An American video game and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Primarily responsible for the formation of the video arcade and modern video game industries, the company was closed and its assets split in 1984 as a direct result of the North American video game crash of 1983.
So for the last two weeks there have been numerous articles from multiple sources detailing the exploits of a documentary crew, set to bust a long held urban myth of the video game industry. The supposed burial of countless numbers of unsold cartridges of the legendary poor E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial video game. Continue reading
While the console market in North America was entering into the worst financial period in it’s short history, the European PC market was on the rise. Although it was computers that originally helped spawn the first video games with the likes of Spacewar! being developed on a PDP-1 computer in the early 60’s. Video games built on those type of machines where limited to universities and technology labs, due to their immense size and cost. Continue reading
The year of 1982 was a dark period for the video game industry. Early in the year the port of the popular arcade game Pac-Man was released. Atari bet on the game selling well and thus produced 12 million cartridges, however in the end it only sold 7 million units. Atari were facing into a bleak financial period and would soon to be facing completion from within. Continue reading
The video game industry currently is riding a wave of unprecedented economic success, with over $25 billion dollars in revenue being generate every year. However at one point in the industries rise to prominence it nearly all came crashing down with only a Japanese company coming to save the day. Continue reading
The game that cemented Activision’s place as a third party developer at a time when most games where made by the console manufactures. The game would go on to be the second most successful Atari 2600 title just coming in behind Pac-Man. Continue reading
Although it was games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man that defined the era that was known as the Golden Age of the Arcade, many other titles helped towards making it a financially successful period for the industry. For some companies it was a time that would forever change their business, adapting their previous fields of expertise to becoming fully fledged game developers and publishers. Continue reading
The new decade looked bright for Atari’s future with a successful console on the market and a brand name that was quickly gaining household status, however that name would soon be sullied by poor management decisions and tough completion from new upstarts from the Japanese market. The VCS continued to sell well and in 1982 it was given a makeover with an all-black version released under the new name Atari 2600, its all black finish caused it to be nicknamed the “Darth Vader” console. That same year also saw the release of two games that would start Atari down the road towards failure. Continue reading
Atari entered the console market with their Pong home system in the mid-seventies and then looked to capitalize on that foothold into the eighties with the release of the Atari 2600 in 1977. The console would continue to be produced and supported until 1992 when it was finally discontinued, given it a record breaking 14 yearlong lifespan. In that time it sold 30 million units and was the cornerstone of Atari’s dominance in the video game market in the early eighties. Continue reading
The video game industry rise to prominence hasn’t being without its rocky periods. Twice within less than a decade the industry had two major financial meltdowns. The first of which happen in 1977 and would threaten the future of the entire medium. Continue reading
Pong’s success in the arcades of the early 70’s propelled Atari and it founders to the forefront of the new and emerging video game industry. The Pong arcade cabinets had been released in November of 1972, but soon Nolan Bushnell want to see his company grow even further and appealed to his engineers to come up with new innovative products. Continue reading