Writingbolt's Creation

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Going bankrupt isn’t bad!…at least, not all of the time. Sometimes, it’s good people who are up to no good run out of funds and have to face some kind of punishment. Even if you’re a rich man who makes a business out of one type of car before getting arrested for drug smuggling, a slap on the wrist is better than no punishment, at all.

But, look at the guy who started Atari (Nolan Bushnell) and then went on to start…Chuck E. Cheese restaurants?

Atari went bust supposedly by licensing its technology to an open marketplace which allowed all sorts of game makers to craft cartridges you could play on systems like your Atari 2600, the home-entertainment gem of my youth. The design of an Atari 2600 game cartridge is as iconic and pleasing as the old audio cassette tape made famous in the 1980s. It’s appearance has pleasure. You can enjoy an Atari game without even playing it! Compare that with all of the games that came after the NES…or maybe the SNES, the last shred of creative cartridge design. With the exception of maybe rare gems like the original Legend of Zelda, which came as a golden cartridge and with an AMAZING game manual, a foreign concept to today’s generation, there were few 1990s games that had that 1980s appeal.

In a way, Atari made gaming feel like a boombox and a mixed tape you make for your best friend or lover. The 1980s introduced a way for people to craft a symphony from their own home and put it in a valentine. Atari gave dreamers of coding a chance to create games they could play on systems other people invented.

Strangely, it is said Nintendo and Sega learned from this mistake by making very exclusive game systems that, for the past few decades, have made players chase down alternate versions, alternate disks, game cards, etc., to play the same game on different systems. Well, as far as I recall, Atari has the same gimmick. They had a few different systems which accepted games only for those systems; though the games came in packaging that was easily confused for another system’s games (to the blind eye of a shopper buying a game for some friend of your child).

“What do you mean it doesn’t work on his game system? I got the right game. There’s a 3600 and a 2600?”

Shopping constantly for games that work on newly released systems is a futile and frustrating endeavor. It’s taxing in so many ways. And, the games, like I just said, don’t have the same tactile appeal. Oh, sure, you’ve improved graphics so the home game is closer to the arcade than it was when arcades were still a great place to spend an afternoon or evening! [Congrats. It only took you 30 years to kill the arcades the way video killed the radio stars.]

But, go back to that Atari story. The guy who starts the Atari boom and creates a memorable game design system open to countless game designers (including some questionable adult games that are like the Lost Ark Indiana Jones seeks in his movie debut) goes bust and starts an equally memorable restaurant franchise. Talk about a life path paved in gold; maybe not the most lucrative financial plan but a very iconic and memorable one.

Imagine designing your own game for a system like the Nintendo Switch instead of shopping online for a “digital copy” of something you’ll never hold, never have a physical manual to read and draw from when you want to turn a Moblin or Octorok into a poster (and you don’t have a means of grabbing an image from the internet which will need to be printed on decent paper if you don’t want to burn up your electronic device). Now, a Nintendo Switch game, even in its physical form, is like a Tic Tac compared to a waffle. I can find tactile pleasure in a waffle. A Tic Tac is a novel little flavored peg…but it has little tactile and memorable pleasure. I’d say it’s as pleasing as so many kinds of gum that lose their flavor too soon. But, imagine being given the liberty to make a game and play it on the Switch. It may slowly deplete the profits of the system’s makers…but it vastly improves the popularity and joy of the system, itself. Don’t you agree?

So, my point is not making a huge profit and even going bust isn’t all bad. It can come with a very pleasing, enduring side effect.

I’d like to extend my gratitude in this virtual space and hope it reaches those who care and matter. You, makers of the Atari age of home and arcade gaming, the vital force of my youth, are in your own special way responsible for my existence. I am, in part, as creative as I am because of your primitive yet aesthetically pleasing efforts. You are a timeless inspiration to creating something that is potentially insubstantial, lacking in profits, in an ever-changing marketplace; yet that same creation retains inexplicable value to the eyes, touch and soul. I may never look at another game the same after being a part of your creation. Thank you. And, I hope your bankruptcy still bears good fruit for you, as well. [I’m sure it does.]

I’m sorry my family and few friends didn’t have more money to afford me more games before you (Atari) were gone…well, no longer the 2600 company I came to admire. I’m sorry I had to sell my own $200 investment in your genius for a mere $50 at a rummage sale, sold to a kid whose mom was buying him a waterbed the same day. My collection was in mint condition, unlike so many I found at other rummage sales, which usually had filthy games with damaged labels and no boxes or manuals. I took care of my Atari 2600 because the first one my family got me blew up the first night we played it. And, that $50 barely afforded me one NES game; it was one of the hardest losses and lessons of my life. I wouldn’t have survived the few sleepovers I had as a kid without you (and the NES for one of those sleepovers).

The generations and game companies that followed the 1980s…just don’t understand. They’re all about the business and disposable merchandise, about theme parks with swag you enjoy for a minute and then add to a discard pile because more keeps coming from some sweat shop, I imagine. But, your era, my childhood…it was something special. As “merch’d” as the 1980s was…and, boy, was there “merch”…it had a lot of memorable moments and shapes, too. It’s the shapes of some of that “merch” that retain value, not the technology or how fast it did something for you.

I don’t think there’s much of anything that came out of the 1990s or 2000s that’s as precious as half the swag that came from the 1980s…which is probably why the generations that followed mine seem to have lost that respect for what is still good even if it’s not new. Even my nephews already call something old if it’s been around nine months. Nine months makes something antique! Instant insanity. It “Rubiks” my cube.

Heck. A lot of the 1980s stuff we experienced could be considered adult baby or “fidget” toys. Places like Spencer’s Gifts had some of that “fidget” stuff before it was a thing. I remember all the early “stress” toys. But, there were other things that weren’t considered therapy items that WERE therapy items…and some became obsessions, which kind of counters the therapy aspect. Yet…mmh! I just can’t get too mad at any of it, because so many things from the 1980s were like security blankets and stuffed animals. I could sleep in a bed made of Atari 2600 game cartridges and feel instantly like a kid at summer camp, dreaming of video-game conventions I only wished I could attend.

Priceless memories from, among other things, a company that lost money from being open to other artists who could use the same technology and programming to make their own games…sort of like the modern Roblox my nephews still obsess about. [Yet, there’s nothing tactile and not much aesthetically pleasing about the very Lego Roblox, not the way Atari was.]

Hmm. Food for thought.  And, like the phoenix on top of this post, I shall rise from the ashes!…whatever those may be.  Just as Bushnell rose from the landfill holding all of those poor ET game cartridges.