )
      The 16 year old was still there when I worked for Atari Games briefly in 1987... he was a senior programmer. (he was the only 21 year old senior programmer at the company at the time, had to be him. No, I don't remember his name, but he was very helpful to me when I was trying to figure out the guts of the developmental prototypes.

      So *that* is what happened to him. Cool.

      What was really neat was working directly under the guy who developed Missile Command.

      The most bizarre things about the company when I

      • Pole Position and Pole Position II were imports directly from Namco(t) Japan and pre-1984 Atari Inc. coin-op releases. Do you mean "Super Sprint" or "Championship Sprint"? Yes, Atari Games did import Namco titles post-1984. Games such as "Pac-Mania" and one of my favorites, "Rolling Thunder," (and "Vindicators")but that does not constitute a majority of Atari Games titles. Atari Games also became 75% owned by Namco from 1987 to approximately 1991 when Time Warner returned to 100% shareholder (and then t

        • Do you mean "Super Sprint" or "Championship Sprint"?

          Definitely not. My dates may be a bit off because I wasn't looking at my resume at the time.Some of what you mention in the way of ownership I didn't know at the time, what I can say is that we had a "Warner" company store on the premises (which might localize when I was there to anybody else who was at Atari at the time reading this thread - and if any of you are, 'Hi!'.).

          I wasn't there that long. Thinking back, I wouldn't have missed it but I had no

  • If Atari is gone, why is their logo on Neverwinter Nights and its sequels. How does this all fit together?...
  • THE COLORS!! Oh jesus fucking christ that's a bright purple. sorry.

    As for atari's shop, I wish it wouldn't get shut down. Rush is one of my favorite arcade games, and I play it religiously whenever I go out to an arcade, movie theatre, etc.

    Just remember 911 for copcar :)

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