Atari (thing)

Atari began its life on June 27, 1972. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney named the company Atari because their first choice "Syzygy" was aldeady taken. They dabbled with some early arcade games, (the kind without processors). But they hit gold in 1975 with Home Pong. Sears funded Home Pong in exchange for exclusive rights. It was wildly successful selling over 150,000 units. (As a side note... I stupidly sold my Home Pong for 8 dollars in 1985, bad move on my part).

In 1976 Nolan Bushnell hires future Macintosh man Steve Jobs to create Breakout. Jobs of course has his pal Steve Wozniak help him out, (but he screwed him over pretty good). Steve Jobs got $5000 for creating Breakout, (he payed Wozniak a pitiful $350 bucks), on top of that he took full credit for the game. It is worth mentioning that it only took "The Twin Quasars of Apple" 5 days from start to finish to make the first Breakout machine.

In 1976 Nolan Bushnell sells Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million. This was so he would have the funding needed to continue work on Stella, (which would eventually become the Atari 2600). They release Stella's first incarnation, (as the Atari VCS), in October of 1977, with an initial price of $200. Nine games were available at system launch.

By 1978 Nolan Bushnell had grown tired of Atari and arranged to get himself fired. Ray Kassar takes over as CEO and has Atari begin work on the Atari 400/800 computer systems. By 1980 Atari had hit it's peak with an income of $415 million, Unfortunately it was all downhill from there.

Atari launches the Atari 5200, Atari 600XL, and Atari 800XL all of which are dismal failures. They delay the launch of the Atari 7800, even though it is already fully developed at this point. Atari is losing money fast now. They post losses of $536 million in 1983.

In 1984 Jack Tramiel bought out 51 percent of Atari's stock and took control of the company, (and proceded to run it into the ground). He refused Nintendo's offer to sell the NES under the Atari nameplate. He made that huge mistake because he seriously thought he could remake Atari as a computer company. (Atari's computer sales were seriously in the toilet at this point, and they never did recover).

Over the next 10 years Atari releases the Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, and the Atari Jaguar. All 3 of which are powerful units. But all 3 are a little late on the scene for their generation, (they even make an attempt to relaunch the Atari 2600). But Atari ends up losing out to Nintendo everytime, (causing Atari to sue Nintendo several times). On a happier note, Atari Games the arcade divison was somewhat successful in this time period, making games such as S.T.U.N. Runner and Hard Drivin'.

Now the Atari name is passed around from company to company. Currently Hasbro and Infogrames both have some rights to the name.