Related Research Articles
Atari is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridges, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976. The VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge—initially Combat and later Pac-Man. Sears sold the system as the Tele-Games Video Arcade. Atari rebranded the VCS as the Atari 2600 in November 1982, alongside the release of the Atari 5200.
ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision.
Commodore International Corporation was a home computer and electronics manufacturer incorporated in The Bahamas with executive offices in the United States founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM), was a significant participant in the development of the home computer industry, and at one point in the 1980s was the world's largest in the industry.
The video game crash of 1983 was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985. The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end.
Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 and based on the film of the same name. The game's objective is to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that will allow him to contact his home planet.
Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.
Q*bert is an arcade video game developed and published for the North American market by Gottlieb in 1982. It is a 2D action game with puzzle elements that uses isometric graphics to create a pseudo-3D effect. The objective of each level in the game is to change every cube in a pyramid to a target color by making Q*bert, the on-screen character, hop on top of the cube while avoiding obstacles and enemies. Players use a joystick to control the character.
Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.
Ms. Pac-Man is a 1981 maze arcade video game developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Midway. It is a spin-off sequel to Pac-Man (1980) and the first entry in the series to not be made by Namco. Controlling the title character, Pac-Man's wife, the player is tasked with eating all of the pellets in an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating the larger "power pellets" lets the player eat the ghosts, which turn blue and flee.
David Crane is an American video game designer and programmer. Crane grew up fascinated by technology and went to DeVry Institute of Technology. Following college, he went to Silicon Valley and got his first job at National Semiconductor. Through his friend Alan Miller he learned about potential video game design work at Atari, Inc. and began work there in 1977.
Imagic was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, and Demon Attack. Imagic also released games for Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit computers, TI-99/4A, IBM PCjr, VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Magnavox Odyssey². Their Odyssey² ports of Demon Attack and Atlantis were the only third-party releases for that system in America. The company never recovered from the video game crash of 1983 and was liquidated in 1986.
Dragonstomper is a video game developed by Stephen Landrum for the Atari Video Computer System and released by Starpath. The game follows the adventures of a dragon hunter who is given a quest by the king to defeat a dragon and reclaim a magical amulet that was stolen. The player makes their way over the countryside, vanquishing various adversaries and gaining gold and experience. After achieving enough strength, the player can enter a shop in an oppressed village where equipment can be purchased, soldiers hired, and special scrolls obtained to defeat the dragon in its lair.
Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically oriented Byte.
The Atari video game burial was a mass burial of unsold video game cartridges, consoles, and computers in a New Mexico landfill site undertaken by the American video game and home computer company Atari, Inc. in 1983. Before 2014, the goods buried were rumored to be unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), one of the largest commercial video game failures and often cited as one of the worst video games ever released, and the 1982 Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man, which was commercially successful but critically maligned.
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.
References
- ↑ "Atari Age Contents", Atari Age, 2 (5): 4, March–April 1984, archived from the original on 2011-05-19
- ↑ Voltz, J. (January 2006). "The Electric Zoo: Video Game Paratext in American Arcades and Homes". ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
- ↑ "Atari Age Volume 2 Number 2 (1983)". Archive.org. Retrieved 16 February 2016.
- ↑ "Join The Atari Club", Atari Age, 2 (1): 12, May–June 1983, archived from the original on 2011-05-19
- ↑ Driscoll, Edward (Aug 2002). "The Atari 2600: The Cartridge Family Rides Again". Vol. 3, no. 8. Poptronics.