CGE 2010: Highlights from the "Atari Days" Panel
by VGChartz Staff, posted on 03 August 2010 / 560 Views
The Classic Gaming Expo hosted a panel called "Atari Days," during which five programmers and designers all reminisced about their glory days at Atari before the market crash, and answered a few questions. They discussed how they got hired at Atari, what they did at Atari, their favorite games, and how they saw the market crash coming in advance. They even tried to dispel the wild Atari party rumors.
They were kind enough to sit with the black shirts on the outside and the Hawaiian shirts in the middle so nobody got confused, but in case you don't know them by their shirts or by their names, here are some of their career highlights that you may have heard of. From left to right, they are:
Keithen Hayenga (the JoyPort, Computer Foosball, RealSports Football, and the unfinished Atari 5200 version of Tempest),
David Crane (an original founder of Activision, designer of Pitfall!, Ghostbusters, and A Boy and His Blob),
Steve Woita (the JoyPort, Taz, Asterisk, Sonic Spinball, Kid Chameleon, the Virtual Boy version of WaterWorld, and some level design in Sonic the Hedgehog 2),
Bob Smith (an original founder of Imagic, and designer of Dragonfire, Video Pinball, and Riddle of the Sphinx, who later worked on Barkley Shut Up and Jam and Army Men 3D), and
Bob Polaro (Defender, RealSports Volleyball, Bass Masters Classic, and the plug-and-play Spider-Man 2 joystick with a Spider-Man head on the top that you see in stores everywhere).
Here are a few of the more interesting and/or hilarious highlights from their discussion:
- Only two of the five (the two Bobs) had any experience making games before they worked at Atari. They said at the time there were "probably only 15 or so" people in the world with experience in game design, and that meant an instant job at Atari. The other three had to prove themselves.
- A friend of David Crane's brought him the Atari job ad and asked him to proofread it. After reading it, he realized he wanted that job, so he went home, wrote a resume on a word processor he'd recently programmed himself, turned in his resume at 10 am the next morning, and had the job at 2 pm.
- Keithen Hayenga and Steve Woita had both just worked on the JoyPort, a device that allowed you to hook up either two Atari joysticks or four paddles to the Apple II computer. Then they made the jump from Apple to Atari, where Hayenga made RealSports Baseball and Woita made Quadrun, the first home video game with voice without the need for a hardware attachment.
- In the beginning, nobody had to clock in or out at Atari. It was a small group of people who had to really trust each other, and they did, because they were all very passionate about playing games, making games, and making games better. In fact, anybody could play games at work all day and nobody else would care. Playing Super Breakout for three hours was considered research. They'd even have tournaments at work, and the best player at any particular arcade game would then make the 2600 port.
- While Bob Polaro was working on Defender, he was asked if he wanted to help work on the home version of Pac-Man. At the time he was working solo and wanted to finish what he started before switching projects, so he declined the offer. Now he's kicking himself 30 years later and saying "I almost worked on Pac-Man!"
- Back then it was much more of a Christmas-focused industry than it is today. Games had to be completed by September so they could be manufactured and distributed to retail in time for Christmas. Most games had six month development cycles. However, games based on movies were rushed with tighter deadlines even more than they are today, and usually had about six weeks of development instead of six months. So that's why 900,000 of the first million E.T. sales were returned as defective within a month.
- They did party a lot at Nolan Bushnell's house, but they were "planning parties." (Hmmm, likely story.) They'd meet in Bushnell's theater room, with its own ice cream soda fountain installed. They had a great time, but the drug culture has been overstated over the years. Crane said by the time he got to Atari, there definitely weren't any more "hot tub parties in the lobby."
- After Bushnell's departure, the new CEO of Atari had no knowledge of games and when somebody asked him if he had any experience managing creative people, he said he managed groups of towel designers. He was serious. As Atari kept growing, and getting new management with amazing towel design management experience, it started to fall apart. The mid-management didn't talk to the upper management, and the marketing department didn't talk to the engineers.
- One of the last things Crane worked on at Atari was a system that allowed each player to switch their difficulties. This was intended to allow dads to handicap themselves against their kids to give the lovable little scamps a chance, but a few weeks later they realized all the kids were getting the handicaps and still dominating their parents at all the new games.
- Contrary to popular belief, they actually saw the market crash coming. At the Consumer Electronics Show, each video game company signed a guest book to show that they were attending. At one show they noticed there were 30 new video game companies that weren't there six months earlier. They thought, "wow, none of these companies are going to make it," but didn't realize the coming crash would take down everybody else with it. These new companies would manufacture huge amounts of their games, go out of business, and try to sell their remaining cartridges for $3, $4, or $5. Since it was a Christmas-oriented industry at the time, parents would go to a store looking for that hot new $40 game for their kids, and buy 10 cheap games instead. Nobody was happy about this. The new companies had gone bankrupt while stealing all the sales from the older successful companies, the older successful companies couldn't compete with mountains of $3 games, and now there were disappointed kids all over the country right afer Christmas.
At the end of the panel, they were all asked what kinds of games they play today, and if they have any favorite games of all time, or favorite games that they'd worked on.
- David Crane plays poker these days, and his favorites are the Commodore 64 version of Transformers and the 2600 version of Grand Prix.
- Bob Polaro plays Scrabulous these days, and his favorites are Missile Command and Daytona.
- Keithen Hayenga plays casual games these days, and his favorites are Gravitar and Grand Theft Auto.
- Steve Woita plays "all games ever," and his favorite is Tempest.
- Bob Smith plays Majesty and Heroes of Might and Magic, and his favorite game is definitely Heroes of Might and Magic, which he's probably played for hundreds or thousands of hours.
So there you have it folks. I hope you learned some valuable history lessons here, and I hope you never forget that Grand Theft Auto is a casual game.
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