1979: Pinball
Atari's
struggling pinball division started 1979 with the release of Hercules in January, the largest pinball
machine ever manufactured. It stood seven feet tall, was eight feet long, and
used (what resembled) pool cue balls in place of steel pin balls.
As you might
imagine, while the machine was certainly a spectacle, the action was not all it
could have been.
"I was always intrigued by Hercules...and I still am. I try play it when I go to the Redondo Beach Fun Factory (one of
the only places that still has an operating version of the game). While it certainly is an 'experience', I can't
say it is actually fun to play."
-Steve Fulton (Atari Fan)
The last
official Atari pinball machine was Superman,
announced in March 1979, and licensed from the movie. The game was significantly
successful, selling nearly 3,500 units. lxxxiv
In fact, Atari simply could not
produce enough units to fill demand. However, when that license was lost, the
machine was re-named and re-themed as Solar
War and Orion XIV. Neither of
these machines ever saw an arcade.
"Atari pinball machines were disasters, but they were also artistic masterpieces. I mean, we worked day and night, seven days a week on Superman, which was the state of the art, and then it got killed. That's probably something I never really forgave the corporation for." lxxxv
- Noah Anglin, Atari engineering VP
Without
Bushnell pushing to innovate in the pinball area, the division soon descended
into chaos. Atari simply did not have the manufacturing experience to produce
pinball games reliably.
"Bally could have produced in
two weeks what took us four months, which is why we dropped out of pinball in
1979." lxxxvi
- Don Osborne
Not soon
after, the division was closed completely, leaving multiple machines, including
Road Runner, 4x4, Monza and Neutron Star all unreleased.
"It was a mess, but we pulled the
plug too soon." lxxxvii
- Gene Lipkin
1979: The Rise Of The Arcade
After the
massive success of Space Invaders in
1978, the Atari coin-op division was desperately trying to gain back its
reputation as the king of the arcades. Atari had dabbled in space-themed games
in the past, but for the most part it had stuck to realistic driving and war
concepts. However with Space Invaders
literally invading Atari's territory, the company had to respond with something very
special.
The
engineers at Atari's Grass Valley facility had been tinkering with a
vector image generator since they had seen one used by Cinematronics' Space War game in 1977. Atari coin-op engineer Howard Delman was
tasked with taking the Grass Valley prototype and perfecting it for use
in a game.
"The original
architecture for Atari's vector generator came out of the Grass Valley group. They built a
prototype of a system that could display vectors on an appropriate monitor. It
wasn't ready for production, but it did clearly demonstrate the viability of
their ideas." lxxxviii
- Howard Delman
Unlike
pixel-based bit-mapped raster graphics, vector images were created by defining
points that could be joined with solid lines. While this gave games a "skeleton"
feel, mostly because the images could not be filled with color, it made up for
it with sharper images, with a then unheard-of 1024 x 768 resolution visuals.
"Vector graphics -- sometimes
called XY graphics -- were great for video games because they provided very
high resolution, razor sharp images in a day when 200 x 180 pixels was
considered 'hi-res'.
Atari designed and built all its own game
hardware, have it we did, thanks to some very clever engineering by Lyle Rains,
Howie Delman, and others at Atari.'" lxxxix
- Owen R. Rubin
After
developing a working vector generator, a monitor was required to display the
images. Rick Moncrief and Howard Delman combined their efforts to continue to create
a working system.
"At the same time, Rick Moncrief was working on the display. (I don't
know if he started from scratch, or was provided a preliminary design from Grass Valley.) Rick and I worked
together, since our respective elements had to work together in any finished
product." xc
- Howard Delman
The
hardware was ready to be programmed by 1978, and the team needed a game concept
to test. Howard Delman chose the game Lunar Lander, itself a mainframe
computer game much like Computer Space. In Lunar
Lander, the player attempted to tweak thrust and angle, formulating the
proper velocity to land a lunar module on a rocky moonscape.
"Of course, a
finished product needed to include a game, and so I was made project leader for
Atari's first vector graphic game. I decided to go with the classic vector
game, Lunar Lander. Rich Moore was assigned the task of
writing to software. Over the next year (roughly 1978), Rick, Rich, and I
developed (the game), and the final product was Lunar Lander." xci
- Howard Delman
Lunar Lander was released in August 1979, and
while it was only a modest success (4,830 units manufactured, and sold for
$1695 each xcii),
the design of the game intrigued the other engineers and designers in the
coin-op division. Even before Lunar
Lander was released, another vector-based game was already in development.
"As the design of
the hardware and game progressed, other engineers became interested in using
it. A team composed of Lyle Rains, Ed Logg, and Steve Callfee had been working
for some time on a traditional raster game called Planet Grab. As Lunar Lander took shape
in the lab, they asked about using the hardware for their game, which would
eventually be released under the name Asteroids." xciii
- Howard Delman
 When the
Asteroids coin-op was finally
released in November 1979, arcade operators were skeptical, but it took the
arcade by storm anyway.
During its run, it was Atari's biggest selling game (at
about 55,000 units xciv)
and unseated Space Invaders in the
mindshare of the rabid and rapidly growing legions of players showing up in
arcades across the U.S. as the best space game available.
"Asteroids surpassed Space Invaders. That's
when the business community started to think that maybe video games were not
flukes." xcv
- Don Osborne
It's
interesting to note that, much like some of Atari's advances in hardware from
the past (i.e. discrete logic), Atari's vector hardware was took a step back in
technology to realize gains for successful production.
In the case of vector
graphics, it was Howard Delman who redesigned the hardware from digital to
analog circuitry, inventing a hardware design that would help Atari rule the
golden age of arcades.
"The original
vector generator hardware that was used in Lunar Lander
and Asteroids was almost completely
digital. It became clear to me that a vector generator was one place where
analog circuitry could outperform digital in cost and efficiency. I redesigned
a portion of the hardware to replace digital components with analog circuitry,
and the analog vector generator was born. Although the player in the arcade
wouldn't know the difference, the change shrunk the size of the circuit board,
and lowered its cost. ." xcvi
-Howard Delman
Besides the
vector games, Atari released other arcade games in 1979. In an attempt build on
the success of Football in 1978,
Atari created the Atari Sports label to market its games. The first Atari
sports game released was Baseball, in
May 1979 -- 1050 units were manufactured and sold for $1595 each. xcvii
Baseball had a similar cabinet and
control mechanism to Football. Also
developed for Baseball was a voice
synthesis unit that was cut before the game went into production.
"The whole idea behind this game was
to use the same hardware and cabinet design that was used to make the very
successful Atari Football game... We did, however, prototype a voice
system for this game that was developed by Dan Pliskin. It used
delta-modulation technology and played back a sampled voice saying such things
as 'Strike', 'Ball', "Foul', and 'Yer out!' It didn't make it into the
final product. I believe that I have the only prototype of this voice unit at
home. Even though it never made it into production, it was probably the first
voice unit ever put into a coin-op game." xcviii
- Ed Rotberg
 As well as Baseball, Basketball and Soccer (programmed
by Dave Theurer xcix)
other games were also produced under the Atari Sports banner in 1979, including
Four Player Football (901 units
manufactured and sold for $1995 each c)
developed at Grass Valley with help from Ed Logg.
Rounding
out the coin-op releases in 1979 were Subs
(May) and Video Pinball (March), also
programmed by Ed Logg.
"I did not believe Video Pinball would be successful... However, there were places video games could go
that large pinball machines could not. In the end, the game earned more than I
expected and it was a commercial success." ci
- Ed Logg
There were
couple games that remained unreleased from this period, including Sebring, a pseudo first-person color driving game designed by Owen Rubin and engineered by Jed Margolin cii.
The game was finished but a
dispute with cabinet manufacturer (and possibly the emergence of better
hardware) kept it from being sold. Malibu
Grand Prix was also a first-person 3D driving game using the vector
hardware. ciii It was scrapped because of hardware
limitations.
However,
all of this was overshadowed by the phenomenal success of Asteroids, and with it the emergence of Ed Logg as one of Atari's
top coin-op designers.
"Ed Logg is the world's greatest games designer. He's done the most,
the best games." civ
- Steve Calfee, Atari coin-op
designer
With old
coin-op standbys either leaving Atari (Joe Decuir) or on the ropes (Al Alcorn,
Ed Rotberg), it would take a new generation with the likes of Ed Logg and Dave
Theurer to launch Atari coin-op into the next decade.
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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