Atari Facing $291 Million Debt Claim From... Atari 121
An anonymous reader writes "Atari declared bankruptcy earlier this year, and part of that process involves selling off its property in order to pay as many entities holding its debt as possible. The latest round includes a $30 million claim from Atari's parent company in France, and a $261 million claim from another subsidiary of that parent company. The $30 million debt is secured (in other words, they get priority on whatever's left in the U.S. Atari's coffers), but the $261 million debt is not, so they'll have to wait in line with everybody else."
The article also lists some interesting sell-offs. The old Accolade brand got sold for $50,000, the Battlezone Franchise was sold to Rebellion Interactive for $566,500, and Wargaming World Limited purchased the Total Annihilation and Masters of Orion franchises. Stardock Systems, creators of Sins of a Solar Empire, picked up the rights to the Star Control franchise, which they intend to reboot. (Those who played it will recall that StarCon2 was the Best Game Ever. And it's been remade after the creators released the source code.)
holy fucking shit (Score:5, Interesting)
new star control game?!
ANYONE?!
Re:holy fucking shit (Score:4, Informative)
God damn it. Stardock is going to ruin it with their awful, awful writing. GalCiv2 had the worst humor I've ever seen in a 4x game ever. I know that nobody plays 4x games for the writing, but it was so bad it hurt.
Re:holy fucking shit (Score:4)
For all the issues Galactic Civilization II had it was loads better than that piece of utter trash that was Elemental: War of Magic. Or the sequel for that matter. Blech. I expect more from a Master of Magic clone. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic did it much better.
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GalCiv 2 was still bland as fuck though.
Re:holy fucking shit (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. For whatever reason I liked GalCiv better than GalCiv 2. I still prefer Master of Orion II from SimTex. But Sins of a Solar Empire was nice. Even though Stardock didn't develop the game. They just distribute it.
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That's what I did with MOO2--played it for a day or two, and went back to (and still play) MOO . . .(never even stuck MOO3 into the drive).
hawk
Re:holy fucking shit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Master of Orion 2 (Score:2)
As a matter of fact, there's still an active community that plays multiplayer Master of Orion 2 games over the Internet (via dosbox). Anyone interested, check out #moo2 on QuakeNet IRC.
*happy campers* (Score:2)
In complete agreement -- Star Control II was the best game ever. I normally don't fan-spam on /. but dagnabbit I just had to chime in.
Of course, someone should take odds on whether or not a reboot can come close to doing as well as the orignal (the original #2 that is.. StarCon was a fine but simplistic game and StarCon 3 did not exist. IT DID NOT EXIST I TELL YOU). Still, I'll play a sequel just on the chance it comes close.
Total Annihilation was one of my faves as well... along with absolutely everythi
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Of course, someone should take odds on whether or not a reboot can come close to doing as well as the orignal (the original #2 that is.. StarCon was a fine but simplistic game and StarCon 3 did not exist. IT DID NOT EXIST I TELL YOU). Still, I'll play a sequel just on the chance it comes close.
The original was Starflight; Star Control II was a graphical facelift with some arcade stuff tacked on, a less interesting story, and much weaker RPG aspects. It's a good game and was a nice refresh, and it's obvious
Re: *happy campers* (Score:2)
This is a sincere tip, but sure to sound like a spambot: If you liked Starflight you should definitely take a look at FTL, "Faster Than Light". It is a modern indie game with retro graphics and Starflight 's soul, though game play has a different, more tactical flavor.
Back in the PC XT era I had access to a pirated copy of Starflight but no crack. The copy protection method was such that after so many turns it would ask a question that a pirate couldn't answer and then halt the game. Very frustrating, as by
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Thanks for the FTL mention, I'm not a fan of real-time strategies in general but if I get a hankering for one I'll check it out.
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The main problem is that Star Control II was an action adventure/RPG game and Star Control III just broke that by turning it into make a crappy strategy game.
The core of it is the ship combat game. The next most important layer is the plot, dialog, and the navigation aspects.
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Of course the only game anyone remembers is SC2, because it broke out of the traditional SC I and III mold. The story is probably the best game story I've ever had the pleasure of playing through. it is the sort of thing that would be very difficult to construct today, mostly because it is so story based.
That said, I really enjoyed the mining/exploration aspects of SC2 as well, landing, capturing lifeforms, landing on varying plantes, finding crystal planets for Tzo Crystals. And the customizable ship/armad
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Of course, someone should take odds on whether or not a reboot can come close to doing as well as the orignal (the original #2 that is.. StarCon was a fine but simplistic game and StarCon 3 did not exist. IT DID NOT EXIST I TELL YOU). Still, I'll play a sequel just on the chance it comes close.
I agree with you on Star Control 2. I almost never play through an adventure game more than once, but I think I have been through it 3 times over the years...
I will have to grudgingly acknowledge SC3's existence because I bought it the day it came out. And then returned it 3 days later. Funny thing is, you usually can't return video games after they are opened unless the media is defective. In this case the employee at the Fry's return counter must have been a SC2 fan as well, because when he asked me w
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along with absolutely everything Atari did in the 80s. How the mighty have fallen.
ET was your fave? I thought the plot in that game was a bit mesed up.
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I played ET for days trying to figure out WTF was going on. I still don't know. But I did, oddly, enjoy playing it and trying to figure it out.
Actually, that's something I liked about SC2 as well -- I lost the first time I played, after many hours of game-play. By the time you figure out you've lost in SC2, a salvageable save-game was so old as to be basically useless, since one forgets all the places they hadn't visited or what they had and had not yet done.
FWIW, I actually wondered if someone would men
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fan-spam away, the game deserves it!
(spoilers below: if you haven't played the game...)
Who can forget the sense of dread they first encountered earth in a slave shield, or intimidated the Spathi Captain Fwiffo, or the last Shofixti's face when you give him his little gift, or discovering the Enigmatic Arilous in Quasi-Space, or encountering the Syreen for the first time... and that love scene! Ahem. Or when you first faced off against a black UrQuan ship... or tricked the Ilwrath into believing you were the
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EJACULATION!
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Offtopic? You idiots! Haven't you played Star Control 3?
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Stardock makes awful, banal games that only a calculator could love (which they aren't glitching and crashing)
Their version of Star Control will be horrific.
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Unless they work with Toys for Bob, they can't reference anything in Star Control 1 or 2 because Toys for Bob retains the copyright for the characters and story.
http://www.incgamers.com/2013/07/open-source-star-control-2-team-express-doubts-over-atari-ip-sale [incgamers.com]
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That's great, so Stardock will make Star Control 3 1/2 and hopefully Toys For Bob will regain the full IP when Stardock goes under.
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Unless they work with Toys for Bob, they can't reference anything in Star Control 1 or 2 because Toys for Bob retains the copyright for the characters and story.
http://www.incgamers.com/2013/07/open-source-star-control-2-team-express-doubts-over-atari-ip-sale [incgamers.com]
The idea that Toys for Bob of all people would pursue a claim of someone ripping them off is pretty rich, given that Star Control was a thinly veiled ripoff of Starflight (which itself has a better claim to "best PC game of all time" than Star Control
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It's not a "ripoff" since the lead designer of Starflight (Greg Johnson) worked on Star Control 2, and the lead designer of Star Control 2 worked on Starflight. How do you rip YOURSELF off?! You might as well just call Black & White a ripoff of Populous or Mass Effect a ripoff of KOTOR. Same people, similar concepts, different titles. Big deal...
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This is a joke, right? If Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr leave the Beatles, they aren't allowed to write "Hey Dude" and "I Want to Hold You Man" to the tune of the originals and completely fail to pay John Lennon, George Harrison, and Apple Records. That's exactly what Star Control 2 did, though--it not only failed to reimburse Binary Systems, but also left the other developers out in the cold while pocketing money for work they did.
And, yeah, I know that some of the developers from Binary went to Toys Fo
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No love for Total Annihilation?
Honestly I liked the campaign mode of SC1 better anyways, but maybe thats because I never had a 3do and only played UQM single player.
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Both sc1 and sc2 were lots of fun to play with another person. At least the PC/DOS game.
Unfortunately sc2 for 3do had "smooth zoom", which ruined the Ilrwrath ship. Thankfully, they added a "pc" switch to ur-quan masters (the open sourced edition).
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If its like 3, screw that.
A brand means nothing if the authors are not there. You know, the guys who open sourced the game as "Ur-Quan Masters" because only the brand did not belong to them...
And yes, i played the three Star Control games. 2 was the best, period. Since the second game was open sourced, its probably in the repository of your favorite distro.
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Master of Orion, please (Score:2)
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I don't expect anything as good as MOO2. However, anything would be better than the buggy heap of crap that was MOO3. Personally, I would have loved to see Firaxis get that property.
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And who owns the old atari rights now days (Score:3, Informative)
And who owns the old atari rights now days?
I think it's been a lot of spinoffs / buyouts over the years.
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I think Trepidity answered your question below. The Atari companies this article discusses were part of the hardware portion of Atari. The other software / IP side of Atari is totally separate and got passed around through the years and is now held by Warner Bros. That is if I interpreted Trepidity's post correctly.
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but what about D&D? (Score:5, Interesting)
Atari owned the rights to make D&D based computer rpg's does that right get sold or returned to hasbro or is it under another branch of atari? If it is under this branch of atari what happens to the lawsuit against beam dog over the baldurs gate enhanced edition that is holding up the android and linux ports from being released.
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after daggerdale atari should never be allowed to touch D&D ever again, god what a shit game
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Keep an eye on Planetary Annihilation [uberent.com].
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Seconded. As a TA, SC, SC:FA fan, I'm seriously excited about Planetary Annihilation.
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Last I heard, Wargaming was in talks to buy Gas Powered Games, I don't know if that's still a thing. However, if it does go through, there is a pretty good chance it could happen.
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Wargaming acquired Gas Powered Games back in February [worldoftanks.com]
.
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Re: Total Annihilation - Will it ever come back? (Score:1)
also none are actually Atari (Score:5, Insightful)
A fun fact is that neither of the two Ataris suing each other here are in any reasonable sense the original Atari. First of all, the original company split in 1984 due to financial difficulties, into two companies: 1) Atari Games, which owned the rights to the classic game IP; and 2) Atari Computer, which took over making actual hardware.
Atari Games existed for a few year in the mid-'80s, but in the late '80s went defunct, getting bought up by Time Warner, which later became AOL, which later sold them to Midway Games, which was later acquired by Warner Bros. So it's basically a copyright holding company owned by some group of investors that is several degrees of separation removed from anyone who actually worked on an Atari game.
Atari Computer initially did some interesting stuff, mostly notably putting out the Atari ST, and later the Atari 7800. They sort of tanked in the late-'80s/early-'90s though, when the Atari Lynx and the Atari Jaguar both fell hugely short of expectations. This half of the company then met the same fate as Atari Games: it de-facto ceased to exist, except as IP that got sold around between various companies that never had anything to do with its products, in this case Hasbro and Infogrames. And now two parts of this half are suing each other.
The short version of the story is: Atari got split up in 1984, was defunct by 1993, and now two, of at least three, companies that own some kind of claim to the name "Atari" are suing each other, but none of them have anything to do with Atari, except insofar as they are leeches who've somehow ended up with the rights to exploit the trademark.
Re:also none are actually Atari (Score:5, Informative)
The companies in this story were renamed "Atari" somewhat recently:
Atari Inc. was formerly GT Interactive
Atari SA and Atari Europe were formerly Infogrames Entertainment
The French company Infogrames purchased GT Interactive and Hasbro Interactive. In the late 90's/early 2000's Hasbro bought the rights to the old Atari games and naming rights, which is what allowed Infogrames to rebrand the main company and their various divisions as "Atari."
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Atari Games existed for a few year in the mid-'80s, but in the late '80s went defunct, getting bought up by Time Warner, which later became AOL, which later sold them to Midway Games, which was later acquired by Warner Bros. So it's basically a copyright holding company owned by some group of investors that is several degrees of separation removed from anyone who actually worked on an Atari game.
You're broadly right, but wrong in some of the details.
"Atari Games" (the arcade division) existed under that name until well into the nineties, and after that as "Midway Games West", though as Midway left the arcade market in the early-noughties, that's now dead.
Ironically, Warner Communications- one of Time Warner's predecessors- was the owner of Atari Inc. (i.e. *the* original Atari company) in its heyday from just before the VCS launch until the 1984 split.
Atari Corporation (Tramiel's company that you m
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Midway Games was owned by Williams since the late 80s so Midway Games West would've been an absorption by Midway into the Williams fold (Atari Games became Midway Games West to avoid trademark disputes with Hasbro). As part of the restructuring in the late 90s, Williams spun off Midway as a semi-indepe
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These days, arcade gaming is dead because of well, the iPhone.
I thought that- with the exception of some niche games like Dance Dance Revolution- arcade gaming had already all but died in most Western countries during the 1990s, when home consoles became as cutting edge as their arcade brethren. That was well before the iPhone. (It supposedly lasted longer in Japan, but even there it's apparently declined badly in recent years).
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Thanks to you, MrEricSir, and AC following for getting some truth out. As a long-time (well, over the short time they existed, plus later on before I got a "PC") user of the ST line, I mostly liked and admired many of those involved many of those involved in both divisions, and valued the few conversations with Bob Brodie, John Townsend, Ken Badertscher, and others.
For some early history, please see:
http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/atari.html [mcurrent.name]
starts with Nolan Bushnell at Ampex and goes from there.
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I work for atari games while it was 'Time Warner Interactive' in the 90's. While it had a new owner many of the original atari employees were still employed at that time. I worked with the original creators of asteroids, missile command, etc. It still seemed like the old atari games to me.
In your opinion, then, when did Atari Games "truly" die? Was it still meaningfully the same entity when Midway took it over and renamed it? Did it survive until Midway exited the arcade business in the early-noughties (which surely must be the latest point one could choose, as after that Midway Games West was apparently a trademark and IP holder only).
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I think I'll get in on the action... (Score:3)
How much for the 3D Tic Tac Toe [wikipedia.org] franchise?
That's odd... (Score:4, Interesting)
As for Star Control, despite the issues with the original release of Elemental i have a moderate amount of faith in Stardock's ability to handle the game well, but they've demonstrated themselves to be both credible as a developer (Galactic Civilizations, Political/Corporate Machine) and as a publisher (Sins of a Solar Empire with Ironcald Games [wikipedia.org].) So i wonder if they're going to develop this game themselves, or farm it out to someone else. Someone like, i dunno, Toys for Bob [wikipedia.org]?
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They don't publish anymore, they just sell games on Steam.
Awful, awful games.
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However i'm not sure how you can say they don't publish games any more. How do you think games get on Steam? Believe it or not Valve is not the publisher of every game for sale on Steam.
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So Stardock got the rights for Star Control but _not_ Master of Orion? I wonder if they were outbid, or decided to pass on it since they have Galactic Civilizations, their own decently reviewed and decently selling turn based 4x space game. They can always make GalCiv 3 not that they've passed on the opportunity to make MoO 3 (it's too bad no one ever made a third MoO game before [xkcd.com]) but even after all this time i think perhaps the MoO name might have given them some cachet (and thus sales) that GalCiv wouldn't get.
:)
As for Star Control, despite the issues with the original release of Elemental i have a moderate amount of faith in Stardock's ability to handle the game well, but they've demonstrated themselves to be both credible as a developer (Galactic Civilizations, Political/Corporate Machine) and as a publisher (Sins of a Solar Empire with Ironcald Games [wikipedia.org].) So i wonder if they're going to develop this game themselves, or farm it out to someone else. Someone like, i dunno, Toys for Bob [wikipedia.org]?
I think as long as Stardock gets someone else to do the writing, a decent SciFi writer with a sense of humour. GalCiv 2 was a very good turn based strategy game (albeit with a steep learning curve) but the criticism that the writing was crap is a valid one. Gal Civ 2 was a good game on its gameplay rather than its story.
Then again, seeing what passes for decent storywriting these days (erm Far Cry 3, Bioshock) Brad Wardell could vomit on a typewriter and be considered amongst the best writers of the mod
How sleazy (Score:1)
So if I want to rip off and steal investors and bank money all I have to do is create 3 shell companies move the debt around and pretend they are 3 entities then declare bankruptcies on all 3 where I get first dibs on my own debt. Then keep all the money again to myself since I get first dibs. Meanwhile pensioner and investor funds get screwed.
Is there any ethics left or did I misinterpret this story? This should be illegal as none of us us individuals can do this with credit card debt as that of course wou
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Congratulations. You just figured out how the hedge fund company business works.
Desert Bus? (Score:1)
Does anyone know who bought the franchise for Desert Bus?
http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/desert-bus-worst-videogame-time-160542705.html [yahoo.com]
That was a classic.
Stardock Published (didn't create) Sins of a Solar (Score:3)
Sins of a Solar Empire was created by Ironclad Games and published by Stardock. Stardock has developed their own games in the past, but let's give credit where credit is due: it belongs to Ironclad Games. It's sad that publishers get more credit and name recognition than developers these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire [wikipedia.org]
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Also note that Ironclad isn't working with Stardock on the follow up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Dark_Age [wikipedia.org]
Very interested to see what this does.... (Score:3)
to the Baldur's Gate franchise. Beamdog is basically in a holding pattern because Atari told them to cease and desist for now, which is holding up the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate 2.
Atari ST (Score:2)
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Best 16 bit pc ever.
You can make an Amiga into an Atari ST by adding a serial to MIDI adapter (the Amiga has 31250bps serial ports, so it's really just a level converter) but the Atari ST doesn't have the Amiga's bit blitter et cetera. Victory: Amiga :D
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And you can put a 68020 in your Amiga and leave all this "best 16-bit pc" talk behind.
Stardock didn't get all the rights (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently they only got the trademark to the name "Star Control" and the copyright to Star Control 3. Unless the license the Star Control 2 content as well, we might get something very different with the Star Control name slapped on.
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http://www.incgamers.com/2013/07/open-source-star-control-2-team-express-doubts-over-atari-ip-sale [incgamers.com]
Apparently they only got the trademark to the name "Star Control" and the copyright to Star Control 3. Unless the license the Star Control 2 content as well, we might get something very different with the Star Control name slapped on.
as long as they have license to all the stuff in the universe, it's all the same. I'm pretty sure that's how they inteprete it, so they can use shofixtis and spathis.. or maybe they'll just remake the 3. the plot wasn't that bad, it's just couple of aspects that ruined it, like the map being a rotating ball.. no sense of exploration when you see everything right away.
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Yay for Star Control and Battlezone (Score:2)
I don't have much to add other than I'm hugely excited for both Star Control and Battlezone. SC1 and SC2 were bedrock mainstays of my college days, and the hover-tank Battlezone released in 1998 was phenomenal.
I've since moved on to play and enjoy The Ur-Quan Masters [sourceforge.net], but even shortly after SC2's heyday and before UQM was available, I remember paying for a legit download of the PC version of the game (late '98, early '99?). If we could get network mode Melee, I'd be tickled pink. If there were a persiste
YAY FOR STAR CONTROL AND BATTLEZONE! (Score:2)
SC2 (Score:2)
Someone already rebooted Star Control II. It was called Mass Effect. :)
I'm kidding, but seriously, go play Mass Effect 1 and compare it to SC2. There are a LOT of similarities there.
For starters, check this out:
http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Ur-Quan_Kzer-Za [wikia.com]
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Thorian [wikia.com]
Heck, the thorian's mind controlled minions are even referred to as "thralls"
Re:$291 or $261? (Score:5, Funny)
Atari subsidiary company: $261 million
$30 million plus $261 million equals $291 million worth of debt owed to Atari entities
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It doesn't matter. Jack Tramiel's Mastercard limit is $230M.
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The late Jack Tramiel.
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Yeah because the 800 was just so far behind the curve when it was released in 1979. It's hardware was so dated it was continued conceptually in the Amiga (same designer). Bot had sprites, hardware assisted scrolling, display interrupts, multi channel sound and stuff like display lists/copper lists.