The History of Atari Consoles: One Button, One Joystick, and We Liked It That Way!

Discussing the history of the Atari Consoles, from the 2600 to the Jaguar!

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Transcript

The History of Atari Consoles

Speaker 1 0:00

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 0:57

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 1:25

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 So then it becomes outdated by the competition in just a few months .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 2:49

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 3:39

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 4:45

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 5:48

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 6:25

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 7:46

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 8:35

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 9:58

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 .

Atari's Console Rise and Fall

Speaker 1 11:25

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 12:56

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 13:51

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 15:23

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 16:51

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 17:23

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 18:25

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 .

Unforgettable Luncheon and Social Media Announcement

Speaker 1 19:48

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 .