1979: The Kassar Reign Begins
1979
started as the first full year that Atari did not have Nolan Bushnell at the
helm. New president and CEO Ray Kassar moved very quickly to shake things up
around the company. One of the first
things Kassar did was cancel many engineering projects that he felt
unnecessary.
Unfortunately for Atari,
this included the "tied-up" N-Channel projects Bushnell had used to
stave off VCS competition. This opened the door for a multitude of competitors
that would soon challenge Atari for dominance in the home video game arena,
including Bally and Mattel.
"Since there were only six labs
in the world that could do N-Channel, you created a virtual monopoly with a
series of contracts. It was so simple. Ray Kassar was not a technologist, so he
had no clue about what was going on" lxi
- Nolan Bushnell
At the same
time, Kassar made several moves to break the hold engineering had on Atari. Aside
from cancelling Friday parties, instituting dress codes and core working hours,
installing security doors, and hiring a former Secret Service agent to head
security for the company, lxii Kassar cut Bob Brown's 30-person
R&D staff completely, leaving Atari with a huge gap for developing new
products.
"In fact, when Al (Alcorn) told me what had happened I didn't understand what he was saying -- I couldn't conceive of Atari cutting off its future by chopping off its R&D work. It will always be my opinion that being engineering-oriented was what made Atari successful." lxiii
- Bob Brown
Kassar's
view was simple: Why did Atari need R&D if the company could not sell the VCS
units already stocked in warehouses?
It was a logical question, but also one that showed Kassar had little
respect for Atari as a creative or pioneering company.
The executive's dire view of
Atari's entertainer engineers showed in the contemptuous things he called them
in private and to the press. Kassar used terms like "spoiled brats",
and "prima donnas" to describe a group that had once been Atari's
most valued resource.
To make up
for the lost focus on engineering and R&D, Kassar hired a slew of marketing
MBAs and increased advertising spending to levels Atari had never seen. The new
crop of Atari executives knew nothing of games, and in fact hardly played them.
"Ray Kassar wouldn't be caught
dead in an arcade." lxiv
- Howard Delman
Kassar
quickly shifted Atari's focus from dreaming up new ideas to selling the ones the company already had. Bushnell had created Atari as company where creativity and
innovation could flourish.
"It became this almost
passionate religious quest, and the more religious fervor, the better and more
interesting the games turned out to be." lxv
- Nolan Bushnell
On the
other hand, Warner and Kassar were designing a company that could market the existing
product line at the expense of everything else.
"They kind of ripped the core
out of what created Atari's brilliance and excellence." lxvi
- Nolan Bushnell
1979: Atari VCS
As 1978
ended and as 1979 began, things were looking-up for the VCS's line-up of
games. Night Driver (Larry Kaplan, Rob Fulop) and Adventure (Warren Robinett)
were coming along nicely. Those titles were shown at the January CES and were
very well received.
At the same
time, it looked like Bushnell's push in 1978 to augment the VCS programming
team to produce for as many games as possible had paid off, at least in numbers.
Many new titles were released in 1979, even while some of the core VCS
programmers like Kaplan, Crane, Miller, and Whitehead were busy preparing the
OS for the home computer division.
Still
though, the quality of the games was an issue. Besides the exceptional Bowling, Canyon Bomber and Sky Diver
cartridges, there was nothing earth-shattering in the line-up: Casino, BASIC Programming, Backgammon,
Football, Human Cannonball, Miniature
Golf, and Slot Machine.
" (Sky Diver) also took about six months as I recall, and I started it before I
even knew there was a Sky Diver coin-op
game...This was the best selling 2600 game until Space Invaders came out." lxvii
- Jim Huether
Video Chess was created when a consumer from Florida sued Atari because there was a
chess piece pictured on the system's box, but no game was available. The VCS
programmers did not think a chess game would be possible on the VCS, but with
some alternating scan-line tricks they got it to work.
"I do remember discussions in
the lab of how 'stupid' it was to assume we can do a chess game and how 'impossible'
it was to do. And that's all I needed... you see the word 'impossible', it
seems, has always been one of my 'igniters' -- it gets the puzzle solver in me
going." lxviii
- Bob Whitehead
Also, Warren
Robinett finished the rather bizarre entry into the VCS line-up, BASIC Programming, in June 1979.
"The higher-ups at Atari wanted
a cartridge that would allow the user to learn simple programming, and I had
been vocal in expressing my interest in doing a programming language before
management came up with this. I was the only 2600 programmer who had studied
computer science." lxix
- Warren Robinett
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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