To pick through the business comings and goings of Atari since it was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney you’d need a huge dollop of patience and a keen eye for detail. The company hit the ground running with the arcade smash hit Pong, but it’s a very different beast today.
That’s primarily because Atari has been in the hands of many companies. Bought by Warner Communications in 1976, its consumer division was sold to the former Commodore International CEO Jack Tramiel in 1984 – a year after Atari ran up a loss of $538 million. The profitable coin-op division, which became known as Atari Games, ended up split between Warner and Namco. Then, in 1998, Atari Inc ended up in the hands of Hasbro Interactive who sold it to Infogrames, while Atari Games became part of Midway Games, and… well, that’s enough of all of that!
Suffice to say that when The Guardian newspaper ran a headline striking a sombre tone foretelling the end of Atari Inc in 2013 (“Game over?”, it questioned, “Atari files for bankruptcy in US”), most gamers had either given up trying to keep track of what was going on or were simply past caring. For although Atari had enjoyed a fantastic run, it had been on borrowed time for a long period. And yet suggesting Atari would ever be dead and buried has always felt like a stretch too far.
There is no doubt that the company that published such gems as , , , , , and had become something of a bit-part player in the games industry. You only need to look at Atari’s timeline on
