PENNY: Post 7: Atari

Taken from the Japanese game 'Go'.
Also, in Japanese, atari is taken from 'ataru', meaning "to hit the target" or "to receive something fortuitously".




The Atari company was started in 1972 by engineers Bob Brown and Harold Lee. The first product being Atari Pong; Codename: "Darlene"; Model # C-100,

it was based on the coin-op arcade game designed by Al Alcorn with the same name. This was based on the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis arcade game; the "Odyssey" was the first home video game console. However Pong had superior full color graphics, a score counter and excellent sound effects.
Distributed and supported by Sears Roebuck & Co.'s Tom Quinn, Atari ended up doing nearly $150,000 in total for the Christmas '75 season. People waited two hours in line, just to get on a list to get Pong.
Later Atari consoles had rainbow colours and a catchy inbuilt "PONG" sound.

Pong set a precedent for home device games; if a game performed well as an arcade game it was redesigned as a console game. For example, Space Invaders started life as a Japanese coin-op game. However when Atari redesigned Pac-Man, the result was so bad that customers became disenchanted with Atari.


Centipede was designed in 1980 by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey, one of the few female game programmers in the industry at this time. It was also the first arcade coin-operated game to have a significant female player base.
The artwork from the Centipede 'cabinet' is used for the CD single cover artwork by the band The Strokes.

There are, to this day, centipede tournaments.










The 10 biggest selling games for the Atari 2600 were:
1. Pac-Man
2. Pitfall!
3. Missile Command
4. Demon Attack
5. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
6. Atlantis
7. Adventure
8. River Raid
9. Kaboom!
10. Space Invaders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ioo5G7Olc
review of centipede released 1980

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600

http://www.atari.com/about

http://www.atarigames.com/

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?letter=C&game_id=7299

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Video_Arcade_Games

http://www.videogamecritic.net/2600bb.htm#Battlezone

http://www.videogamecritic.net/2600.htm

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-ads.html

http://www.theoldcomputer.com/Libraries/tv_adverts_summary.htm
tv ads

http://www.8bitrocket.com/newsdisplay.aspx?newspage=4185