January 22, 2026 • 41 mins
Oof! Atari! As our producer Max likes to say, 'it was a thing.' In the second part of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the pioneering rise of Atari, corporate overtake, and the final words of its founder.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max
Macnvox Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Max Atari teenage Ryan Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
That's Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullen. This is Part two
of the Ridiculous History of Atari. So if you haven't
heard part one yet, please get THEE to thy podcast
platform of choice and check it out, because part two
will make a lot more sense when you've heard part one.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
It's true, but it's a pretty good division. I mean,
I would definitely recommend checking out episode one you probably
already have. But we're going to start from kind of
the fall from Grace type period of Atari.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, more money, more problems, and as Biggie would say,
we're here in what we'll call the post pong era.
Uh yeah, I guess we're still in the post police man.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I think like postmodernism.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So Keza McDonald, writing for IGN, points out that Atari
is growing to new unprecedented levels, but at every step
along the way, the company is facing a litany a
chorus of challenges. Their trajectory is up up, up, up,
up and away. But they make a few missteps in
(01:52):
the seventies.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
That's right, on the business side of things. Maybe they're
reached exceeding their grasp a bit when it comes to
banding to international markets, not to mention sinking a whole
lot of capital into a particularly convoluted development process on
a game called Grand Track ten, which may not surprise
(02:13):
you that you have not heard of.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Right, yeah, And it also it reminds me of other
missteps that occurred in the past. We'll get to some
of them with Atari, yeah, right. But also games that
require a specific controller can be a little bit of
a hard sell, like a couple of Battle met games
(02:36):
are like that, and a couple of other you know,
in depth simulator games. Luckily, though, Atari is able to
save their bacon with a game that is a huge
hit Arcades.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's called Tank, right, Yes, that is the game that
lifts them out of this this morass, these duldrums, and
Atari then has emerged with one of their sister companies
called k Key Games, key Key Games k e E,
which split off from Atari's main business in nineteen seventy
(03:09):
three to help the company get around some tricksy legal
areas or surrounding exclusivity.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, yeah, exactly. And this was this was the rule
of the day with the arcade industry. So by spinning
off key games, they were able to say, oh no,
I mean, it's not really us anymore. This is a
different guy.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
And now we have sort of another Sears type situation
in terms of mergers, though in this case with a
big boy in the communications industry, Warner Communications. So you
may have heard of They've been in the news a
little bit lately. It is the same, right, Warner Communications
and Warner Brothers would not have been like a community
an extension or is this very complete? It has to be,
(03:53):
And forgive me if anyone knows that not to be true,
but I do believe it is the case. So they
sold to Warner Communications for this number was not a secret,
unlike the settlement with Magnavox for a publicized twenty eight
million dollars. We got inflation calculator this, guys, and a
(04:13):
dude boo boooooo, boo boopy doope oop boopoo.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Oh we must and thank you for the boop there. Max. No,
it's trying to get me to inflation calculate sisygy, which
we're going to do. That was something we had pasted earlier. Okay,
here we go, folks. In nineteen seventy three dollars, twenty
(04:40):
eight million dollars is going to be as of two
thousand and five, the equivalent of drum roll two hundred
and three million, twenty seven thousand, one hundred and seventeen
dollars and twelve cents.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
A lot of cash, but still not at the level
of the types of communication and tech acquisitions we see
today that are like in the billions.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And of that twenty eight million, Bushnell himself receives the
line share. He walks away with something like fifteen million
of that twenty eight million.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Good on him.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He's put in the work, yeah, and he also he
bought out his co founder Ted Ted Dadney. Also, if
we inflation calculate once again to see Bushnell's share of
this sale, we will see the fifteen million in nineteen
seventy three is the equivalent of one hundred and eight million,
(05:39):
seven hundred and sixty four thousand, five hundred and twenty
seven dollars and three cents. So we set.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Easy retirement type windfall there for Buddy Bushnell. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And weirdly enough, though, this is the beginning of Atari's
death nells.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Sometimes that happens, right when you get a big company
coming in and changing the company culture and stuff like that,
which we're going to get into. However, before that death knell,
you know, kind of rang out, there was another hugely
important development at Atari, which was the VCS, the home
game console that we know as the Atari. The Atari
(06:21):
twenty six hundred.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, that's probably what you picture in your head, folks
when you think of Atari, or what's going to stick
in the button, It's going to be this console. It
stands for video computer system. Not the most creative name,
but a very creative piece of technology. Also, at this time,
Bushnell is drifting further and further away from the company
(06:44):
that he created. But if we go to James Lindino
writing for PC mag, we'll see that the twenty six
hundred is probably the I would say it's the second
most famous thing Atari's created outside of Pong. It's September eleventh,
nineteen seventy seven. This is weird because it's not the
(07:06):
first video game console, it's not the first one to
accept cartridges, but it could bring actual arcade games home
to your house when you plugged it into your TV.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
That's right. And by the end of nineteen seventy six
we started to see other competing systems jumping into the fray,
including Magnavox, Old Favorites and Kaliko with their was it
Calco vision.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, that was one thing they did for sure, and
these other companies. There was real proliferation of boom and bust.
At least it was a console wars really, I mean,
that's really what we're seeing here. And that did not stop. Yeah,
and we see this happen in all kinds of all
kinds of industries, like the early days of soda pop.
(07:53):
There were so many flash in a pan soda companies
and flavors and the history that is amazing. But ultimately,
you know, the market starts to collapse, the choices, right,
and there are just a few big soda companies, are a
few big video game console manufacturers left. There's something else
(08:13):
that happens here with an outfit called Fairchild. This company
gets in front of the curve and beats Atari to
the punch with something called Channel F. This is a
microprocessor based game console.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I want to say that Fairchild was also responsible for
a pretty important piece of audio equipment, the fair Child compressor,
which is another classic audio device that exists in plug
in form today. It's all full of vacuum tubes and
this is that kind of a sacred cow of studio tech.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Oh yeah, I love the tubes, man, love to see it.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
This.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Okay, so fair or the Channel F we should say,
has color graphics. It can accept cartridges, unlike all the
other TV games systems on the market, and that's exactly
what Atari was working on doing on their own end.
So eventually RCA releases something called the Studio two. The
(09:12):
Studio two as built in game pad buttons, it also
takes cartridges. Magnavox, not to be outdone, comes out with
the Odyssey two that has a built in keyboard that
lets you write your own game software. That's crazy. And
a couple of other companies also again got into the race,
places like Bally and Allied Leisure. And you know, we
(09:35):
were talking a little off air about something we also
see in the early days of the automotive industry or
appliance manufacturers. A lot of the video games are coming
from companies that already had the ability to manufacture electronics.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It a social step. Yeah, like RCA as an example,
a company that was responsible for a lot of innovation
involving you know, record playback like LPs and other you know,
pro and consumer audio products.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
And so we're back to Atari. It's nineteen seventy seven.
You can get the twenty six hundred with all kinds
of fun stuff, joysticks, two paddles, uh, the cartridge Combat
which comes packaged with it, and this Combat cartridge gives
you not one but two games Tank and Jet Fighter. However,
(10:31):
you're going to have to be a really good kid
to get one of these for Christmas. It cost one
hundred and eighty nine dollars and ninety five cents. We
returned to the inflation calculator.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
That'll be a boop. Please.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
One hundred and eighty nine dollars ninety five cents nineteen
seventy seven is one thousand, nine dollars and thirteen cents.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And that is a tall order today for any home
gaming the system. This is like early cam quorder type
prices prohibitively expensive. I mean even like the switch to
which people bulked at was you know, I think five
hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right, and how much is a PS five.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Probably there's smaller versions of them now that are closer
to three hundred max.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
I think they're still in the four. They just went
up in price four hundred.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Did they ever come out with a smaller form factor
one or are they still big honkers.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
They've just come up with a bigger one pro.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
This does what higher res video memory.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
As opposed to. Okay, so according to the Google AI,
you can get the slim with not a actual disc,
or you can get the standard. You can get the
digital edition for five Yeah, you can get a pro.
You can get a regular one standard disc for five hundred,
and you can get a pro for seven hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Okay, but even that's well below you know, grand Yeah,
yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It also, by the way, not to sound like I
could mudgine shouting at the sky, but do get the
one that can do physical media. If you have the ability,
always go for physical media.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yep. What is that that big campaign stop killing games
or something like that? People are really we're speaking of
right to repair and right to own the things that
you purchase. I say speaking of because we just talked
about that on our sister show stuff. They don't want
you to know. It's most recent episode of strange News.
It's really becoming a problem where when these gaming companies
(12:35):
no longer want to do online support for games that
it's almost as though like they're they're taking it away
from you. Absolutely, ephemeral.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Ephemeral in video games is really bad. It's really bad precipation.
I want to give a shot to my friend Meredith
who bought a PS five last year and refuse to
accept any offer that was given to her that did
not come with a disk. And I was like, ah,
good fight.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
There, because you don't really own something and as you
physically own it. I'm just gonna be honest.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
There.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Now, one thing that the Atari twenty six hundred did
that was brilliant is they included a switchbox so that
you could play a game on your TV screen and
then if you wanted to watch television, you just hit
the switch and now you're back to your regularly scheduled program.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
They didn't have multiple inputs on TVs in those days.
You would have had to. It would probably have been
some sort of coax connection, I imagine, And this was
literally just a little junction box that probably maybe would
have been sold separately, but probably was more relegated to
the areas of pro av type worlds. So this would
have been a big deal for them to include this,
(13:42):
and for a lot of people this would have been
new technology. They would have been aware of it. So
another brilliant thing they did, which they weren't unique in this,
but it was brilliant move. They said, well, what if
these folks get bored of the games that come with
the device, Well we've got the cartridge slot, so all
you have to do is convince your household to let
(14:03):
you buy another game. And that would have been incredibly
innovative as well. And we're not talking about yet a
world where there's just like all the focus is being
put into game design, like it was so novel at
this point that like maybe just a handful of games
that were out there would have been enough to keep
people's attention for long enough to you know, make them
bundles of money, but then to your point bend when
(14:25):
you run out or get tired of those games. Now
we've got a whole new industry that's opening up in
order to fill that void.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And with economy of scale, the only thing that's really
changing about the cartridges is the information on them, so
they become naturally cheaper to create over time and as
volume increases. So not all, not every, not every early
Atari game was an absolute banger. They had some hits,
(14:55):
they had some missus, They had some ones that were simple, fun,
kind of novelties. But then they had really cool conversions
of things like Breakout in nineteen seventy eight, which you
can tell my cat loves.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Big fan of the Breakout, big fan of classic gaming,
that cat. This was actually I didn't know this. It
was a coin op arcade cabinet. It was popular, was
designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
And of course if you want to learn more, you
can go to some of the sources we've mentioned to
get under the hood into the nuts and bolts of specs.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Here.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's interesting reading, but we have to move on to
the next beat about the story.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
We sound like we might be glazing the Atari twenty
six hundred a little bit, as the younger folks in
the crowd would say, But get this, it was not
an instant hit.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
No no, And I'm surely the pricing had something to
do with that.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I bet man, this would be one of the most
successful game consoles ever. But because to your point, Noel,
it was so expensive, it didn't take off immediately.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
But when you also had to educate the public as
to what was possible with these things, because I think
that folks were mainly still pong brained.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, they were thinking, why would I pay the equivalent
of more than one thousand dollars to play one game?
So you had to educate the public, You had to
market and promote to them. As a result, the twenty
six hundred didn't really hit the sales numbers they wanted
in nineteen seventy seven. In nineteen seventy eight, by the
(16:42):
end of nineteen seventy eight, they had only sold seven
hundred and fifty thousand machines, and this was despite a
five million dollar marketing investment by their parent company.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Warn that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
The board was not happy.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I met no, no, no, no, for sure, this was
a problem. So now it's nineteen seventy eight, Nolan Bushnell
has left the company entirely. His version, as we may
be mentioned in the previous episode, that kind of early
spirit of Las Fair punk rock, kind of Silicon Valley
startup mentality this laid back atmosphere, super creative exchange of ideas.
(17:25):
This was not something that the brass wanted to continue.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, it was a culture clash which happens when different
companies acquire each other. Right, so, no more hot parties.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
No more, No more drink and right this is a
known thing.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, no more drink and drug riddled company retreats. The
corporation border says, look, we hate you guys weird Friday parties.
We think there should be a more professional dress code.
And Bushnell says, you guys stink. And he fights with
(18:04):
the owners and the managers all the time, including a
stand up shouting match with a Warner executive in front
of the shareholder board.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yikes. Yeah, good luck this dude. It's time for him
to go, at least as far as the execs. We're concerned.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, he got his walking papers and then he he
goes on his story doesn't in there. He goes on
to participate with a ton of other companies and related
adjacent fields. But looking back in interviews, we always get
the sense that he would have loved to stay on
with Atari. Which it's his book, it's his baby. I
(18:41):
let's call it his boy. It's his baby you know
what I mean, his baby dream. Yeah, it's his baby
boy in a box. And so now it's nineteen seventy nine.
We've got a new CEO, Ray Kazar, the Max.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Refers to lovingly as the video game Palpatine. Though I
don't know if Max coined that is something that gets
thrown around in gamer circles.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
He was not well liked. Let's just say that.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right, So shake down, nineteen seventy nine, we've got Space
Invaders hitting the scene. I think that's one that you'll
still see around in the bars or on your phone
or on your phone. And by the way, a shout
out to Button Mash in Los Angeles in the Highland
Park area. It is an incredible vintage arcade Wonderland barcade situation,
(19:28):
and they have a lot of these really cool it's
almost like a combination of an arcade in a museum,
but it's a museum where you can actually play the things.
Really really cool spot if you're ever around that part
of the country.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, I love an arcade bar. I haven't been in years,
but there's a spot here in our fair metropolis of
Atlanta to Georgia called Joystick, which I used to have
a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Still pop and they do some good Burger pop ups
there too. Yeah, cool spot, you know dad, these great fries.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Anyway, we're getting close to lunchtime, folks, that dreamy voice.
Oh great friends. So this is a huge hit. Space
Invaders becomes just a massive success for Warner because they're
still pumping marketing money into this product. The home conversion
(20:16):
of Space Invaders sells two million units for the Atari
twenty six hundred in nineteen eighty and now the sales
numbers are starting to double year over year. It hits
ten million in annual sales in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Mm. That's right. Yeah, just exponential growth, no question about it.
And considering that it, you know, was not a huge
success out of the gate, this is a big deal
and Warner really thinking they've kind of found the secret sauce.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Oh yeah, for sure by nineteen eighty two, Right, some
of those numbers we just we just kicked there. Atari's
revenue just from Atari makes up seventy percent of Warner's
total income. It's bigger than Warner's music, It's bigger than
Warner's film. It's the Atari twenty six hundred is becoming
a world wide hit.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, it's the age of Atari. I mean this is
like what you think of when you think of like
the early eighties and gaming culture, right before Nintendo hits
the scene, of course.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah right, Nintendo looming in the shadows. So this CEO
that Max also calls suron at times in our research.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Tauran and Palpatine, Yeah, that's secret sauce we were talking about.
He thinks it's got it so good that he can
kind of, you know, slacken up on some other things
a bit. Not the best move though, right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, he cuts the R and D department in seventy nine.
It makes no sense, right, It's like, Wow, this car
is going is doing great on this road trip. I
think we should stop paying for gas, yeah, or just
stop making cars like we already got it. This is
the only car we'll ever need.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
That is not a very forward thinking CEO there.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
No, he's chasing the bottom line in a very strange
way that a lot of people disagree with. He's adding
marketing staff to sell the thing they're already making. And
he might not say it explicitly, but he has an
internal political motive here. He wants to hamstring the influence
that Atari's creative team had under Bushnell.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Okay, so he's he's being a little bit petty if
we're being honest here, and certainly it would seem is
not nearly aware enough of all of the looming competition,
thinking that he's got it, this is all that is
ever going to be gaming. He's not looking at it
a big picture.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And did job in it real quick to kind of
point out how Warner Brothers really didn't think this out.
They had post Rayizar from Burlington coat factory.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely a top gaming mind.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yes, and that you know, that kind of hopping around
from leadership role to leadership role is pretty often in
corporate America. It can't be surprised when you hear a
fact like that and you're thinking, what, the guy was
c suite at a coat company and now he c
suiteed a video game company. It's just always been weird
(23:13):
to me. How how they defy expertise or experience at
that level of corporate America anyway.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Well, you know, I mean, the argument might be that
a leader at that level should be more focused on
the numbers of it all and doesn't necessarily have to
have a head for the products. But I don't know.
I think we've seen time and time again that if
there's no passion there and there's no you know, real
vision in a leader like that, that things aren't gonna
they're not going to continue to grow. And you can't
(23:44):
just look at the numbers and the things that are
happening right now. You need someone that can recognize innovation
and look at the overall landscape and you know, make
smart plays considering those factors.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And that guy was not. Ray not a good fit
for Atari. Atari has been rioting off this massive wave
of success, but arguably, well I'm being diplomatic, historians will
tell us that Ray Kassar's actions set the company up
for failure. There was a bunch of what Corey douk
(24:16):
Toro would later call in shitification of Atari.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Isn't it funny, Ben that like the first big video
game company is an American company with a fake Japanese name,
very Hogan does not a fake Japanese name. I mean,
it's a real Japanese word. But it's just considering that
we had not yet seen the ultimate takeover of gaming,
you know, but never thought that.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Is absolutely hilarious. Yeah, it's true. And look, there's some
of this in popification occurs. There's a lot of low
quality software running through wild through the marketplace, and a
lot of it is coming from Atari itself. Because since
the creative team hates Kassar so much, Atari has experience
(25:00):
serious brain drain. People are leaving the company in droves.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Not to mention that whole resting on the Laurels mentality
surely trickled down in terms of the amount of time
and the resources that would be devoted to developing. So
a perfect example would be the et video game. It's
a great example of an era where like if it
had cool art and it was tied in with some
kind of intellectual property that people understood, then it didn't
(25:26):
have to have any relation to it in the game itself.
Like the Superman game absolute garbage, you know, it just
looks like trash, but the art on the cartridge super
super vivid. You know we even see that, you know,
into Nintendo early days.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Sure, yeah, we also still see that with money grab
branding efforts. You know, there's a famously not great Mad
Max Fury Road.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Game never even cross my radar.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I've just saved you so much time. Cool. So this
lead us to some strong headwinds, the so called video
game crash of nineteen eighty three. It hits everybody in
the business pretty hard. It hits Atari especially hard. Where
this is you know, the legend that we always love
to talk about. And Jonathan Strickland ak the quizt loves
(26:17):
this story too.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
There's another episode of tech Stuff about it, for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, it's a cautionary tale. It's a parable for our times.
They couldn't sell stuff, and things went so disastrously wrong
that they ended up dumping unsold merchandise in the desert
and covering it with concrete as though it were nuclear waste.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, YUCKA mountain of video games, and that of course
includes famously, and probably most referenced in this story, the
absolutely abysmal Et, the video game which apparently Max owns
a copy of.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, how do you find it?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Max? I do?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Alice got it for Christmas for me, and I have
been looking all around my room trying to get back
to me. It's somewhere in a drawer of this desk.
It's just a big desk.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I believe, We.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Believe you man, So look Atari was not just set
up to come out with a next gen console a
successor to the twenty six hundred. They were definitely going
to do it had the execs not interfered, but Warterer
was just fixated on selling the existing hardware, not innovating,
(27:26):
like we were saying earlier.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Correct. And there, you know, there was the aforementioned brain
drain and the Atari division just kind of having been
segmented up in an odd way with different divisions almost
operating at like cross purposes. You know, we've got on
a computer arcade and game console divisions working independently but
(27:48):
without talking to one another. So they're almost like yeah again,
like competing with themselves in a very counterproductive way.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
And doing redundant projects. Right there, they're doing double work.
So there were different versions of the twenty six hundred,
including things like the fifty two hundred, but they they
were small improvements. They weren't anything significantly new. This is
one of the criticisms you sometimes see with Apple post
(28:17):
Steve Jobs, right where they say, hey, we've got a
new thing. Don't worry, we've made the ports even more inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Correct, Yeah, or you know, largely things that could be
accomplished with a software update. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, that's a great point, because Atari's competitors in home
computing are coming out with more and more fascinating, increasingly
sophisticated machines like the old Commodore sixty four it's cool name.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Which are still really popular today. The early chiptune kind
of creation, like audio production could be accomplished on Commodore
sixty four, which is that classic early video game kind
of arpeggiated beat boop kind of sound. People still enjoying
our Commodore sixty one for making kind of vintage sounding music.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And here we see the so called PC master erase
of gamers begin to emerge, because now people are going
away from cartridge based dedicated gaming machines to home computers
which can do a bunch of stuff and also play
games with you.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
We're talking the early days of like real time video
and things like that. And just like you know, they
just had a much more expandable set of hardware in
these computers, so you could upgrade them, update them, etc.
Where as the consoles were just sort of static.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, and so the twenty six hundred is starting to
fall from grace. It's looking increasingly obsolete along in the tooth. Yeah,
the sad part is here. The bittersweet part is that
Atari is still cranking out pretty awesome games even as
(30:05):
the home console begins to lag in popularity. They have
games from the seventies to eighties that are classics. Asteroids,
lunar Lander, Oh gosh, there are a ton centipede.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
We could just keep naming them. Yeah, Senap is still cool.
I love those those flat like screen on top consoles
that you'll see are cabinets they you'll see sometimes and bars.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Like Gatika Galaga, Galagha, Gadiga is the film that's.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
The movie about the theme like what the spoke gene
splice entered gene editing, Yeah, eugenics corporate.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
So now, as we've teased a little bit, Atari is
at this point competing with other Titans in the arcade
game of games, Nintendo, Sega, Konami. But Atari's games are
still holding their own people like them. So holten consoles
may not be as popular for Atari as they once
(31:05):
were for a few years, but if you go to
an arcade, some of your favorite games are going to
be Atari creations.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Which is interesting considering the cut in R and D
so I'm a little Yeah, obviously there was still some
good stuff coming out of Atari, and to your point, Ben,
earlier segmented divisions, it would maybe seem that some of
the best innovations were still happening in the arcade division.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Oh yeah, I agree with you there. You know, it's
strange too, because to your point about the segmentation, having
one division of Atari that just does home video game stuff,
having one that just does computers, having one that just
does arcades, they end up being poisonous to each other
(31:48):
because Atari makes the arcade less popular.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well that's funny too, Ben, because I think we are
all old enough to remember when the quality of games
you would see in our caide aids was higher than
what could be achieved on home consoles. And it wasn't
until a few generations later on console that you started
to see ports of those arcade games that were, Wow,
it's almost as good as the arcade version. So obviously
(32:13):
there was innovation going on in game design, but they
were pump pushing all of that into the arcade because
they could have bespoke, you know, proprietary hardware in those
that wouldn't fit in the home console version.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah. Well, put and I think a lot of us,
and not to date myself too are but I think
a lot of us in the audience probably still remember
that astonishing moment where you get you know, Mortal Kombat or.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Street Fighters, the psycond Genesis.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, yeah, and you say, wait, you mean I don't
have to have a bunch of quarters to play this.
I can play it all the time.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
And they still didn't look identical. They were. They were
a little little, little shaggier let's just see, right.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah. Absolutely, And so people started discovering their gay at
home on their television sets. And this drew a lot
of criticism from Nolan Bushnell. He had some very strong
words to say about.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
This, yes, specifically about Warner, who he had clearly had
some public beef with. Under Warner, it committed suicide, Yeah, intense.
It wasn't homicide. It was self inflicted stupidity. What you
had was a bunch of record guys thinking they knew
what the game business was about. Warner obviously big music
(33:33):
conglomerate as well. I could catalog the screw ups they made.
I would have liked to have taken Atari to another level.
If I could go back in time, I would not
sell to Warner. Yeah, he's got that kind of fu money.
He can say this kind of stuff without fear of,
you know, retribution.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
He's probably literally in the interview, he's probably counting money.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yes, don't forget all that chuck and cheese money he had.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Oh yes, yes, Charles e cheese, Charles Entertainment cheese. And
so Warder is having a tight spot. They're they're going
through a tough time. Atari's dying and they run away.
They sell the home computing bit of the Atari business
in nineteen eighty four to the founder of Commodore. He
(34:20):
renames it Atari Corporation. That could be confusing. They held
onto the arcade division now called Atari Games for a
little bit longer, but ultimately they sell that as well
to Namco in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Namco is still a huge concern in games. But didn't
they do wait Bandai Bandai Namco is Elden ring right, Namco.
They're huge, and you know there's tons of titles that
they make that you will see in some of those
Japanese arcades. So you're talking about ben or places here
in Atlanta, like like Round One, which I think is
(34:54):
in other cities as well. In other other parts of
the country.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I think you're right, and we're going to have so
much fun when we convinced accounting to pay for us
to go to Japan.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Hey man, I'll go on my own steam with you anytime, dude.
I'm really excited. We've got a trip planned with the
kid for their eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
So yeah, that's right, that's cool. Maybe we can meet
up there.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
And so now we see a bunch of horse trading
on these names this ip. A group of employees buys
Atari games from Namco. They go on they make stuff
like paper Boys San Francisco Rush. They it's kind of
paper Boys cool. It's kind of like what happened to
us with how stuff works back in the day, where
(35:34):
a bunch of different parent companies were acquiring different pieces.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
And they wanted this bit or that bit. Honestly too,
it's sort of about It's not that far off from
what's going on with a huge bid for Warner right
now from Netflix in Paramount. Like I think part of
the deal is like Netflix or versus, Paramount only wanted
like certain parts of it and that they did not
necessarily want, like the television division or like some of
(35:59):
the camel properties or whatever. I forget exactly the way
it parses out. But when you've got these kind of acquisitions,
there are going to be sort of piecemeal kind of
breakups of the overall corporation.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, it's a common practice, right, And Atari goes through
a lot of this. Their golden age is officially over,
but the nostalgia and the fascination remains, So we don't
have to get two into the weeds other than to
summarize it by saying, a lot of stuff got sold
and parceled out, and then a lot of things that
(36:32):
those Atari descendants, we could call them, a lot of
stuff they made gets passed by by other companies. They
have some failures with some of their other systems that
they try to roll out, like the links that was
here and gone.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Well, I think, and a lot of that was in
response to, you know, a new boom in home consoles
once you started, you know, inching towards the sixteen bits
systems of the early nineties. So after being dormant for
a while, Atari was trying to get back in the
game that they essentially started. But they'd been Mega no
pun intended passed over by the competition, including the Sega
(37:12):
Master System soon to be the Mega Drive. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
And the real last nail in the coffin for Atari
is the Atari Jaguar. It was pretty impressive for me,
number ninety three, Yeah, I remember sixty four bits first
of its kind. It looks really weird. It was very
powerful technically speaking, but it had ad a Jankie controller,
(37:42):
there was a lot of software support, and the Super Nintendo.
So the Supernintendo was the Coca Cola. Sega Genesis was
the Pepsi.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, for sure. And after this massive failure is sort
of the death knell of Atari as we know it,
and it kind of descended into, as I've don the
ign piece we referenced, corporate purgatory. You certain you surely
will still see like Atari branded stuff like T shirts
and sort of nostalgia bait products. So whoever owns the
(38:13):
IP of that stuff is still making a few bucks
at like game stops and you know five below, right,
But I believe at this point the remaining the name,
the branding, and the remaining assets were sold to a
electronics company primarily known for making hard drives called JTS.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, and then JTS gets bought other companies through around
the world get into buying up. As you said, kind
of the ip of Atari, the idea of Atari. And
then we get to January twenty thirteen, Atari filed for bankruptcy.
Yet again, as of the day we're recording on January fifteenth,
(38:54):
twenty twenty six, nobody is stepped up to.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Buy the name yet, got it?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Ok? Yeah, and so passes a legend. Hats off, Thank
you for all the beautiful memories Atari, everybody who worked there,
and thank you for launching a thousand ships pressure entertainment.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Well, and Bushnell still has more to say about it.
Concerning Atari's place in the modern gaming landscape, he said, absolutely,
Atari could be competing with Xbox and PlayStation today. I
would have liked to have taken Atari to another level
if I could go back in time again. Wouldn't have
sold to Warner, take the company public, raise money that way?
I think I should have just taken a vacation. Yeah, Okay, Well, hindsight,
(39:37):
my guy.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
Yeah, we've all been there on a much smaller level, Dolan,
And look, this did shape the business of video games,
the idea of video games, and even if Atari is
not what its creator originally envisioned.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
It has an inarguably important place in history, and we
can't thank our super producer and research associate mister Max Williams,
Max Magnavox Williams enough for uh for getting in the
in the trenches of the research here man O Man,
Thanks Magnetvox Max, and big big thanks to our composer
(40:15):
Alex Williams, who I was supposed to hang out with
him a little bit earlier, but I think we had
we had some different projects to work on, so Alex,
we might have to hunt you down in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
I think he's around for a little bit longer, but yeah,
I did get to catch him once. We did a
yoga together and it was delightful. Huge thanks to Christo
Frasciotas and Eive, the Jefickos, both here in spirit. Jonathan
strick Land the quiz or you Little so and so
a Jabahama, Jacobs is the.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Puzzler, Doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance Big. Thanks to the
rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
If you dig.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Us, you'll love them. Beat Bop Boot, Beat Boot, That's
the show.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
You'll see you next. Books For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio at the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max
Macnvox Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Max Atari teenage Ryan Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
That's Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullen. This is Part two
of the Ridiculous History of Atari. So if you haven't
heard part one yet, please get THEE to thy podcast
platform of choice and check it out, because part two
will make a lot more sense when you've heard part one.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
It's true, but it's a pretty good division. I mean,
I would definitely recommend checking out episode one you probably
already have. But we're going to start from kind of
the fall from Grace type period of Atari.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, more money, more problems, and as Biggie would say,
we're here in what we'll call the post pong era.
Uh yeah, I guess we're still in the post police man.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I think like postmodernism.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So Keza McDonald, writing for IGN, points out that Atari
is growing to new unprecedented levels, but at every step
along the way, the company is facing a litany a
chorus of challenges. Their trajectory is up up, up, up,
up and away. But they make a few missteps in
(01:52):
the seventies.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
That's right, on the business side of things. Maybe they're
reached exceeding their grasp a bit when it comes to
banding to international markets, not to mention sinking a whole
lot of capital into a particularly convoluted development process on
a game called Grand Track ten, which may not surprise
(02:13):
you that you have not heard of.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Right, yeah, And it also it reminds me of other
missteps that occurred in the past. We'll get to some
of them with Atari, yeah, right. But also games that
require a specific controller can be a little bit of
a hard sell, like a couple of Battle met games
(02:36):
are like that, and a couple of other you know,
in depth simulator games. Luckily, though, Atari is able to
save their bacon with a game that is a huge
hit Arcades.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's called Tank, right, Yes, that is the game that
lifts them out of this this morass, these duldrums, and
Atari then has emerged with one of their sister companies
called k Key Games, key Key Games k e E,
which split off from Atari's main business in nineteen seventy
(03:09):
three to help the company get around some tricksy legal
areas or surrounding exclusivity.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, yeah, exactly. And this was this was the rule
of the day with the arcade industry. So by spinning
off key games, they were able to say, oh no,
I mean, it's not really us anymore. This is a
different guy.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
And now we have sort of another Sears type situation
in terms of mergers, though in this case with a
big boy in the communications industry, Warner Communications. So you
may have heard of They've been in the news a
little bit lately. It is the same, right, Warner Communications
and Warner Brothers would not have been like a community
an extension or is this very complete? It has to be,
(03:53):
And forgive me if anyone knows that not to be true,
but I do believe it is the case. So they
sold to Warner Communications for this number was not a secret,
unlike the settlement with Magnavox for a publicized twenty eight
million dollars. We got inflation calculator this, guys, and a
(04:13):
dude boo boooooo, boo boopy doope oop boopoo.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Oh we must and thank you for the boop there. Max. No,
it's trying to get me to inflation calculate sisygy, which
we're going to do. That was something we had pasted earlier. Okay,
here we go, folks. In nineteen seventy three dollars, twenty
(04:40):
eight million dollars is going to be as of two
thousand and five, the equivalent of drum roll two hundred
and three million, twenty seven thousand, one hundred and seventeen
dollars and twelve cents.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
A lot of cash, but still not at the level
of the types of communication and tech acquisitions we see
today that are like in the billions.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And of that twenty eight million, Bushnell himself receives the
line share. He walks away with something like fifteen million
of that twenty eight million.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Good on him.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He's put in the work, yeah, and he also he
bought out his co founder Ted Ted Dadney. Also, if
we inflation calculate once again to see Bushnell's share of
this sale, we will see the fifteen million in nineteen
seventy three is the equivalent of one hundred and eight million,
(05:39):
seven hundred and sixty four thousand, five hundred and twenty
seven dollars and three cents. So we set.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Easy retirement type windfall there for Buddy Bushnell. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And weirdly enough, though, this is the beginning of Atari's
death nells.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Sometimes that happens, right when you get a big company
coming in and changing the company culture and stuff like that,
which we're going to get into. However, before that death knell,
you know, kind of rang out, there was another hugely
important development at Atari, which was the VCS, the home
game console that we know as the Atari. The Atari
(06:21):
twenty six hundred.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, that's probably what you picture in your head, folks
when you think of Atari, or what's going to stick
in the button, It's going to be this console. It
stands for video computer system. Not the most creative name,
but a very creative piece of technology. Also, at this time,
Bushnell is drifting further and further away from the company
(06:44):
that he created. But if we go to James Lindino
writing for PC mag, we'll see that the twenty six
hundred is probably the I would say it's the second
most famous thing Atari's created outside of Pong. It's September eleventh,
nineteen seventy seven. This is weird because it's not the
(07:06):
first video game console, it's not the first one to
accept cartridges, but it could bring actual arcade games home
to your house when you plugged it into your TV.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
That's right. And by the end of nineteen seventy six
we started to see other competing systems jumping into the fray,
including Magnavox, Old Favorites and Kaliko with their was it
Calco vision.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, that was one thing they did for sure, and
these other companies. There was real proliferation of boom and bust.
At least it was a console wars really, I mean,
that's really what we're seeing here. And that did not stop. Yeah,
and we see this happen in all kinds of all
kinds of industries, like the early days of soda pop.
(07:53):
There were so many flash in a pan soda companies
and flavors and the history that is amazing. But ultimately,
you know, the market starts to collapse, the choices, right,
and there are just a few big soda companies, are a
few big video game console manufacturers left. There's something else
(08:13):
that happens here with an outfit called Fairchild. This company
gets in front of the curve and beats Atari to
the punch with something called Channel F. This is a
microprocessor based game console.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I want to say that Fairchild was also responsible for
a pretty important piece of audio equipment, the fair Child compressor,
which is another classic audio device that exists in plug
in form today. It's all full of vacuum tubes and
this is that kind of a sacred cow of studio tech.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Oh yeah, I love the tubes, man, love to see it.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
This.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Okay, so fair or the Channel F we should say,
has color graphics. It can accept cartridges, unlike all the
other TV games systems on the market, and that's exactly
what Atari was working on doing on their own end.
So eventually RCA releases something called the Studio two. The
(09:12):
Studio two as built in game pad buttons, it also
takes cartridges. Magnavox, not to be outdone, comes out with
the Odyssey two that has a built in keyboard that
lets you write your own game software. That's crazy. And
a couple of other companies also again got into the race,
places like Bally and Allied Leisure. And you know, we
(09:35):
were talking a little off air about something we also
see in the early days of the automotive industry or
appliance manufacturers. A lot of the video games are coming
from companies that already had the ability to manufacture electronics.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It a social step. Yeah, like RCA as an example,
a company that was responsible for a lot of innovation
involving you know, record playback like LPs and other you know,
pro and consumer audio products.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
And so we're back to Atari. It's nineteen seventy seven.
You can get the twenty six hundred with all kinds
of fun stuff, joysticks, two paddles, uh, the cartridge Combat
which comes packaged with it, and this Combat cartridge gives
you not one but two games Tank and Jet Fighter. However,
(10:31):
you're going to have to be a really good kid
to get one of these for Christmas. It cost one
hundred and eighty nine dollars and ninety five cents. We
returned to the inflation calculator.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
That'll be a boop. Please.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
One hundred and eighty nine dollars ninety five cents nineteen
seventy seven is one thousand, nine dollars and thirteen cents.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And that is a tall order today for any home
gaming the system. This is like early cam quorder type
prices prohibitively expensive. I mean even like the switch to
which people bulked at was you know, I think five
hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right, and how much is a PS five.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Probably there's smaller versions of them now that are closer
to three hundred max.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
I think they're still in the four. They just went
up in price four hundred.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Did they ever come out with a smaller form factor
one or are they still big honkers.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
They've just come up with a bigger one pro.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
This does what higher res video memory.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
As opposed to. Okay, so according to the Google AI,
you can get the slim with not a actual disc,
or you can get the standard. You can get the
digital edition for five Yeah, you can get a pro.
You can get a regular one standard disc for five hundred,
and you can get a pro for seven hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Okay, but even that's well below you know, grand Yeah,
yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
It also, by the way, not to sound like I
could mudgine shouting at the sky, but do get the
one that can do physical media. If you have the ability,
always go for physical media.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yep. What is that that big campaign stop killing games
or something like that? People are really we're speaking of
right to repair and right to own the things that
you purchase. I say speaking of because we just talked
about that on our sister show stuff. They don't want
you to know. It's most recent episode of strange News.
It's really becoming a problem where when these gaming companies
(12:35):
no longer want to do online support for games that
it's almost as though like they're they're taking it away
from you. Absolutely, ephemeral.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Ephemeral in video games is really bad. It's really bad precipation.
I want to give a shot to my friend Meredith
who bought a PS five last year and refuse to
accept any offer that was given to her that did
not come with a disk. And I was like, ah,
good fight.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
There, because you don't really own something and as you
physically own it. I'm just gonna be honest.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
There.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Now, one thing that the Atari twenty six hundred did
that was brilliant is they included a switchbox so that
you could play a game on your TV screen and
then if you wanted to watch television, you just hit
the switch and now you're back to your regularly scheduled program.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
They didn't have multiple inputs on TVs in those days.
You would have had to. It would probably have been
some sort of coax connection, I imagine, And this was
literally just a little junction box that probably maybe would
have been sold separately, but probably was more relegated to
the areas of pro av type worlds. So this would
have been a big deal for them to include this,
(13:42):
and for a lot of people this would have been
new technology. They would have been aware of it. So
another brilliant thing they did, which they weren't unique in this,
but it was brilliant move. They said, well, what if
these folks get bored of the games that come with
the device, Well we've got the cartridge slot, so all
you have to do is convince your household to let
(14:03):
you buy another game. And that would have been incredibly
innovative as well. And we're not talking about yet a
world where there's just like all the focus is being
put into game design, like it was so novel at
this point that like maybe just a handful of games
that were out there would have been enough to keep
people's attention for long enough to you know, make them
bundles of money, but then to your point bend when
(14:25):
you run out or get tired of those games. Now
we've got a whole new industry that's opening up in
order to fill that void.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And with economy of scale, the only thing that's really
changing about the cartridges is the information on them, so
they become naturally cheaper to create over time and as
volume increases. So not all, not every, not every early
Atari game was an absolute banger. They had some hits,
(14:55):
they had some missus, They had some ones that were simple, fun,
kind of novelties. But then they had really cool conversions
of things like Breakout in nineteen seventy eight, which you
can tell my cat loves.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Big fan of the Breakout, big fan of classic gaming,
that cat. This was actually I didn't know this. It
was a coin op arcade cabinet. It was popular, was
designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
And of course if you want to learn more, you
can go to some of the sources we've mentioned to
get under the hood into the nuts and bolts of specs.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Here.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's interesting reading, but we have to move on to
the next beat about the story.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
We sound like we might be glazing the Atari twenty
six hundred a little bit, as the younger folks in
the crowd would say, But get this, it was not
an instant hit.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
No no, And I'm surely the pricing had something to
do with that.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I bet man, this would be one of the most
successful game consoles ever. But because to your point, Noel,
it was so expensive, it didn't take off immediately.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
But when you also had to educate the public as
to what was possible with these things, because I think
that folks were mainly still pong brained.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, they were thinking, why would I pay the equivalent
of more than one thousand dollars to play one game?
So you had to educate the public, You had to
market and promote to them. As a result, the twenty
six hundred didn't really hit the sales numbers they wanted
in nineteen seventy seven. In nineteen seventy eight, by the
(16:42):
end of nineteen seventy eight, they had only sold seven
hundred and fifty thousand machines, and this was despite a
five million dollar marketing investment by their parent company.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Warn that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
The board was not happy.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I met no, no, no, no, for sure, this was
a problem. So now it's nineteen seventy eight, Nolan Bushnell
has left the company entirely. His version, as we may
be mentioned in the previous episode, that kind of early
spirit of Las Fair punk rock, kind of Silicon Valley
startup mentality this laid back atmosphere, super creative exchange of ideas.
(17:25):
This was not something that the brass wanted to continue.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, it was a culture clash which happens when different
companies acquire each other. Right, so, no more hot parties.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
No more, No more drink and right this is a
known thing.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, no more drink and drug riddled company retreats. The
corporation border says, look, we hate you guys weird Friday parties.
We think there should be a more professional dress code.
And Bushnell says, you guys stink. And he fights with
(18:04):
the owners and the managers all the time, including a
stand up shouting match with a Warner executive in front
of the shareholder board.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yikes. Yeah, good luck this dude. It's time for him
to go, at least as far as the execs. We're concerned.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, he got his walking papers and then he he
goes on his story doesn't in there. He goes on
to participate with a ton of other companies and related
adjacent fields. But looking back in interviews, we always get
the sense that he would have loved to stay on
with Atari. Which it's his book, it's his baby. I
(18:41):
let's call it his boy. It's his baby you know
what I mean, his baby dream. Yeah, it's his baby
boy in a box. And so now it's nineteen seventy nine.
We've got a new CEO, Ray Kazar, the Max.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Refers to lovingly as the video game Palpatine. Though I
don't know if Max coined that is something that gets
thrown around in gamer circles.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
He was not well liked. Let's just say that.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right, So shake down, nineteen seventy nine, we've got Space
Invaders hitting the scene. I think that's one that you'll
still see around in the bars or on your phone
or on your phone. And by the way, a shout
out to Button Mash in Los Angeles in the Highland
Park area. It is an incredible vintage arcade Wonderland barcade situation,
(19:28):
and they have a lot of these really cool it's
almost like a combination of an arcade in a museum,
but it's a museum where you can actually play the things.
Really really cool spot if you're ever around that part
of the country.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, I love an arcade bar. I haven't been in years,
but there's a spot here in our fair metropolis of
Atlanta to Georgia called Joystick, which I used to have
a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Still pop and they do some good Burger pop ups
there too. Yeah, cool spot, you know dad, these great fries.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Anyway, we're getting close to lunchtime, folks, that dreamy voice.
Oh great friends. So this is a huge hit. Space
Invaders becomes just a massive success for Warner because they're
still pumping marketing money into this product. The home conversion
(20:16):
of Space Invaders sells two million units for the Atari
twenty six hundred in nineteen eighty and now the sales
numbers are starting to double year over year. It hits
ten million in annual sales in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Mm. That's right. Yeah, just exponential growth, no question about it.
And considering that it, you know, was not a huge
success out of the gate, this is a big deal
and Warner really thinking they've kind of found the secret sauce.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Oh yeah, for sure by nineteen eighty two, Right, some
of those numbers we just we just kicked there. Atari's
revenue just from Atari makes up seventy percent of Warner's
total income. It's bigger than Warner's music, It's bigger than
Warner's film. It's the Atari twenty six hundred is becoming
a world wide hit.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, it's the age of Atari. I mean this is
like what you think of when you think of like
the early eighties and gaming culture, right before Nintendo hits
the scene, of course.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah right, Nintendo looming in the shadows. So this CEO
that Max also calls suron at times in our research.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Tauran and Palpatine, Yeah, that's secret sauce we were talking about.
He thinks it's got it so good that he can
kind of, you know, slacken up on some other things
a bit. Not the best move though, right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, he cuts the R and D department in seventy nine.
It makes no sense, right, It's like, Wow, this car
is going is doing great on this road trip. I
think we should stop paying for gas, yeah, or just
stop making cars like we already got it. This is
the only car we'll ever need.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
That is not a very forward thinking CEO there.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
No, he's chasing the bottom line in a very strange
way that a lot of people disagree with. He's adding
marketing staff to sell the thing they're already making. And
he might not say it explicitly, but he has an
internal political motive here. He wants to hamstring the influence
that Atari's creative team had under Bushnell.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Okay, so he's he's being a little bit petty if
we're being honest here, and certainly it would seem is
not nearly aware enough of all of the looming competition,
thinking that he's got it, this is all that is
ever going to be gaming. He's not looking at it
a big picture.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And did job in it real quick to kind of
point out how Warner Brothers really didn't think this out.
They had post Rayizar from Burlington coat factory.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely a top gaming mind.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yes, and that you know, that kind of hopping around
from leadership role to leadership role is pretty often in
corporate America. It can't be surprised when you hear a
fact like that and you're thinking, what, the guy was
c suite at a coat company and now he c
suiteed a video game company. It's just always been weird
(23:13):
to me. How how they defy expertise or experience at
that level of corporate America anyway.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Well, you know, I mean, the argument might be that
a leader at that level should be more focused on
the numbers of it all and doesn't necessarily have to
have a head for the products. But I don't know.
I think we've seen time and time again that if
there's no passion there and there's no you know, real
vision in a leader like that, that things aren't gonna
they're not going to continue to grow. And you can't
(23:44):
just look at the numbers and the things that are
happening right now. You need someone that can recognize innovation
and look at the overall landscape and you know, make
smart plays considering those factors.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And that guy was not. Ray not a good fit
for Atari. Atari has been rioting off this massive wave
of success, but arguably, well I'm being diplomatic, historians will
tell us that Ray Kassar's actions set the company up
for failure. There was a bunch of what Corey douk
(24:16):
Toro would later call in shitification of Atari.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Isn't it funny, Ben that like the first big video
game company is an American company with a fake Japanese name,
very Hogan does not a fake Japanese name. I mean,
it's a real Japanese word. But it's just considering that
we had not yet seen the ultimate takeover of gaming,
you know, but never thought that.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Is absolutely hilarious. Yeah, it's true. And look, there's some
of this in popification occurs. There's a lot of low
quality software running through wild through the marketplace, and a
lot of it is coming from Atari itself. Because since
the creative team hates Kassar so much, Atari has experience
(25:00):
serious brain drain. People are leaving the company in droves.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Not to mention that whole resting on the Laurels mentality
surely trickled down in terms of the amount of time
and the resources that would be devoted to developing. So
a perfect example would be the et video game. It's
a great example of an era where like if it
had cool art and it was tied in with some
kind of intellectual property that people understood, then it didn't
(25:26):
have to have any relation to it in the game itself.
Like the Superman game absolute garbage, you know, it just
looks like trash, but the art on the cartridge super
super vivid. You know we even see that, you know,
into Nintendo early days.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Sure, yeah, we also still see that with money grab
branding efforts. You know, there's a famously not great Mad
Max Fury Road.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Game never even cross my radar.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I've just saved you so much time. Cool. So this
lead us to some strong headwinds, the so called video
game crash of nineteen eighty three. It hits everybody in
the business pretty hard. It hits Atari especially hard. Where
this is you know, the legend that we always love
to talk about. And Jonathan Strickland ak the quizt loves
(26:17):
this story too.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
There's another episode of tech Stuff about it, for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, it's a cautionary tale. It's a parable for our times.
They couldn't sell stuff, and things went so disastrously wrong
that they ended up dumping unsold merchandise in the desert
and covering it with concrete as though it were nuclear waste.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, YUCKA mountain of video games, and that of course
includes famously, and probably most referenced in this story, the
absolutely abysmal Et, the video game which apparently Max owns
a copy of.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, how do you find it?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Max? I do?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Alice got it for Christmas for me, and I have
been looking all around my room trying to get back
to me. It's somewhere in a drawer of this desk.
It's just a big desk.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I believe, We.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Believe you man, So look Atari was not just set
up to come out with a next gen console a
successor to the twenty six hundred. They were definitely going
to do it had the execs not interfered, but Warterer
was just fixated on selling the existing hardware, not innovating,
(27:26):
like we were saying earlier.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Correct. And there, you know, there was the aforementioned brain
drain and the Atari division just kind of having been
segmented up in an odd way with different divisions almost
operating at like cross purposes. You know, we've got on
a computer arcade and game console divisions working independently but
(27:48):
without talking to one another. So they're almost like yeah again,
like competing with themselves in a very counterproductive way.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
And doing redundant projects. Right there, they're doing double work.
So there were different versions of the twenty six hundred,
including things like the fifty two hundred, but they they
were small improvements. They weren't anything significantly new. This is
one of the criticisms you sometimes see with Apple post
(28:17):
Steve Jobs, right where they say, hey, we've got a
new thing. Don't worry, we've made the ports even more inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Correct, Yeah, or you know, largely things that could be
accomplished with a software update. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, that's a great point, because Atari's competitors in home
computing are coming out with more and more fascinating, increasingly
sophisticated machines like the old Commodore sixty four it's cool name.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Which are still really popular today. The early chiptune kind
of creation, like audio production could be accomplished on Commodore
sixty four, which is that classic early video game kind
of arpeggiated beat boop kind of sound. People still enjoying
our Commodore sixty one for making kind of vintage sounding music.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And here we see the so called PC master erase
of gamers begin to emerge, because now people are going
away from cartridge based dedicated gaming machines to home computers
which can do a bunch of stuff and also play
games with you.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
We're talking the early days of like real time video
and things like that. And just like you know, they
just had a much more expandable set of hardware in
these computers, so you could upgrade them, update them, etc.
Where as the consoles were just sort of static.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, and so the twenty six hundred is starting to
fall from grace. It's looking increasingly obsolete along in the tooth. Yeah,
the sad part is here. The bittersweet part is that
Atari is still cranking out pretty awesome games even as
(30:05):
the home console begins to lag in popularity. They have
games from the seventies to eighties that are classics. Asteroids,
lunar Lander, Oh gosh, there are a ton centipede.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
We could just keep naming them. Yeah, Senap is still cool.
I love those those flat like screen on top consoles
that you'll see are cabinets they you'll see sometimes and bars.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Like Gatika Galaga, Galagha, Gadiga is the film that's.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
The movie about the theme like what the spoke gene
splice entered gene editing, Yeah, eugenics corporate.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
So now, as we've teased a little bit, Atari is
at this point competing with other Titans in the arcade
game of games, Nintendo, Sega, Konami. But Atari's games are
still holding their own people like them. So holten consoles
may not be as popular for Atari as they once
(31:05):
were for a few years, but if you go to
an arcade, some of your favorite games are going to
be Atari creations.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Which is interesting considering the cut in R and D
so I'm a little Yeah, obviously there was still some
good stuff coming out of Atari, and to your point, Ben,
earlier segmented divisions, it would maybe seem that some of
the best innovations were still happening in the arcade division.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Oh yeah, I agree with you there. You know, it's
strange too, because to your point about the segmentation, having
one division of Atari that just does home video game stuff,
having one that just does computers, having one that just
does arcades, they end up being poisonous to each other
(31:48):
because Atari makes the arcade less popular.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well that's funny too, Ben, because I think we are
all old enough to remember when the quality of games
you would see in our caide aids was higher than
what could be achieved on home consoles. And it wasn't
until a few generations later on console that you started
to see ports of those arcade games that were, Wow,
it's almost as good as the arcade version. So obviously
(32:13):
there was innovation going on in game design, but they
were pump pushing all of that into the arcade because
they could have bespoke, you know, proprietary hardware in those
that wouldn't fit in the home console version.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah. Well, put and I think a lot of us,
and not to date myself too are but I think
a lot of us in the audience probably still remember
that astonishing moment where you get you know, Mortal Kombat or.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Street Fighters, the psycond Genesis.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, yeah, and you say, wait, you mean I don't
have to have a bunch of quarters to play this.
I can play it all the time.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
And they still didn't look identical. They were. They were
a little little, little shaggier let's just see, right.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah. Absolutely, And so people started discovering their gay at
home on their television sets. And this drew a lot
of criticism from Nolan Bushnell. He had some very strong
words to say about.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
This, yes, specifically about Warner, who he had clearly had
some public beef with. Under Warner, it committed suicide, Yeah, intense.
It wasn't homicide. It was self inflicted stupidity. What you
had was a bunch of record guys thinking they knew
what the game business was about. Warner obviously big music
(33:33):
conglomerate as well. I could catalog the screw ups they made.
I would have liked to have taken Atari to another level.
If I could go back in time, I would not
sell to Warner. Yeah, he's got that kind of fu money.
He can say this kind of stuff without fear of,
you know, retribution.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
He's probably literally in the interview, he's probably counting money.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yes, don't forget all that chuck and cheese money he had.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Oh yes, yes, Charles e cheese, Charles Entertainment cheese. And
so Warder is having a tight spot. They're they're going
through a tough time. Atari's dying and they run away.
They sell the home computing bit of the Atari business
in nineteen eighty four to the founder of Commodore. He
(34:20):
renames it Atari Corporation. That could be confusing. They held
onto the arcade division now called Atari Games for a
little bit longer, but ultimately they sell that as well
to Namco in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Namco is still a huge concern in games. But didn't
they do wait Bandai Bandai Namco is Elden ring right, Namco.
They're huge, and you know there's tons of titles that
they make that you will see in some of those
Japanese arcades. So you're talking about ben or places here
in Atlanta, like like Round One, which I think is
(34:54):
in other cities as well. In other other parts of
the country.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I think you're right, and we're going to have so
much fun when we convinced accounting to pay for us
to go to Japan.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Hey man, I'll go on my own steam with you anytime, dude.
I'm really excited. We've got a trip planned with the
kid for their eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
So yeah, that's right, that's cool. Maybe we can meet
up there.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
And so now we see a bunch of horse trading
on these names this ip. A group of employees buys
Atari games from Namco. They go on they make stuff
like paper Boys San Francisco Rush. They it's kind of
paper Boys cool. It's kind of like what happened to
us with how stuff works back in the day, where
(35:34):
a bunch of different parent companies were acquiring different pieces.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
And they wanted this bit or that bit. Honestly too,
it's sort of about It's not that far off from
what's going on with a huge bid for Warner right
now from Netflix in Paramount. Like I think part of
the deal is like Netflix or versus, Paramount only wanted
like certain parts of it and that they did not
necessarily want, like the television division or like some of
(35:59):
the camel properties or whatever. I forget exactly the way
it parses out. But when you've got these kind of acquisitions,
there are going to be sort of piecemeal kind of
breakups of the overall corporation.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, it's a common practice, right, And Atari goes through
a lot of this. Their golden age is officially over,
but the nostalgia and the fascination remains, So we don't
have to get two into the weeds other than to
summarize it by saying, a lot of stuff got sold
and parceled out, and then a lot of things that
(36:32):
those Atari descendants, we could call them, a lot of
stuff they made gets passed by by other companies. They
have some failures with some of their other systems that
they try to roll out, like the links that was
here and gone.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Well, I think, and a lot of that was in
response to, you know, a new boom in home consoles
once you started, you know, inching towards the sixteen bits
systems of the early nineties. So after being dormant for
a while, Atari was trying to get back in the
game that they essentially started. But they'd been Mega no
pun intended passed over by the competition, including the Sega
(37:12):
Master System soon to be the Mega Drive. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
And the real last nail in the coffin for Atari
is the Atari Jaguar. It was pretty impressive for me,
number ninety three, Yeah, I remember sixty four bits first
of its kind. It looks really weird. It was very
powerful technically speaking, but it had ad a Jankie controller,
(37:42):
there was a lot of software support, and the Super Nintendo.
So the Supernintendo was the Coca Cola. Sega Genesis was
the Pepsi.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, for sure. And after this massive failure is sort
of the death knell of Atari as we know it,
and it kind of descended into, as I've don the
ign piece we referenced, corporate purgatory. You certain you surely
will still see like Atari branded stuff like T shirts
and sort of nostalgia bait products. So whoever owns the
(38:13):
IP of that stuff is still making a few bucks
at like game stops and you know five below, right,
But I believe at this point the remaining the name,
the branding, and the remaining assets were sold to a
electronics company primarily known for making hard drives called JTS.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, and then JTS gets bought other companies through around
the world get into buying up. As you said, kind
of the ip of Atari, the idea of Atari. And
then we get to January twenty thirteen, Atari filed for bankruptcy.
Yet again, as of the day we're recording on January fifteenth,
(38:54):
twenty twenty six, nobody is stepped up to.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Buy the name yet, got it?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Ok? Yeah, and so passes a legend. Hats off, Thank
you for all the beautiful memories Atari, everybody who worked there,
and thank you for launching a thousand ships pressure entertainment.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Well, and Bushnell still has more to say about it.
Concerning Atari's place in the modern gaming landscape, he said, absolutely,
Atari could be competing with Xbox and PlayStation today. I
would have liked to have taken Atari to another level
if I could go back in time again. Wouldn't have
sold to Warner, take the company public, raise money that way?
I think I should have just taken a vacation. Yeah, Okay, Well, hindsight,
(39:37):
my guy.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
Yeah, we've all been there on a much smaller level, Dolan,
And look, this did shape the business of video games,
the idea of video games, and even if Atari is
not what its creator originally envisioned.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
It has an inarguably important place in history, and we
can't thank our super producer and research associate mister Max Williams,
Max Magnavox Williams enough for uh for getting in the
in the trenches of the research here man O Man,
Thanks Magnetvox Max, and big big thanks to our composer
(40:15):
Alex Williams, who I was supposed to hang out with
him a little bit earlier, but I think we had
we had some different projects to work on, so Alex,
we might have to hunt you down in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
I think he's around for a little bit longer, but yeah,
I did get to catch him once. We did a
yoga together and it was delightful. Huge thanks to Christo
Frasciotas and Eive, the Jefickos, both here in spirit. Jonathan
strick Land the quiz or you Little so and so
a Jabahama, Jacobs is the.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Puzzler, Doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance Big. Thanks to the
rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
If you dig.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Us, you'll love them. Beat Bop Boot, Beat Boot, That's
the show.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
You'll see you next. Books For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio at the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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