Atari Historical Society

Matthew Bacon takes a short history lesson

Thanks to the recent sale of Atari to Infogrames, the Atari brand name looks set to make a comeback. In fact, if the rumours currently circulating are true (and I'm not saying that they are), Infogrames allegedly intends to formally change its name to Atari. Now why would they do that? After all, what's in a name...

Although Atari can no longer be considered a household name like Nike, McDonalds or Coca Cola, it is still held in high regard by consumers and certainly more well known than the Infogrames brand. Unfortunately, the success of the Playstation, N64 and hype of the forthcoming X-BOX looks set to bury the early achievements of Atari firmly in the past... but not if the Atari Historical Society has anything to do with it ;-)

The Atari Historical Society was founded by Curt Vendel in 1997 with the support of former Atari employees and enthusiasts. Its aims are to track down and recover as much of the lost history of Atari as possible in order to preserve it for future generations. From looking at the site it is easy to see that Curt and his contributors have obviously spent a great deal of time and effort creating what is one of the best sources of Atari information in the world.

The site has an inviting retro feel and is organised in a clear and logical manner. The main sections, Coin Operated Video Games; Standalone Home Video Consoles; Video Computer Consoles and Atari Home Computer Range all sub-divide and include some wonderful technical data, documentation and images. For example, did you know that Atari actually designed a successor to its Jaguar console and that in the early 1980's Atari were designing portable modular computers!

The quality and originality of this site is to be applauded. If you want to learn more about the rise and fall of Atari or simply curious about how the billion dollar games industry began, check out www.atari-history.com today!

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MyAtari magazine - Review #2, June 2001