Atari’s Forgotten Arcade Classics (1972-1975)
June 8th, 2017 by Benj Edwards
Rolling Stone recently launched a dedicated gaming site called Glixel, and just recently, EGM alum and Glixel’s General Manager, John Davison (of whom I am a big fan), asked me to write something for the site.
So I did. Atari turns 45 this month, and I thought it would be fun to look back at some of Atari’s early coin-op titles that very few people have heard of. The result is called “Atari’s Forgotten Arcade Classics,” and you can read it now over at Glixel.
If I weren’t so busy with other projects, I’d dive more in-depth into the origins of Atari — I certainly have a lot to say about it. But that will have to wait until another time. Until then, I hope you enjoy this piece.
June 9th, 2017 at 11:22 am
Interesting article Benj. Since these games use discrete logic chips instead of CPU’s, they’re actually very hard to emulate. You can use DICE, but I’m not sure if you play all the games.
June 9th, 2017 at 1:38 pm
Thanks, Jim. I’m glad you like it.
Yep, they are all discrete, which is one of the reasons they are mostly forgotten today.
June 12th, 2017 at 6:05 pm
Analog and hybrid electrical/mechanical arcade games remained very popular in the Soviet Union (where I’m originally from) through the 1980’s, out of necessity since the USSR was so behind in computing technology.
http://www.15kop.ru/en/
If you haven’t looked into it, Benj, you should, it’s like a whole other world of video game history.
June 13th, 2017 at 8:31 am
I’ve seen that Soviet Arcade games website before, V — it’s amazingly cool. There is definitely a lot of unexplored history there (in the English language, at least). I hope I get around to it some day.
As a side note, I did write a piece about Soviet PCs for PCMag a few years ago.
June 14th, 2017 at 8:22 pm
Wow, how cool, thanks for the link!