Oh yeah, another Atari story that I thought of. Tunnel Hunt!
In 1979 Owen Rubin saw Alien and thought that the computer graphics landing sequence would make a fun game. He took a new color vector system, plugged in some code from a driving game, and ended up with a prototype.
The design didn't really work as a vector game, though. Another Atari designer, though, had come up with some TTL graphics hardware that could draw raster ellipses really fast. Over the next 9 months, they retooled it to become Tube Chase.
The idea was flying through tunnels that could turn and split, shooting at or avoiding enemies, sort like the Death Star trench. The cabinet was very elaborate, with surround sound and a big flight stick.
It did well in field test, but not well enough for management. It was #2.
Quick story time! It's 1973 and it's been a year since the blockbuster release of Pong, the game that kicked off an entire industry of coin-op video games. (Yes, yes, Computer Space, work with me here.)
Pong, like all games at the time, was implemented in TTL circuitry with off-the-shelf parts. That meant it was trivial for other companies to make their own versions of Pong. You can build your own clone out of 74xx logic, even.
Furthermore, there was another problem - distribution. Atari could sell games to bars and convenience stores sure, but the coin-op industry as a whole worked on the distributor system. Distributors signed exclusivity deals with manufacturers and placed games in their locations.
The hottest new computers on the market are Atari's 520ST and the Amiga from Commodore. What can they do and which one may be right for you? We'll help you find out today.
These computers, the Atari 800 and the Commodore 64, represented the battle between the low end of the market about a year ago. Now there's a new generation of home machines, but what will people do with them? Can they get people's attention back?
Second-generation machines need better capabilities all around, but it's up to software developers to make them useful for home users!