Definition
Atari is an American video game company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It is widely credited with launching the modern video game industry with the release of Pong in 1972, one of the first commercially successful arcade games. Atari followed up with the Atari 2600 (originally called the Atari Video Computer System) in 1977, which became the best-selling console of its era and established the home video game market. The company also produced iconic arcade games like Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, and Space Invaders (the latter licensed from Taito). Atari’s corporate history is a rollercoaster: the 1983 video game crash — triggered in part by the disastrous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game for the 2600 — nearly destroyed the industry and the company. Atari split, was sold, and changed hands multiple times over the decades. The brand name has survived through various corporate entities, and in recent years, Atari has attempted comebacks with retro consoles and new hardware.
Why It Matters
Atari is the internet’s favorite grandfather of gaming. Every modern video game — from Call of Duty to Minecraft — traces its lineage back to Atari’s Pong and the 2600. The internet retro gaming community treats Atari with a mixture of nostalgia and archaeology: YouTubers dig up buried cartridges (literally — thousands of E.T. cartridges were buried in a New Mexico landfill in 1983 and excavated in 2014), speedrunners compete in ancient arcade games, and collectors pay absurd prices for mint-condition 2600 cartridges. Atari also matters because it represents the original Silicon Valley myth: two guys in a garage creating an industry from nothing. Nolan Bushnell is a cult figure in tech history, and Atari’s corporate saga — the rise, the crash, the endless reinvention — is a template that hundreds of tech companies have followed since. The internet loves Atari because it is proof that even the most influential companies can fail, be forgotten, and then be rediscovered by a new generation that treats their obsolete technology as sacred artifacts. Atari made the games. The internet keeps them alive.
Example
“He found an Atari 2600 in his uncle’s attic. It was 2010. He plugged it in. The graphics were squares. The sound was beeps. He played Adventure. He found the hidden dot. He saw the name ‘Warren Robinett’ — the first video game Easter egg. He felt something. It was not nostalgia. He had never played Atari. It was awe. The awe of seeing where it all started. The squares were not primitive. They were origins. The beeps were not annoying. They were the first notes of a symphony. He kept the Atari. He still has it. It still works. That is the point. Atari still works.”
Related Terms
- Pong — The game that launched Atari and the video game industry
- Atari 2600 — The console that defined home gaming in the late 1970s and early 1980s
- Video Game Crash of 1983 — The industry collapse that Atari helped trigger
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — The infamous game whose failure became legend
- Nolan Bushnell — Atari’s co-founder and Silicon Valley pioneer