Atari

Atari Inc. was once a major force in the computer entertainment industry. It made video games, home video game consoles, and personal computers. Founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell Atari could be credited with starting the Video Arcade industry with the seminal Pong. In the 1980s the home computing division was sold off to Jack Tramiel under the name Atari Corp., while the arcade machines were continued under the name "Atari Games".

The name Atari is a term from the board game Go. The term means, roughly, "Look out, this move I am making is dangerous to you", similar to chess's "check". Since the early days of coin operated machines, Atari has been responsible for home consoles Atari 2600 (VCS), eight-bit computers (Atari 400 & 800), took part in the 16 bit computer revolution with the Atari ST, made the revolutionary (for its time) 64 bit Atari Jaguar, and a hand held video game console, the Atari Lynx.

At the end of 2000 the Atari brand was purchased by Infogrames[?] when it took over Hasbro Interactive. In October 2001, Infogrames announced that it was "reinventing" the Atari brand with the launch of three new games. On May 7th, 2003, Infogrames officially changed its name to Atari, Inc.

As for Atari Games, Time-Warner took control of the company in 1993 and folded it into its own video game division, Time Warner Interactive (TWI). In 1996, TWI was sold to WMS Industries (owners of the Williams, Bally and Midway game companies) to become a subsidiary of Midway Games. Atari Games was later renamed Midway Games West. Midway Games left the arcade market to concentrate on home systems in 2001, ending Atari's pivotal influence in the arcade industry. Midway Games West, still producing games for home systems, was disbanded in 2003.

List of Video Game Consoles:

• Atari 2600
• Atari 5200
• Atari 7800
• Atari XEGS
• Atari Jaguar
• Atari Lynx

List of Atari 8-bit (6502) microcomputers:

• Atari 400
• Atari 800
• Atari 1200XL
• Atari 800XL
• Atari 600XL
• Atari 130XE
• Atari 65XE
• Atari XEGS

List of 16-bit (Motorola 68000) microcomputers:

• Atari 520ST
• Atari 1040ST
• Atari Mega ST
• Atari STacy

List of 32-bit (Motorola 68030) microcomputers:

• Atari TT
• Atari Falcon

Other machines:

• Atari Transputer Workstation

A handful of their many Arcade Games:

• Area 51
• Asteroids
• Battle Zone[?]
• Breakout[?]
• Centipede[?]
• Firefox[?]
• Gauntlet
• I, Robot[?]
• Lunar Lander[?]
• Marble Madness
• Missile Command
• Pong
• Pole Position
• Star Wars[?]
• 'Tempest[?]

External links

• Atari.com (http://www.atari.com/)
• Atari North America (http://us.atari.com/)
• Infogrames (http://www.infogrames.com/)
• Atari.org (http://www.atari.org/)
• Atari history (http://www.atari-history.com/)
• Atari Age (http://www.atariage.com/)