The History Of Atari

Back in the year 1961, the mere thought of a person contemplating the idea of creating videogames would have been enough to label that person crazy. Why ? I hear you ask, well that answer is simple! Back then videogames didn’t even exist.

A little Video Game Pre History

For those of you less versed in the birth of modern day video gaming lets take a trip down history lane and look at how it all began. Our first stop has to be with “OXO” a game released in 1952 by Cambridge University PHD student Alexander Douglas who created a simple case of Tic Tac Toe during his work on his thesis on human computer interaction.

“OXO” never truly made it to the public, since it was exclusive to Cambridges “EDSAC” machine (a.k.a. “Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator”) which at the time was one of only two programbearing computers along with Manchester University’s “SSEM” (standing for “Small Scale Experimental Machine”).

Douglas’ game was followed by American physicist William Higinbotham’s 1958 oscilloscope based game “Tennis For two”. Now this game was almost one of those little miracles of its time and the product of Higinbotham’s inventive mind. He drew a tiny dot ball’s trajectory over a laboratory oscilloscope, by using a small analogous mainframe then used its monitor as a screen for the game creating a little direction gizmo which served as a control pad and voilá! The first properly named videogame (though a historical second) was a reality!

Where No One Has Gone Before

So it came to be that one day, full time nerd and most probably Star Trek geek Steven “Slug” Russell finally got tired of just dreaming about space voyages and mega galactic battles and began to assemble his gang of MIT geek friends to make a game version. It was 1961 and “Slug”, Martin “Shag” Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen put their heads together to create the game otherwise known as “Spacewar”.

Developed on a PDP-1 mainframe the size of a wall closet (yes mainframes were that big) the PDP-1 or “Programmed Data Processor 1” was the first Digital Equipment Corporation PDP series’ computer, and is still renowned as both the first computer to host a “modern” videogame (which would be Russell’s) and having a major importance in the advent of hacking culture.

“Spacewar!” was about two galactic battleships fighting each other in a bucolic, black and white rigid screen. Needless to say there was no such thing as AI back at the time; therefore, the battles had to be fought by two live opponents.

Russell’s invention became the first massively played videogame, due in great part to it taking advantage of the Arpa-Net (“Advanced Research Projects Agency Network”), a U.S.A. Defense Department created network which is in itself a predecessor to the World Wide Web.

It’s also remarkable that Russell – the “nerd inside”, the nerd all of us game freaks have come to love - didn’t want to register a patent for his game, which sort of made him a free software pioneer and a full time cool guy. It would have been quite easy for him to sell out but he didn’t!

The Clone Wars

Spacewar had been around for almost 10 years when American engineer and entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell entered the scene in 1971. Along with co-operator Ted Dabney they decided to establish the “Syzygy” development company to create a cloned and improved version of Russell’s original game. They baptized this creation as a coin slot system which they called “Computer Space”. Not only was this a paradigm for future arcade games but it ended up being a complete commercial disappointment.

The reason for such failure? Well, try “reasons” instead. Firstly, it was an arcade videogame and with it being the 70’s most had never even seen such a system let alone heard of it. Secondly, potential clients would run away like damsels in distress at the mere sight of the console’s many controls and buttons. Sure, people were interested in having a good time, but not subliminally learning how to maneuver the Apollo 15 space rocket.

In the words of Bushnell himself:

“Before you could play it you had to read the instruction manual, and people didn’t want to read instruction manuals. If I wanted to be successful, I had to come up with a game people were already familiar with, something so simple any drunken in a bar anywhere could understand.”

The third and one that’s no less in stature than the first two has to be Nutting Associates extremely bad promotional campaign. (They were the circulation company who kicked off the games marketing and promotion.

Go Atari Go!

Having all that in mind and trying to learn from past mistakes, Bushnell yet again recruited long time fellow Ted Dabney to develop the world’s first commercial console aka “Magnavox Oddyssey”, a ping pong game that later became better known as “Pong”. It was as simple as it got, a black and white screen featuring a tennis match in two dimensional graphics, a game that could be played either by two human opponents, or solo against the system.

The game was released under their new company which they named… Yes, you guessed it, ATARI. The name for the company was taken from Japanese board game “Go”, which Bushnell has cited as being his “all time favorite game” and one that stands out for having simple runs yet a high strategic intricacy.

The “Pong” game released by Atari was a success, and as it usually happens with big smash cash hitters, Bushnell and partner started to become quite wealthy. Of course there were a whole array of companies that tried to take advantage of Atari’s “Pong” success. Competitors began to appear and grow larger in numbers, so an already market wise Bushnell decided to release a home version of the company’s big hit.

Bushnell Sells Atari

By the mid 70’s Atari was sold by Bushnell to Warner Communications who went onto develop the interchangeable cartridge system Atari 2600. Not only did this represent the birth of the home video game era but with the Atari 2600, standards were raised, triggering a whole new wave of games and consoles which we so rightly have enjoyed until today. By the way if you were wondering what happened to Bushnell well let’s just say that the ever grateful Warner responded by very quickly kicking Bushnell’s ass out of the company! Reason ? His very “liberal” employee policies.

Thanks For Playing

As you can see, lots of things happened before we got to where we are today. All those lovely games like Halo 3, GTA 4, Killzone, Street Fighter 4 (the list could go on) would never have been possible if it weren’t for the oldies. From OXO and Spacewar, to Computer Space, Pong, and all in between, these were the games that made it all possible.

Nowadays, Nolan Bushnell enjoys a reasonably wealthy life, and in exchange we the gamers enjoy the latest games and home entertainment consoles. Fair enough, huh? You bet!