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Mr. Marty Goldberg

Atari Inc.: Business is Fun Paperback – January 1, 2012

by Curt Vendel (Author), Marty Goldberg (Author)

168 ratings

Book 1 of 1: Complete History of Atari

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Atari Inc. - Business is Fun, the book that goes behind the company that was synonymous with the popularization of 'video games.'

Nearly 8 years in the making, Atari Inc. - Business is Fun is comprised of thousands of researched documents, hundreds of interviews, and access to materials never before available.

An amazing 800 pages (including nearly 300 pages of rare, never before seen photos, memos and court documents), this book details Atari's genesis from an idea between an engineer and a visionary in 1969 to a nearly $2 billion dollar juggernaut, and ending with a $538 million death spiral during 1984. A testament to the people that worked at this beloved company, the book is full of their personal stories and insights. Learn about topics like:

* All the behind the scenes stories surrounding the creation of the company's now iconic games and products.

* The amazing story of Atari's very own "Xerox PARC" research facility up in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains

* The full recounting of Steve Jobs's time at Atari, with comments from the people he worked with on projects and the detailed story of the creation of Atari Breakout, including input by Steve Wozniak on his development of the prototype, and how it couldn't be used and another Atari engineer would have to make the final production Breakout arcade game instead.

* The creation of "Rick Rats Big Cheese Restaurants" which later became "Chuck E. Cheese's"

* How Atari Inc. faltered and took down an entire industry with it before being put on the chopping block.

If you've ever wanted to learn about the truth behind the creation of this iconic company told directly by the people who made FUN for a living, then this is the book for you!

Print length

800 pages
Language

English
Publication date

January 1, 2012
Dimensions

6.69 x 1.81 x 9.61 inches
ISBN-10

0985597402
ISBN-13

978-0985597405
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Martin Goldberg - A writer and programmer in the video game industry, Goldberg has had a lifelong fascination with all things electronic entertainment since first playing PONG and Tank as a child at his local arcadesin the 70's. As the former site director of IGN/GameSpy's 'ClassicGaming.Com' and a current freelancer for Retro Gamer magazine, Goldberg has been writing about video games for 13 years. Along with Dan Loosen and Gary Heil, Goldberg is also a co-founder of the Midwest Gaming Classic, one of the largest electronic entertainment expos in the United States open to the general public. In 2004, Goldberg also founded the Electronic Entertainment Museum (E2M), a non-profit archive whose mission is to help preserve the history and artifacts of the video game and home computer industries. In line with this goal, he's also a member of the International Game Development Association's (IGDA) Game Preservation SIG, a hub and community for those interested in digital game preservation and history. Curt Vendel - A former IT Systems Engineer, Vendel is also a self-taught Electrical Engineer with a Bachelor's in Computer Science. In the 1980's, Vendel had begun collecting Atari products, engineering logs, schematics, drawings, and technical materials from former Atari employees - even making trips to Atari's buildings in California to salvage Atari's valuable history from its dumpsters. Founding the Atari History Museum in 1998, the Atari History Museum archives have amassed over 15,000 files, folders and documents, two archival rooms of schematics, mechanical drawings, artwork and PC board films. Vendel is frequently tapped as a valued resource for Atari insight and archival information by Atari, SA., Atari Interactive, numerous research institutions, trade publications and entertainment magazines, television networks and movie studios.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Syzygy Press (January 1, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 800 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0985597402
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0985597405
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.76 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.69 x 1.81 x 9.61 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,496,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,158 in Company Business Profiles (Books)
- #2,906 in Video & Computer Games
- #53,457 in United States History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
168 ratings

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Mr. Marty Goldberg

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A writer and programmer in the video game industry, Goldberg has had a lifelong fascination with all things electronic entertainment since first playing PONG and Tank as a child at his local arcades in the 70s. As the former site director of IGN/GameSpy's 'ClassicGaming.Com' and a current freelancer for Retro Gamer magazine, Goldberg has been writing about video games for 13 years. Along with Dan Loosen and Gary Heil, Goldberg is also a co-founder of the Midwest Gaming Classic, one of the largest electronic entertainment expos in the United States open to the general public. In 2004, Goldberg also founded the Electronic Entertainment Museum (E2M), a non-profit archive whose mission is to help preserve the history and artifacts of the video game and home computer industries. In line with this goal, he's also a member of the International Game Development Association's (IGDA) Game Preservation SIG, a hub and community for those interested in digital game preservation and history.

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3 star		7%
2 star		4%
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Very detailed, highly flawed look at the early years of Atari.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 28, 2018

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Atari: Business is Fun is a book that's difficult to rate in some ways. Do you care only about the high level of detail and tremendous research compiled by the authors? Or do you take note of the haphazard construction, the unbelievably terrible spelling and grammar mistakes and areas given short shrift?

Well, at the end of the day, I'm going to split the difference.

The general material in this book is first-rate. There's a ton of detail here on Atari, the 2600 (in particular), and various other products, including numerous unreleased prototypes or products that have long been forgotten. This material is backed by tons of interviews with the key players in the Atari story as well as a treasure trove of photos, internal documents, advertisements, and so on.

However, one would be remiss to not make serious mention of the writing itself. The book reads as if it were never proofread at all. The constant misuse of the word "it's" is highly irritating. It's literally misused at least 500 times throughout the book. Seriously. In addition that, the book switches from past tense to present tense seemingly at random. It would be tough to overstate just how sloppy the writing is for a book of this size and magnitude. It really is THAT stunningly bad.

In addition, the structure of the book leaves much to be desired. What starts out as a solid chronological retelling of the Atari story devolves into a disjointed mess that leaps around the timeline from product to product with little cohesion. The end result seriously detracts from the book.

Finally, while there's some 200-300 pages of photos and documents in the book, the quality of those photos is very, very poor. They are, without fail, really grainy and black and white. It's tough to imagine that the authors, who have possession of the vast majority of the originals reproduced in the book, couldn't have come up with SOMETHING better for reproducing these items. A $50 scanner would have done better a better job.

One more thing: to be clear, this book does not cover the entire history of Atari. It covers the formation up to the sale to Jack Tramiel. Wanna know about the performance of the 7800 in the market? The release of the 520ST? The death and rebirth in later years? None of that is covered. This book is the first in what was planned to be a trilogy. Unfortunately, the authors have stopped work on the remaining books and it looks like this one is all we'll ever get from them.

Bottom line:Very detailed, highly flawed look at the early years of Atari.

10 people found this helpful

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Charles H. Park, Jr.

Well Chronicled, but Riddled with Errors

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 26, 2021

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I would have loved to give this book 5 stars. I have been eager to read it since it was first published. It was informative and quite interesting, but the tome suffers from a serious lack of proofreading. Like most of the modern books and magazines being self-published in the retro community these days (The Art of Atari being an exception), this reads more like a rough draft than a final version.

The authors love to misuse apostrophes for pluralization, and the editor seems to be okay with it. The error occurs frequently throughout the book. There are other grammatical errors and plenty of examples
of poor or confusing sentence structure. The authors would also have benefited from the use of a thesaurus to avoid word repetition within sentences.

I'm sorry, but for what I paid for the book I expected a certain level of professionalism to the writing.

Hopefully a second edition will be published one day that corrects these issues.

If you don't bat an eye over "player's" being used when "players" is correct then this book should provide you with a thoroughly entertaining chronicle of the rise and fall of Atari.

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Keith Smith

The Definitive History of Atari

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 30, 2012

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There was a time when Atari was more well-known than Nintendo and Nolan Bushnell was almost as well-known as Steve Jobs. For many who grew up in the video game "golden age" of the 1970s and 1980s, Atari is still the quintessential video game company. Over the years, much has been written about the history of Atari. Unfortunately, much of it is wrong and a much more has gone untold. Until now. Atari, Inc. Business is Fun the first volume in what will be the definitive history of this legendary company. The authors have spent the better part of a decade researching, interviewing, digging, and uncovering a trove of information about Atari, much of it previously unknown except to those who lived it.

The first of three volumes, this one covers Atari from its beginnings up to the Tramiel buyout in 1984.
There are dozens and dozens of fascinating stories scattered amongst its 800(!!) pages, including the real stories of the first mass-produced arcade video game and Atari's beginnings, the story of the 2600, 5200, and 7800, Atari's arcade hits, Atari's little-known skunkworks. The truth about the New Mexico graveyard of VCS cartridges (just one of many sacred cows that are slain here) and much, much more.
If you love pictures, you're in for a real treat. There are probably about 300 pages of them including company picnics, internal documents, artwork, rare prototypes, secret agreements and more.

The negatives? There are a few. The photos are all black-and-white (I believe a more expensive color version will be released later). There's no index. And there are some stylistic issues (the biggest for me being authors' choice to relate certain key incidents in the presnt tense to create a "you are there" feeling. Some may find the use of present tense and the shifting to past tense distracting [I did]). There are some typos (though on first reading, there seemed to be surprisingly few for the first edition of a self-published book). There are also a number of sentences that I found clunky.

For me, however, the many postivies outweigh the negatives and I was willing to overlook the stylistic issues. Those with a less rabid interest in classic gaming, however, may not be.
If you have any interest in classic video games, you will find much to love here and if you are a fan of Atari, this is an absolute must-have.

17 people found this helpful

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The Tennis Boy

Thorough and fascinating. Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 28, 2020

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Having watched Easy to Learn, Hard to Master I was fascinated to learn more about Atari. This literally has everything I wanted to know in it. Incredible detail to the point that I don't know how they got it all. Fantastic. Really enjoying reading it. Thank you

Darren Doyle

A book that ultimately delivers but not without flaws

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 25, 2019

Verified Purchase

A tome of a book that ultimately delivers, but not without its flaws which a great many people have already covered here, so no need to draw that up a second time. But it looks like volume two may ever be released and if it does the majority of that history will or is readily available on the internet for free.

But this book was a great undertaking and has some incredible content a majorly many would never had seen and worth it for that alone. The only missed opportunity here was monochrome printing. A book like this should have been in full colour as much as the Atari ethos was.

CraftyPearly

Great item for those that understand the theme

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2016

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I thought it was pricey but it's a gift that was asked for so I went with it.

S DAVIES

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

Fascinating read, well worth the money!

One person found this helpful

Francy C.

Atari Inc: reading is fun!

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on January 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

Se si conoscono nostalgici cresciuti a pane e anni '80 o che vogliono studiare fino all'ultimo dettaglio cosa c'è dietro l'avventura di un'azienda che ha segnato la storia del videogioco fin dalle sue origini questo libro è uno dei regali più da fare...o da farsi!

Quasi ottocento pagine ricche di dettagli e frutto di un lungo e paziente lavoro di ricerca degli autori, corredato da foto e interviste ai tantissimi che hanno segnato la storia e l'ascesa dell'Atari.

Unico difetto? Tutte le foto in bianco e nero. Ma davvero per meno di venti euro ci si vuole lamentare di questo?

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