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.

Is this that atari movie that was talked about a while ago?

This is really creepy to me for some reason

Sssso, I basically had never had a bosssss

Man, it looks like Warshaw made that DVD out of his basement. Interesting, nonetheless.

There's something a little 80's about the production of this.  Reminds me of old computer journal shows like ?Computer Chronicles?... Maybe he uses his Commodore 64 for the editing.  And whats with gettin metaphysical man with the tarot?  Geesh... technohippies.  I'm sure I'd like to see the ful doc though.  Relive memories and connect a few dots I was too young at the time to understand.

I think it's odd that Mr. Suntan is calling this place "not a business" when what I thought business meant was a group of people who work together to make money (legally).  There's this insidious thing in what he's saying, this exclusionary attitude that I don't think we've really dealt with in society about how businesses can be run, and how they actually are run.

One of the mistakes we make is to assume business is for businessy types.  The recent economic climate shows that even businessy types don't understand what they're doing sometimes.  It's sort of up to us, if we're really down with this capitalism thing, to get on the ball and start learning about how these things work.  Then I think we'll have a more varied idea of what business models can be successful, not just the narrow outlook of folks like Mr. Suntan. 

This would never work in today's age.

IS working at giantbomb as awsome as atari?

ahhhhh those wild Atari nights....

A stoner-lounge, thats awesome :D

Sounds like a fascinating production, but I totally disagree with Ryan that little is known about Atari's history - most mainstream videogame histories centre on Atari to the exclusion of almost anything else.

I love watching stuff like this :D

Interesting...

To me it's a toss up between Yars' Revenge and Pitfall has to what was the best Atari 2600 game of all time.  

My first video game system was the Atari 2600 and it came with Combat.