The History of Atari Video Game Consoles (1975-1996)

[Music] thank you oh sorry we like this super Punk by Atari I'm sold out that's a demonstrator but I've got lots of these well we want super Punk by Atari yes but super Punk's Four Color games are more fun well how about this one well no you see we'll have more fun with super pong sport color games there's catch Solitaire super pong and pong so we'll take this one okay sure you won't change your mind no why because I wanted it Super Pawn it's not just another video game it's a real Atari the story of the Atari Pond console really starts way back in the 1950s 1958 would be exact when physicists were William Higginbotham designed tennis for two which was a computer game based on tennis two players would go back and forth with a ball that would bounce back and forth as well so this was really the first type of pong game that was developed and this was way back in the 1950s this deserves a video all on its own but let's fast forward a few years in 1966 another engineer named Ralph bear working for a company called Sanders Associates it's now baa systems it's actually a military contractor but he came up with the idea to play games on basically a television set uh he thought it would be a marketable idea so it was actually funded through baa systems or Sanders and Associates which is kind of funny because nowadays nothing like that would happen and about the same time three different young Engineers were hopping onto the scene one named Nolan Bushnell that recently graduated from the University of Utah College of Engineering is one of the few students that got to play around on the deck Mainframe and play with the original space War video game as well also he had to work his way through college and he worked at the Lagoon Amusement Park in Utah and there he saw electromechanical machines specifically Chicago coins racing Speedway game and it inspired him to want to create his own arcade games also at this time a young engineer named Ted Danby had just gotten out the military and had learned a ton of electrical experience while being in the military his first job was with Bank of America to work on electromechanical accounting machines there and then he was hired on by Hewlett-Packard but within a few weeks he moved on to Ampex this was in 1961. Nolan Bushnell eventually got hired on with Ampex as well and in 1971 Ampex hired on another young brilliant engineer named Alan Alcorn who recently graduated from the University of California Berkeley Bushnell and Danby formed a company called sisigi and developed a clone system of the video game Space war that they have played on the deck the Prototype was developed by Danby and Bushnell basically did the marketing trying to find somebody that could manufacture it for them they found nutting and Associates which was a maker of coin op trivia and shooting games and decided to go with them they produce a fiberglass cabinet and inserted a coin Mech in it and basically created the game although sales exceeded three million dollars it was still a commercial failure it was at this point that Danby and Bushnell decided to rename the company due to trademark issues as sisaji was already taken by another company so they decided to name the company Atari the name comes from the ancient Japanese board game named go and Atari means to hit a Target in Japanese and it's at this point in 1971 that they hired on Alcorn from Ampex as well and change the name officially to Atari Bushnell assigned Alcorn a task to create a new video game something that Atari would distribute themselves without a third party distributor Bushnell really wanted a racing game to be created but alcorn's first project he wanted to make it easy on him Bushnell had actually went to a trade show and saw the magnafox Odyssey that Ralph bear had developed and they were still waiting for that patent to go through this is supposedly where Bushnell came up with the idea of pong he put Al Alcorn in charge of developing this new video game after Alcorn developed the circuitry he bought a Hitachi black and white television and put it into a cabinet that they just built basically and wired it all together they put the Prototype into Andy capp's Tavern in August of 1972. and within a week and a half the owner of the tavern had called and said that they were having problems and the game wasn't working they came down expecting the circuitry or something to be broke and what the problem was it was just jam-packed full of quarters and Atari knew they had a success on their hands it was at this point that Bushnell wanted to develop the system into a home video game console this is when Atari hired engineer Harold Lee to work with Al Alcorn it took alcorn's design and turned it into an icy form basically making a pong on a chip this minimalized the circuitry and really brought the cost down to the consumer at the time of its release the Atari Pong on a chip or the chip itself was the highest performing chip used in a consumer product at the time so now Atari had developed the system but they needed to find a distributor for it Atari had seen that the Magnavox Odyssey had an ad in the series catalog so Atari approached Sears top executive Tom Quinn who really wanted the product but Atari believing they could get a better deal elsewhere declined Atari showed the pawn console off in a January 1975 Toy Fair trying to find a distributor for the pong console but this turned out to be unsuccessful so Atari met back up with Sears and Quinn and struck a deal and by the Christmas season Atari had to come up with 150 000 units although Atari didn't have the capability to produce that many units Bushnell was able to secure funding through venture capitalist Don Valentine to build a new Factory to fulfill the Sears order the first units were branded Sears telegames and the Atari products were made afterward now you would think this would be the end of a great story for Atari or the beginning of a great story for Atari but at this point in April of 1974 Magnavox filed a lawsuit against Atari along with other manufactured of pong clone systems Ralph bear and Magnavox were saying that Atari had infringed on their trademark which had finally went through in 1973. in fact in court Bushnell did not deny that he had saw the Odyssey and stated the fact is that I absolutely did see the Odyssey game and I did not think that it was very clever Atari settled out of court for an approximate payment of 1.5 million dollars made payable in eight installs and Magnavox obtained the rights to see full information on Atari products publicly announced over the next year and if history serves correct this is why the VCS was pushed back an additional few months before it was released so Magnavox wouldn't get information on it Atari went on to sell many more iterations of the pong console as well including pong doubles super pong and later consoles like video pinball but the original pong console that debuted in 1975 sold little over 150 000 units it was completely discontinued by 1978 and was the kickstarter for antari Incorporated it comes with 27 games but that's just for starters you can get nine cartridges 187 games Blackjack oh I'd like an Atari sorry only our demonstrators left no George mine the new video computer system by Atari more games more fun the story of the Atari 2600 really starts in 1972 when Nolan Bushnell and Ted Danby formed Atari Incorporated during this time Atari produced arcade game hits like pong but by 1974 Atari had realized they needed to get into the Home Market at this point Atari acquired cyan engineering and with that acquisition brought on Engineers Ron Milner and Steve Mayer also in 1975 after the acquisition of Scion engineering the two Engineers mayor and Milner met with moss technology that was recently purchased by Commodore Incorporated they spoke with Chuck petal and he advised them that they could sell them the 6502 microprocessor for a price of 25 dollars per unit unfortunately for Atari this price was still too high for the consumer Market at this point mayor Milner and petal all sat down and basically came up with the design of the 6507 processor for atari's use this is a cost reduced version of the processor which has less address lines and a smaller footprint and a smaller cost as MOS offered the chip to Atari for a price of twelve dollars per unit also what the deal would be bundled in for an additional 12 per unit the MOs Riot ship the ram input output timer chip Atari struck the deal and the development of the 2600 started in late 1975 Atari hired Joe decor to help design the graphics chip for the new game console the first prototype which was named Stella had the 6507 processor the riot Chip and A breadboard version of the graphics chip known as Stella at the time which would eventually become the television interface adapter now a second version of this prototype was completed by March 1976 with the help of minor they actually Incorporated the chip called the television interface adapter or Tia chip into the design in 1976 unfortunately Atari was experiencing Financial woes by this point due to the development of the Atari 2600 or VCS system it's Palm console and its arcade divisions Atari was millions of dollars in debt and needed financial help at this point Bushnell agreed to the terms for Warner Communications to purchase Atari Incorporated on June 4th 1977 the Atari VCS was debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show and by September 1977 the Atari VCS launched at a price of 199 dollars by 1978 Bushnell and mortar Communications were in disagreements about how the Atari 2600 should be marketed Nolan Bushnell at this point decided to step away from atarium be between 1978 and 1983 mourner Communications had great success with the Atari VCS or 2600 system unfortunately by 1983 due to really poor games being dumped on the Atari system the video game Crash occurred at this point Warner was losing money at Atari and decided to sell in 1984 Atari was sold to ex-commodore founder Jack Trammell during Jack's Reign at Atari we saw the last iteration of the Atari 2600 released in 1986 the one that we know as the Atari Junior this was produced until 1992 giving the Atari an amazing 15-year run the most of any video game console arcade players get you edited the new Atari 5200 super system is here with a controller so in that he plays arcade Graphics so real it looks arcade with Arcade Hits you can't play on any other system no other Home Video system in late 1977 Atari had already been purchased by Warner Communications the story of the 5200 starts after that Nolan Bushnell was still with the company and Warner Communications had already started the successor of the 2600 and there was actually talks of them discontinuing it Bushnell disagreed with this and along with other issues that he had with Warner Communications he decided to leave the company that's how I'm going to tell it Warner would probably tell it a different way but I'm taking Bushnell's side of this story Warner started development of the successor to the 2600 but 1977 is known as the year of the personal computer Revolution this is the year that the Apple II Commodore pet and that TRS-80 launched bringing the personal computer to many homes and businesses Atari had seen this and wanted in on the lucrative personal Computing market so instead of developing the next video game system they use the technology to develop the Atari 8-bit line of computers now at this time the only real competition that Atari had was the Fairchild channel f the Bally astricade and the Magnavox Odyssey 2. but fast forward a couple years and Mattel had released the intellivision in 1979 and in 1982 coleco released the ColecoVision both of which had add-ons that could play the Atari 2600 cartridges and had Superior Graphics to the 2600 Atari knew that they had to do something and they unshelf the console prototype from 1978. it developed it into the Atari video system X which a few prototypes were actually made the name was changed to the Atari 5200 the 5200 was officially launched in November of 1982. Atari had released a decently powerful video game console to compete with the coleco and in television however a timing was completely wrong the controllers were horrible and the games were just the same old arcade ports like on the Atari 2600 and it wasn't backwards compatible with the 2600 nor was it compatible with the 8-Bit line of computers and because of this consumers just couldn't justify the cost of buying a new game console for the same old games but with a little bit better graphics and of course it had the bad reputation for the controllers as well after its release it did sell a few units but it did not meet atari's sales expectations Atari had even gone as far as designing a slim version of the Atari 5200 called the Atari 50 200 junior or the 5100 however since sales were slow this project was canceled a few of those prototypes do exist and they're out there in the wild as well and then in 1983 the video game Crash came and sales of the system plummeted along with the sales of the Atari 2600 Atari discontinued the 5200 in May of 1984 giving it a lifespan of only 18 months and shortly after this Warner Communications sold Atari to Jack tremel the 5200 just sold over 1 million units although it was a powerful machine it was not a success for Atari Atari just reinvented the video game with this the Atari 7800 incredible huh so powerful it plays like the best arcade game with real joysticks right I was so Advanced to play Super Games computer games no other video game system ever played just look at these it even plays all Atari 2600 games great huh t oh the new Atari 7800 we reinvented the video game the story of the Atari 7800 starts in 1982. after the release of the Atari 5200 Atari was already getting complaints from consumers that the system was not that great controller issues no backward compatibility with the 2600 and most of the games were the same arcade ports that were already on the 2600. sales figures supported this as the system was not selling well Atari knew it had to come up with a new video game system to compete with the clecovision but after Warner Communications took over the company from Nolan Bushnell most of the brilliant Engineers that Atari had left so for the first time in atari's history they had to Outsource a company to design their new game system right about this time a small startup company named General computer Corporation was making arcade mods for popular arcade machines one of which was super missile attack a mod of atari's Missile Command Atari got wind of this and sued General computer Corporation for copyright infringement but once Atari saw the mods they cut a deal with GCC to hire them to produce the mods under atari's name they also had them start developing arcade games for Atari as well such as food fight and quantum then Atari had them start development on the den called Atari 3600 video game console it was to be backwards compatible with the 2600 and have arcade quality Graphics that can compete with the ColecoVision development started in 1983 and was ready for production in 1984 with the launch of 15 titles a high score cart and it even had a keyboard accessory it was renamed the Atari 7800 Pro System but Atari was going through its own changes the video game Crash started in 1983 and with it took a lot of profit out of the gaming industry Atari was at the heart of it due to so many bad games being released on the 2600 Warner Communications knew this and they wanted out in 1984 atari's consumer division was bought out by former Commodore president Jack Trammell it was Jack's decision to cancel the Atari 7800 project and shelve it due to the gaming consoles not being profitable after the crash and Atari focused more on its computer division fast forward a couple years to 1986 with the release of Nintendo's NES and seeing how successful it was tremel decided to unshelf the Atari 7800 unfortunately for Atari by this time the system was outdated and really was not a competitor to the NES or the Sega Master System the system wasn't that successful selling just over a hundred thousand units in 1986 far below what Nintendo had sold a total of 57 games were released for the system it was discontinued in 1992 along with the 2600 and the 8-Bit line of computers this is the Nintendo video game system it plays only cartridge games this is the new Atari XE system it plays cartridge and disc based games disk drive sold separately and only Atari comes with a real joystick both have guns but only Atari comes with a Target game bug hunt Nintendo has a toy robot but only Atari gives you a keyboard for playing Advanced computer games it even comes with the amazing Flight Simulator 2 cartridge the new Atari XC video game system unbeatable the story of the xeegs starts way back in the 1970s Nolan Bushnell had sold Atari to Time Warner Communications in 1976 to help pull Atari out of its financial bind in 1977 Atari started development of a new 8-bit game console as popular as the Atari 2600 was it was underpowered and Atari knew this the top Executives at Atari saw how successful the personal computer Market was becoming with the release of the Commodore pet Apple II and the TRS-80 in fact 1977 is known as the year of the personal computer because of this the top brows at Atari took the technology from the 8-Bit game system that was being developed and turned it into the Atari 8-bit line of computers the 400 and the 800 Nolan Bushnell and most of the engineers at Atari saw this as bad marketing and started to leave Atari at this point fast forward a few years to the early 1980s Atari now had competition in the video game console market with the intellivision and the clickovision and they knew they had to come up with the system that had arcade quality graphics and sound they reverse engineered the Atari 8-bit computer into a game console that we all know as the Atari 5200 in essence the 5200 is an Atari 8-bit computer under the hood but Atari made it so it was incompatible with the 8-Bit computer carts did not support a floppy or cassette Drive nor was it backboard compatible to the 2600 without the additional 2600 add-on along with the horrible analog controllers and the same arcade ports that were already on the 2600 consumers just didn't buy the system it was right about this time in 1983 that the video game Crash started diminishing the video game market and making it unprofitable a lot of companies pulled out of the market and Time Warner was no different in 1984 they sold Atari to former Commodore president Jack Trammell when Jack took over the company his primary focus was on computers he even shelved the then completed Atari 7800 game console because he thought releasing it after the crash would be unprofitable but Nintendo released the NES in 1985 and took the gaming World by storm showing video game consoles could be profitable once again in 1986 Atari then released the 7800 but it was too late to compete with Nintendo and another new competitor Sega after seeing that the 7800 was not going to be the success they thought it would be Atari had to come up with something quick to try to compete in the market they went back to the hybrid console computer idea that they had with the 5200 but this time it would be compatible with the 8-Bit carts support drives and have a keyboard light gun and even have basic on the ROM it was marketed as a video game console that could be expanded to a full-blown computer so Atari started development of the Atari XE GS the xcgs is really a redesigned Atari 65xe computer that was made to be a standalone video game console the system was as powerful if not more powerful than either the NES or the Sega Master System Atari thought they had a hit on their hands the shellless system was designed to fit the times a radical case and fluorescent colored buttons along with the Buck Rogers style bike gun it also had a redesigned detachable full Cordy keyboard but the reality of the system is far different than what it appeared Atari made these systems as cheap as they could to get rid of the 8-Bit component inventory getting ready to discontinue the 8-Bit computer systems making way for the 16-bit line of St computers these systems are plagued with issues because of this from failing system ROMs cold solder joints bad RAM and mmu issues the system was starting to get a bad reputation initial sales of the unit look good selling out of the 100 000 units that they made during the Christmas season but cells slumped afterward as the build quality issue started to pop up also by this time most people already had an NES or a Sega Master System Atari supported the xegs until 1992 when it was discontinued with the 2600 7800 and the Atari 8-bit line of computers the Atari xegs had a five-year lifespan from 1987 to 1992. it sold over 100 000 units and is considered to be the last 8-bit computer Atari produced or was it a console you guys be the judge ninja and to defeat the evil ninja yaku you need razor sharp reflexes Superior strength and really good cheat sheet with all the Death moves show me ninja only on the 64-bit Jaguar the story of the Jaguar actually starts in the mid-1980s with four different companies Atari Commodore Sinclair and flare Technologies commodore's longtime president Jack tremel jumped ship from Commodore to Atari in 1984. at this point tremel focused on selling the existing inventory of Atari products and creating a new line of computers capable of competing with Apple's Macintosh the Atari St in the late 1980s tramel wanted to design a new series of video game consoles for Atari this is where Sinclair and Flair Technologies comes into play Flair Technologies was part of Sinclair and they started designing a new computer called the Loki unfortunately for Flair the Loki didn't pan out and was canceled Flair Technologies was headed by Martin Brennan Ben cheese and John Matheson Flair started working with amstrad and developed a system called the flare one the flare one was intended to be a home computer or video game console but the chipset was actually used in arcade game cabinets for quizzes machines eventually the chipset was further developed into the connects multi-system prototype this was also canceled but caught the eye of Jack tremel through its technological capabilities in 1989 Jack tremel contacted Flair Technologies and made a deal to buy flare technology and turn it into part of Atari calling it flare 2. tremel asked them to create a 32-bit and 64-bit game consoles based off of the flare 1 technology that was used in the connect they started to work on both the 32-bit which was the Panther and the 64-bit Jaguar consoles work on the Jaguar console proved to be going a lot faster advancing further so the panther project was canceled in 1993 the Jaguar was unveiled at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show also there was a test launch of the Jaguar which saw all of the 20 000 units that were shipped be sold Atari at this point thought that they had a big hit on their hands Jaguar was launched on November 23 1993 at a price of 249.99 most of the games were not very popular but there were a few games that were good Tempest 2000 Doom Wolfenstein 3D Alien vs Predator were all released in 93 as well but as the consoles were starting to sell and people started buying and playing games one thing came to the Forefront Gamers realize that games did not look like they were on a 64-bit system and even as low as 16 bit but most likely 32-bit quality consumers started questioning whether the Jaguar was a true 64-bit system Atari kind of limped along for a couple years until 1995 when the arrival of the Sega Saturn in the Sony PlayStation basically sealed the final nail in the coffin for the Jaguar but we'll take a quick pause here and I just want to let you know that there were a few peripherals that were designed for the Jaguar one being the Pro Controller giving additional buttons for fighting games then there was the Jag link which was a network device to connect Jaguars together to be able to play games together and then in 1995 they released the Jaguar CD and memory track module but unfortunately for Atari this was not enough to save the jaguar and by late 1995 rumors started circulating that the Jaguar was going to be discontinued in April of 1996. Atari agreed to merge with jts Incorporated and on July 30th of that year the merger was completed after the merger with jts most of the Jaguar inventory remained unsold and was moved to a private Liquidator called tiger software in 1996. and in 1998 jts sold the Atari name and all of its Atari properties to Hasbro marking the end of Atari as we all knew it after 26 years now a funny tidbit of information about the Atari and jts is that they ended up selling the console shells to a dental Imaging company where they went ahead and produced an Imaging machine using the shells of the Atari Jaguar unfortunately only a few of these were produced as technology changed and the company used different products so that kind of brings us to the end of the Atari Jaguar story however I did want to say in 1998 the Jaguar became an open source system and with many great Homebrew games that have been made for the jaguar in fact The Homebrew games tend to be a little bit better than the original Jaguar games that were released by Atari so if you ever have a chance to check out The Homebrew scene on the Jaguar it's excellent now the Jaguar did not have a very long life span it started in 1993 and was discontinued in 1996 selling less than 150 000 units in total and being the very last video game console made by Atari well at least the Atari that we all grew up with game over man this game over [Music]

Channel: Retrogamer Gen X

Views: 2,945

Keywords: atari history, video game history, history of video games, atari, atari 2600, video games, video game consoles, video game console (invention), console history, atari story, atari console, atari vcs, worst video game consoles, evolution of atari, history of video games (exhibition subject), home video game consoles, atari games, history, atari 7800, atari 5200, video game console history, home video game console story, the story of atari, atari console history

Id: xCP1Ld6NX-w

Length: 31min 20sec (1880 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023