have you played atari today?

Around 1981 or 82, I learned to program – if you could call it that – on the Atari 400, copying programs out of magazines, one uncertain finger at a time. I also learned the proper way to cuss out a computer when I’d miss a comma or make some other mistake, getting nothing more than SYNTAX ERROR for my hours of hard work. Guess which skill still serves me today?

While I was doing some admin stuff on the Geek Group at Propeller this morning, I saw that member JBooth had submitted Atari: The Golden Years. It’s a fabulous article at Gamasutra that covers 1978-1981:

This four-year period — from 1977 to 1981 — contains some of the most exciting developments the company ever saw in its history: the rise of the 2600, the development of some of the company’s most enduringly popular games (Centipede, Asteroids) and the development and release of its first home computing platforms.

This comprehensive look back, filled with quotes from the original creators and other primary sources, offers a detailed peek into the company that popularized video gaming as the ’70s turned into the ’80s, and created the first viable market for home consoles.

If you ever owned an Atari computer or played any of their ubiquitous games, this article is going to be an awesome ride on the nostalgia bus for you. It’s also useful for you damn kids today who want to understand why guys like me get all worked up about 8-bit computers, but get off my lawn before you read it.

You know . . . there are lots of great 80s computer emulators available now, and I’ve often wondered if it would be as fun as I think to fire up an Atari 400 emulator, track down one of those old magazines, and see if I can actually get one of those games to run.

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39 thoughts on “have you played atari today?”

  2. Wasn’t much for Atari stuff back then, but I do remember typing in programs from magazines for my TI99/4A and Commodore 64. I was starting out in the IT field back then writing DBMS, but being able to work with a system at home was just too much fun.
    For those interested, there is a 3 part documentary called “Triumph of the Nerds” that details the beginnings of the computer revolution. Google it.

  3. I never had the Atari, but I had a Commodore 64, and I remember doing the same thing… typing in code from a magazine for hours only to have it not work because of some typos. So frustrating! Either as a sign of my stubbornness or stupidity, I would then repeat… and repeat.. and repeat until it finally worked and I was greeted to something simpler to pong (or related basic program). Yes!! A crappy program but so damn sweet since I just wasted all day typing it in.

  4. I used to sell Atari computers in.. ’82 and ’83 at a Lazarus Department store in Indiana. The 800 went for $699 and the 400 went for $299. Once the XL series came out, the prices on the older ones dropped until the 400 was selling for $39.95 with an Atari $50 rebate.
    I still have a huge old pile of Atari 8-bit stuff in a box in the basement. My first foray into Online Computing was a subscription to Delphi to get into to the Atari 8-bit Developers forum on Wednesday nights. Talking for hours with the the guy who wrote BobTerm, the great BBS-surfing Terminal program, and the guy who wrote the .alf compression utility (Before *.zip*, there was .arc, and .lzw, and a million others, Children), and the guy who was building a CPU replacement board that plugged into the old 6502 socket and ran it up to a 65816 16-bit chip (from the Apple IIgs).
    At 300 baud – who could read any faster than that anyway?
    /chases kids off his lawn
    CheapEngineer

  5. I saw the article, great memories. The atari 400 was my first computing experience, and I had one with a dodgy power connector, so when I was mashing the membrane keys to type donkey kong out of a magazine, I would be gingerly pressing in case the power cable moved and reset the whole thing (which it did too often).

  6. Ah, the magazine games! Written in BASIC. Transcribed by hand…
    I still clearly recall (sometime around 1980 or 1981) spending a couple hours typing in a lunar lander simulator, testing it out to make sure it worked, *carefully* listing it to the audio cassette recorder – and then recording it a *second* time just to make sure!
    When, about a half-second after flipping the computer’s power switch OFF, I saw that the recorder’s audio cable wasn’t connected to the computer, my heart sank – and I followed with several minutes of creative cursing.
    But OH, the game was glorious the ONE time I played it…

  9. Ahhh back in the day back in the day….I was actually an Intellivision girl myself, then got an Apple IIe and never looked back 🙂
    Awesome trip into the past, thank you

  11. I didnt get to play Atari until my senior year of college. One got donated for a yard sale, and fellow members of the student group quickly snatched it and set it up in an office, where Im pretty sure it still resides. Right next to the XBox that was there. Atari vs Halo battles were very interesting. I enjoyed both. Forwarding this article to aforementioned friends. 🙂

  12. OMG, it’s freaky you would post about this while working on converting some of those old BASIC games to C so they’ll run on a modern PC.
    There’s a pretty strong following of those things out there. If you want to try your hand on them again, here’s a good place to start:
    http://www.atariarchives.org/
    If you want to see some of the converted-to-modern-PC-without-an-emulator, here’s where I’ve been putting some of mine:
    http://cymonsgames.retroremakes.com
    The main site is also dedicated to remaking (for free) the originals of the era. Quite a lot of fun!

  13. Had a series of them – 400, 800, 130XE..
    Yeah we typed in a heck of a lot of programs, too, but I want to take this opportunity to ask if anyone else enjoyed Star Raiders/Star Raiders II as much as I did, and if you don’t think the pair would make a totally awesome DS cartridge?

  14. big fan of the atari…have an atari 2600 that my wife gave me for christmas a few years ago. actually just hooked it up to my 42 inch plasma with surround sound 🙂
    its pretty sweet!

  15. So, I was reading this post and got sidetracked, left it open to come back later because I had something fascinating (I’m sure) to say about the Atari thing.
    Later I was doing something on my blog and saw that someone new had linked to me saying my blog was really funny, smart, etc. (which it absolutely is).
    I clicked over to see who it was, and accidentally hit the popup of this post. And I was all, “Holy baloney, Wil WHEATON loves my blog! I AM SO COOL.”
    Then reality set in.
    I forgot what I was going to say about the Atari thing. Something clever and insightful, I’m sure. But I’m now completely thrown off my game.
    I don’t know why I am telling you this. I really, really don’t.
    Love your blog, though. 🙂

  16. My brother and I played Atari at the home of some friends who had one. I think it was a 2600. I really enjoyed those games, but never thought to try and program one. I was born in 1978, so I was a little young for that.
    I bought an Atari 2600 at a garage sale a few years ago and found that I already had the proper adapter to make it plug in to a coaxial plug. They want a lot of money for those online, as if they are special, but I’m sure you can get them cheap at Radio-Shack. I also have “Namco Museum 64” for the Nintendo 64 and Mrs. Pac-Man for my iPod.
    Has anyone else noticed that Mrs. Pac-Man is rarely on those modern Atari games like the flashback?
    I remember hearing Wil brag at a con, on an online video, that he had all the Atari Games on his flash drive in his pocket. I would like to know how I could do that.
    I’ll bet you could even modernize the old multiplayer games to be playable by two or more people online like modern multiplayer games. (If no one has already).

  17. I’ve got an Atari 2600Jr. in the closet somewhere. I need to pull that bad boy out and see how it looks on the big screen.
    I need another paddle controller though, one set is busted.

  19. Around that time (1982) I used to do the same thing, typing programs from magazines, but not into an Atari. No, I had my trusty Commodore VIC-20 with it’s enormous 5K of memory! Though I also had an 8K memory expander cartridge, giving me 13K total. And a “Datasette” cassette recorder to save programs on tape. Only took about 20-30 minutes to load a long program! Assuming, of course, you didn’t get the dreaded “load error” and have to start over.
    I then upgraded to a Commodore 128, and finally, a Commodore Amiga 500. Take about brand loyalty! Still have the 128 & Amiga, but not hooked up, so not sure if they still work. Although the 128 continued to function even after I’d spilled a cup of coffee into it.
    Also had an early model Atari Video Computer System (later renamed the Atari 2600). When I first got it and told people I had an Atari, most of them would look at me like I was speaking an alien language, as they had not yet heard of it. It had what I called the “good” joysticks, because they contained springs inside that activated the movement switches. And once those springs got loosened up a bit through use, you had better & faster response over your on-screen movements. Later versions of the Atari 2600 joysticks had plastic inserts in place of the individual springs, making them much stiffer & less responsive.

  21. Asteroids, had oodles of fun with that.
    It was a great era.
    Going back? Nah.
    Yesterday was playing Lord of the Rings Online. Had my Hobbit fishing in the Ice bays of Forochel. The visuals and the ability just to be in another world was unbeatable.
    I’m just sad I won’t live long enough to see Holodecks!!

  22. HUNT THE WUMPUS!!!! ah, good times.
    I also remember being in “independent computer study” for a semester my jr. year of high school (82-83) where we (3 of us) had to write three programs in BASIC, Pascal or FORTRAN for our semester-long assignment. We all wrote our programs in the first two weeks, and played the rest of the time. Those were on a DEC….
    Ah, good times.

  23. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000: I bought it for $10 plus a D&D module (“The Lost City”, I think?)that I’d already played. What little “programming” I did was on that thing – my greatest accomplishment was a text adventure called “Dungeons of the Whe-Wha.” We eventually got a Commodore 64, but honestly, that was all about the video games.
    These days, through a bizarre set of circumstances, I sit in the same room in almost the same spot where I was introduced to “Zork” on my neighbor’s Atari 800 computer.
    (Thanks for the little shout-out, too, Wil – Glad you enjoyed the read. Now I feel like I want to write & revisit my 1980s video games & computers.)

  28. Wil, I can tell you it is EXACTLY as much fun firing up an emulator and playing all the games you remember from your childhood. I even went and bought a GP2X console so I could run my emulators on the move.

  29. For Christmas a year or so ago, my mom bought me one of those self contained atari joysticks that holds something like 20 of the old games in it. You supply it with a few AA batteries, plug it into the video and audio in ports to your TV and you’re off and running. the first game I tried was Adventure. You know the one, your “character” is an arrow and you roll around this maze trying to avoid the dragon that kills you and the pesky bat that takes off with your stuff. Before I knew what was happening, I had completely finished the first level, on muscle memory alone. The second level took me all of 5 minutes to remember, and the “Hard” level maybe took 10. The human brain never ceases to amaze me. Why on earth would I remember these patterns, and frankly, I probably couldn’t sit down and tell you how to do it, I just have to put the joystick in my hand and let them take over.
    That being said, I think I sold the thing later that summer at our annual garage sale.
    On another note. Wil – on your glowing recomendation, I picked up Watchmen at the bookstore about a month ago. WOW! Thanks for the heads up!

  30. I, too, learned to program on a flat keyboard. But it’s surprising how few people know about Atari’s computers. Every time I went to a friend’s house, they had the 2600, and thus didn’t know that there was a home version of Pac-Man that played like the arcade.
    I stuck with Atari until I was about 12 and then mine broke and my grandfather gave me a Commodore 64, just in time for me to watch that computer’s slow descent into obsolescence.
    At least the Atari told you the syntax error as you were writing the program. And you didn’t have to type an incantation to boot from disk. Unfortunately, errors had numbers instead of names. File Not Found was 170. You had to learn them like POKEs.

  33. This is a pretty timely post, and thanks to you Wil I was able to regain a bit of my nostalgic past over the weekend. Peter Hirschberg, of Luna City Arcade in Virginia, hosted a benefit “Game Day” at his home for a family-friend named Shawn who is battling Hodgkin’s.
    http://mysite.verizon.net/cshaines/shawn.htm
    Thanks to Peter’s generosity my friends and I spent hours on free-play, and we even were able to preview the wildly funny new movie Chasing Ghosts before it hits DVD. It is stand up hilarious.
    Here’s a link to a few of the photos I took on Picasa:
    http://picasaweb.google.com/Conquistahore/LunaCityArcadeGameDayAugust232008

  34. “Hmm, it is true old people are often concerned that there are children on their lawns…”
    Just thought I’d throw that out there.

  35. Wow- this post brings back memories. I spent half of my early teen years translating Apple Basic programs from COMPUTE magazine into Atari Basic for my Atari 800 computer.
    I also recall finding a basic program in a magazine that was a machine language compiler. I then spent literally weeks typing in codes for a simple Word processor. It was awesome!

  36. Saving to a tape was a voodo art form. I typed in a program from Byte mag that was about 8 pages long. Finished and next day my Dad re used the tape for a word processing document. Entire weekend wasted. Was a great welcome when they finally had crc checkers to check all of the 1 and 0 that you typed in so you could figure out what stupid line you messed up.
    I refuse to get rid of my Atari 800 with a Happy drive (disk duper on a chip) which is all housed in a custom foam cut out suit case.

  37. I still have my 400 and 800XL, with a floppy drive for each! I also have several cartridges, including Star Raiders (one of my favorites, up there with Gauntlet and T…Gah! That one where you go around the top of geometric shapes in 3D, shooting down at stuff…) Anyway, loved the article, thanks!

  38. One of my best memories about the 2600 is building a circuit board with my Dad, breaking apart the Atari 2600 carts, and copying the eproms. Good times 🙂

  39. Oooh, I loved playing with my friend’s Atari 2600 way back when…she didn’t have many games, but we loved Moon Patrol and the way the ickle vehicle could jump. Yeah, so we were pretty young an easily impressed, okay?
    I turned into a total geek when I got my C64, the first person in my whole year at school (large school!) who had a computer-I basically learnt English with Infocom text adventures, although I had ahard time finding “grue” in the dictionary…ah, the memories….I still have all my favorites for several emulators!
    *wipes tears from her eyes*

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