Atari Nights

For the significant role that Atari played in the burgeoning video-game industry of the late '70s and early '80s, it doesn't seem like much is known about the people who made the company what it was. Nolan Bushnell and Eugene Jarvis are the only names from that era that I can pull out of my skull, and Jarvis was more of a Midway man anyway. Much to my delight, Howard Scott Warshaw--the man behind Yars' Revenge, as well as the game most often cited for sparking the video-game crash of the early '80s, E.T. for the 2600--got together with a number of Atari engineers, animators, and managers, as well as Bushnell himself, to share some of their fonder memories for a DVD called Once Upon Atari. IGN has been posting four-minute clips from Once Upon Atari (which is available for purchase on Warshaw's website) for about a month now, and while Warshaw's corny tarot-based interludes can be real eye-rollers, the interviews offer plenty of insight into what the culture was like at Atari, where management was almost non-existent, stress was high, and pranks and casual drug use were common occurrences. It's a good way to totally destroy a Friday afternoon, and it puts to rest my doubts about just how interesting Leonardo DiCaprio's upcoming Nolan Bushnell biopic could be.