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It has been a busy year for the Atari games team. We've revived classics like Haunted House and recharged titles like Caverns of Mars and Quantum.
- 1 min
- 3.2K
- Atari
Follow Atari from it's humble beginnings to becoming a corporate giant. Let's take an in-depth view of Atari's console histor...
- 31 min
- 4.3K
- Retrogamer Gen X
Each of the three owners of the old Atari gave it their all to succeed in Japan. Here's what happened.
- 20 min
- 27.2K
- GTV Japan
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and video game console and home computer development company which operated between 1972 and 1984. During its years of operation, it developed and produced over 350 arcade, console, and computer games for its own systems, and almost 100 ports of games for home computers such as the Commodore 64.
- Breakout
- Asteroids
- Battlezone
- Centipede
- Missile Command
- Tempest
- Star Wars
- Marble Madness
- Paperboy
- Gauntlet
Designed by Steve Wozniak (later of Apple fame), who was duly ripped off by Steve Jobs (also later of Apple fame) over development bonuses, Breakout is one-player Pong. It’s basic fare, but tough and compelling. Play it with a spinner for best effect.
Arriving a year after Space Invaders, Asteroidsmade Taito’s title look archaic. In place of doddering and chunky foes was a field of asteroids you blasted to smithereens – and a sneaky saucer determined to turn you into so much space dust.
One of the earliest first-person shooters, Battlezoneplonked you in a tank and had you roam the landscape looking for other tanks to destroy. It was considered so realistic at the time that a version was worked up for the US Army.
Another title that reimagined Space Invaders, Centipede’swormy foes sped across the screen, inconveniently breaking in two when you shot them. The title’s breakneck pace and blink-and-you-die gameplay ensures it holds up today.
Released during the Cold War, Missile Commandtasked players with fending off waves of missile attacks. Chillingly and matter-of-factly stating ‘The End’ instead of ‘Game Over’ summed things up when all your bases were nuked.
More Space Invaders? Yep, but now in a tube and across varied geometric ‘webs’. Creator Dave Theurer’s additions (spikes, smart bombs, varied foes) ramped up the tension. Years later, Jeff Minter remade the game as Tempest 2000– aka the main reason to buy an Atari Jaguar.
Forget your Battlefronts and TIE Fighters (actually, don’t, because they were fab), because this vector classic made you feel like you were right there in the movie, blasting enemies to pieces, and making that famous trench run. “Use the force, Luke!”
The visually spectacular isometric levels in Marble Madnessbring to mind Escher-like landscapes as you attempt to coax your marble along narrow pathways and around plentiful hazards. Terrifyingly, experts can blaze through the entire game in three minutes.
British kids used to wonder what US newspapers were made of when they went through windows in this high-octane arcade game. It remains fun, though, not least when you reach the stunt course at the end of the street.
This dungeon crawler was a rarity at the time, in offering four-player co-op – and ratting you out if you kept shooting or eating all the health-replenishing food. The game itself ate coins, marking the start of pay to play.
- Craig Grannell
Oct 13, 2023 · Atari Corporation began to release home computers and video game consoles. This came in the form of the Atari ST series, Atari 400 and 800, Atari 2600, and the Atari 5200. The arcade division was sold to Namco in 1985 after the release of the NES.
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1986 - 1987: Just when console gaming became popular again in North America, it had reached its lowest point in the UK, generating only £10,000,000 as 1987 wrapped up. 1988 - 1989: The Atari 2600 was slowly dropping to second place of best-selling game consoles in the country; the Sega Master System had arrived.
