> Every story I hear about Atari is wild. Hard to believe they managed to have the success they did.
It was a different era.
I worked in a mall arcade in the early 90s, and because we purchased arcade games, I had access to the trade shows and various promotional events. For instance, E3 invited me to come out for their first event.
The size of the teams in the early 90s was TINY; I met the dudes who made Mortal Kombat at the AMOA convention, and the entire team was less than ten people. The main programmer had so little experience, he was largely known for doing the voice of "Rudy" in the pinball game "Funhouse."
Basically, the tech community was tiny and the gaming community was a tiny subdomain of the tech community.
Atari's big innovation may have simply been that it was founded in the right location (Silicon Valley.) If it wasn't for that, Steve Jobs wouldn't have worked at Atari. (And Wozniak wouldn't have moonlighted at Atari.)
Atari was the only major gaming company based out of Silicon Valley
A lot of the games of the time were basically just Japanese games that were licensed by US distributors. Pac Man came from Namco in Japan and was distributed in the US by Chicago's Midway, Space Invaders was made by Taito in Japan and licensed in the US. (Also by Midway, IIRC.) "Defender" was one of the first 'homegrown' games in the US that wasn't coming out of Atari in Silicon Valley. (Defender was made by Eugene Jarvis in Chicago for Williams, who later merged with Midway.)
Although Nintendo was NOT based in Silicon Valley, they had the dumb luck of locating just up the hill from Microsoft. If you've seen "King of Kong," the dude from the documentary basically lives halfway between Microsoft in Redmond and Nintendo in Snoqualmie: https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_North_Bend
Sega WAS based in Silicon Valley, but their slow decline was arguably due to a political tug-of-war between Sega of America (based in Silicon Valley) and Sega (based in Japan.)
It was a different era.
I worked in a mall arcade in the early 90s, and because we purchased arcade games, I had access to the trade shows and various promotional events. For instance, E3 invited me to come out for their first event.
The size of the teams in the early 90s was TINY; I met the dudes who made Mortal Kombat at the AMOA convention, and the entire team was less than ten people. The main programmer had so little experience, he was largely known for doing the voice of "Rudy" in the pinball game "Funhouse."
Basically, the tech community was tiny and the gaming community was a tiny subdomain of the tech community.
Atari's big innovation may have simply been that it was founded in the right location (Silicon Valley.) If it wasn't for that, Steve Jobs wouldn't have worked at Atari. (And Wozniak wouldn't have moonlighted at Atari.)
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-empl...
I'm doing this from memory, but IIRC:
Atari was the only major gaming company based out of Silicon Valley
A lot of the games of the time were basically just Japanese games that were licensed by US distributors. Pac Man came from Namco in Japan and was distributed in the US by Chicago's Midway, Space Invaders was made by Taito in Japan and licensed in the US. (Also by Midway, IIRC.) "Defender" was one of the first 'homegrown' games in the US that wasn't coming out of Atari in Silicon Valley. (Defender was made by Eugene Jarvis in Chicago for Williams, who later merged with Midway.)
Although Nintendo was NOT based in Silicon Valley, they had the dumb luck of locating just up the hill from Microsoft. If you've seen "King of Kong," the dude from the documentary basically lives halfway between Microsoft in Redmond and Nintendo in Snoqualmie: https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_North_Bend
Sega WAS based in Silicon Valley, but their slow decline was arguably due to a political tug-of-war between Sega of America (based in Silicon Valley) and Sega (based in Japan.)