mmcirvin: (0)
mmcirvin ([personal profile] mmcirvin) wrote 2024-09-28 05:40 pm (UTC)

I get the impression that from the very beginning, Atari was kind of a shady operation--one with brilliant people working there. Creator Nolan Bushnell had all these deceptive tricks up his sleeve, making up "competitors" that were really subsidiaries so he could negotiate exclusivity agreements that weren't, things like that.

But they attracted people in part because they were one of the earlier technology firms to have a casual environment in the office--in those days, most programmers still wore a suit and tie to work.

Star Raiders was the solo creation of Doug Neubauer, who had also designed the POKEY chip that handled sound generation, keyboard scanning and paddle controllers for the 400/800. The days of this kind of thing being the creation of one person are long gone, but it's a real tour de force. For a while, it seemed like every video game manufacturer and platform had to do a Star Raiders knockoff. Atari's own port for the 2600 was generally held to be inferior to Activision's Starmaster. I personally kind of like Imagic's Star Voyager, which isn't as deep but simplifies the gameplay to better fit the platform.

Neubauer later did the 2600 game Solaris as a kind of spiritual successor--the gameplay in Solaris isn't exactly the same but in some ways it's even more complicated.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting