Atari Corporation

» see atari.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

by the time i would have signed up for an atari, the company was already in the jts merger paperwork. the jaguar shipped in north america in november 1993 and reached turkey in tiny quantities through gray-market importers in istanbul. nobody i knew owned one. the atari st was more visible in europe through the late 80s and early 90s, but in turkey the home-computer market in those years was an ibm-compatible market on dos, with the occasional amiga 500 in a friend's older brother's bedroom. atari corporation was the breakaway company that jack tramiel built after he lost commodore, and i missed both ends of it.

tramiel walked out of commodore on january 13 1984 after a board fight with irving gould, and incorporated a new company called tramel technology on may 17 of that year. warner communications had been trying to unload the atari consumer division since the 1983 video-game crash had wiped its books. on july 2 1984 warner sold the consumer business to tramiel for about 240 million dollars in long-term notes, with no cash up front. tramiel renamed the new company atari corporation and put his three sons in senior positions.

the atari st shipped in june 1985 with a 68000 cpu, color graphics, and a midi port that turned it into the default cheap music-production computer in european recording studios for the next decade. tangerine dream and fatboy slim and a-ha all ran cubase on atari sts. the line sold about five million units, mostly in west germany and the uk and france. it never sold meaningfully in north america, where the commodore amiga and the ibm pc compatible owned the home market.

the lynx in 1989 was a color handheld that arrived two years too late against the game boy, with eat-batteries-by-the-pack power consumption. the jaguar in 1993 was marketed as the first 64-bit console, on a chip arrangement that depended on multiple processors that almost nobody outside the hardware team understood how to program. it shipped about 250,000 units before atari stopped manufacturing in 1996. the jts merger followed on july 30 of that year. tramiel's son sam ran the combined company for a few months before resigning. hasbro interactive bought the atari ip in 1998 for five million dollars, and the brand has lived under various owners since.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the st years ~

the atari st was the closest tramiel got to recreating the commodore 64 commercial model at his new company. cheap hardware, a built-in operating system that was good enough, and a price below the equivalent macintosh. the gem desktop ran on top of tos and looked enough like a mac that apple sued digital research over it. the midi port on the back was what made the st the choice for working musicians in europe through the late 80s. cubase on a 1040st ran every studio session that needed sequencing without a 12 thousand dollar synclavier. that audience kept atari alive in europe for years after the company had given up on north america.

~ the jaguar years ~

the jaguar was the bet that ended the company. five processors on a custom architecture, marketed as a 64-bit console at a time when the sega genesis was still selling 16-bit cartridges. the controller had seventeen buttons on it. tempest 2000 was the one game that justified buying the hardware. alien vs predator was the second. atari paid out about 25 million dollars in publisher signing bonuses to get a launch lineup, and most of the games shipped in unfinished states. the cd add-on in 1995 added about 150 dollars of cost and another two-disc launch lineup that did not move hardware. by the time the playstation arrived in north america in september 1995, the jaguar was already in clearance pricing.

~ the long tail ~

the brand survived the company. hasbro interactive ran the atari name through a string of compilation releases in the late 90s. infogrames of france bought hasbro interactive in 2001 and renamed itself atari over the following years, taking on the logo and the corporate identity even though it had no legal continuity with tramiel's company. that atari is still trading on euronext paris in 2026, shipping nostalgia hardware called the atari vcs and licensed pong t-shirts. it is not the same company. the corporate entity that built the st and the jaguar was finished on july 30 1996, when sam tramiel signed the jts paperwork.

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