1978: Atari Electronics and Pinball
Atari's pinball
division continued to produce games through 1978. The first was Middle Earth in February. It included a
double playfield with sets of flippers and a theme based on Lord of the Rings. Also
released in 1978 was the largest pinball machine ever made (83" tall x
39" wide x 93" deep). Hercules
in April 1978, and Space Riders in
November 1978.
At the same
time the Atari Electronics division released its first product, Touch-Me, which was a version of the
arcade game of the same name that was similar to well-known toy
inventor and patent defender Ralph Baer's Simon game at Milton Bradley.
"(I did) a little
product called Touch-Me, which was a hand-held version of Milton Bradley's
Simon, which was Milton Bradley's version of Atari's coin-op Touch-Me." lii
- Dennis Koble
Touch-Me was not a huge success, and the
Electronics Division never released another product. Three other products were
created in 1978, but never sold: handheld
versions of Space Invaders and Breakout, plus Pro Coach Football.
1978: Bushnell Leaves
As 1978
continued, Ray Kassar's involvement in Atari moved from mere consultant into a
much larger role. As Ray's importance grew -- and confidence in his abilities
increased within Warner brass such as Manny Gerard -- Nolan Bushnell and Joe
Keenan were systematically pushed out of the company.
"By the time I got
to Atari (in the summer if 1978), Nolan was just being phased out by Ray
Kassar." liii
- Rob Fulop
Bushnell
constantly fought with Warner Communications and Kassar over the direction of
Atari. By the end of 1978, Bushnell was
convinced that Atari was making huge mistakes. He felt that the VCS was in
trouble, and needed to be scrapped for a successor.
"The day that we shipped the
2600, I felt we needed to spend engineering money on getting the next one. By
the time it was there, the technology had advanced so much that we could build
a much better video game. Warner was horrified by the idea. They wanted to be
in the 45 rpm record business and just sell records for ever, and I told them, 'It
doesn't work that way, every two to three years you need to upgrade your
hardware', and their decision to not upgrade the hardware was really what led
to the collapse of the business in 1982."
- Nolan Bushnell
He also
felt that the incipient Atari computer line needed to embrace outside
developers, but the record company execs from Warner -- who were used to
completely controlling IP and the delivery medium for it -- wanted to make the
new computers completely closed to outside developers.
"I felt that the computer
system should not be a closed system, we needed to have third party software
developers. I could see Steve Jobs out evangelizing, and Atari was saying that if you write software for
the Atari computers, we will sue you. I just thought that was foolhardy. They
were from the record world, where you sue people."
- Nolan Bushnell
Bushnell
also continued to fight with Warner over R&D, especially his plan to tie up
all the N-Channel chip fabricators with alternative Atari designs, so no
competitors could get their products manufactured. They also argued over the premium
prices Atari put on pinball machines.
History
would prove Bushnell correct on all accounts except for the fate of the VCS,
and this became his Achilles heel to his superiors. In November 1978, Bushnell
laid his feelings bare about the fate of the VCS during a meeting at Warner
headquarters in New York City. Atari had manufactured 800,000
units for 1978, but many remained unsold. liv It looked like dire straits for all
involved, including Bushnell and Manny Gerard.
"The meeting -- Warner's annual
budget meeting -- took place in November. It proved to be Bushnell's downfall.
Before a crowd of high-level executives, Bushnell and Gerard locked horns,
screaming at each other for hours." lv
- Steve Bloom
The pair
fought about all their outstanding issues, especially the still-poor sales of
the VCS.
""It was a very bad year
for the company. Clearly we built too many units, which translated into
potential disaster. We're talking $40 million worth of inventory that the
company was stuck with." lvi
- Joe Keenan
Bushnell
was convinced that VCS would have a disastrous Christmas season. Gerard was
confident that Kassar's marketing plans would show good results. The meeting turned
into a complete disaster, and all involved knew that some kind of change had to
be made.
The one
thing that could have saved Bushnell was if his prediction for terrible VCS
sales had come true. However, it never materialized. The success of Space Invaders in the arcades, plus
the unprecedented Kassar-initiated TV marketing blitz for the VCS in the fourth
quarter of 1978, meant respectable sales for the Christmas 1978 season, and
$200 million for the consumer division in fiscal 1978-1979. Bushnell was very
much part of that success.
"Don't forget, I also hired Ray
(Kassar). If there was a problem with marketing, as Warner claims, I solved
that problem by hiring Ray." lvii
- Nolan Bushnell
However,
his prediction of the VCS's failure was his Bushnell's undoing. Manny Gerard
suggested a reorganization that would have kept Bushnell at Atari as director,
but Bushnell realized that he could never really effectively control his
company again.
"I realized no matter what the
title was, the real shots were going to be called from New York." " lviii
- Nolan Bushnell
Instead,
Bushnell informed Gerard that he wanted to be fired (Warner contended that it
fired Bushnell, but the end result was the same) and thus ended the role of the
first engineer entertainer in the business of the world's first video game
company.
Bushnell signed a seven year non-compete agreement, negotiated for the
rights to Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time Theater from his former company (for
$500,000 lix),
and then set off to try to conquer the world in other avenues.
"You
can spend your life doing woulda, shoulda, coulda. I wish I hadn't sold to
Warner, because I think that the world would be a very different place with
Atari being the preeminent video game company today." lx
- Nolan Bushnell
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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