Antic The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Cathryn Mataga: Shamus, Zeppelin, Mindwheel   Cathryn Mataga wrote several games that were published by Synapse software: Shamus, Shamus Case II, and Zeppelin, then three electronic novels: Brimstone, Essex, and Mindwheel.   In this interview we discuss Ihor Wolosenko, whom I previously interviewed for this podcast.   This interview took place on May 17, 2015.   Teaser quotes:   “These games were pretty hard. It was quite a bit of work, actually, to make a game by yourself. And it was all assembly language. And I was doing all the art and all the stuff. They were pretty involved projects for me, personally.”   “There was a tragic bug in the music driver in all of the Synapse 8-bit titles ... When they went to the new Atari XLs, when they upgraded the operating system, all these games crashed. And they all came back.”   Link: Software at AtariMania

David Burling, Atari in-house counsel   I like interviewing the lawyers, they always know what’s really going on. David Burling was in-house counsel for Atari from 1980 through 1984. His job included distribution contracts, licensing, and manufacturing. He supervised the customs department, intellectual property, and international business transactions. His stint included being general council of the international division, and council for the AtariTel telecommunications products.   This interview took place on May 22, 2015.   Teaser quote:   “Try and dress like I was in the coin-op industry. I wore sort of an open-throated shirt with two buttons undone at the top and an old, wide lapel jacket and jeans, trying to look sort of hip slick, and cool ... and went down to Los Angeles. They sent me to a major coin-operated games retail ... outlet to see if I could buy one of the Asteroids copies that was coming from Japan.”

Marty Payson, Warner, Office of the President   Hi, everyone, and welcome to another in the long-standing series of interviews being published for Antic, the Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast.  I’m Randy Kindig and this interview is a follow-up to the recent interview that we published with Manny Gerard of Warner Communications, the company that bought Atari in 1976.  This time the interview is with Marty Payson, also of Warner Communications.  Marty began with Warner in 1970, became executive vice president and general counsel in 1982, and in 1987 became a member of the Office of the President for Warner.  He was with Warner during the Atari days, up to 1984 when it was sold to the Tramiels, and was still involved with Atari for some time after that, as you will hear.  Marty was not as intimately involved with Atari as was Manny Gerard, but nonetheless I hope you find his perspective from the Warner side interesting.   This interview was conducted on August 17, 2015.   Teaser Quotes   “The problem with it was

John Constantine, General Accounting Manager   John Constantine was General Accounting Manager in Atari's Consumer Division from 1978-1981, then became Executive Director until he left the company in 1984.   This interview took place May 14, 2015.   Teaser quote:   "One of your clerks sent a package Federal Express — across the street — in the headquarters in Sunnyvale"

Manny Gerard, The Man Who Fired Nolan   For this interview, we’re getting a different perspective of the Atari/Warner relationship, this time from the Warner side.  (Emanual) Manny Gerard was a member of the Office of the President for Warner during the Atari days from 1976, when they acquired Atari, to 1984 when it was sold to the Tramiels.  He in fact was the key person in the decision for Warner to acquire Atari.  As you will hear in the interview, he was also the man who ousted Nolan Bushnell from Atari.  We get Manny’s perspective on Atari from Warner’s view, on the decision to bring out the computer line, and much more.  I think you’ll appreciate Manny’s honesty and his sense of humor.   This interview took place on August 9, 2015.   Teaser Quotes   “I can remember saying this to Nolan, over and over again: You cannot run the company by divine right of kings, Nolan”   It feels to me like the computer’s problem at Atari was that it was; it lived in the shadow of the game systems, because they were s

Tandy Trower, Atari product manager   Tandy Trower started at Atari evaluating software titles, then moved on to the position of product manager, managing new titles including Missile Command, Asteroids, and the port of Microsoft BASIC for the Atari. Then, he left Atari for Microsoft, where — once again, he managed Microsoft BASIC for the Atari. Tandy also wrote the Character Set Editor program which was sold by Atari Program Exchange.   This interview took place May 13, 2015.   Teaser quotes:   “The Atari executives were so impressed with Bill [Gates] at the time that they flew up in their corporate jet to Seattle and offered to try to acquire Microsoft. But Bill and Paul [Allen] were not interested in selling at all at that time.”   “If you had a title, you had to make sure there was an engineer who was available and interested in doing it. So if you couldn’t talk an engineer into writing it — unless you were going to write it yourself. Except for me, there were very few people in the marketing departm

Tim McGuinness, Atari Senior Research Engineer and Founder of ROMOX   Tim McGuinness was a Hardware Design Engineer in Atari’s Personal Computer Division in 1980 and 1981, then moved to become Senior Research Engineer/Assistant Director of Corporate Research Engineering through 1982. Tim was co-developer of 400, 800, and 1200XL computers and peripherals. He was also the initial architect and designer of the first version of the Amiga computer. He left Atari in 1982 to co-found Romox, a software publisher that had a unique software distribution system where you could load new software onto cartridges using an in-store kiosk.   This interview took place on May 23, 2015.   Teaser quotes: “Personal computer division was a toxic environment ... I had a taken a prototype that we had been working on over to the research division, because I was going to show Alan Kay. And I come back with the unit and I’m being threatened with arrest.”   “Michael Jackson spent a couple of days at our facility in Campbell to help

Steve Davis, Director of Advanced Research   Steve Davis worked in Atari’s advanced research lab under Alan Kay, for 5 or 6 years, where he worked on several skunkworks projects including a laserdisc player controlled by an Atari 800, an Atari 800-based local area network, and artificial intelligence projects.   This interview occurred May 11, 2015.   Teaser quote:   “I winded around the building, there was nobody there. ... I opened up this one door and there was, like, hundreds of people partying. With party hats on. I called the guy in New York and said ‘This doesn’t look good.’”

This is an interview episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast.  I’m Randy Kindig and in this interview I sat down with one of the members of the core design team at Cyan Engineering for such projects as the Atari 2600 and the 8-bit computers, Mr. Ron Milner. Ron is currently President of Applied Design Laboratories, but from 1973-1984, as an employee of Atari Inc, he worked at the Grass Valley Think Tank (also known as Cyan Engineering) where they did some amazing stuff, as you’ll hear in this interview.  Ron was involved in many pivotal technologies in video games and home computers and was co-inventor of the Atari 2600 video game system.   This interview took place on May 16, 2015.   Teaser Quotes   “Our group worked on just a lot of other projects relating to the home computer line.”   “You know, it didn’t have to work, but if it looked like it might we looked into it.”   “This is Ron Milner and I was one of the early Atari engineers at Atari’s secret think tank in the mountains pioneering many of th

Joe Villalobos, Materials Planner for Atari   Boxes! Your Atari computers and game cartridges came in boxes! Someone was responsible for producing those boxes. Joe was the guy.   Joe Villalobos was materials planner at Atari in El Paso, Texas from 1980 – 1982. He was responsible for the planning and expediting of materials used in the production of video game cartridges.   This interview took place on May 6, 2015.

Ed Rotberg, Rotberg Synthesizer   Ed Rotberg worked programmer in Atari’s coin-op division, where he worked on Atari Baseball, Battlezone, Blasteroids, Hard Drivin’, and other coin-op games. He consulted for the Atari consumer side, where he created demos for the Atari 800 — including working on the music for the in-store demo — and the Rotberg Synthesizer music software.   Check the show notes atAtariPodcast.com for downloads of the Rotberg Synthesizer and Rotberg Scrolling Marquee software (which I acquired and uploaded toarchive.org after this interview took place.)   This interview took place April 28, 2015.   Teaser quote:   “My good friend Dan Pliskin wrote a tune called Disco Dirge that we programmed into the earliest version of the Rotberg Synthesizer to play at the bachelor party, as kind of a joke. Because Chris who was getting married was a disco fan, he was a disco buff and we all *hated* disco.”   Links:   Rotberg’s sound article in Antic magazine   Article at archive.org   Version of the

On this episode of ANTIC the atari 8-bit podcast: Randy delves into Altirra BASIC, there’s another podcast to dilute our listenership, Kevin reports back from KansasFest, and there’s lots of new Atari stuff to download at Archive.org.   Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kevins Book “Terrible Nerd” New Atari books scans at archive.org ANTIC feedback at AtariAge   What we’ve been up to Retrobright "Microcomputer Primer" by Mitchell Waite KansasFest - Retro Computing Roundtable episode KansasFest - Wade talked about it in episode S1EB2 of Inverse ATASCII Podcast KansasFest - Rob talked about it in episode 15 of Player/Missile Podcast Atari Summer Camp Episode   Interview Discussion Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge Atari 5200 Trak-ball Controller   News Atari founder Nolan Bushnell on why life is 'a game' U- BASIC New Game "Jim Slide" ABBUC Software Contest Info about some of the ABBUC games More detailed info about some of the ABBUC games Retrochal

Hello, and welcome to a very special interview-only episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast.  I am Randy Kindig, one of your hosts for this podcast.  I say “special” because it’s not often that you get a chance to talk with an icon like the one we talk with today.  Kevin Savetz and myself were given the chance to sit down, so to speak, with “Mr. Atari” Nolan Bushnell and spend a few minutes shooting the breeze.  If you need any more introduction for this guest, then you’re probably listening to the wrong podcast.  In fact, he’s one of those guys that can go by a single name “Nolan” and everyone in the Atari community knows who you’re talking about.   Before we get to the interview, I want to thank the Atari community on the AtariAge forums for suggesting questions for Nolan.  When we put out a request for questions, who knew we would get such a large and varied response.  Regrettably, we only had time for some of them.  Many of you will recognize the questions that you submitted and we are very grateful fo

Jon Freeman   Jon Freeman was co-founder of the computer game publisher Automated Simulations, which became EPYX. At Automated Simulations, he co-created Starfleet Orion and Gateway to Apshai. Then he and his wife Anne Westfall started the game development company FreeFall Associates, where they created Tax Dodge, Archon, Archon II, and Murder on the Zinderneuf.   This interview took place April 21, 2015.   Teaser quotes:   “That six months, I read two books in six months, and we went to one movie. The rest of the time we we just working on the game. That’s all we did. It was very, you know, intense.”   “You know, I could just basically flip that switch every VBI and have the computer play itself. That turned out to be one of the absolutely huge selling points of [Archon]. Stores could put it in the window, get it started, and let it run.”   Links:   Free Fall Games web site   Free Fall Associates chapter in Halcyon Days   Tax Dodge   1984 article about Free Fall

ANTIC Special Episode - Atari Summer Camp   Let's go to Atari Summer Camp! A special episode.   Links   Today Show clip   The Magic Room Movie   The Magic Room Trailer   ANTIC magazine article   Atari Connection article   Bob Kahn's Atari Special Projects page   Atari Computer Camps curriculum, software, and ephemera

Lloyd Speyer, Batteries Included Lloyd Speyer worked for Batteries Included from 1983 to 1987, where he worked with Commodore PETs, 64, Apple ][, Macintosh, as well as the Atari 800. He built hardware dongles, demonstrated products in the retail store, and worked in quality assurance, where he beta tested PaperClip and HomePak. This interview was conducted April 27, 2015. Teaser quote: “The Atari version and the Commodore 64 version [of PaperClip] were completely different, even though we said ‘These are the commands we want. This is what we need.’ Steve [Ahlstrom] and Dan [Mppre] decided that they wanted to take the product in a different direction because the Atari could do a little bit more. . . It actually came out to be a really, really nice product.”

Thomas Renbarger, Dorsett Educational SystemsThomas Renbarger worked at Dorsett Educational Systems from 1978 through 1980, where he converted audio and filmstrip based educational programs to computer graphics and text for the TRS-80 and Atari 400 and 800 computers.This interview took place April 21, 2015.Teaser quote:“Smart, nerdy people might be interested in something just because it says it’s educational, but most of the programs and stuff that was written was pretty — not totally remedial — but it was pretty introductory educational stuff.”

Ted Richards, Atari Connection Magazine   Ted Richards was Editor In Chief of Atari Connection magazine, Atari’s in-house computer magazine; and was Marketing Communications Manager for Atari Home Computers, where he worked on print and package design, from 1981 to 1984.   This interview took place on April 19, 2015.   Links:   Atari Connection Magazine scans   40 Year Old Hippie Brings The Computer Age Home   Ted Richards’ web site   Teaser Quotes:   “Antic was a competing magazine, so to speak, at the time. I forget the editor’s name, he was quite a guy. . . [Jim] Capparell. He was always meeting with Atari executives, trying to persuade them to shut down our magazine.” “So when the Tramiels came in, they confronted him and they asked him ‘Who are you?’ And Arnold says ‘Who are you?!’ And they said ‘Him we like. He stays.’”

Peter Liepa, Boulder Dash   Peter Liepa was co-creator and programmer of Boulder Dash and Boulder Dash 2 for the Atari computers. Boulder Dash was published by First Star Software in 1984 and is regarded as a seminal game for the Atari 8-bit machines.   This interview took place on June 16, 2015   Teaser quotes: “I sat there playing these games and the idea of ‘I can do this’ or ‘I can build one of these’ welled up in my head.”   “All of the pleasure of this project was in developing the game. I got very little pleasure out of the business aspect of it.”   LINKS Peter's web site 2005 interview with Peter 2011 interview with Peter 10-line BASIC Boulderdash clone

Steve Mayer, Atari 400/800 Designer   Hello and welcome to an interview-only episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast. Today I’m honored to be interviewing someone who was involved in the original design of the Atari 400 & 800 computers, Mr. Steve Mayer.  Steve worked with Joe Decuir (whom I interviewed in an earlier episode), Jay Miner, and others on the Candy & Colleen project and that’s our main focus for this interview.  However, Steve also was involved in much more, including involvement in the creation of Cyan Engineering, later known as the Grass Valley Think Tank and was involved in the creation and design of the 2600.   This was recorded on April 18, 2015.