Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. It is time for us
Speaker 1: to conclude our tech Stuff classic series where we were
Speaker 1: looking at the Rise and Fall of Atari. So two
Speaker 1: weeks ago we did part one. Last week we did
Speaker 1: Part two. This week we did part three. This is
Speaker 1: all assuming that I don't change the actual order of
Speaker 1: classic episodes, which I have been known to do. I
Speaker 1: record these way in advance, so who knows. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this particular episode was originally published on March nine, two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, The Rise and Fall of Atari, Part three,
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy. There could be seven eight episodes where
Speaker 1: we talk about all the things that we're going on.
Speaker 1: There were incredible political moves going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: There were some amazing technological development. We haven't really touched
Speaker 1: on the major competitors with Atari that we're causing extra
Speaker 1: problems for them, like, uh, you know, the early on
Speaker 1: the in television and Coliko, but then later on we're
Speaker 1: talking Nintendo and Sega and then Sony with the PlayStation
Speaker 1: I mean by that time, ATRII is pretty much out
Speaker 1: of the picture anyway. But I mean, it's just so
Speaker 1: much to talk about. I found some some websites that
Speaker 1: even broke it down into when Atari hired people. And
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the big names we've mentioned talking
Speaker 1: about like Marty and Accounting exactly. I mean, it was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: The documentation that's out there. So we're going to now
Speaker 1: pick up in that tells you how detailed we've been.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard the first two episodes in this series,
Speaker 1: go back listen to those first. It's an amazing story.
Speaker 1: So is when something happens to Atari that redefines everything,
Speaker 1: and some people consider this yet another death of the company.
Speaker 1: That's when Warner, which had purchased Attari from Nolan Bushnell,
Speaker 1: the founder of Atari. Warner splits Atari into two entities
Speaker 1: one of it one of them is a home computing division,
Speaker 1: which is called the Atari Corporation, and the other is
Speaker 1: the arcade division, which is called Atari Games. And it
Speaker 1: sells off the home computing division. So Atari Corporation gets
Speaker 1: sold to a man named Jack Tramiel. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: the original founder of Commodore uh in the famous Commodore
Speaker 1: sixty four computer, which was great for its time. Oh yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1: There's a full tech Stuff episode about Commodore published on
Speaker 1: Ferbruary first, two thousand twelve. It's good, it was. It
Speaker 1: was fun to talk about that too, to talk about
Speaker 1: the development of the Commodore system. So Tramiel was another
Speaker 1: another pioneer in personal computing and home electronics, and he
Speaker 1: saw some promise in that home computing division of Atari,
Speaker 1: something that after the video game Crash of three a
Speaker 1: lot of people thought had no value whatsoever. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: renamed it, uh, I think he renamed it the Atari Corporation. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he decided to call it that because obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: now you have two separate entities that both have the
Speaker 1: Atari name in them, Yeah, which is always confusing in
Speaker 1: the marketplace, and it's going to be confusing in this
Speaker 1: episode because we're gonna be talking about the fate of
Speaker 1: both of them, right, So we're gonna follow both the
Speaker 1: fate of the Atari Corporation and the fate of Atari Games.
Speaker 1: So Atari Games At in nineteen eighty four was still
Speaker 1: with Warner, not for long. Not for long in fact,
Speaker 1: would be when that changes. So some big stuff happens
Speaker 1: in home video games. That's when the Fama com also
Speaker 1: known as Nintendo Entertainment System is released in the United States,
Speaker 1: which was a body blow like Tyson's punch out right there. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was something that convinced people maybe home video
Speaker 1: games aren't as dead as we thought they were. Because
Speaker 1: the video game crash, we pretty much thought that's it.
Speaker 1: Personal computers are going to take over. There won't be
Speaker 1: any home consoles dedicated video games anymore. Because that idea
Speaker 1: played itself out with Apples on the scene at this point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: making a stink. Yeah. In fact, by they're selling the
Speaker 1: Macintosh because that came out four so they Yeah. But
Speaker 1: the brilliant thing Nintendo did was they learned from Attari's mistakes.
Speaker 1: They said, all right, well we are going to license
Speaker 1: games like they have to be certified by US. You
Speaker 1: can't develop for Nintendo independently without submitting the game for
Speaker 1: US for certification. That way we still have some control
Speaker 1: over what and Warners wanted. But they didn't get out
Speaker 1: ahead of it in time like Nintendo did. No Activision
Speaker 1: pretty much doomed Atari because Activisions set that that precedent
Speaker 1: that a third party developer can can create uh cartridges
Speaker 1: for another platform that they don't own. Once that insident
Speaker 1: was set and that policy wasn't in place, it was
Speaker 1: it was game on, literally for everybody who wanted to
Speaker 1: develop for Atari. Yeah, and pardon my ignorance because I'm
Speaker 1: not a current gamer. I'm still stuck in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Activision still around, right, uh huh, Well it's part of
Speaker 1: something bigger, but ya, but they survived everything and did
Speaker 1: well for them. Well, I mean I could do a
Speaker 1: full episode on what happened to Activision too. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's kind of like a tari you know how,
Speaker 1: Atari technically still exists today, so at any rate. Um uh.
Speaker 1: Also in five, that's when Warner Communications sells the arcade
Speaker 1: division of Atari Games to a competitor, Namco. Yes, so
Speaker 1: that's the company that that developed pac Man. Yeah. Namco
Speaker 1: only owned it for about a year, and then some
Speaker 1: employees bought Atari Games from Namco and then uh made
Speaker 1: a few more pretty good arcade games, paper Boy, it
Speaker 1: was a big one. Gauntlet, Yeah, Gauntlet was a big one.
Speaker 1: Wizard needs food, good games, so they pumped a little
Speaker 1: more lifeblood into the car Atari Games division. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: also started to develop home games. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When Warner split it up between Atari Corporation in Atari Games,
Speaker 1: Atari Corporation had the sole right to sell home games
Speaker 1: under the Atari brand, Yeah, which they had already proved
Speaker 1: the struggle post without a really great, solid follow up
Speaker 1: that didn't didn't jump over. Yeah. And then you've got
Speaker 1: Atari Games that was making these these arcade games, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to make home video games, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: do it under the Atari brand because that belonged to
Speaker 1: Atari Corporation. So they created a new brand called Tension
Speaker 1: t E N G E N, which also comes from
Speaker 1: a h an aspect of the old board game Go.
Speaker 1: Intension the game, the board game, the Japanese board game Go,
Speaker 1: or It's great, Yeah, it's um. In fact, there's a
Speaker 1: great story that uh going way back to the first
Speaker 1: episode we talked about the the founders of Atari, they
Speaker 1: used to play Go in their office, which was an
Speaker 1: office that was originally meant for one person, but two
Speaker 1: people had to share it, so they would play games
Speaker 1: of Go in between actually getting any work done, although
Speaker 1: according to uh Ted, Mr Nolan never really actually did
Speaker 1: any work as far as he could tell, but then
Speaker 1: remember he had a lot of sour grapes for legitimate reasons.
Speaker 1: So if you notice what's going on now is Atari
Speaker 1: Um the corporation is getting really fractured. Um their home
Speaker 1: computer business with the hundred, we're doing okay, but they
Speaker 1: were behind the curve, so to speak, and they were
Speaker 1: playing catch up. They were announcing a new computer system,
Speaker 1: the Atar E S T. They did that at the
Speaker 1: Winter c E S. I did an episode about c
Speaker 1: E S once where I explained this. But once upon
Speaker 1: a time there were two big c S events. One
Speaker 1: happened in the winter and one happened in the summer,
Speaker 1: and now there's only the winter version. But so this
Speaker 1: this was back when there were still two and at
Speaker 1: Winter c E S they announced a R S T.
Speaker 1: The ST stands for sixteen slash thirty two, which refers
Speaker 1: to the microprocessor and its internal and external bus connections.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it had five kilobytes of RAM yeah, smoking fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh it could be expanded up to four megabytes.
Speaker 1: So there's that had a graphical user interface, so jewey,
Speaker 1: uh or gooey if you prefer. Once the whole Jeff
Speaker 1: gift thing came out, Yeah, it messes everything up. I
Speaker 1: always say gooey because jewey does not sound like it's
Speaker 1: appropriate to me at any rate. It We'll go with gooey.
Speaker 1: I think that's the more than more than overwhelming choice.
Speaker 1: It also had a floppy disk drive, and it would
Speaker 1: be the cartridge drive. Yes, so I had both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it would be produced up until the early nineteen nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was the cheapest sixteen bit computer. Um. And
Speaker 1: like like you said, if it was around to the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, it did okay. Yeah. In fact, in Europe
Speaker 1: it did pretty well. Here in the United States did okay,
Speaker 1: and in Europe it did it did better. Um. And
Speaker 1: then we've got uh, the Atari Corporation releasing the Atari
Speaker 1: hundred Pro system in six soft dred had come out,
Speaker 1: and then the seventy eight hundred comes out. It had
Speaker 1: digital joysticks rather than the older analog type, and the
Speaker 1: seventy hundred had a weird little story and that it
Speaker 1: was manufactured and then shelves in a warehouse basically for um,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure how long. Two years. Yeah, two years.
Speaker 1: They basically were just going to sit on it, and
Speaker 1: then finally they said, well, the decision was really is arbitrary,
Speaker 1: is like, let's just sell these things. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: released like a couple of early models uh in that
Speaker 1: two year period, but they, like you were saying, they
Speaker 1: didn't sell it like it. People talk about it being
Speaker 1: uh uh re debuted or reintroduced, but it never was
Speaker 1: fully introduced in the first place. But one cool thing
Speaker 1: about it was it was backwards compatible with almost all games. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of neat, you know, it's better than
Speaker 1: the fifty UM and yeah, it ended up uh not
Speaker 1: really competing very well against the Nintendo Entertainment System. It
Speaker 1: would only be produced until or supported until that's when
Speaker 1: Atari announced that they would no longer UM produce games
Speaker 1: or consoles. There was also JR companion model to basically
Speaker 1: the the public. At this point, uh, Nintendo Fever had
Speaker 1: struck and Sega started to come out with their systems,
Speaker 1: and Atari was just kind of sadly lost in the
Speaker 1: shuffle there as far as the home systems go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if your mascot wasn't a little Italian plumber,
Speaker 1: yeah you were out of luck. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more about Attari after this quick break. So Attari would
Speaker 1: release the Atari x E video Game System a k a.
Speaker 1: The Atari x E g S, which was based off
Speaker 1: the eight bit computers Attari had previously created. Um so
Speaker 1: think of like the fifty two hundred was kind of
Speaker 1: the video game console of the four eight hundred bit
Speaker 1: or four eight hundred Atari computers. This one was the
Speaker 1: next general it was based off the next generation of
Speaker 1: those same home computers. Yeah, those confusion in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: and I think confusion within Atari. I don't think they
Speaker 1: even knew what kind of company they were at this point. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. In this one actually had one
Speaker 1: game hard coded into it. So the Atari you could
Speaker 1: play other games, like you could get the disks for
Speaker 1: other games and play them, but it had one game
Speaker 1: that was hard coded into it, and that was Missile Command.
Speaker 1: So it's not a bad choice. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: again one of those things where you might feel that
Speaker 1: Atari didn't have a clear vision for what its place was.
Speaker 1: Things just in kind of money and in they would
Speaker 1: release the five twenty st E and the ten forty
Speaker 1: STE models of its home computer, which had an increased
Speaker 1: color palette and a graphics processor, right, a dedicated co
Speaker 1: processor for the graphics which is something that's common now,
Speaker 1: but at the time was pretty new. Yeah. So, I
Speaker 1: mean they were, they were doing some of the right
Speaker 1: things on the home computer front, but there was just
Speaker 1: so much more competition now. You had you had Apple,
Speaker 1: you had the IBM compatibles, and you had IBM Plus.
Speaker 1: The Amigo was still out there. Um you can't forget
Speaker 1: about the Amiga. No. I had a friend who was
Speaker 1: a die hard Amiga fan, and I gotta admit the Amiga.
Speaker 1: The thing that I loved about the Amiga was that
Speaker 1: well before anyone else, it was doing amazing sound and graphics,
Speaker 1: like years before anyone else had managed to do that
Speaker 1: in an affordable way. And uh so, I remember my
Speaker 1: friend had several games for the Amiga that I found
Speaker 1: to be like light years beyond anything I could play
Speaker 1: on my Apple two E or my two eighties six
Speaker 1: at home. Um So, but the the CPU on these
Speaker 1: devices had a blistering speed of eight Mega hurts. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the multiple Giga hurts now, and it's a
Speaker 1: little a little slow on that and in fact, my
Speaker 1: phone is way faster than that. Um But that's also
Speaker 1: when Atari Corporation acquired the right to manufacture and sell
Speaker 1: a handheld gaming console that had been developed by a
Speaker 1: different company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Links was really cool.
Speaker 1: It had been developed by a company called Epics e
Speaker 1: p y X, but Epics had entered financial difficulty and
Speaker 1: it owed a lot of money to various companies. The
Speaker 1: largest that it owed money too was Atari. Actually, the
Speaker 1: largest amount it owed was to Atari. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: they had this kind of settlement to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: how are we going to make good on this because
Speaker 1: Epics is on the verge of just disappearing, and as
Speaker 1: part of the deal, essentially they signed over this this
Speaker 1: handheld gaming system they had been developing, and that became
Speaker 1: the Atari Links. And the Links was great. I remember
Speaker 1: I had a couple of friends it had it. It
Speaker 1: um It was released around the same time as the
Speaker 1: Game Boy, but it had full color graphics. It looked better,
Speaker 1: it sounded better. You could link them together, you could
Speaker 1: link them together. It was it was sort of large. Um.
Speaker 1: It was had a horizontal UM I guess body UM.
Speaker 1: So it was big, which wasn't great. It was a
Speaker 1: little ungainly. The battery life would only last four to
Speaker 1: five hours, so that was kind of frustrating because this
Speaker 1: is this is not era of rechargeable batteries. For most people,
Speaker 1: you were popping out old ones and replacing them with
Speaker 1: new ones, so that could get really frustrating. But the
Speaker 1: one thing Links did not have was a game called Tetris. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is what basically was the death blow to
Speaker 1: the Links. Tetris was just such a huge deal. It
Speaker 1: was the killer app. Yeah, it was the killer app
Speaker 1: and it's what made game Boy what it was. And
Speaker 1: I got the game Boy. Yeah, and then and then
Speaker 1: like you would think that, well, maybe if they can
Speaker 1: stick it out, then the Links will have a chance
Speaker 1: because the Nintendo game Boy, once everyone's got that, they'll
Speaker 1: see that the Lynx has got uh better stats, and
Speaker 1: maybe I'll go with that. But then in Sega came
Speaker 1: out with the game Gear, and Sega was already doing
Speaker 1: really good business too, and that just that just meant
Speaker 1: that the Links had no place in that competition. I
Speaker 1: feel bad for a Tary at this point because they're
Speaker 1: coming up with superior products in certain case, it still
Speaker 1: can't get market. It's either bad timing or it's a
Speaker 1: combination of bad timing and a lack of a compelling
Speaker 1: library to these games. It really shows how you need
Speaker 1: to have strong launch titles to move a console. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to it than just like this
Speaker 1: has the best graphics. In fact, you know, going into
Speaker 1: personal account here, I don't own a current generation game.
Speaker 1: I love gaming. I consider myself to be a gamer.
Speaker 1: I'm not a hardcore gamer, and certainly I'm sure any
Speaker 1: of my listeners listening could beat me at any game
Speaker 1: of their choice. So I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to put that out there, but but I will
Speaker 1: say that I love gaming, but I haven't purchased an
Speaker 1: Xbox One or a PS four because we're finally at
Speaker 1: a point now where it's different. But for the longest time,
Speaker 1: the libraries weren't compelling enough for me to make that investment, right,
Speaker 1: So I would think, yes, it's clearly superior to the
Speaker 1: system I have now, but the games aren't games that
Speaker 1: I want to play yet. I want to wait until
Speaker 1: they're enough games that I want to play to justify
Speaker 1: that expense, and now we're at that point. I just
Speaker 1: haven't Well, for one thing, I'm not allowed to have
Speaker 1: a present for another year and a half. I have
Speaker 1: a two year, two year period where I can't get presence,
Speaker 1: or at least my wife won't buy me presence for
Speaker 1: a good reason, and it's not a bad one. It's
Speaker 1: that I made a substantial donation to a nonprofit and
Speaker 1: in return, the agreement was two years no presence. You're
Speaker 1: a good man. Here's my deal with gaming now is
Speaker 1: I uh played Nintendo and stuff through the through the
Speaker 1: sixty in college, was way into it, and then sort
Speaker 1: of dropped out for a long time until my stepfather,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, my father in law gave me his PS
Speaker 1: three a couple of years ago because he just didn't
Speaker 1: want it. And since then, I buy like I just
Speaker 1: look up once a year and buy like the two
Speaker 1: best reviewed games of the year, and I'll play those
Speaker 1: for about a month and then that's it. We don't
Speaker 1: have the time to doe to gaming three years old.
Speaker 1: You know, I fix up my house. I know I've
Speaker 1: got a house, I got a puppy, I got four animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've gotten to a point. We're obviously getting a little
Speaker 1: off topic, but it's true, like we we just have
Speaker 1: reached a point in our lives where no, you just
Speaker 1: can't game like that anymore. About about the last of us, Oh,
Speaker 1: fantastic game. Fantastic game. But see, I still have that
Speaker 1: gamer in me because I was addicted to this game. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I bought one of the bio BioShock BioShock,
Speaker 1: but the steampunk one, right, so BioShock Infinite, Yeah, that one,
Speaker 1: and I played that one through and that was really great.
Speaker 1: The music in that game is amazing. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the extent of my gaming. Now I hear two years,
Speaker 1: I'll buy the best two games. Although after the last
Speaker 1: of us, I don't. I mean, I don't see how
Speaker 1: you can get any better. It was a very emotionally
Speaker 1: impactful game. I mean right at my amories. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: back to the get back to the Tari. No, I
Speaker 1: love doing this. I would just totally continue on that
Speaker 1: conversation otherwise. But no, there's only one thing I have
Speaker 1: to mention, which is that Atari Corporation released the Atari
Speaker 1: t T zero three zero or zero thirty. It's a
Speaker 1: workstations thirty two Mega Hurts process or workstation. So they
Speaker 1: were still staying in the home computer business at that point.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, they're they're trying to hang in there. And
Speaker 1: I don't have any notes for ninety one, but into Yeah.
Speaker 1: In ninety two, Atari Corporation would release the Falcon, which
Speaker 1: would be the last of its computer systems. The Falcon
Speaker 1: was the last time they tried to do a home computer,
Speaker 1: and then they made the decision to switch back to
Speaker 1: trying to do video game consoles again. So that's why
Speaker 1: we see the release of the Atari jag jagua if
Speaker 1: you want to go with the British pronunciation jack one again.
Speaker 1: Atari is doing the right thing there ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1: It's the first sixty four bit system. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: so it is graphically and as far as the processor goes,
Speaker 1: more powerful than any of the competitors on the market
Speaker 1: at that Yeah, and had had a couple of success
Speaker 1: successful titles. I think the Alien versus Predator that's one
Speaker 1: that's considered to be one of the best titles for
Speaker 1: that system. Tempest two thousand that was the other one
Speaker 1: was really good. Um, but the controller on it was terrible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was huge and it was unwieldy, um, and didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of software support. Right to the titles
Speaker 1: that we just mentioned are pretty much I was like, well,
Speaker 1: beyond that, I can't really justify buying this. It says
Speaker 1: there were sixty seven games ever released, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I don't think more than ten of them registered on
Speaker 1: the radar. You read over the them and you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: I never heard of this there. That's gonna be one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why this Jaguar never took off. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in the sixty four was just awesome and they had
Speaker 1: good games, and then you had the PlayStation coming on.
Speaker 1: Like when Sony starts really throwing down then it really
Speaker 1: this was at last like a star in just reaching
Speaker 1: for that rope at the end of the rope, trying
Speaker 1: to grab ahold of it and Nintendo and Sonny was
Speaker 1: just pulling the rope higher. So we haven't talked about
Speaker 1: Atari Games for a little bit. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: branch that did the arcade versions not and also produced
Speaker 1: some home video under home video games under tension, uh,
Speaker 1: Time Warner Communications. Just in case you didn't know, Warner
Speaker 1: and Time merged in nine. Just a little bit of
Speaker 1: a merger. Yeah, Time Warner Communications purchased controlling interest in
Speaker 1: Atari Games, so Atari Games would get consolidated with other
Speaker 1: properties in nine and become known as Time Warner Interactive.
Speaker 1: So Atari Games was part of Time Warner Interactive. But
Speaker 1: this means that part of Atari is back with Warner.
Speaker 1: Remember Warner was the one that so off. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Warner had sold it off to Namco, then employees bought
Speaker 1: it back from Namco, and then Time Warner Communications buys it.
Speaker 1: And it's just this is why it gets really hard
Speaker 1: to talk about the end of Atari. Um And another
Speaker 1: confusing thing, uh JT Storage, which was a hard disc manufacturer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: JTS merges with Atari Corporation. So this is the home
Speaker 1: computer one, not the Atari games one. So JTS merges
Speaker 1: with Atari Corporation. But JTS was in a tough spot
Speaker 1: because it was already had a cash flow problem and
Speaker 1: so it was looking for a way to avoid going
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy and thought that by acquiring Atari, which had
Speaker 1: lots of cash, but not a whole lot of market
Speaker 1: share because most of the cash from Atari was actually
Speaker 1: coming from lawsuits like they were going after other companies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they weren't making money off their products as much
Speaker 1: as they were off some of the lawsuits. So JTS
Speaker 1: comes in, acquires Atari, then fires almost all of the
Speaker 1: former Atari employees and inquidates the remaining Atari inventory as
Speaker 1: a means of helping stave off this impending disaster, which
Speaker 1: it did not do. Two years after that, Hasbro Interactive
Speaker 1: um buys JTS for five million bucks. Yeah, essentially it
Speaker 1: bought the Atari Corporation from JTS for five million. JTS
Speaker 1: actually went bankrupt that year. It essentially bought the Atari
Speaker 1: name for five million. But yeah, because at that point
Speaker 1: there really was nothing left, right because and at this
Speaker 1: point in the name, it's like your your drunk uncle
Speaker 1: who was he was a big shot in high school.
Speaker 1: That's what Atari is at this point. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, stumbling around in the alley, you know, don't
Speaker 1: you know who I am? And around the same time,
Speaker 1: to make matters worse. Okay, So that that's Atari Corporation, right,
Speaker 1: getting acquired for five million by Hasbro Interactive. Meanwhile, around
Speaker 1: that same time, Atari Games was split off from Time
Speaker 1: Warner Interactive. So it didn't stay at Time Warner very
Speaker 1: long either, like three years it was gone. It splits
Speaker 1: off and is purchased by w MS Industries, which was
Speaker 1: the parent company or Williams and Bally Midway. So now
Speaker 1: we're seeing a consolidation of the big names that you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years earlier, have been the defining names in in
Speaker 1: arcade entertainments. So they purchase Atari Games. Uh, and meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got Hasbro Interactive that's acquired the Atari Corporation. So
Speaker 1: at that point, yeah, that's true, but don't get ahead
Speaker 1: of me. So at that point, when when Hasbro gets
Speaker 1: hold of Atari Corporation, w MS Industries doesn't want confusion.
Speaker 1: You know, they just purchased Atari Games earlier. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're already confused. So what they do is they renamed
Speaker 1: Atari Games. Atari Games gets renamed into Midway Games West.
Speaker 1: So now when I talk about Atari Games, I'm actually
Speaker 1: talking Midway Games West. Don't worry, we'll come back around
Speaker 1: to make things more confusing later. So yeah, so now
Speaker 1: we get to two thousand, that's when the dot com
Speaker 1: bubble bursts. Poor Atari because through two bubble bursts, right,
Speaker 1: the video game bubble and then the dot com bubble.
Speaker 1: Man So they probably had were affected by the real
Speaker 1: estate bubble in some way to Probably I was affected
Speaker 1: by the dot com bubble. I worked for a human
Speaker 1: resources management consulting firm at the time, and most of
Speaker 1: our clients were dot com companies. Yeah, suddenly our client
Speaker 1: lists got a lot smaller, but look where you are now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a long road, but I'm glad I'm here.
Speaker 1: Uh So Hasbro because Hasbro Interactive was hit hard by
Speaker 1: this dot com verse. Everyone was right, you mean you
Speaker 1: just had this. It was another market correction that was
Speaker 1: the devastated a lot of companies and lives. So Hasbro
Speaker 1: decides to sell off Hasbro Interactive, including the intellectual property
Speaker 1: from a Hary corporation. Remember that's the home computing one.
Speaker 1: They sell it to a French company that I always
Speaker 1: misspelled because I always think that the name is a typo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: info Grams in not info Games. Yeah, I keep thinking
Speaker 1: it's info games. It's info Grams because it's spelled like
Speaker 1: info games but with an extra are there right after
Speaker 1: the G? Yeah? The French that was in two thousand Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh so Hasbro Interactive becomes info Grams Interactive and
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, unless you have anything between two
Speaker 1: thousand and two thousand three, thank goodness. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, Info Grams Interactive is renamed Atari Interactive and
Speaker 1: Infograms creates a subsidiary called Atari Incorporated, which has its
Speaker 1: own listing on NASDAC. Yeah, they still saw value in
Speaker 1: that Atari name, despite the pummeling it took over the years.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that by this point there's nothing
Speaker 1: left of the original Atari attached to the Satari name.
Speaker 1: The Atari name is a name and an idea, but
Speaker 1: it's no longer associated with the original company at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the European branch of Infograms became known as Atari
Speaker 1: Europe and Infograms Australia became Atari Australia, Infograms UK became
Speaker 1: a UK. Yeah, and there were re releases of some
Speaker 1: of the classic games. There were some newer games. One
Speaker 1: called Alone in the Dark in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: was supposed to be pretty good. I never played it. Fantastic,
Speaker 1: So they had some successes. But again that was just
Speaker 1: confusing because they were, you know, a publisher and a distributor,
Speaker 1: and they really didn't really know what they were doing
Speaker 1: completely with the Autari name. Right. Infograms in particular was
Speaker 1: into this like acquisition mania, like they were they were
Speaker 1: buying up properties left and right, Yeah, which is always
Speaker 1: a little dangerous, yeah, because it can lead to a
Speaker 1: lack of focus, which is exactly what happened in this case.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, hindsight tells us that right. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know that otherwise, but it is the case Midway
Speaker 1: Game In two thousand three, Midway Games West, I should say,
Speaker 1: remember that what used to be Atari Games now Midway
Speaker 1: Games West disbands, So now Atari Games is just a name.
Speaker 1: In fact, there was a holding company that was still
Speaker 1: called Midway Games West, but it was just a holding company.
Speaker 1: There was no nothing else to it. It was not
Speaker 1: an office, no secretary, no games coming out of it, nothing,
Speaker 1: So it only exists as a name literally at this point.
Speaker 1: Two thousand four, the Atari Flashback launches. Now the Flashback
Speaker 1: is a dedicated console with games that are hard baked
Speaker 1: into it, so it doesn't use cartridges as a selection
Speaker 1: of games. It looked like except for some added buttons
Speaker 1: here and there. Um. I bought. I don't know who
Speaker 1: made it, but I bought. At one point someone was
Speaker 1: selling the joystick just plugs directly into the Yeah, that
Speaker 1: had like games or something on it. Um, and that
Speaker 1: was I played the heck out of that thing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I did too. I have one of those at home.
Speaker 1: But that I have one of those at home right
Speaker 1: next to my TV. So not trying to bragg or anything.
Speaker 1: I mean I realized that almost everyone out there probably
Speaker 1: has a larger TV, So please don't make me feel
Speaker 1: badly about myself. But the flashback did. Okay. They came
Speaker 1: out with different versions of that exactly like the first
Speaker 1: one did not have river Ate and it, so that
Speaker 1: just did not fly with me. Yeah, but it's all
Speaker 1: for the nostalgia crowd. Yeah. So that came out with
Speaker 1: models in two thousand four, two thousand five, two two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, and two thousand twelve. Different companies would produce
Speaker 1: it over the years, um, but they were all licensed
Speaker 1: by Atari. And by Atari I mean Atari Home Computing,
Speaker 1: which means uh infograms as opposed to Midway Games West,
Speaker 1: which is I know, really two thousand five. Okay, seriously,
Speaker 1: has Bro, what the heck are you doing? Has Bro
Speaker 1: buys back some intellectual property from Atari s A. Which
Speaker 1: is the info Grams version, the home computer version also
Speaker 1: known as Atari Inc. As the subsidiary of Ataria, say,
Speaker 1: for sixty five million in dollars. See that's what's confusing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that Hasbro got out of the game and then
Speaker 1: literally got back into it, you know. For that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: clearly that dot com bubble scared everybody, and then once
Speaker 1: we started seeing recovery, people wanted to get back into it,
Speaker 1: the ones that were still around anyway. Now now Atri
Speaker 1: is not your drunk uncle, it's just the abused, like confused,
Speaker 1: I don't even know which which way is up at
Speaker 1: this point. This is this is the This is the
Speaker 1: person who's just wandering the street and talking about how
Speaker 1: you know, the trees are convincing them to buy Dorito's.
Speaker 1: That is what this is that now we're at that point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in two eight, Infograms offers to buy out Atari
Speaker 1: Incorporated shares to make Infograms the sole owner of Atari
Speaker 1: Incorporated again because they had listed to Tori Incorporated on NASDAC,
Speaker 1: so they sold shares to other parties, making it a
Speaker 1: publicly traded company. But now they're saying, well, we need
Speaker 1: to fix Atari like this, this brand is not doing
Speaker 1: what we needed to do. We think that this brand, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we think this brand could save us because Infograms as
Speaker 1: a whole was having a lot of issues. We want
Speaker 1: to be able to rebrand ourselves, but in order to
Speaker 1: do that, we first need to get all of Atari
Speaker 1: back belonging to us. So they offered to buy it out.
Speaker 1: It's accepted, and Infograms reacquires Atari uh completely, so now
Speaker 1: it totally belongs to Infograms uh. Atari meanwhile had acquired
Speaker 1: another company called Cryptic Studios, which developed a game called
Speaker 1: City of Heroes. It's an online multiplayer game where you
Speaker 1: create a superhero um and you an original superhero that
Speaker 1: you can play. It's one that I always wanted to
Speaker 1: get into it, but I never I never had the
Speaker 1: time to dedicate to those massive online games and their
Speaker 1: monthly subscription base. For well, now they're mostly free to play,
Speaker 1: but back then they were all monthly subscriptions and you're
Speaker 1: busy creating your own real life superhero persona. That's true,
Speaker 1: but you know that's what about. That's an alter ego
Speaker 1: thing that we need to steer away from. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break for some messages, but then we'll
Speaker 1: be back with more of the rise and fall of Atari.
Speaker 1: So two thousand nine, good grief. Could this story get
Speaker 1: more ridiculous? Warner Brothers Entertainment purchases the Midway intellectual property,
Speaker 1: including the name Atari Games, So for the third time
Speaker 1: Warner Warner owns something called Atari three times buying and selling.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So. Meanwhile, Namco Bandai acquires Atari Europe
Speaker 1: from Infograms. Infograms itself changes its name to Atari Essay
Speaker 1: to create a united company, and it also has the
Speaker 1: Atari Group, which is a collection of divisions from around
Speaker 1: the world, like Atari Italia, that kind of thing um
Speaker 1: that still have the Atari brand name. Here's a name
Speaker 1: we haven't heard for a while. Bushnell. He comes back.
Speaker 1: He actually, because of an acquisition, ends up on the
Speaker 1: board of directors or Atari So Incorporated specifically, So they
Speaker 1: brought him back for that very reason, right to sort
Speaker 1: of get some attention again, I imagine. So yeah, because
Speaker 1: this is again one of those things where you've got
Speaker 1: the name but otherwise there's no connection. But now you've
Speaker 1: got the guy who founded the company. So that's big news.
Speaker 1: And it definitely did get a lot of people writing
Speaker 1: about it at the time, although if you look at
Speaker 1: two now you realize not a whole lot has will
Speaker 1: remind you of the old golden age of Atari um
Speaker 1: so inn. Atari Incorporated sells off Cryptic Studios, the one
Speaker 1: that they had bought, the City Heroes one and in
Speaker 1: Atari Incorporated files for bankruptcy January. Oh so remember this
Speaker 1: is the this was formally Infograms Atari Incorporated was formerly
Speaker 1: part of Infograms, now part of Ataria Say. Atari Incorporated
Speaker 1: files from bankruptcy partly to escape the debt accrued by
Speaker 1: its parent company h and In. In an effort to
Speaker 1: pay off the debt, they attempt to sell off the
Speaker 1: portfolio of more than two video games, but they only
Speaker 1: received fifteen preliminary bids and none of them approach the
Speaker 1: price that Atari was hoping for, so they don't accept
Speaker 1: any of them. Instead, they decide they'll sell bits and
Speaker 1: pieces off rather than rather than sell everything off at
Speaker 1: a price too low, They're going to sell bits and
Speaker 1: pieces off and try and get themselves through it. And
Speaker 1: it works. I mean they sell some stuff, not everything,
Speaker 1: but they sell some stuff and then by the end
Speaker 1: often they emerged from bankruptcy December. So like the entire
Speaker 1: year of Atari Incorporated is in bankruptcy. This at US year.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's hard. I mean there's a lot of competition
Speaker 1: for that time. That title fourteen. Finally last year, that's
Speaker 1: when we have the documentary that we talked about previously,
Speaker 1: the one that went out to the desert to dig
Speaker 1: up to find out if et really was beneath it
Speaker 1: the cartridge, not the character and that kind of resurrected
Speaker 1: a little bit of interest in it'sar again. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of talk about there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people wondering whether or not they were actually
Speaker 1: gonna find anything, if they would just find scraps as
Speaker 1: opposed to entire cartridges. And as we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, they did find cartridges. So um, yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole story behind that is they manufactured four million cartridges,
Speaker 1: they were unable to move three and a half million
Speaker 1: of those. Man So they had only a couple of choices.
Speaker 1: Do you store this and hope that you can one
Speaker 1: day sell it, because keep in mind, storing stuff costs money, right,
Speaker 1: you can't. It's not like there's just a magical space
Speaker 1: like that. It's gonna occupy space that you would otherwise
Speaker 1: use for something else. Or do you call it a
Speaker 1: loss and throw it away? And they chose option number two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so what's amazing to me about the whole et
Speaker 1: debacle is that, um, word got I mean this is
Speaker 1: pre internet and word still got around that fast. From
Speaker 1: Johnny telling his neighbor Billy how bad sucked, and Billy
Speaker 1: telling his neighbor and it was around so fast that
Speaker 1: there wasn't five thousand copies. There was no like Kataku
Speaker 1: forum or something for people to say, this is still
Speaker 1: in cul de sex yeah, and then scoffing over bargain
Speaker 1: bins at your local toy store. Um. And so what's
Speaker 1: going on with the Tory now, Well, it's focusing on
Speaker 1: developing games for social platforms like Facebook and for mobile
Speaker 1: devices primarily, although they're looking at some other stuff as well. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A former employee name Fred Uh, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce that c h E s in a I S.
Speaker 1: I believe it is one of the French fellows from Infogram.
Speaker 1: Perhaps perhaps he's now the CEO. And he said that
Speaker 1: he is going to try and be relevant in the
Speaker 1: PC world again with a few different things, uh, notably gambling,
Speaker 1: real casino gambling and just for fun casino gambling. So
Speaker 1: I think this would be like if you walked into
Speaker 1: a casino, you know how you see all those licensed
Speaker 1: slot machines, like Lord of the Rings. That one, by
Speaker 1: the way, treats me really well. So I love the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Ring slot machine, but I can see
Speaker 1: like the Centipede slot machine, and then operate some of
Speaker 1: the gameplay. They're gonna do both. They're gonna have a
Speaker 1: licensing program and they're gonna have an actual online casino,
Speaker 1: social casino with virtual money and so the gambling thing
Speaker 1: and licensing and games. They said, the flashback they're gonna
Speaker 1: keep around. Uh, they have one idea for They're going
Speaker 1: to create some new I p s. One is for
Speaker 1: the LGBT community called pride Fest. And um he said,
Speaker 1: they're developing a new Asteroids game that is a PC
Speaker 1: game where you will actually be surviving on the asteroid itself.
Speaker 1: So turn things around a little bit. They're trying, um
Speaker 1: he thinks that they can capitalize on that Atari name
Speaker 1: and get it back to relevance again. But I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's whether or not we see anything
Speaker 1: coming out of this division. Also, keep in mind the
Speaker 1: the Atari games that was purchased by Warner Brothers Entertainment.
Speaker 1: You know, the story is not necessarily over for Atari,
Speaker 1: although you could argue that as far as the original
Speaker 1: company is concerned, that story has been over since the eighties.
Speaker 1: So Uh, it's an interesting and and sometimes upsetting story,
Speaker 1: the rise and fall of the of Atari and it Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and there's people. I remember reading things like could
Speaker 1: the video game crash happen again? And if you look,
Speaker 1: there is a large number of different providers that are
Speaker 1: all trying to clamor for attention. Now, when we think
Speaker 1: of consoles, we think Nintendo, Sony an Xbox. Some people
Speaker 1: would say just Sony an Xbox. They don't even think
Speaker 1: of Nintendo. Um. But then we have the mobile game market,
Speaker 1: we have computers. PC gaming is hitting a resurgence, so uh.
Speaker 1: And then there are people like me who hold back
Speaker 1: from buying current generation consoles because we don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: the value in them or the reason to upgrade. Where
Speaker 1: I was given one by my father in law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they we get to that point where we think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it is possible. You can't never say that you're
Speaker 1: too big to fail. That's a rookie mistake, comes before
Speaker 1: the fall. That that's true. So we have completed the
Speaker 1: story of Attari. But now we've got a little time
Speaker 1: to talk about some personal reflections beyond the stuff that
Speaker 1: we've talked about in the previous episodes. So, Chuck, what
Speaker 1: are some of your fond memories of Atari in general? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: buying pac Man on Christmas day, the buying was great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and actually, man I actually enjoyed playing it as um
Speaker 1: a twelve year old. Um, I didn't realize how bad
Speaker 1: it's stunk at the time because it was pac Man
Speaker 1: in my house. Um And you know, as a little kid,
Speaker 1: you're not like, oh, this doesn't look just like it
Speaker 1: and sound just like it. I think older kids probably
Speaker 1: were a little more like that, but um, I was
Speaker 1: young enough to where I enjoyed it adventure. Like we
Speaker 1: talked about man um the imagination playing Adventure well and
Speaker 1: the fact that they incorporated things like the bat mechanic,
Speaker 1: which meant that you could never expect the same gameplay
Speaker 1: experience two times in a row, which was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of these games, like the early games,
Speaker 1: it involved memorizing patterns, and if you memorize the pattern,
Speaker 1: you could play definitely, but that didn't work for games
Speaker 1: that actually would uh introduce some sort of element that
Speaker 1: could at least be perceived as random. Yeah. River Raid fantastic,
Speaker 1: huge game to me, that holds up still today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good game. I think out of all the
Speaker 1: shooter games, that's like by shooter, I mean like you're
Speaker 1: controlling a ship that's moving around and shooting things. In
Speaker 1: this case, it's a it's a jet, it's flying over
Speaker 1: a river. Uh. That one. I didn't own river Raid,
Speaker 1: but a friend of mine from down the street owned it,
Speaker 1: and I would go over to his house all the
Speaker 1: time to play it because it was the one title
Speaker 1: on Atari that I really wanted but did not have. Well,
Speaker 1: actually no, there were two, river Rate and Pitfall. I
Speaker 1: never owned either of those, but I played the heck
Speaker 1: out of them. I think river Raid was the first
Speaker 1: top scroll game. Uh. Pitfall was huge, and that kind
Speaker 1: of introduced the platforming genre of video games. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: Warlords yeah. Uh. Man. I had a ton of Frogger.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that was sort of a kid's game,
Speaker 1: but I still like Frogger. I think it's still challenging.
Speaker 1: I liked Frogger as well. I remember I had some
Speaker 1: games that I wish had been better, Like I had
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong Jr. That really it didn't measure up nearly
Speaker 1: as well to the arcade version. I had Popeye, which
Speaker 1: also didn't measure up very well to the arcade version. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean it was it was like I had
Speaker 1: a lot of those those games licensed games and stuff
Speaker 1: as well. Uh yeah, I I also have really fond
Speaker 1: memories of arcades. Like you know, there were there were
Speaker 1: times where I would just go to the arcade to um,
Speaker 1: you know, spend a dollar or whatever, and you know,
Speaker 1: you always try and find the game that you figure
Speaker 1: you're gonna get the most value for your money. I
Speaker 1: can play this one for a long time. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: play this one, um. And luckily there were also a
Speaker 1: lot of them made by Atari that were really fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, Star Wars is still like I love the
Speaker 1: Star Wars trilogy game that came out that was modeled
Speaker 1: after um, closer after the movies, like with better graphics
Speaker 1: and everything. But there's still a place in my heart
Speaker 1: of that vector graphics Star Wars game. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: kidding when I said that I would actually consider purchasing
Speaker 1: one of those because that was, um such an such
Speaker 1: a fond memory. Like the two arcade games I went
Speaker 1: back to over and over, we're uh We're Star Wars
Speaker 1: and Spy Hunter. Oh yeah, No, Spy Hunter was not
Speaker 1: an Atari game, but oddly enough, I think Spy Hunter
Speaker 1: two ended up being distributed under Atari, even though Atari
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the original Spy Hunter. But
Speaker 1: that just shows another way that the Atari story makes
Speaker 1: no sense when you look at the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I hate to sound like the old guy,
Speaker 1: but um, I'm really thankful that we grew up in
Speaker 1: that generation. There was something really special about seeing something
Speaker 1: invented for us right in front of our very eyes,
Speaker 1: created out of nowhere, like we talked about in I
Speaker 1: think episode two, when there were three TV stations or
Speaker 1: you know, five or six TV stations and crappy handheld games,
Speaker 1: and it was just it blew my mind. And I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in the arcade and the
Speaker 1: games today are amazing, but the mind blow isn't there
Speaker 1: like it was back then, because it's all building on
Speaker 1: what happened before it, and this was building on out
Speaker 1: of thin air. And it also, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: an era where a single person could develop a game
Speaker 1: from beginning to finish. You know, now we have companies
Speaker 1: that have entire divisions dedicated to that. It was also
Speaker 1: an era where people were making weird games, like weird
Speaker 1: games that could be a lot of fun but had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it, Like you look at yours Revenge,
Speaker 1: I dare you to tell me what that's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: It is bizarre, but it's awesome, And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of really fun games. Yeah, huge, huge risks, right,
Speaker 1: both in the arcade and in the home video game market,
Speaker 1: just people saying, let's create some a fun experience. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it quote unquote makes sense or whatever.
Speaker 1: These days, you look at video games and a lot
Speaker 1: of the companies tend to get hung up on creating franchises.
Speaker 1: They want they want to create a title that they
Speaker 1: can make essentially clones of with modifications. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: that way they have built in a built an audience
Speaker 1: they've got all right, these are the people who are
Speaker 1: Call of Duty players. So let's put out a Call
Speaker 1: of Duty game every single year. They'll buy it. We
Speaker 1: we know they'll buy it because they are Call of
Speaker 1: Duty fans, as opposed to saying what kind of cool
Speaker 1: experience can we create, which is sort of given rise
Speaker 1: to the independent developer community. So in a way, those
Speaker 1: early Atari days are very similar to what we see
Speaker 1: with the independent game community these days, except, of course,
Speaker 1: the independent game developers are are not, as you know,
Speaker 1: not as organized in a sense, they're nonder an umbrella
Speaker 1: like Atari was. But other than that, they're they're operating
Speaker 1: in a very similar way. You look at those early
Speaker 1: days of Atari, it really did sound lot like what
Speaker 1: an internet startup sounds like today. Yeah, you were defining
Speaker 1: what you did and so there weren't rules because no
Speaker 1: one had done it before. Yeah, we're talking earlier. So
Speaker 1: my needs to get on that Atari movie. Yeah, great one. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about the possibility of you know, someone needs
Speaker 1: to do a documentary about this, like take this idea
Speaker 1: of the rise and fall, the three episodes that we
Speaker 1: have done, um, and really look into it and make
Speaker 1: it a film to document what happened and explain the
Speaker 1: processes and uh, because it does get so so convoluted
Speaker 1: and complex towards the end of its existence. And of
Speaker 1: course we could argue that by that time, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's saying the name Attari is meaningless because again it's
Speaker 1: just a word at that point, um, which is sad.
Speaker 1: It was. It did have such an important part in
Speaker 1: my childhood. I mean, I I played so much both
Speaker 1: in the arcade and blisters on my hand. Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would get like I remember because the way I
Speaker 1: would hold the joystick. Um in the in between my
Speaker 1: thumb and forefinger where I would I would grip the
Speaker 1: thumb stick, I would have a blister right there, and um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It also was one of those things that would frustrate
Speaker 1: me because I'm a left hander, and so I I
Speaker 1: ended up. Yeah, I coped well enough, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a little I guess it kind of helped with
Speaker 1: my precision of my right hand. Otherwise I probably would
Speaker 1: just be flailing around the office on fire all the time.
Speaker 1: So I thank Atari for that as well. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny because I never owned you know, when the
Speaker 1: Atari crap video game crash happened. Atari was the only
Speaker 1: video game console I owned at the time of video
Speaker 1: game consoles being being built. Right, So I got in television,
Speaker 1: but that was after in television had was no longer
Speaker 1: a thing that was. That was a hand me down.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a Nintendo. I never had. My college
Speaker 1: roommate had one, So I didn't buy one of those.
Speaker 1: You see. I what I did was I transitioned over
Speaker 1: to computers and I got I became one of those
Speaker 1: snooty computer gamers because the games on computers were deeper,
Speaker 1: more sophisticated. They didn't have the arcady kind of graphics
Speaker 1: that dedicated video game consoles could have, but they did
Speaker 1: have a richer game experience in my mind, and so
Speaker 1: I became a computer gamer. Now it's funny because now
Speaker 1: I'm a console gamer again, although I'm now transitioning back
Speaker 1: to computer gamer. And that's because of services like Steam,
Speaker 1: which allowed me to buy games and have them download
Speaker 1: directly to my computer and I don't have to go
Speaker 1: to a store. I don't have to buy a box.
Speaker 1: I get the game delivered straight to my computer and
Speaker 1: I can play it off of there. So it's funny
Speaker 1: because I keep going back and forth. I went console
Speaker 1: to PC to console. In fact, I was consoled for
Speaker 1: a long time with the uh In sixty four GameCube,
Speaker 1: the PS two, the PS three, the Xbox, the Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty I have all of those. A Dreamcast. I've
Speaker 1: got a Dreamcast too. I'm thinking back now, I've never
Speaker 1: bought a console. You've only been given was Christmas. My
Speaker 1: college roommate had the first Nintendo had the Super Nintendo.
Speaker 1: Another college droommate had the sixty four. My friend in
Speaker 1: l A had the Xbox who lived next door to
Speaker 1: men bought me the or gave me the p S three.
Speaker 1: Not all of us can walk outside and expect consoles
Speaker 1: to rain down from the heaven. Never bought one, just
Speaker 1: just occurred to me, to be fair, Some of those
Speaker 1: were gifts to me. Actually, the Dreamcast was given to
Speaker 1: me after Dreamcast had already folded, and uh, my wife
Speaker 1: bought it like a used Dreamcast and then we just
Speaker 1: got like a folder full of games that that came
Speaker 1: out for it. By the way, I should do a
Speaker 1: full episode just on the Dreamcast at some point, because
Speaker 1: that was also an amazing system. Uh that died unnecessar
Speaker 1: sarely like it. It was. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: the Jaguar and that it came out and it was
Speaker 1: clearly superior to it's it's uh competitors in space, but
Speaker 1: because of bad timing and a bad library early on,
Speaker 1: it never took off, at least not to a point
Speaker 1: that could sustain a company. And there you have it,
Speaker 1: the classic three part series, the Rise and Fall of Atari.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that. Like I said, it was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to look into one of those
Speaker 1: where at the time when we were looking into this,
Speaker 1: we came across lots of different conflicting stories about the
Speaker 1: history of Atari and who played what role, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of of kind of accusations and cross accusations
Speaker 1: of people misrepresenting things. It made it a bit of
Speaker 1: a challenge. There was a lot of fun to to
Speaker 1: really talk about, and like I said in the last episode,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more, you should check out
Speaker 1: the more recent episode I did of the video game
Speaker 1: Crash of Night teena three that tells some more of
Speaker 1: the story of Atari that kind of compliments what we
Speaker 1: have gone through with these classic episodes. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes, please
Speaker 1: reach out to me. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
Speaker 1: Stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: and really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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