1980: Home Competition
On April
25, 1980,
the "Fantastic Four" made it known that they would be producing games
for the Atari VCS with their new company, Activision. At first, there was
little reaction from Atari. The company
went on to announce four games: Boxing,
Fishing Derby, Dragster, and Checkers.
There was little fan-fare for Activision, and hardly anyone took notice.
More
pressing for Atari was the emergence of some serious competition for the VCS. The
Mattel Intellivision was test-marketed in 1979 and released wide in 1980. It
sold 200,000 units, and was considered superior in some ways to the Atari VCS.
However, it was competition that could have been avoided (or at least
postponed) if Ray Kassar had respected Nolan Bushnell's SLI chip blocking
strategy.
"When I sold the company to
Warner and after I left, Ray Kassar looked at and said 'Bushnell is a real
idiot, why does he have five different chip manufacturing projects going along?' He cancelled all but the best ones. One went
to TI, one went to Bally, and one went to Mattel. All of a sudden, with the
stroke of a pen, he generated three major competitors." cxxxiv
- Nolan Bushnell
This has always
been a bit of a grey area. The hardware specs of the Mattel Intellivision
certainly sounded very similar to a project called The Atari 3200. The 3200 was
a system that was supposed to be a successor to the 2600, but development did
not start until 1981.
"According to engineering logs,
in 1981 Atari began work on a new video game console to replace the Atari 2600
Video Computer System. This new console during development took on many
codenames: Sylvia, Super-Stella and also... PAM (with notes next to it saying 'Super-Stella:
Multipurpose'. This new console was to be based on a new 10-bit processor and
would have more memory, higher resolution graphics and improved sound while
maintaining compatibility with all existing Atari 2600 console games." cxxxv
- Curt Vendel
However, this still does not preclude it being the same chip, as no matter when design started on the system, the chip could have been designed long before. The most striking similarity between the 3200 and the Intellivision was the inclusion of 10-bit internals, which were not common at a time when 8-bit was the norm.
The 3200 was never built and Atari moved onto other projects to succeed the
2600. However, if it is true it means that Ray Kassar's contempt for
engineering and his misunderstanding Bushnell's blocking strategy led directly
to the Atari VCS's fiercest competition in the early '80s.
1980: Atari Electronics
By 1980 the
Atari Electronics Division's future looked very bleak. Touch-Me was not success, and its new products in development
looked questionable at best. Al Alcorn, Roger Hector and Harry Jenkins lead a
team developing Cosmos, a standalone
console that combined and LED screen with holographic images. The holograms
looked cool, but were mere window-dressing. The real meat of the games were
played out on the LEDs.
"..you played a
tabletop game then a hologram appeared. They made you think the GAMES were
going to be Holograms!" cxxxvi
- Bill Kunkel
Still, there
was much public interest in Cosmos and the team was pushing toward a 1981 CES
unveiling for the product.
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Thanks for the great article, although I must say that I find the claim that the VIC-20 was more powerful than an Atari 400 a bit tough to swallow... ;-)
-Clay
Thanks. That probably should read "arguably more powerful" or "perceived as more powerful". In retrospect, it wasn't.
-Steve
Having worked at Time Warner, back in the SF Rush / Rise of the Robots era, I totally recognize the pattern that has also poisoned most large developers :)
Sorry to be a pingeek but I think there's a misplaced comma: Superman the pinball, more like 3500-5000 units sold according to the ipdb. 10 K sales from the late 70's on was blockbuster.
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/7749/fairchildchannelfcartrihz0.jpg
Channel F's Videocart 12 was baseball, released in 1977.
Good catch, but I believe it says that it was the first "single player" baseball game. I believe the Fairchild game (which I played many times at my friend's house BTW...but my favorite game was Alien Invasion) required two-players. I was trying to highlight the A.I. of the VCS game.
-Steve
We'd like to translate a decent articles "The History of Atari: 1971-1977" (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2000/the_history_of_atari_19711977.php?pag
e=1) and "Atari: The Golden Years -- A History, 1978-1981" (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years__a_.php) into Polish language and publish it on a popular portal jakilinux.org (and/or osnews.pl). Do you mind us doing so? Obviously proper attribution would be paid to you as the author.
Please let us know what you think about such re-publication. (My e-mail address is tprimke_at_gmail_dot_com.)
Best regards,
Tomek
Moreover, it is very unlikely that the Atari 3200 was to be based on the same chipset as the Intellivision. The Intellivision was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to the Atari 2600 from Mattel, and therefore consisted of an pre-built, off-the-shelf game system created by chip maker General Instruments. In fact, it was an actual sku item on their 1978 parts catalog. It was later customized a little, mainly to allow for more ROM and custom graphic tiles, but it was generally an off-the-shelf product.
Therefore it seems unlikely that Atari would plan to replace their aging custom-designed Atari 2600 with an off-the-shelf product, whose technology, although having some more capabilities, was just as old.
-dZ.
Thanks for that!
I'd say that from your description, the Intellivision processor could have still been one of the chips that Bushnell had tied-up in development, especially if GI was one of the companies he used. Remember, the idea that the Intellivision was based on one of those processors did not come from myself, but from a direct quote that Bushnell gave to me in an interview. Still, it's a very gray area and this why that part of the story is painted as "not definite".
-Steve
Thanks for your response. You are right, the GI microprocessor could still have been the planned successor to the Atari 2600. However, I still think it unlikely due its many limitations (weird architecture, 10-bit memory addressing, etc.).
My point was that the only reason Mattel used it was not because it was considerably better, but because they needed a quick release, and chose the General Instrument's pre-built system in haste in order to jump into the new Video Game market.
The entire Intellivision console was indeed superior, with better graphics resolution and 3-channel DSP'ed sound (although the graphics were tile-based instead of pixel-based, limiting its practicality; not to mention the ill-conceived Disc Controller!), but its microprocessor and chip technology were the products of early 1970s technology, hardly state-of-the-art; and unlikely the first choice for a successor.
But, of course, we can't ever know, and I do concede it's possible.
I do agree that competition from Mattel could have been avoided if only Atari had adhered to Bushnell's strategy.
All in all, a very interesting and satisfying article; one that brought back wonderful memories. Please keep up with the thoughtful historical accounts of our wonderful technological roots.
Thank you,
-dZ.
P.S. Why, yes, I did (and currently) own a Mattel Intellivision, thank you.
Perhaps Gamasutra can showcase the Mattel Intellivision on a future article and fulfill my well of nostalgia, as it has already done with the Atari VCS, the Commodore 64, and Video Game arcades in general.
-dZ.
No problem! Thanks for adding to the discussion. I agree, the Intellivision story needs to be told. I'd love to try to tackle it someday, especially since it all went down near my home town (they used to frequent the local arcade here while making games), Keith Robinson from the Blue Sky Rangers draws a cartoon for the local paper, and Intellivision Productions is in the same office building as my favorite Sunday breakfast coffee shop)...plus, I currently work for Mattel.
mason,
I'm happy you noticed. The quotes, to me, are the most important part.
It was Atari that really changed my life. Starting with COMBAT. My brother and I played that till the wee morning hours and although it was simplistic. I never had so much fun in my life. That would be followed by Space Invaders. Asteroids, Adventure, which was the first game that gave me the sense I could explore a world in a game. I liked the Sword Quest series as well.
Seeing a TV ad for Atari. Going to store and seeing the box art for each game. Buying a game and taking it home and opening it up. Taking the cart out and putting it into your Atari. That was pure bliss when I was growing up.
Atari is my childhood. I love Nintendo as well, but I'm not the Nintendo generation. I'm the Atari generation. Atari forever!
We re-developed 2-3 years ago Intellivision cartridges as Keith acquired the rights to unreleased games and wanted to release them for the retro crowd.
The carts are not simple ROMs, but use a time multiplexed bus for address and data, and the Intellivision hardware is definitely odd...
We've also re-developed a 2600 clone, for a product that hasn't been released (distributor problem), so I can answer a lot of questions about the 2600 hardware and some of its history if you want to do a followup.
you can contact me at: my first name that you can see on this post @ retrogamesllc.com
>>box art for each game. Buying a game and taking it home
>>and opening it up. Taking the cart out and putting it into
>>your Atari. That was pure bliss when I was growing up.
Ryan,
That is exactly what I can't shake Atari from my mind. Somehow i want to recreate those moments, but it is very difficult these days.
-Steve