The interesting history of the Atari 2600/VCS. From Nolan, to Kassar, to Tramiel.

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

I've been pretty obsessed with my Atari 2600 as of late, I've been playing games on it like crazy and have really re-bonded with it over the past several weeks. I've studied it's history from it's very beginnings since the mid 90's and I think that the VCS has one of the best and most interesting histories of any console ever created with so many interesting people thrown into the mix, reading up on it throughout the years has been fun and rather exciting. Lately I've been putting a huge emphasis on collecting for my 2600 and I've found some great gems hidden in the sea of available games and I've gathered up all the classics I loved for it as a kid too, it's been a blast revisiting those too. So much that I've recently written my own story of the 2600, which was fun. Everything from the landfill dumpings, to the Time Warner merger, to the selling of the company to Jack Tramiel, there is so much to explore with the company and the console as a whole, it's really one of gamings most storied topics in my opinion and it's a blast to discuss with others who enjoy it.

Of all the things that went on during the life cycle of the 2600/VCS what event do you think was the most interesting? For me it would be the entry of Ray Kassar and the whole merge with Time Warner. Without Kassar I don't think the 2600 would have lived the amazing life that it had and I don't think Nolan would have let the system breath, especially since he wanted to dump it as soon as clones started hitting shelves. Also, do you have any experiences with the 2600 that you'd like to add to the conversation?

[Steve W]

Before Ray Kassar, there was no third-party development. He was such a bastard to the programmers, thinking of them as primadonnas who don't deserve getting credit or royalties on the games they worked on, that forced all their decent programmers to jump ship and do it on their own. The programmers were making something like $18,000 a year and their games were bringing in millions for a company that treated them like they were worthless. Kassar basically built the foundation for the 1984 American video game industry crash and started the flood of poor quality third-party games that choked the store shelves.

I always wonder what would have happened if Atari had a different manager who wasn't an asshat and instead treated their people well. Who knows, Atari would have been the only company making games for their systems and the designers would receive credit and royalties from their titles. Instead of the company becoming the unmanageable behemoth that lost Warner half a billion dollars in 1983 they instead properly transitioned to the next generation console smoothly, and we'd now be playing games on Atari's latest system rather than thinking of them as a relic of the '80s.

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

Before Ray Kassar, there was no third-party development. He was such a bastard to the programmers, thinking of them as primadonnas who don't deserve getting credit or royalties on the games they worked on, that forced all their decent programmers to jump ship and do it on their own. The programmers were making something like $18,000 a year and their games were bringing in millions for a company that treated them like they were worthless. Kassar basically built the foundation for the 1984 American video game industry crash and started the flood of poor quality third-party games that choked the store shelves.

I always wonder what would have happened if Atari had a different manager who wasn't an asshat and instead treated their people well. Who knows, Atari would have been the only company making games for their systems and the designers would receive credit and royalties from their titles. Instead of the company becoming the unmanageable behemoth that lost Warner half a billion dollars in 1983 they instead properly transitioned to the next generation console smoothly, and we'd now be playing games on Atari's latest system rather than thinking of them as a relic of the '80s.

I know Kassar's history of not giving game designers credit where credit was due, it's as if he believed they were just employees and nothing more when really they were creators and should be noted as such like an author or song writer would be. Kassar did run a pretty tight ship at Atari for a while though and helped to make them a lot of money before they went and lost it all.