Atari is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972.
| FactSnippet No. 417,317 |
32 Facts About Atari
2.
The original Atari, founded in Sunnyvale, California, in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles and home computers.
| FactSnippet No. 417,318 |
3.
In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS, creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive.
| FactSnippet No. 417,319 |
4.
Atari logo was designed by George Opperman, who was Atari's first in-house graphic designer and drawn by Evelyn Seto.
| FactSnippet No. 417,320 |
6.
In 1973, Atari secretly spawned a competitor called Kee Games, headed by Nolan's next-door neighbor Joe Keenan, to circumvent pinball distributors' insistence on exclusive distribution deals; both Atari and Kee could market nearly the same game to different distributors, each getting an "exclusive" deal.
| FactSnippet No. 417,322 |
7.
From this platform Atari released their next-generation game console in 1982, the Atari 5200.
| FactSnippet No. 417,323 |
8.
The ported version of Pac-Man for Atari 2600 omitted many of the visual features of the original to compensate for the lack of ROM space and the hardware struggled when multiple ghosts appeared on the screen creating a flickering effect.
| FactSnippet No. 417,324 |
9.
At its peak, Atari accounted for a third of Warner's annual income and was the fastest-growing company in US history at the time.
| FactSnippet No. 417,325 |
10.
Atari began a massive restructuring of the company and worked with Warner Communications in May 1984 to create "NATCO".
| FactSnippet No. 417,326 |
11.
Unknown to James Morgan and the senior management of Atari, Warner had been in talks with Tramel Technology to buy Atari's consumer electronics and home computer divisions.
| FactSnippet No. 417,327 |
12.
Atari continued to experiment with parallel computing aiming at B2B customers and graphic designers, but the transputer line failed to achieve commercial success.
| FactSnippet No. 417,328 |
13.
In 1989, Atari released the Atari Lynx, a handheld console with color graphics, to much fanfare.
| FactSnippet No. 417,329 |
14.
Atari eventually lost the case when it was rejected by a US district court in 1992.
| FactSnippet No. 417,330 |
15.
In 1991, Atari released its PCs ABC386SXII and ABC386DXII based on Intel's i386 chip.
| FactSnippet No. 417,331 |
16.
In 1993, Atari positioned its Jaguar as the only 64-bit interactive media entertainment system available, but it sold poorly.
| FactSnippet No. 417,332 |
17.
In July 1996, Atari merged with JTS Inc, a short-lived maker of hard disk drives, to form JTS Corp.
| FactSnippet No. 417,333 |
18.
Atari Games continued to manufacture arcade games and units, and starting in 1988, sold cartridges for the Nintendo Entertainment System under the Tengen brand name, including a version of Tetris.
| FactSnippet No. 417,334 |
19.
The suit finally reached a settlement in 1994, with Atari Games paying Nintendo cash damages and use of several patent licenses.
| FactSnippet No. 417,335 |
20.
On May 7, 2003, Infogrames had its majority-owned, but discrete US subsidiary Infogrames NA officially renamed Atari, Inc, renamed its European operations to Atari Europe but kept the original name of the main company Infogrames Entertainment.
| FactSnippet No. 417,336 |
22.
On December 9, 2008, Atari announced that it had acquired Cryptic Studios, a MMORPG developer.
| FactSnippet No. 417,338 |
23.
Atari had significant financial issues for several years prior, with losses in the tens of millions since 2005.
| FactSnippet No. 417,339 |
24.
On June 22, 2014, Atari announced a new corporate strategy that would include a focus on "new audiences", specifically "LGBT, social casinos, real-money gambling, and YouTube".
| FactSnippet No. 417,340 |
25.
On September 26, 2017, Atari sent out a press release about the new "Atari VCS", which confirmed more details about the console.
| FactSnippet No. 417,341 |
26.
On January 27, 2020, Atari announced a deal with GSD Group to build Atari Hotels, with the first breaking ground in Phoenix in mid-2020.
| FactSnippet No. 417,342 |
27.
On December 16, 2020, Atari shipped the first units of the Atari VCS exclusive to backers of the systems crowdfunding campaign.
| FactSnippet No. 417,343 |
28.
Atari urged the backers to give feedback on the system so that the company could make changes to improve the product on its official launch.
| FactSnippet No. 417,344 |
29.
In 2020, Atari launched its decentralized cryptocurrency Atari Token in equal partnership with the ICICB Group.
| FactSnippet No. 417,345 |
30.
Group partnering with Atari opened a new company in Gibraltar called Atari Chain LTD.
| FactSnippet No. 417,346 |
31.
In March 2021, Atari extended its partnership with ICICB Group for the development of Atari branded hotels, and the first hotels will be constructed at selected locations outside the United States, with Dubai, Gibraltar and Spain.
| FactSnippet No. 417,347 |
32.
On 18 April 2022, Atari announced the termination of all license agreements with ICICB Group and its subsidiaries.
| FactSnippet No. 417,348 |