40 Years Of The Atari 2600
Key developers from gaming’s golden age on the impact and legacy of Atari’s hit console
Amajor milestone in videogame history was marked in July of 1977 when the first Atari Video Computer System rolled off a production line in California. However, Atari’s think tank – Cyan Engineering – had been discussing ideas for a programmable game system as early as 1975. In light of the long lead time required by the console – now better known as the 2600 – it’s perhaps unsurprising that Atari recruited the first member of its launch games team – Larry Kaplan – almost a year before mass production began. “I was working in Silicon Valley, this is August of 1976, and Atari put an ad in the newspaper for programmers,” Larry begins. “Atari at the time was a coin-op company, but there was a new consumer division – that was six people – and I interviewed with them to be a game programmer for their new system, the 2600.”
Soon after, three additional coders joined Larry, and the small group were given preproduction hardware on which to develop the 2600’s launch titles. This gang of four subsequently became six, and following the console’s autumn launch, the team switched from assembly code to assembling consoles for what they thought might be the 2600’s only Christmas. “We had a development system that we worked on, and the whole of 1977 was doing games,” remembers Larry. “It was kind of a tough situation because production was way behind. So during Christmas, they actually made all the employees – including us engineers – work on the assembly line to keep up with orders. No one knew how long the 2600 would last, they assumed one Christmas, maybe two at most, and then we would move on to the next product. The launch titles were okay – there was Combat, and I did Air-sea Battle.”
Although not official coin-op conversions, these two launch games – and many of the other initial 2600 releases – were based on arcade favourites, which set the trend for Atari’s 2600 output for 1978, as developer David Crane confirms. “It was ironic that we were tasked with making home versions of $3,000 arcade games on the lowly $200 2600, but as game programmers at Atari, we were
ALTHOUGH INTENDED TO HAVE A SHORT LIFESPAN, THE 2600 DEFIED ALL EXPECTATIONS AND STILL REMAINS POPULAR FOUR DECADES LATER. RORY MILNE CHARTS THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF ATARI’S PIONEERING CONSOLE
encouraged to port their arcade games to the 2600. Outlaw, Canyon Bomber and many others were based on existing arcade games.”
Atari’s policy of taking its lead from coin-ops proved popular, and this was reflected in sales of the 2600 quadrupling between 1978 and 1979. Pioneering designer Warren Robinett puts this growth spurt down to increased awareness and a rapidly expanding games library. “It takes a while for the word to spread about a new product that’s good; that was probably part of it. And as the number of available games increased that probably increased the attractiveness of the 2600.”
But while Warren’s first 2600 game – Slot Racers – closely adhered to Atari’s arcade-derived house style, his second – Adventure – spawned a new genre and introduced the concept of a world that couldn’t be contained within a single screen. “I didn’t set out to break the mould with Adventure,” Warren clarifies, “but I found a new template. I thought that this text adventure game with a ‘rooms and objects’ concept – Colossal Cave Adventure – was cool, and I wanted to do that on the 2600. So I came up with this ‘driving off the edge of the screen’ thing, and that resulted in creating a much bigger world than one screen. But nobody told me I was inventing a new genre; it just seemed like one more 2600 cartridge.”
But rather than praise, Warren’s boss heaped criticism on him for creating Adventure, and the developer left Atari in 1979. Larry Kaplan explains why he and three colleagues followed suit later that year after a run-in with Atari CEO Ray Kassar. “Management kept claiming there were no profits. One big joke was that they had something called DBOI – ‘Departmental Budget Operating Income’. We were supposed to share in that as engineers, but we ended up calling it: ‘Don’t Bet On It’, because we never did. Warner was pouring money into Atari during 1979, and we were trying to figure out what to do. So we said: ‘Lets go and see Ray,’ because 2600 cartridges were selling in the millions. So Al Miller wanted a royalty, and Ray said: ‘No.’ He said we were ‘a dime a dozen.’”
AL MILLER WANTED A ROYALTY, AND RAY [KASSAR] SAID: ‘NO.’ HE SAID WE WERE ‘A DIME A DOZEN’ Larry Kaplan
Subsequently, the four coders – Larry, Al, David Crane and Bob Whitehead – resigned and set up the first third-party console publisher, the output of which massively boosted the 2600’s reputation, as David notes. “Because Activision initially featured the 2600, we made Atari’s console into the de facto standard. But Activision’s designers had to innovate or die. First, we didn’t own any arcade properties to port, and second, we were the new kids and we initially had to struggle to create new games, a new trademark and a new business model. I know that we felt pushed by our prior work – feeling the need to make every game better than anything we had ever done before.”
The drive to better their previous 2600 titles, the need to create original games and the cumulative knowledge they had accrued while at Atari resulted in Activision becoming a huge success in short order. The firm’s fortunes ultimately persuaded the majority of Atari’s remaining 2600 developers to establish or join third-party firms, and two years later, Atari had a fresh set of coders facing a steep learning curve, as Larry Kaplan points out. “After we left, the Imagic guys left and then the 20th Century Fox guys. By 1981, all Atari had, basically, were new people. The problem was that everyone who left already had three years of experience, so we knew how to do stuff – and those guys didn’t. If Atari had given us royalties we would have all stayed there; it would have made a billion dollars, it would have been Nintendo. But Atari totally fucked it up. Us leaving split everything up, everybody had to reinvent the technology and there were all these suits going on. It was just a mess, and we could have all been doing games.”
Despite the mess, Atari’s former designers weren’t alone in third-party 2600 development for long. Rex
Bradford started coding Empire Strikes Back for Parker Brothers in 1981, and feels the console’s best games emerged in the 18 months that followed. “It seemed to me like the ‘golden period’ of some of the best 2600 games was the second half of 1981 and 1982.
It was certainly the period in which graphics techniques got refined. There were much better thoughts about how to reuse sprites multiple times on the screen in order to get better-looking displays. Also, by 1982, there were bankswitch cartridges for 8K games. Empire Strikes Back came out May 1982, or something. There hadn’t been a huge amount of games out at that point, but Activision had published some of their great stuff – Tennis and Ice Hockey.
And Stampede showed what you could do if you paid attention to how to lay out your screen. I was studying them to get a sense for what was possible, and certainly River Raid. A lot of people were learning from one another. Then Pitfall! was the breakthrough game, but there were certainly many good ones that came out in the 1982 timeframe.” But while the 2600 hosted a wealth of great titles during 1982, it was far from the most advanced system available. Rex largely credits the 2600’s success to the fact that its games punched above their weight. “Parker Brothers were working
the 2600 games themselves received more intense effort in development Rex Bradford
on the Intellivision at the same time, I remember it had superior graphics capability. Although it may not have been fantastic, by that era it was quite good. A lot of factors go in, but the 2600 games themselves received more intense effort in development. I think the focus of Activision had a big role in that, because they came out with some really good 2600 games early on that fired people up and created some momentum. There was a progression where the games just got better. It was an exciting time to be buying games as well as making them.”
Despite its superior competition, Howard Scott Warshaw – a star among Atari’s second wave of 2600 coders – produced a trio of million-selling 2600 games during this exciting period. “At the 2600’s peak, I don’t know if the other consoles were as distributed, because things were already kind of declining at that point,” Howard reflects. “The other consoles were definitely better, but were they enormously better? The 2600 was the one that got the major distribution first. That gave it momentum; that’s where most of the games were, the largest games library. The Commodore 64 and Intellivision were far more capable systems, but they also had a lot of operating system overheads. There were a number of things that interfered with them really being spectacular advances. When you looked at their games they didn’t look that much more spectacular than 2600 games. So they didn’t have that ‘wow’ impact, that’s why I think there wasn’t much of a threat. You look at Yars’ Revenge, which was the first game that I did, I think I definitely saw some things in a new way or was able to produce a few things that were highimpact. Which was where I was coming from. I wanted something that was going to grab the eye and the attention, and then hopefully this fun spirit.”
As 1982 drew to a close, however, two unexpected events loomed on the horizon that when combined would all but end 2600 game development: the announcement of a $1 billion dollar loss at Atari and the collapse of the entire US videogames market. Larry Kaplan blames Atari for these related events. “By the time I came back to Atari, Ray Kassar had started paying royalties. And so, Tod Frye got a dime a cartridge and made a million dollars. Howard Scott Warshaw made $2 million. But the 2600 was very limited in what it could do; Pac-man was just something we never would have attempted at Activision. And then the whole thing with E.T. – that was just silly. Nobody in the world could do an original game from scratch in six weeks. And the E.T. movie wasn’t much of a videogame concept, but I gave Howard credit to actually finish it. But Pac-man, E.T., Atari doubled the price of those things – it charged $40 instead of $20. To a large extent, that destroyed the industry. Videogames were done. Atari lost a billion dollars in 1982. You know, it went crazy. It had all these huge projects it was working on, but it missed the 2600, and making good games for it.”
When asked about his 2600 Pac-man port, Tod Frye is broadly philosophical, and takes the view that the game shouldn’t shoulder too much blame
for Atari’s financial misfortunes or the US videogames crash of 1983. “I think the degree to which Pac-man was responsible is exaggerated. I think if there was a factor it might have been something along the lines of disenchantment with videogames. I don’t think that Pac-man was anything more than a fellow traveller in that area, one of a whole trend of disillusionment. A lot of people really loved the game, but there was a momentum; the press hated the shit out of it. And then E.T. hot on its heels, which did not help – Howard was given like five weeks to make E.T. So the Atari brand was besmirched by 1983.”
On E.T., Howard Scott Warshaw explains the main problem with developing his 2600 movie adaptation in a little over a month, and on the crash, he recalls Atari’s blinkered response to the 2600 games market imploding. “E.T. was really kinda proof of this: you can do a decent job of an initial design, but no good videogame goes from initial design to release. I don’t think anyone really saw the crash coming. There wasn’t a sense of impending doom, nobody expected things to reverse as quickly as they did. People had incredible denial over the idea that there was a crash. And the only thing Atari knew to do at this point was to sell 2600 games; that was their only money vehicle.”
However great Atari’s liability was, events outwith the firm’s control were equally responsible for the decline of the 2600 games market. Rex Bradford reflects on how third-party 2600 development self-destructed in 1983.
“If I’m remembering correctly, January of 1983 was when things started to go completely haywire. We were going to consumer electronics shows, and there were so many third-party companies with games. It was Custer’s Revenge – all these crazy games. It was insane. Later, some of us left Parker to join
Activision. And so in 1983, I was working on a game called Kabobber.
That was how I experienced the crash. Activision at that time had about 60 titles in development. The word came down that they were going to publish only, like, five of them because of the market. Mine didn’t make the cut. It did seem like an unexpectedly swift decline; one year was white-hot, then the next year the whole thing was in collapse. There were a lot of factors for the decline – including the flood of lousy games, but part of the story is that people really did peak out what you could do with the 2600 by 1983. The games were also expensive.”
On the collapse of the 2600 games sector – and the US console market as a whole – David Crane traces events back to the formation of Activision, the firm’s success as a third-party developer and the fate of those that followed its lead. “By showing that there was a viable third-party videogame business, Activision – and later Imagic – helped to cause the videogame crash. We had trade shows – CES – every six months. In one six-month period, 30 new companies showed up trying to follow in Activision’s footsteps. Each got a couple of million dollars of VC money, and they designed and built game cartridges. Those companies all failed, and flooded the market with games at bankruptcy, fire-sale prices. That Christmas, over 20 million game cartridges were in bargain bins at the front of toy stores. Dad, bringing $40 in to buy his kid the latest Activision or Atari game on his Christmas list, stopped at the bargain bin and bought eight games at $5 each rather than the new game his kid asked for. Not until all 20 million bargain games sold through would new, high-quality games sell. That put a lot of companies out of business, causing the shutdown of Imagic and almost destroying Activision.”
Following the fall of the 2600, Atari itself entered a downward spiral. In early-1983, a newly appointed CEO cut the firm’s staff by 80 per cent, and then in 1984, Atari was sold to Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, who reduced Atari’s employee count by a further 90 per cent. Jack’s intension was to create a 16-bit computer, but he needed funds, and so in late-1985, he hired Mike Katz to market an inexpensive, cost-reduced 2600. “Jack Tramiel had bought Atari for debt from Warner,” Mike recollects, “and he approached me to try to resurrect it. Our opportunity for the 2600 was to come out with as low a price version as possible, with the least expensive software. We had a very good commercial, which had the jingle, ‘Under $50.’ Everything we did in marketing was intended to be not extravagant, but fit the bill of creating awareness that Atari was back.”
By early- 1986, however, the gaming landscape had changed dramatically from the 2600’s 1982 peak, which made it challenging for Mike to facilitate in-house and third-party games for the system. “It was difficult to get any new developers to develop for the 2600 because they wanted to make money and the capabilities of the machine were limited. We couldn’t get the conversion rights for the hot coin-op games because Nintendo had a lock on through their relationships with the Japanese coin-op manufacturers. So these were problems, but I’d just come from the computer game company Epyx, and it occurred to me that the awareness that arcade games had generated in the past for home systems might be gotten by going after the bestselling computer games. So I went to people I knew from the industry to see if we could get them to do titles for the 2600 based on computer games. I thought it was a good strategy, but Jack was not willing to put money behind our own development nor was he willing to put it behind marketing.”
However, by 1987, Mike’s strategy was paying dividends. Tod Frye was working for Epyx at the time, and remembers the thinking behind porting computer classics, such as Summer Games, to the 2600. “Epyx had these Commodore 64 games, and was going horizontal with them out to the other platforms. At the time, the thinking was still that there were a lot of 2600 machines in people’s living rooms. While technology had moved ahead, we knew a lot more programming tricks for the 2600, so you could actually make a pretty good game without banging your head against the wall.”
By publishing titles on the Atari label and encouraging third-party development, Mike Katz managed to buoy the 2600 games market throughout 1988. By the following year, however, Atari was all but alone in developing for the system. Tod Frye found himself employed by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell’s firm Axlon in 1989, and he explains how Nolan struck a deal to design 2600 games for Atari. “Atari still had some not-insignificant number of 2600 units, and basically Nolan said: ‘We’ve got great ideas, and they will breathe enough life into the 2600 market to flush the last few million units out of the warehouse.’ I think Nolan just needed a job, but he did actually have the chops to put together this package of game concepts that Jack Tramiel would buy for the 2600 in 1989.”
Atari’s last 2600 games trickled out in 1990, and the system’s final commercial release appeared in 1992. Looking back, Tod Frye credits the console’s long lifespan to its constantly evolving games. “I think the 2600 lasted so long because the games kept getting better, because the designers and the programmers kept being able to eke more out of it.”
Commenting on the contemporary 2600 homebrew scene, Howard Scott Warshaw identifies the system’s challenging architecture as its ongoing attraction. “People are still making 2600 games. Their games aren’t really commercially viable; they’re not making a shitload of money with them, but it’s about the challenge. There is something really kind of magical about meeting that challenge.”
Many people claim that 2600 games are still more fun to play than any modern game
David Crane
Given the final word on Atari’s pioneering console on its 40th anniversary, David Crane singles out the creativity of 2600 coders and the fun provided by their games. “Many people claim that 2600 games are still more fun to play than any modern game. If true, that is due to versatile hardware and creative game designers. The 2600 both pioneered and embodied that wondrous time in history.”
Thanks to Larry Kaplan, David Crane, Warren Robinett, Rex Bradford, Howard Scott Warshaw, Tod Frye, Mike Katz and Alan Murphy.