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A Ridiculous Love Letter to Atari, Part Two: a Rise, a Fall, and a Legacy · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max
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Speaker 1: Macnvox Williams.
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Speaker 2: Max Atari teenage Ryan Williams.
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Speaker 1: That's Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullen. This is Part two
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Speaker 1: of the Ridiculous History of Atari. So if you haven't
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Speaker 1: heard part one yet, please get THEE to thy podcast
0:53
Speaker 1: platform of choice and check it out, because part two
0:56
Speaker 1: will make a lot more sense when you've heard part one.
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Speaker 2: It's true, but it's a pretty good division. I mean,
1:01
Speaker 2: I would definitely recommend checking out episode one you probably
1:04
Speaker 2: already have. But we're going to start from kind of
1:06
Speaker 2: the fall from Grace type period of Atari.
1:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, more money, more problems, and as Biggie would say,
1:21
Speaker 1: we're here in what we'll call the post pong era.
1:25
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I guess we're still in the post police man.
1:29
Speaker 2: I think like postmodernism.
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Speaker 1: So Keza McDonald, writing for IGN, points out that Atari
1:36
Speaker 1: is growing to new unprecedented levels, but at every step
1:41
Speaker 1: along the way, the company is facing a litany a
1:44
Speaker 1: chorus of challenges. Their trajectory is up up, up, up,
1:48
Speaker 1: up and away. But they make a few missteps in
1:52
Speaker 1: the seventies.
1:52
Speaker 2: That's right, on the business side of things. Maybe they're
1:56
Speaker 2: reached exceeding their grasp a bit when it comes to
2:00
Speaker 2: banding to international markets, not to mention sinking a whole
2:04
Speaker 2: lot of capital into a particularly convoluted development process on
2:10
Speaker 2: a game called Grand Track ten, which may not surprise
2:13
Speaker 2: you that you have not heard of.
2:15
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And it also it reminds me of other
2:19
Speaker 1: missteps that occurred in the past. We'll get to some
2:22
Speaker 1: of them with Atari, yeah, right. But also games that
2:29
Speaker 1: require a specific controller can be a little bit of
2:32
Speaker 1: a hard sell, like a couple of Battle met games
2:36
Speaker 1: are like that, and a couple of other you know,
2:39
Speaker 1: in depth simulator games. Luckily, though, Atari is able to
2:44
Speaker 1: save their bacon with a game that is a huge
2:47
Speaker 1: hit Arcades.
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Speaker 2: It's called Tank, right, Yes, that is the game that
2:53
Speaker 2: lifts them out of this this morass, these duldrums, and
2:58
Speaker 2: Atari then has emerged with one of their sister companies
3:02
Speaker 2: called k Key Games, key Key Games k e E,
3:06
Speaker 2: which split off from Atari's main business in nineteen seventy
3:09
Speaker 2: three to help the company get around some tricksy legal
3:15
Speaker 2: areas or surrounding exclusivity.
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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, exactly. And this was this was the rule
3:22
Speaker 1: of the day with the arcade industry. So by spinning
3:25
Speaker 1: off key games, they were able to say, oh no,
3:28
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not really us anymore. This is a
3:31
Speaker 1: different guy.
3:31
Speaker 2: And now we have sort of another Sears type situation
3:35
Speaker 2: in terms of mergers, though in this case with a
3:37
Speaker 2: big boy in the communications industry, Warner Communications. So you
3:42
Speaker 2: may have heard of They've been in the news a
3:44
Speaker 2: little bit lately. It is the same, right, Warner Communications
3:47
Speaker 2: and Warner Brothers would not have been like a community
3:49
Speaker 2: an extension or is this very complete? It has to be,
3:53
Speaker 2: And forgive me if anyone knows that not to be true,
3:57
Speaker 2: but I do believe it is the case. So they
3:59
Speaker 2: sold to Warner Communications for this number was not a secret,
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Speaker 2: unlike the settlement with Magnavox for a publicized twenty eight
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Speaker 2: million dollars. We got inflation calculator this, guys, and a
4:13
Speaker 2: dude boo boooooo, boo boopy doope oop boopoo.
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Speaker 1: Oh we must and thank you for the boop there. Max. No,
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Speaker 1: it's trying to get me to inflation calculate sisygy, which
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Speaker 1: we're going to do. That was something we had pasted earlier. Okay,
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Speaker 1: here we go, folks. In nineteen seventy three dollars, twenty
4:40
Speaker 1: eight million dollars is going to be as of two
4:44
Speaker 1: thousand and five, the equivalent of drum roll two hundred
4:50
Speaker 1: and three million, twenty seven thousand, one hundred and seventeen
4:55
Speaker 1: dollars and twelve cents.
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Speaker 2: A lot of cash, but still not at the level
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Speaker 2: of the types of communication and tech acquisitions we see
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Speaker 2: today that are like in the billions.
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Speaker 1: And of that twenty eight million, Bushnell himself receives the
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Speaker 1: line share. He walks away with something like fifteen million
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Speaker 1: of that twenty eight million.
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Speaker 2: Good on him.
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Speaker 1: He's put in the work, yeah, and he also he
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Speaker 1: bought out his co founder Ted Ted Dadney. Also, if
5:22
Speaker 1: we inflation calculate once again to see Bushnell's share of
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Speaker 1: this sale, we will see the fifteen million in nineteen
5:34
Speaker 1: seventy three is the equivalent of one hundred and eight million,
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Speaker 1: seven hundred and sixty four thousand, five hundred and twenty
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Speaker 1: seven dollars and three cents. So we set.
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Speaker 2: Easy retirement type windfall there for Buddy Bushnell. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And weirdly enough, though, this is the beginning of Atari's
5:55
Speaker 1: death nells.
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Speaker 2: Sometimes that happens, right when you get a big company
5:59
Speaker 2: coming in and changing the company culture and stuff like that,
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Speaker 2: which we're going to get into. However, before that death knell,
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Speaker 2: you know, kind of rang out, there was another hugely
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Speaker 2: important development at Atari, which was the VCS, the home
6:16
Speaker 2: game console that we know as the Atari. The Atari
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Speaker 2: twenty six hundred.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably what you picture in your head, folks
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Speaker 1: when you think of Atari, or what's going to stick
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Speaker 1: in the button, It's going to be this console. It
6:30
Speaker 1: stands for video computer system. Not the most creative name,
6:35
Speaker 1: but a very creative piece of technology. Also, at this time,
6:38
Speaker 1: Bushnell is drifting further and further away from the company
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Speaker 1: that he created. But if we go to James Lindino
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Speaker 1: writing for PC mag, we'll see that the twenty six
6:52
Speaker 1: hundred is probably the I would say it's the second
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Speaker 1: most famous thing Atari's created outside of Pong. It's September eleventh,
7:01
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. This is weird because it's not the
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Speaker 1: first video game console, it's not the first one to
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Speaker 1: accept cartridges, but it could bring actual arcade games home
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Speaker 1: to your house when you plugged it into your TV.
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Speaker 2: That's right. And by the end of nineteen seventy six
7:21
Speaker 2: we started to see other competing systems jumping into the fray,
7:25
Speaker 2: including Magnavox, Old Favorites and Kaliko with their was it
7:30
Speaker 2: Calco vision.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was one thing they did for sure, and
7:35
Speaker 1: these other companies. There was real proliferation of boom and bust.
7:41
Speaker 1: At least it was a console wars really, I mean,
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Speaker 1: that's really what we're seeing here. And that did not stop. Yeah,
7:45
Speaker 1: and we see this happen in all kinds of all
7:48
Speaker 1: kinds of industries, like the early days of soda pop.
7:53
Speaker 1: There were so many flash in a pan soda companies
7:58
Speaker 1: and flavors and the history that is amazing. But ultimately,
8:02
Speaker 1: you know, the market starts to collapse, the choices, right,
8:06
Speaker 1: and there are just a few big soda companies, are a
8:09
Speaker 1: few big video game console manufacturers left. There's something else
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Speaker 1: that happens here with an outfit called Fairchild. This company
8:18
Speaker 1: gets in front of the curve and beats Atari to
8:22
Speaker 1: the punch with something called Channel F. This is a
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Speaker 1: microprocessor based game console.
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Speaker 2: I want to say that Fairchild was also responsible for
8:32
Speaker 2: a pretty important piece of audio equipment, the fair Child compressor,
8:37
Speaker 2: which is another classic audio device that exists in plug
8:41
Speaker 2: in form today. It's all full of vacuum tubes and
8:43
Speaker 2: this is that kind of a sacred cow of studio tech.
8:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love the tubes, man, love to see it.
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Speaker 2: This.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so fair or the Channel F we should say,
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Speaker 1: has color graphics. It can accept cartridges, unlike all the
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Speaker 1: other TV games systems on the market, and that's exactly
9:02
Speaker 1: what Atari was working on doing on their own end.
9:07
Speaker 1: So eventually RCA releases something called the Studio two. The
9:12
Speaker 1: Studio two as built in game pad buttons, it also
9:16
Speaker 1: takes cartridges. Magnavox, not to be outdone, comes out with
9:20
Speaker 1: the Odyssey two that has a built in keyboard that
9:24
Speaker 1: lets you write your own game software. That's crazy. And
9:28
Speaker 1: a couple of other companies also again got into the race,
9:31
Speaker 1: places like Bally and Allied Leisure. And you know, we
9:35
Speaker 1: were talking a little off air about something we also
9:38
Speaker 1: see in the early days of the automotive industry or
9:43
Speaker 1: appliance manufacturers. A lot of the video games are coming
9:48
Speaker 1: from companies that already had the ability to manufacture electronics.
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Speaker 2: It a social step. Yeah, like RCA as an example,
9:56
Speaker 2: a company that was responsible for a lot of innovation
10:00
Speaker 2: involving you know, record playback like LPs and other you know,
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Speaker 2: pro and consumer audio products.
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Speaker 1: And so we're back to Atari. It's nineteen seventy seven.
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Speaker 1: You can get the twenty six hundred with all kinds
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Speaker 1: of fun stuff, joysticks, two paddles, uh, the cartridge Combat
10:21
Speaker 1: which comes packaged with it, and this Combat cartridge gives
10:27
Speaker 1: you not one but two games Tank and Jet Fighter. However,
10:31
Speaker 1: you're going to have to be a really good kid
10:33
Speaker 1: to get one of these for Christmas. It cost one
10:36
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty nine dollars and ninety five cents. We
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Speaker 1: returned to the inflation calculator.
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Speaker 2: That'll be a boop. Please.
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Speaker 1: One hundred and eighty nine dollars ninety five cents nineteen
10:50
Speaker 1: seventy seven is one thousand, nine dollars and thirteen cents.
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Speaker 2: And that is a tall order today for any home
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Speaker 2: gaming the system. This is like early cam quorder type
11:03
Speaker 2: prices prohibitively expensive. I mean even like the switch to
11:07
Speaker 2: which people bulked at was you know, I think five
11:10
Speaker 2: hundred dollars.
11:11
Speaker 1: Right, and how much is a PS five.
11:14
Speaker 2: Probably there's smaller versions of them now that are closer
11:17
Speaker 2: to three hundred max.
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Speaker 3: I think they're still in the four. They just went
11:21
Speaker 3: up in price four hundred.
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Speaker 2: Did they ever come out with a smaller form factor
11:27
Speaker 2: one or are they still big honkers.
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Speaker 3: They've just come up with a bigger one pro.
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Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
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Speaker 2: This does what higher res video memory.
11:36
Speaker 3: As opposed to. Okay, so according to the Google AI,
11:40
Speaker 3: you can get the slim with not a actual disc,
11:44
Speaker 3: or you can get the standard. You can get the
11:46
Speaker 3: digital edition for five Yeah, you can get a pro.
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Speaker 3: You can get a regular one standard disc for five hundred,
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Speaker 3: and you can get a pro for seven hundred and fifty.
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Speaker 2: Okay, but even that's well below you know, grand Yeah,
12:01
Speaker 2: yeah exactly.
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Speaker 1: It also, by the way, not to sound like I
12:06
Speaker 1: could mudgine shouting at the sky, but do get the
12:10
Speaker 1: one that can do physical media. If you have the ability,
12:13
Speaker 1: always go for physical media.
12:15
Speaker 2: Yep. What is that that big campaign stop killing games
12:18
Speaker 2: or something like that? People are really we're speaking of
12:20
Speaker 2: right to repair and right to own the things that
12:23
Speaker 2: you purchase. I say speaking of because we just talked
12:26
Speaker 2: about that on our sister show stuff. They don't want
12:28
Speaker 2: you to know. It's most recent episode of strange News.
12:31
Speaker 2: It's really becoming a problem where when these gaming companies
12:35
Speaker 2: no longer want to do online support for games that
12:38
Speaker 2: it's almost as though like they're they're taking it away
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Speaker 2: from you. Absolutely, ephemeral.
12:43
Speaker 3: Ephemeral in video games is really bad. It's really bad precipation.
12:46
Speaker 3: I want to give a shot to my friend Meredith
12:48
Speaker 3: who bought a PS five last year and refuse to
12:51
Speaker 3: accept any offer that was given to her that did
12:53
Speaker 3: not come with a disk. And I was like, ah,
12:55
Speaker 3: good fight.
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Speaker 1: There, because you don't really own something and as you
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Speaker 1: physically own it. I'm just gonna be honest.
13:03
Speaker 2: There.
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Speaker 1: Now, one thing that the Atari twenty six hundred did
13:06
Speaker 1: that was brilliant is they included a switchbox so that
13:12
Speaker 1: you could play a game on your TV screen and
13:16
Speaker 1: then if you wanted to watch television, you just hit
13:18
Speaker 1: the switch and now you're back to your regularly scheduled program.
13:22
Speaker 2: They didn't have multiple inputs on TVs in those days.
13:25
Speaker 2: You would have had to. It would probably have been
13:27
Speaker 2: some sort of coax connection, I imagine, And this was
13:29
Speaker 2: literally just a little junction box that probably maybe would
13:33
Speaker 2: have been sold separately, but probably was more relegated to
13:35
Speaker 2: the areas of pro av type worlds. So this would
13:39
Speaker 2: have been a big deal for them to include this,
13:42
Speaker 2: and for a lot of people this would have been
13:44
Speaker 2: new technology. They would have been aware of it. So
13:48
Speaker 2: another brilliant thing they did, which they weren't unique in this,
13:51
Speaker 2: but it was brilliant move. They said, well, what if
13:54
Speaker 2: these folks get bored of the games that come with
13:57
Speaker 2: the device, Well we've got the cartridge slot, so all
14:00
Speaker 2: you have to do is convince your household to let
14:03
Speaker 2: you buy another game. And that would have been incredibly
14:07
Speaker 2: innovative as well. And we're not talking about yet a
14:10
Speaker 2: world where there's just like all the focus is being
14:13
Speaker 2: put into game design, like it was so novel at
14:16
Speaker 2: this point that like maybe just a handful of games
14:18
Speaker 2: that were out there would have been enough to keep
14:20
Speaker 2: people's attention for long enough to you know, make them
14:23
Speaker 2: bundles of money, but then to your point bend when
14:25
Speaker 2: you run out or get tired of those games. Now
14:27
Speaker 2: we've got a whole new industry that's opening up in
14:30
Speaker 2: order to fill that void.
14:33
Speaker 1: And with economy of scale, the only thing that's really
14:38
Speaker 1: changing about the cartridges is the information on them, so
14:41
Speaker 1: they become naturally cheaper to create over time and as
14:45
Speaker 1: volume increases. So not all, not every, not every early
14:51
Speaker 1: Atari game was an absolute banger. They had some hits,
14:55
Speaker 1: they had some missus, They had some ones that were simple, fun,
14:59
Speaker 1: kind of novelties. But then they had really cool conversions
15:03
Speaker 1: of things like Breakout in nineteen seventy eight, which you
15:07
Speaker 1: can tell my cat loves.
15:09
Speaker 2: Big fan of the Breakout, big fan of classic gaming,
15:11
Speaker 2: that cat. This was actually I didn't know this. It
15:14
Speaker 2: was a coin op arcade cabinet. It was popular, was
15:18
Speaker 2: designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
15:21
Speaker 1: And of course if you want to learn more, you
15:24
Speaker 1: can go to some of the sources we've mentioned to
15:26
Speaker 1: get under the hood into the nuts and bolts of specs.
15:29
Speaker 2: Here.
15:30
Speaker 1: It's interesting reading, but we have to move on to
15:35
Speaker 1: the next beat about the story.
15:44
Speaker 2: Here's the thing.
15:45
Speaker 1: We sound like we might be glazing the Atari twenty
15:49
Speaker 1: six hundred a little bit, as the younger folks in
15:52
Speaker 1: the crowd would say, But get this, it was not
15:56
Speaker 1: an instant hit.
15:57
Speaker 2: No no, And I'm surely the pricing had something to
15:59
Speaker 2: do with that.
16:01
Speaker 1: I bet man, this would be one of the most
16:05
Speaker 1: successful game consoles ever. But because to your point, Noel,
16:09
Speaker 1: it was so expensive, it didn't take off immediately.
16:14
Speaker 2: But when you also had to educate the public as
16:16
Speaker 2: to what was possible with these things, because I think
16:18
Speaker 2: that folks were mainly still pong brained.
16:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were thinking, why would I pay the equivalent
16:24
Speaker 1: of more than one thousand dollars to play one game?
16:29
Speaker 1: So you had to educate the public, You had to
16:31
Speaker 1: market and promote to them. As a result, the twenty
16:34
Speaker 1: six hundred didn't really hit the sales numbers they wanted
16:38
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. In nineteen seventy eight, by the
16:42
Speaker 1: end of nineteen seventy eight, they had only sold seven
16:45
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand machines, and this was despite a
16:51
Speaker 1: five million dollar marketing investment by their parent company.
16:55
Speaker 2: Warn that's a lot.
16:57
Speaker 1: The board was not happy.
16:58
Speaker 2: I met no, no, no, no, for sure, this was
17:01
Speaker 2: a problem. So now it's nineteen seventy eight, Nolan Bushnell
17:05
Speaker 2: has left the company entirely. His version, as we may
17:10
Speaker 2: be mentioned in the previous episode, that kind of early
17:13
Speaker 2: spirit of Las Fair punk rock, kind of Silicon Valley
17:17
Speaker 2: startup mentality this laid back atmosphere, super creative exchange of ideas.
17:25
Speaker 2: This was not something that the brass wanted to continue.
17:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a culture clash which happens when different
17:34
Speaker 1: companies acquire each other. Right, so, no more hot parties.
17:39
Speaker 2: No more, No more drink and right this is a
17:43
Speaker 2: known thing.
17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, no more drink and drug riddled company retreats. The
17:49
Speaker 1: corporation border says, look, we hate you guys weird Friday parties.
17:56
Speaker 1: We think there should be a more professional dress code.
17:59
Speaker 1: And Bushnell says, you guys stink. And he fights with
18:04
Speaker 1: the owners and the managers all the time, including a
18:08
Speaker 1: stand up shouting match with a Warner executive in front
18:12
Speaker 1: of the shareholder board.
18:13
Speaker 2: Yikes. Yeah, good luck this dude. It's time for him
18:16
Speaker 2: to go, at least as far as the execs. We're concerned.
18:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got his walking papers and then he he
18:24
Speaker 1: goes on his story doesn't in there. He goes on
18:26
Speaker 1: to participate with a ton of other companies and related
18:31
Speaker 1: adjacent fields. But looking back in interviews, we always get
18:35
Speaker 1: the sense that he would have loved to stay on
18:38
Speaker 1: with Atari. Which it's his book, it's his baby. I
18:41
Speaker 1: let's call it his boy. It's his baby you know
18:43
Speaker 1: what I mean, his baby dream. Yeah, it's his baby
18:45
Speaker 1: boy in a box. And so now it's nineteen seventy nine.
18:50
Speaker 1: We've got a new CEO, Ray Kazar, the Max.
18:55
Speaker 2: Refers to lovingly as the video game Palpatine. Though I
18:58
Speaker 2: don't know if Max coined that is something that gets
19:00
Speaker 2: thrown around in gamer circles.
19:03
Speaker 3: He was not well liked. Let's just say that.
19:05
Speaker 2: Right, So shake down, nineteen seventy nine, we've got Space
19:09
Speaker 2: Invaders hitting the scene. I think that's one that you'll
19:12
Speaker 2: still see around in the bars or on your phone
19:16
Speaker 2: or on your phone. And by the way, a shout
19:18
Speaker 2: out to Button Mash in Los Angeles in the Highland
19:22
Speaker 2: Park area. It is an incredible vintage arcade Wonderland barcade situation,
19:28
Speaker 2: and they have a lot of these really cool it's
19:30
Speaker 2: almost like a combination of an arcade in a museum,
19:32
Speaker 2: but it's a museum where you can actually play the things.
19:36
Speaker 2: Really really cool spot if you're ever around that part
19:38
Speaker 2: of the country.
19:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love an arcade bar. I haven't been in years,
19:43
Speaker 1: but there's a spot here in our fair metropolis of
19:46
Speaker 1: Atlanta to Georgia called Joystick, which I used to have
19:49
Speaker 1: a lot of fun.
19:50
Speaker 2: Still pop and they do some good Burger pop ups
19:52
Speaker 2: there too. Yeah, cool spot, you know dad, these great fries.
19:55
Speaker 1: Anyway, we're getting close to lunchtime, folks, that dreamy voice.
20:01
Speaker 1: Oh great friends. So this is a huge hit. Space
20:05
Speaker 1: Invaders becomes just a massive success for Warner because they're
20:11
Speaker 1: still pumping marketing money into this product. The home conversion
20:16
Speaker 1: of Space Invaders sells two million units for the Atari
20:21
Speaker 1: twenty six hundred in nineteen eighty and now the sales
20:25
Speaker 1: numbers are starting to double year over year. It hits
20:28
Speaker 1: ten million in annual sales in nineteen eighty two.
20:32
Speaker 2: Mm. That's right. Yeah, just exponential growth, no question about it.
20:38
Speaker 2: And considering that it, you know, was not a huge
20:41
Speaker 2: success out of the gate, this is a big deal
20:43
Speaker 2: and Warner really thinking they've kind of found the secret sauce.
20:47
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure by nineteen eighty two, Right, some
20:50
Speaker 1: of those numbers we just we just kicked there. Atari's
20:53
Speaker 1: revenue just from Atari makes up seventy percent of Warner's
20:59
Speaker 1: total income. It's bigger than Warner's music, It's bigger than
21:02
Speaker 1: Warner's film. It's the Atari twenty six hundred is becoming
21:06
Speaker 1: a world wide hit.
21:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the age of Atari. I mean this is
21:09
Speaker 2: like what you think of when you think of like
21:12
Speaker 2: the early eighties and gaming culture, right before Nintendo hits
21:17
Speaker 2: the scene, of course.
21:18
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Nintendo looming in the shadows. So this CEO
21:24
Speaker 1: that Max also calls suron at times in our research.
21:29
Speaker 2: Tauran and Palpatine, Yeah, that's secret sauce we were talking about.
21:32
Speaker 2: He thinks it's got it so good that he can
21:34
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, slacken up on some other things
21:37
Speaker 2: a bit. Not the best move though, right.
21:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, he cuts the R and D department in seventy nine.
21:43
Speaker 1: It makes no sense, right, It's like, Wow, this car
21:47
Speaker 1: is going is doing great on this road trip. I
21:50
Speaker 1: think we should stop paying for gas, yeah, or just
21:53
Speaker 1: stop making cars like we already got it. This is
21:56
Speaker 1: the only car we'll ever need.
21:57
Speaker 2: That is not a very forward thinking CEO there.
22:01
Speaker 1: No, he's chasing the bottom line in a very strange
22:04
Speaker 1: way that a lot of people disagree with. He's adding
22:07
Speaker 1: marketing staff to sell the thing they're already making. And
22:10
Speaker 1: he might not say it explicitly, but he has an
22:12
Speaker 1: internal political motive here. He wants to hamstring the influence
22:19
Speaker 1: that Atari's creative team had under Bushnell.
22:22
Speaker 2: Okay, so he's he's being a little bit petty if
22:25
Speaker 2: we're being honest here, and certainly it would seem is
22:29
Speaker 2: not nearly aware enough of all of the looming competition,
22:33
Speaker 2: thinking that he's got it, this is all that is
22:35
Speaker 2: ever going to be gaming. He's not looking at it
22:37
Speaker 2: a big picture.
22:38
Speaker 3: And did job in it real quick to kind of
22:40
Speaker 3: point out how Warner Brothers really didn't think this out.
22:44
Speaker 3: They had post Rayizar from Burlington coat factory.
22:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely a top gaming mind.
22:52
Speaker 1: Yes, and that you know, that kind of hopping around
22:57
Speaker 1: from leadership role to leadership role is pretty often in
23:01
Speaker 1: corporate America. It can't be surprised when you hear a
23:04
Speaker 1: fact like that and you're thinking, what, the guy was
23:07
Speaker 1: c suite at a coat company and now he c
23:10
Speaker 1: suiteed a video game company. It's just always been weird
23:13
Speaker 1: to me. How how they defy expertise or experience at
23:19
Speaker 1: that level of corporate America anyway.
23:22
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, the argument might be that
23:25
Speaker 2: a leader at that level should be more focused on
23:28
Speaker 2: the numbers of it all and doesn't necessarily have to
23:30
Speaker 2: have a head for the products. But I don't know.
23:33
Speaker 2: I think we've seen time and time again that if
23:34
Speaker 2: there's no passion there and there's no you know, real
23:37
Speaker 2: vision in a leader like that, that things aren't gonna
23:41
Speaker 2: they're not going to continue to grow. And you can't
23:44
Speaker 2: just look at the numbers and the things that are
23:45
Speaker 2: happening right now. You need someone that can recognize innovation
23:49
Speaker 2: and look at the overall landscape and you know, make
23:51
Speaker 2: smart plays considering those factors.
23:55
Speaker 1: And that guy was not. Ray not a good fit
23:57
Speaker 1: for Atari. Atari has been rioting off this massive wave
24:02
Speaker 1: of success, but arguably, well I'm being diplomatic, historians will
24:09
Speaker 1: tell us that Ray Kassar's actions set the company up
24:12
Speaker 1: for failure. There was a bunch of what Corey douk
24:16
Speaker 1: Toro would later call in shitification of Atari.
24:19
Speaker 2: Isn't it funny, Ben that like the first big video
24:21
Speaker 2: game company is an American company with a fake Japanese name,
24:26
Speaker 2: very Hogan does not a fake Japanese name. I mean,
24:28
Speaker 2: it's a real Japanese word. But it's just considering that
24:31
Speaker 2: we had not yet seen the ultimate takeover of gaming,
24:35
Speaker 2: you know, but never thought that.
24:38
Speaker 1: Is absolutely hilarious. Yeah, it's true. And look, there's some
24:42
Speaker 1: of this in popification occurs. There's a lot of low
24:46
Speaker 1: quality software running through wild through the marketplace, and a
24:50
Speaker 1: lot of it is coming from Atari itself. Because since
24:55
Speaker 1: the creative team hates Kassar so much, Atari has experience
25:00
Speaker 1: serious brain drain. People are leaving the company in droves.
25:04
Speaker 2: Not to mention that whole resting on the Laurels mentality
25:07
Speaker 2: surely trickled down in terms of the amount of time
25:11
Speaker 2: and the resources that would be devoted to developing. So
25:16
Speaker 2: a perfect example would be the et video game. It's
25:19
Speaker 2: a great example of an era where like if it
25:21
Speaker 2: had cool art and it was tied in with some
25:23
Speaker 2: kind of intellectual property that people understood, then it didn't
25:26
Speaker 2: have to have any relation to it in the game itself.
25:30
Speaker 2: Like the Superman game absolute garbage, you know, it just
25:33
Speaker 2: looks like trash, but the art on the cartridge super
25:36
Speaker 2: super vivid. You know we even see that, you know,
25:38
Speaker 2: into Nintendo early days.
25:40
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, we also still see that with money grab
25:45
Speaker 1: branding efforts. You know, there's a famously not great Mad
25:50
Speaker 1: Max Fury Road.
25:52
Speaker 2: Game never even cross my radar.
25:54
Speaker 1: I've just saved you so much time. Cool. So this
25:59
Speaker 1: lead us to some strong headwinds, the so called video
26:03
Speaker 1: game crash of nineteen eighty three. It hits everybody in
26:06
Speaker 1: the business pretty hard. It hits Atari especially hard. Where
26:12
Speaker 1: this is you know, the legend that we always love
26:14
Speaker 1: to talk about. And Jonathan Strickland ak the quizt loves
26:17
Speaker 1: this story too.
26:18
Speaker 2: There's another episode of tech Stuff about it, for sure.
26:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cautionary tale. It's a parable for our times.
26:25
Speaker 1: They couldn't sell stuff, and things went so disastrously wrong
26:29
Speaker 1: that they ended up dumping unsold merchandise in the desert
26:34
Speaker 1: and covering it with concrete as though it were nuclear waste.
26:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, YUCKA mountain of video games, and that of course
26:42
Speaker 2: includes famously, and probably most referenced in this story, the
26:46
Speaker 2: absolutely abysmal Et, the video game which apparently Max owns
26:51
Speaker 2: a copy of.
26:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you find it?
26:54
Speaker 2: Max? I do?
26:55
Speaker 3: Alice got it for Christmas for me, and I have
26:57
Speaker 3: been looking all around my room trying to get back
27:01
Speaker 3: to me. It's somewhere in a drawer of this desk.
27:03
Speaker 3: It's just a big desk.
27:04
Speaker 2: I believe, We.
27:05
Speaker 1: Believe you man, So look Atari was not just set
27:08
Speaker 1: up to come out with a next gen console a
27:12
Speaker 1: successor to the twenty six hundred. They were definitely going
27:16
Speaker 1: to do it had the execs not interfered, but Warterer
27:20
Speaker 1: was just fixated on selling the existing hardware, not innovating,
27:26
Speaker 1: like we were saying earlier.
27:27
Speaker 2: Correct. And there, you know, there was the aforementioned brain
27:30
Speaker 2: drain and the Atari division just kind of having been
27:35
Speaker 2: segmented up in an odd way with different divisions almost
27:40
Speaker 2: operating at like cross purposes. You know, we've got on
27:43
Speaker 2: a computer arcade and game console divisions working independently but
27:48
Speaker 2: without talking to one another. So they're almost like yeah again,
27:52
Speaker 2: like competing with themselves in a very counterproductive way.
27:56
Speaker 1: And doing redundant projects. Right there, they're doing double work.
28:01
Speaker 1: So there were different versions of the twenty six hundred,
28:06
Speaker 1: including things like the fifty two hundred, but they they
28:10
Speaker 1: were small improvements. They weren't anything significantly new. This is
28:14
Speaker 1: one of the criticisms you sometimes see with Apple post
28:17
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, right where they say, hey, we've got a
28:19
Speaker 1: new thing. Don't worry, we've made the ports even more inconvenient.
28:25
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, or you know, largely things that could be
28:30
Speaker 2: accomplished with a software update. Yeah.
28:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point, because Atari's competitors in home
28:36
Speaker 1: computing are coming out with more and more fascinating, increasingly
28:40
Speaker 1: sophisticated machines like the old Commodore sixty four it's cool name.
28:45
Speaker 2: Which are still really popular today. The early chiptune kind
28:48
Speaker 2: of creation, like audio production could be accomplished on Commodore
28:52
Speaker 2: sixty four, which is that classic early video game kind
28:55
Speaker 2: of arpeggiated beat boop kind of sound. People still enjoying
28:58
Speaker 2: our Commodore sixty one for making kind of vintage sounding music.
29:04
Speaker 1: And here we see the so called PC master erase
29:07
Speaker 1: of gamers begin to emerge, because now people are going
29:11
Speaker 1: away from cartridge based dedicated gaming machines to home computers
29:18
Speaker 1: which can do a bunch of stuff and also play
29:21
Speaker 1: games with you.
29:22
Speaker 2: We're talking the early days of like real time video
29:25
Speaker 2: and things like that. And just like you know, they
29:28
Speaker 2: just had a much more expandable set of hardware in
29:34
Speaker 2: these computers, so you could upgrade them, update them, etc.
29:37
Speaker 2: Where as the consoles were just sort of static.
29:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the twenty six hundred is starting to
29:45
Speaker 1: fall from grace. It's looking increasingly obsolete along in the tooth. Yeah,
29:57
Speaker 1: the sad part is here. The bittersweet part is that
30:00
Speaker 1: Atari is still cranking out pretty awesome games even as
30:05
Speaker 1: the home console begins to lag in popularity. They have
30:09
Speaker 1: games from the seventies to eighties that are classics. Asteroids,
30:14
Speaker 1: lunar Lander, Oh gosh, there are a ton centipede.
30:19
Speaker 2: We could just keep naming them. Yeah, Senap is still cool.
30:21
Speaker 2: I love those those flat like screen on top consoles
30:25
Speaker 2: that you'll see are cabinets they you'll see sometimes and bars.
30:28
Speaker 1: Like Gatika Galaga, Galagha, Gadiga is the film that's.
30:33
Speaker 2: The movie about the theme like what the spoke gene
30:39
Speaker 2: splice entered gene editing, Yeah, eugenics corporate.
30:43
Speaker 1: So now, as we've teased a little bit, Atari is
30:47
Speaker 1: at this point competing with other Titans in the arcade
30:51
Speaker 1: game of games, Nintendo, Sega, Konami. But Atari's games are
30:56
Speaker 1: still holding their own people like them. So holten consoles
31:02
Speaker 1: may not be as popular for Atari as they once
31:05
Speaker 1: were for a few years, but if you go to
31:07
Speaker 1: an arcade, some of your favorite games are going to
31:09
Speaker 1: be Atari creations.
31:11
Speaker 2: Which is interesting considering the cut in R and D
31:13
Speaker 2: so I'm a little Yeah, obviously there was still some
31:16
Speaker 2: good stuff coming out of Atari, and to your point, Ben,
31:20
Speaker 2: earlier segmented divisions, it would maybe seem that some of
31:23
Speaker 2: the best innovations were still happening in the arcade division.
31:28
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I agree with you there. You know, it's
31:30
Speaker 1: strange too, because to your point about the segmentation, having
31:36
Speaker 1: one division of Atari that just does home video game stuff,
31:41
Speaker 1: having one that just does computers, having one that just
31:43
Speaker 1: does arcades, they end up being poisonous to each other
31:48
Speaker 1: because Atari makes the arcade less popular.
31:52
Speaker 2: Well that's funny too, Ben, because I think we are
31:54
Speaker 2: all old enough to remember when the quality of games
31:58
Speaker 2: you would see in our caide aids was higher than
32:01
Speaker 2: what could be achieved on home consoles. And it wasn't
32:04
Speaker 2: until a few generations later on console that you started
32:07
Speaker 2: to see ports of those arcade games that were, Wow,
32:10
Speaker 2: it's almost as good as the arcade version. So obviously
32:13
Speaker 2: there was innovation going on in game design, but they
32:15
Speaker 2: were pump pushing all of that into the arcade because
32:18
Speaker 2: they could have bespoke, you know, proprietary hardware in those
32:22
Speaker 2: that wouldn't fit in the home console version.
32:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, put and I think a lot of us,
32:27
Speaker 1: and not to date myself too are but I think
32:29
Speaker 1: a lot of us in the audience probably still remember
32:33
Speaker 1: that astonishing moment where you get you know, Mortal Kombat or.
32:38
Speaker 2: Street Fighters, the psycond Genesis.
32:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you say, wait, you mean I don't
32:44
Speaker 1: have to have a bunch of quarters to play this.
32:46
Speaker 1: I can play it all the time.
32:48
Speaker 2: And they still didn't look identical. They were. They were
32:51
Speaker 2: a little little, little shaggier let's just see, right.
32:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And so people started discovering their gay at
33:00
Speaker 1: home on their television sets. And this drew a lot
33:05
Speaker 1: of criticism from Nolan Bushnell. He had some very strong
33:09
Speaker 1: words to say about.
33:10
Speaker 2: This, yes, specifically about Warner, who he had clearly had
33:15
Speaker 2: some public beef with. Under Warner, it committed suicide, Yeah, intense.
33:22
Speaker 2: It wasn't homicide. It was self inflicted stupidity. What you
33:26
Speaker 2: had was a bunch of record guys thinking they knew
33:29
Speaker 2: what the game business was about. Warner obviously big music
33:33
Speaker 2: conglomerate as well. I could catalog the screw ups they made.
33:37
Speaker 2: I would have liked to have taken Atari to another level.
33:39
Speaker 2: If I could go back in time, I would not
33:42
Speaker 2: sell to Warner. Yeah, he's got that kind of fu money.
33:46
Speaker 2: He can say this kind of stuff without fear of,
33:48
Speaker 2: you know, retribution.
33:50
Speaker 1: He's probably literally in the interview, he's probably counting money.
33:53
Speaker 3: Yes, don't forget all that chuck and cheese money he had.
33:57
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, Charles e cheese, Charles Entertainment cheese. And
34:02
Speaker 1: so Warder is having a tight spot. They're they're going
34:07
Speaker 1: through a tough time. Atari's dying and they run away.
34:12
Speaker 1: They sell the home computing bit of the Atari business
34:16
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four to the founder of Commodore. He
34:20
Speaker 1: renames it Atari Corporation. That could be confusing. They held
34:24
Speaker 1: onto the arcade division now called Atari Games for a
34:27
Speaker 1: little bit longer, but ultimately they sell that as well
34:30
Speaker 1: to Namco in nineteen eighty five.
34:32
Speaker 2: Namco is still a huge concern in games. But didn't
34:36
Speaker 2: they do wait Bandai Bandai Namco is Elden ring right, Namco.
34:44
Speaker 2: They're huge, and you know there's tons of titles that
34:47
Speaker 2: they make that you will see in some of those
34:49
Speaker 2: Japanese arcades. So you're talking about ben or places here
34:52
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, like like Round One, which I think is
34:54
Speaker 2: in other cities as well. In other other parts of
34:56
Speaker 2: the country.
34:56
Speaker 1: I think you're right, and we're going to have so
34:58
Speaker 1: much fun when we convinced accounting to pay for us
35:02
Speaker 1: to go to Japan.
35:03
Speaker 2: Hey man, I'll go on my own steam with you anytime, dude.
35:05
Speaker 2: I'm really excited. We've got a trip planned with the
35:08
Speaker 2: kid for their eighteenth birthday.
35:09
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's right, that's cool. Maybe we can meet
35:11
Speaker 1: up there.
35:12
Speaker 2: Sure.
35:13
Speaker 1: And so now we see a bunch of horse trading
35:16
Speaker 1: on these names this ip. A group of employees buys
35:19
Speaker 1: Atari games from Namco. They go on they make stuff
35:23
Speaker 1: like paper Boys San Francisco Rush. They it's kind of
35:28
Speaker 1: paper Boys cool. It's kind of like what happened to
35:31
Speaker 1: us with how stuff works back in the day, where
35:34
Speaker 1: a bunch of different parent companies were acquiring different pieces.
35:38
Speaker 2: And they wanted this bit or that bit. Honestly too,
35:40
Speaker 2: it's sort of about It's not that far off from
35:43
Speaker 2: what's going on with a huge bid for Warner right
35:47
Speaker 2: now from Netflix in Paramount. Like I think part of
35:50
Speaker 2: the deal is like Netflix or versus, Paramount only wanted
35:53
Speaker 2: like certain parts of it and that they did not
35:56
Speaker 2: necessarily want, like the television division or like some of
35:59
Speaker 2: the camel properties or whatever. I forget exactly the way
36:03
Speaker 2: it parses out. But when you've got these kind of acquisitions,
36:05
Speaker 2: there are going to be sort of piecemeal kind of
36:07
Speaker 2: breakups of the overall corporation.
36:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a common practice, right, And Atari goes through
36:14
Speaker 1: a lot of this. Their golden age is officially over,
36:17
Speaker 1: but the nostalgia and the fascination remains, So we don't
36:21
Speaker 1: have to get two into the weeds other than to
36:24
Speaker 1: summarize it by saying, a lot of stuff got sold
36:28
Speaker 1: and parceled out, and then a lot of things that
36:32
Speaker 1: those Atari descendants, we could call them, a lot of
36:35
Speaker 1: stuff they made gets passed by by other companies. They
36:39
Speaker 1: have some failures with some of their other systems that
36:44
Speaker 1: they try to roll out, like the links that was
36:47
Speaker 1: here and gone.
36:48
Speaker 2: Well, I think, and a lot of that was in
36:50
Speaker 2: response to, you know, a new boom in home consoles
36:54
Speaker 2: once you started, you know, inching towards the sixteen bits
36:57
Speaker 2: systems of the early nineties. So after being dormant for
37:01
Speaker 2: a while, Atari was trying to get back in the
37:03
Speaker 2: game that they essentially started. But they'd been Mega no
37:07
Speaker 2: pun intended passed over by the competition, including the Sega
37:12
Speaker 2: Master System soon to be the Mega Drive. Yeah.
37:18
Speaker 1: And the real last nail in the coffin for Atari
37:22
Speaker 1: is the Atari Jaguar. It was pretty impressive for me,
37:27
Speaker 1: number ninety three, Yeah, I remember sixty four bits first
37:30
Speaker 1: of its kind. It looks really weird. It was very
37:36
Speaker 1: powerful technically speaking, but it had ad a Jankie controller,
37:42
Speaker 1: there was a lot of software support, and the Super Nintendo.
37:46
Speaker 1: So the Supernintendo was the Coca Cola. Sega Genesis was
37:50
Speaker 1: the Pepsi.
37:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And after this massive failure is sort
37:55
Speaker 2: of the death knell of Atari as we know it,
37:57
Speaker 2: and it kind of descended into, as I've don the
38:00
Speaker 2: ign piece we referenced, corporate purgatory. You certain you surely
38:05
Speaker 2: will still see like Atari branded stuff like T shirts
38:09
Speaker 2: and sort of nostalgia bait products. So whoever owns the
38:13
Speaker 2: IP of that stuff is still making a few bucks
38:15
Speaker 2: at like game stops and you know five below, right,
38:19
Speaker 2: But I believe at this point the remaining the name,
38:22
Speaker 2: the branding, and the remaining assets were sold to a
38:25
Speaker 2: electronics company primarily known for making hard drives called JTS.
38:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then JTS gets bought other companies through around
38:36
Speaker 1: the world get into buying up. As you said, kind
38:39
Speaker 1: of the ip of Atari, the idea of Atari. And
38:45
Speaker 1: then we get to January twenty thirteen, Atari filed for bankruptcy.
38:50
Speaker 1: Yet again, as of the day we're recording on January fifteenth,
38:54
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, nobody is stepped up to.
38:57
Speaker 2: Buy the name yet, got it?
38:59
Speaker 1: Ok? Yeah, and so passes a legend. Hats off, Thank
39:05
Speaker 1: you for all the beautiful memories Atari, everybody who worked there,
39:09
Speaker 1: and thank you for launching a thousand ships pressure entertainment.
39:13
Speaker 2: Well, and Bushnell still has more to say about it.
39:17
Speaker 2: Concerning Atari's place in the modern gaming landscape, he said, absolutely,
39:22
Speaker 2: Atari could be competing with Xbox and PlayStation today. I
39:25
Speaker 2: would have liked to have taken Atari to another level
39:28
Speaker 2: if I could go back in time again. Wouldn't have
39:30
Speaker 2: sold to Warner, take the company public, raise money that way?
39:33
Speaker 2: I think I should have just taken a vacation. Yeah, Okay, Well, hindsight,
39:37
Speaker 2: my guy.
39:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've all been there on a much smaller level, Dolan,
39:42
Speaker 4: And look, this did shape the business of video games,
39:47
Speaker 4: the idea of video games, and even if Atari is
39:50
Speaker 4: not what its creator originally envisioned.
39:55
Speaker 1: It has an inarguably important place in history, and we
40:00
Speaker 1: can't thank our super producer and research associate mister Max Williams,
40:04
Speaker 1: Max Magnavox Williams enough for uh for getting in the
40:08
Speaker 1: in the trenches of the research here man O Man,
40:11
Speaker 1: Thanks Magnetvox Max, and big big thanks to our composer
40:15
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, who I was supposed to hang out with
40:19
Speaker 1: him a little bit earlier, but I think we had
40:20
Speaker 1: we had some different projects to work on, so Alex,
40:23
Speaker 1: we might have to hunt you down in Mexico.
40:24
Speaker 2: I think he's around for a little bit longer, but yeah,
40:26
Speaker 2: I did get to catch him once. We did a
40:28
Speaker 2: yoga together and it was delightful. Huge thanks to Christo
40:31
Speaker 2: Frasciotas and Eive, the Jefickos, both here in spirit. Jonathan
40:34
Speaker 2: strick Land the quiz or you Little so and so
40:37
Speaker 2: a Jabahama, Jacobs is the.
40:39
Speaker 1: Puzzler, Doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance Big. Thanks to the
40:43
Speaker 1: rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime.
40:44
Speaker 2: If you dig.
40:45
Speaker 1: Us, you'll love them. Beat Bop Boot, Beat Boot, That's
40:49
Speaker 1: the show.
40:50
Speaker 2: You'll see you next. Books For more podcasts from my
40:59
Speaker 2: Heart Radio at the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
41:02
Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows.