1978: The Coin-Op Business
At the
beginning of 1978 Atari's coin-op business was still coming to grips with the
microprocessor technology now used in most of its games, while pushing
forward with game and cabinet innovations.
By that time, the coin-op group had
expanded to four core teams (adding fresh talent such as Mike Albaugh and Ed
Logg to the ranks), each with consisting of a team leader (usually a senior
electrical engineer), plus a couple of programmers, a couple electrical engineers,
and a couple technicians.
Unlike the solo work on VCS games, coin-ops were a
team effort. The focus was still on technology, because the graphical
capabilities of the hardware were still fairly primitive.
"Graphic and cabinet design
were a 'shared resource', and 'graphics' meant physical stuff, not pixels.
Teams did their own pixels, which we called 'dots' at the time, none of us
having taken a computer-graphics class." xl
- Mike Albaugh
Atari
started 1978 with an aerial action game named Sky Raider released in March. Still working from the "military"
theme of earlier games, Sky Raider
had the player fly over a scrolling landscape, dropping bombs on enemy
targets. It was one of the first games
to keep a high score (though without initials).
"Sky
Raider will be a super attraction game...it was first previewed at the ATE show
in London where the overall reaction was superb" xli
-Frank Ballouz, Atari Marketing executive
One of
Atari's earliest coin-ops from 1978 was Avalanche,
programmed by Dennis Koble and released in April. Avalanche was a sort of a "reverse Breakout", in which rocks fell from the top of screen and had
to be caught by the player.
Soon after, in June, Atari released the Fire Truck coin-op. Fire
Truck was one of the first cooperative multiplayer coin-ops. One or two
players would guide a hook and ladder fire truck around a city.
The game
cabinet consisted of a seat for the driver with a steering wheel for the cab,
and a platform directly behind the seat with another steering wheel used for
the second player to control the ladder portion of the fire-truck.
"Fire Truck was a follow-up to Superbug. The idea was to create a two player
cooperative driving game. In Fire Truck,
one player drove the front of the truck, and the other player drove the rear.
It was trickier than it sounds. " xlii
A single
player version of the game named Smokey
Joe was released in August 1978, intended for locations that didn't have
room for the massive Fire Truck
cabinets.
July 1978 saw the release of Skydiver,
programmed by Owen R. Rubin. The game consisted of a player jumping from an
airplane and guiding their avatar to hit a spot on the ground.
Rubin, a pinball fan, added a "pinball
feature": the name of the game on the marquee would light up when you
landed successfully. If you were able to light the full name, you would win a
bonus life, points, or a free game. Rubin had to fight his superiors to get
this added to the game. xliii
"I was a pinball
fan, so this is the first video game to have a pinball feature. When I asked
for it, I had to fight to get it added because they thought I was crazy."xliv
- Owen R. Rubin
When Ed
Logg joined Atari in 1978, he immediately started working with Atari engineer
Dennis Koble on the ill-fated and unreleased coin-op Dirt Bike. When that project was cut short, he moved on to Super Breakout, a follow-up to the
established 1976 Atari hit Breakout. Released
in August, Super Breakout was a
sizable hit with nearly 5000 units sold. xlv
The game improved on Breakout in many
ways: it was written for a microprocessor (6502) instead of discrete logic, and
it included 3 game variations -- Double Breakout
(two walls separated by a space), Progressive (continuous walls that scroll
down the screen), and Cavity (two balls embedded in a standard wall).
"The original idea was to have six variations on Breakout... However, in actual play there was one overall favorite, Progressive Breakout". In the end we put three variations in one game: Progressive, Double, and Cavity Breakout." xlvi
- Ed Logg
Other
coin-ops released in 1978 were Sprint 1,
a 1-player version of Atari sister company Kee's Sprint 2, Ultra Tank, a version of Tank inspired by Atari VCS Combat,
with eight game variations, and Orbit,
a raster version of Space War
developed for the European market by Owen R. Rubin in six to eight weeks. xlvii
As well,
there were several notable unreleased games in 1978, many with military themes.
These included Wolf Pack, PT Commander, and Captain Seahawk, plus the decidedly non-military Mini Golf.
One very interesting
unreleased game from this year was Tunnel
Hunt, programmed by Owen R. Rubin.
Tunnel Hunt was a pseudo-3D shooting game that was determined to simply not
be fun enough for release. The game was later sold to Exidy as Vertigo and then to Centuri as Tube Chase.
"Marketing felt just flying was
not fun enough, so we added Star Wars-like objects that flew down the tube at
you and you had to shoot them. It was a good game, but they kept wanting
changes. It did a solid #2 and #3 for 12 weeks in tests, but Atari could not
decide to ship it." xlviii
- Owen R Rubin
The biggest
coin-op game for Atari in 1978 was Football.
Football was a huge hit when it was
released in October, just in time for the NFL season.
"Several folks at Atari
had wanted to do a football game for a while, by the time I got there. I
believe Steve Bristow and Lyle Rains were the main promoters of the idea,
however the technology was not quite up to it. With the move toward
microprocessor-controlled games, it started looking possible." xlix
- Mike Albaugh
The game
included an innovative new controller scheme named a Trak-Ball (trademarked in
October 1977) that was used to control the game. By rolling the ball faster and
slower in any direction, the Trak-Ball could be used to control direction and
velocity of the X's and O's -- the on-screen players.
"When we brainstormed about
controls, I wanted a trackball. They had existed for a while, but were
fiendishly expensive. I harassed Jerry Lichac, one of our ace mechanical
engineers, with a number of harebrained schemes. Meanwhile, Sega produced a
soccer game with a trackball. It was not a great design, but served as an 'existence
proof' to quiet Atari management claims that a trackball was inherently too
expensive. Jerry came through in style. His "three-point suspension"
was the first I ever saw in such a context, and was widely adopted shortly
thereafter in pretty much every (mechanical) mouse. Too bad he never patented
it." l
- Mike Albaugh
Football sold an astonishing 10,450 arcade machines li within a few months. At the very same time, the Space Invaders coin-op from Taito was sweeping the nation (and the
world) and driving thousands of people back into the arcades. Football benefitted from this influx,
and held its own against Space Invaders
through the end of 1978. However, sales dropped off drastically when the NFL
season ended. By early 1979 Atari was giving the games away for the rock-bottom
price of $395.
By fiscal
1979, Atari's coin division has only generated $52 million is sales, as opposed
to nearly $200 million for the consumer division. It was clear that the coin-op
division was not going to be the primary focus of Atari. However, Atari's
coin-op division did not take the success of Space Invaders lightly, and moved quickly to create its own
space-themed games to compete in the new marketplace.
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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