Discussing the history of the Atari Consoles, from the 2600 to the Jaguar!
All my links in one convenient place: linktr.ee/steamedhams81
Discussing the history of the Atari Consoles, from the 2600 to the Jaguar!
All my links in one convenient place: linktr.ee/steamedhams81
Back in the wonderful 80s, the second generation of video game consoles was in full swing. The Atari 2600 ruled the roost With cutting edge graphics and sound. The squares and beeps made you feel like you were there. It had one button, one stick, and that's the way we liked it. But Atari, with its successes, was also responsible for the lows, such as the video game crash of 1983. You win some, you lose some. I guess Today we're talking about the history of Atari consoles on the Unforgettable Luncheon. Hi, it's your pal, steamedhams. I hope you're ready for an Unforgettable Luncheon.
Speaker 1:Back in 1972, nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney formed Atari Incorporated. They had created the first successful coin-out video game Pong Good ol' Pong. Electronic table tennis, two lines and a dot Cutting edge technology for the 70s Good stuff. By 1975, atari had made a Pong home game. But the engineers recognized that custom logic integrated into the circuit board.
Speaker 1:Confining the console to a single game permanently was not the best business plan. I mean, who's gonna spend money and collect a bunch of consoles that each only play one game, you know? Plus, the cost of developing each console was about 100k in 70s money. So then it becomes outdated by the competition in just a few months. So again, not the best business plan. Now they eventually figured out how to use programmable microprocessors that were eventually cost effective enough to use. Now we're not gonna go into all that because we'll be here forever. I'm trying to keep your attention for crying out loud. Anyways, bushnell brought consultant Gene Landrum to determine requirements for the new console. He suggested a nice living room aesthetic for the 70s with a wood grain finish and to match the wood paneling walls we all had in our houses in the 70s and 80s. The cartridges had to be idiot proof, child proof and resistant to static electricity present in the average living room setting. Because yes, back in the 70s that shag carpet was a real static danger. Along with them corboreed pants. Cartridges were designed after another console called the Fairchild Channel F, which was the first console to use interchangeable round cartridges for the games.
Speaker 1:Atari needed some cashola to fund the development of its new console. So in 1976 Atari was sold to Warner Communications for a cool 28 million clams. Warner was looking to get into the video game racket to offset declining profits from its movie and music divisions. So it said hey, these video games they're making money we want in, and you know we can only make so many dirty Harry movies. So Warner provided 120 million to fast track the project. By 1977, the project now branded the Atari VCS video computer system, and game development had begun. The console was announced at the 1977 Summer Consumer Electronics Show. Who remembers CES? That used to be cool.
Speaker 1:The Atari VCS, later renamed to the Atari 2600, launched in September 1977 at a retail price of $199, which is almost $1000 in present day money. Due to inflation that's like 2 PS5s for an Atari. The console was shipped with two joysticks in the game Combat, which was actually a port of an Atari arcade game called Tank, and another one called Air Battle. I believe it was Jet Fighter. No, jet Fighter, because Air Sea Battle was another one released at launch, along with Basic Math, that riveting hardcore toughy called Basic Math, blackjack, indy 500. Starship, street, racer, surround and Video Olympics. Now, fun fact, the Indy 500 game actually shipped with a steering wheel peripheral, which was much like its little freewheeling paddles, except they could actually fully freewheel.
Speaker 1:Atari sold only 550,000 of the 800,000 manufactured, meaning they were going to need some help from Warner to cover losses for that first year. But in 1979, atari sold 1 million units. Especially during the holidays, the best time to sell toys. They did this even with competition from the Intellivision and the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Atari received a license from Taito to make a port of Space Invaders. Space Invaders ended up becoming the Atari's killer app, doubling sales exponentially over the next couple of years. In 1979, activision was formed by former Atari employees, releasing games like Kaboom and Pitfall. They were sued by Atari for intellectual property infringement, but the two companies settled out of court, with Activision agreeing to pay a licensing fee to Atari which set the standard for licensing by video game companies, which led to various third party companies popping up.
Speaker 1:Now we'll talk about that in a minute. We'll get back to that. By 1982, atari was selling 10 million units a year, with its best selling game being Pac-Man Another topic we're going to hit in a minute. Now. Fun fact the 2600 was actually my first game console. I mean it technically belonged to my parents because I was all of 3 years old, but that was the first console I got to play on the regular. In fact, I finished my first game adventure at age 5. So yeah, child gaming prodigy right here. I mean I was always more of an indoor kid.
Speaker 1:Anyways, in 1982, atari also released the Atari 5200, their next gen console. This console included a 360 degree non-centering joystick that was honestly just garbage A numeric keypad similar to the Intellivision, and start-pause and reset buttons. You know I have a feeling my dumbass would accidentally hit the reset button more than I care to admit Now. The 5200 did not fare as well in the 2600 commercially between competition from the ColecoVision and the fact that it had no backwards compatibility with the 2600's extensive library. The Intellivision 2 had actually released an adapter to play Atari 2600 games. Man, can you imagine that happening on later consoles, playing Mario on a Sega or Sonic on a Super NES or playing a CD-i game from Phillips without being a freaking millionaire because that motherfucker was expensive? It's like $700 in, like 90s money. Woo, what do we millionaires? Now most of the 5200's library were just updated versions of 2600 titles. So great job, atari. Thanks for giving us new shit.
Speaker 1:Now we're actually going to pause on the consoles for a second here to talk about third-party games, especially the adult games. Yeah, while third-party games did account for half of all game sales by 1982, a portion of those games were by Mystique, who strictly made adult-oriented games. These were often games that were based on other non-porn games. So they were basically like a porn version of something that's completely normal, such as there was a porn version of Kaboom called Beat'em and Eat'em. I am not describing this game because it's just wrong and I'm just not going to discuss most of these because they're just straight gross.
Speaker 1:The worst game, the one that was like caused the most uproar, was a game called Custer's Revenge where you played Custer, who was naked except for boots, a cowboy hat and a raging, mega huge erection. The plot you had to get past a field full of arrows to reach and have relations with a well-endowed, naked Native American woman. I can't see where that game was in. Problematic, nooooo. Now, mystique went bye-bye prior to the great video game crash of 1983, but sold their rights to their spin-off company, playaround. So adult games kept flowing, but not for much longer. Those pretty much went away with the 8-bit era and adult games made somewhat of a comeback in the Xbox, ps2 era with games such as the guy game and Grand Theft Auto, though in a very limited capacity, because when you have the adults only rating on a game, you can't buy it. There's no way to buy it because you have to be over 18 to buy it, no matter what. So those were basically considered like poison to the game you couldn't to sales.
Speaker 1:Now, speaking of games that were terrible, I'm going to talk about possibly the worst arcade port ever that came to the Atari Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. Now, yes, a port from an arcade game to a console means some downgrading in graphics and sound. That's going to happen, technological limitations. But Pac-Man was just a fucking insult. The maze was inverted with the warp tunnel top to bottom, not side to side. The maze was also in landscape, not portrait mode, which kind of threw people off. Also, only having just over half the pellets the arcade version had. The arcade version, I believe, has 244 per level, while the Atari version had 126. Pac-man only faced right and left and would not turn top to bottom, so when he's moving up he's still facing right or left. The iconic waka waka sound was now a single tone clank sound. The bonus fruits which, depending on what fruits you got, were replaced with a single value, non-descript vitamin. So, yeah, the ghosts constantly flickered and that kind of messed with people's eyes while they were playing the game.
Speaker 1:Initial sales were high and it became the 2600's best selling game. But once people saw the quality, yeah, sales dipped. It did contribute heavily to the great video game market crash of 1983. Let's touch on that crash for a moment. The video game market took a shit in 1983. Between various consoles flooding the market, a lot of third party publishers making low quality shovelware, loss of confidence in the industry thanks to big name failures like Pac-Ban and ET and competition with home computers, the market just crashed. Et oh what a pile of crap that was Granted. I never played it back then. It only played it through an emulator as an adult. Let's just say there's a reason why so many of them were buried in a New Mexico landfill. It's a textbook course in why you don't rush game development. The movie came out and they had to rush the game to make it for the holiday season. You know, good things come to those who wait, guys. We learn that now. Now US companies were basically in the toilet at this point. This opened the door for Japanese companies to jump into the US market and the video game market made a recovery in 1985 with the debut of the Nintendo Entertainment System. But that's a story for another day.
Speaker 1:In 1986, atari released its next console, the Atari 7800. I'm sensing a pattern here 26, 52, 78, math it's a good thing we played basic math kids. They needed something to compete with the Colecovision which had arcade quality games basically. Now, fun fact Colecovision had their big licensing with Nintendo and had Donkey Kong, which was their killer app, and just was else selling everything. Now, a funny story I actually had a Colecovision Donkey Kong cartridge and that thing worked perfectly in the Atari 2600 because for some reason you could cross-play some games from other consoles. Back in the day, yeah, they fixed that problem.
Speaker 1:Now, the console was not released in 1984 when it was announced, mostly due to Warner selling Atari's consumer division to Jack Tramiel. So until things were squared away with that, they had to warehouse the 7800. The console was released in May of 1986 for one easy payment of $79.95. Wait a minute, newer consoles coming out cheaper and cheaper why are we not doing this today? Why did I just pay like $500 for an Xbox? Hell, guys. Now 13 games were announced to release for the 7800. But those games were released so slowly. By the end of 1986 only 10 games were released for the 7800, compared to Sega's 20 games and Nintendo's 36 games that had been released in 1986. So I mean, yeah, not much to play with. There wasn't much selection. So why are you going to play a console that's only got a few games out Now? Atari would end up selling 1 million of those consoles by 1988. Now in 1992 Atari discontinued support for the 2600, 5200, 7800 and also the 8-bit family and ST computers which we didn't go into because we'd be here all day. It was truly the end of an era.
Speaker 1:Now in 1989 Atari released the Lynx, their first handheld console, meant to compete with the Game Boy and Game Gear. It was a 16-bit color console that retailed for $179.99 because apparently they thought kids had millionaires for parents. It was fragile, had a crap battery and was twice the price of the competing Game Boy, which you could throw against the wall and be just fine and, you know, just had Tetris to it. By 1995, total sales were just under 7 million units versus the Game Boy's 16 million units in the same span. The Lynx also had a wired connection system for multiplayer, which the Game Boy kind of had. But the Game Boy you can only chain two Game Boys together. The Lynx could chain up to 8 players at once and it only had a single 8 player game though Todd's Adventure in Slime World. And we see why we've never heard of that. The Lynx 2 was released in 1991 with a sleeker design, better battery and a lower price of $99, since it came with really no accessories. I mean, the Lynx went on until 1995, but they kind of just discontinued support when they wanted to focus everything to the Jaguar.
Speaker 1:Now, in November 1993, the Jaguar was launched. It was the first 64-bit console. It cost a whopping $249.99 in $1993, and was released in test markets in New York and San Francisco. Now the test market sold out and there was just crazy advertising for it and it was released nationwide in early 94. It sold about 100,000 units by the end of 1994.
Speaker 1:Now it had a weak adoption rate due to poor quality of its library and the library not exactly being very big. It didn't truly hit it big until the releases of Tempest 2000, doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Of course, its most successful release of the first year was Alien vs Predator, which I did actually get to play a couple times in the little demo consoles that used to have it like Venture and Kmart and I'm really aging myself by mentioning these stores. It was kind of fun, but yeah, my parents weren't paying $250 for a Jaguar. Now, if only they could have repeated that success. Maybe a dozen more times they'd have been on Easy Street, but that wasn't the case. I mean, they had brand recognition with older gamers who came up with the old Atari's, but not the younger crowd who was more focused on the Nintendo, the Sega, the 3DO, which was another one of those oh my god, my parents are fucking rich type of consoles.
Speaker 1:Now a peripheral the Jaguar CD was released in 1995 to try to bolster the Jaguar. It cost itself this is a peripheral $149.99, and had a memory track card to store high scores and save points. But it did little to save the Jaguar and when you put it on the Jaguar and made the Jaguar look like a toilet literally. The console was abandoned by Atari in November 1995, and with that Atari essentially left the console business. They still make games. They were sold to Hasbro in 98, I believe it was, if I remember right. I can't keep dates straight anymore and yeah, they haven't made a console since, except for the little flashback consoles. You can buy it like Bed, bath and Beyond and Target. So Atari was a trailblazer in the console business. They created many of the things we know as normal today, like cartridges and third party licensing. Without Atari, we wouldn't have gaming the way it is today. We evolved from a joystick and a button, a square and some beeps to the high tech consoles with a bajillion buttons that we know and love today. Atari, we salute you.
Speaker 1:Well, that's it for another unforgettable luncheon. I hope a good time was had by all. You can find me on the social medias as SteamedHams81 on Twitch, twitter and Instagram and also YouTube, and you can find me on Facebook as the unforgettable luncheon. And don't forget to check out my merch store, steamedhams Merchtorium. The link will be in the description of this podcast. Now you do get a 25% discount if you subscribe to my Twitch channel and then you link your Twitch channel to the store or your Twitch username to the store. So go for it. Join me next time when the topic will be something nerdy.