STEVEN POOLE
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
There is no better way to understand how far we have (and haven’t) come since then than by playing such games
Illustration konsume.me
Long before people who knew nothing about videogames referred dismissively to “playing Xbox” or “playing Nintendo”, it was the much-storied company Atari whose name provided videogames’ first proprietary eponym. Like Hoover or Sellotape, Atari was, for most of the 1970s, the popular name for its entire genre of product, and your correspondent has fond memories of going to a friend’s house to spend weekend afternoons “playing Atari” on his miraculous 2600 console.
It came as a surprise to me to learn that the company – or, at least, not the original Atari Inc, founded by Nolan Bushnell, but a company using the much-bought-and-sold brand name, with the blessing of Bushnell himself – still exists. Not only that, but it recently released probably its first important game since 1985’s Gauntlet. And that is Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration.