Hello, its blogging time again and it's video game history time again, and today were taking a look at an interesting footnote in video game history. However, in order to understand our topic, we need to start by taking look at an event that happened much more recently. On July 25, 2025, The Job Board Website Greenhouse.io listed that Sony Interactive Entertainment was looking for a quote: Sr Director, Multiplatform & Account Management.
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The Greenhouse.io listing as it was on July 27, 2025
According to the listing, The job description was to quote: Play a critical leadership role in shaping and executing the global commercial strategy for PlayStation Studios software titles across all digital platforms beyond PlayStation hardware, including Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox, Nintendo, and mobile. This role is accountable for optimizing title profitability, ensuring cross-functional alignment, and leading a high-performing team focused on multiplatform expansion, mid-range commercial planning, and platform partner management.
Or in Layman's terms, Publish Sony Exclusive games on other systems! Now this made quite the buzz online a week ago, it even caught the attention of a certain breadbox!
However, despite this, the concept of a major video game console maker making their exclusives on other platforms is nothing new. In fact the first company to to this was one that you probably wouldn't expect: Atari!
Thats Right! For a brief period, from 1983 to 1984, Atari had a division that made some of their exclusive arcade ports availible on other video game consoles and home computers. That division was called Atarisoft.
So how and why did Atari do this? Well the answer traces back to the idea of third party game licenses, A practice Atari invented by accident. It all started back in 1976, While Atari was riding on the success on their home Pong Console, A newcomer to the video game market had introduced a new console of their own. That company was called Fairchild Camera and Instrument.
They were founded in 1927, and initially manufactured airplanes and aerial cameras for commercial aerial mapping and the military. but by the 1950's they diversified into creating other types of photography equipment and other product for all sorts of different industries from x-ray and Lithotype machines to pilot training systems and color engraving machines to motion picture and early Super 8 film cameras.
In 1957, they created a new division called Fairchild Semiconductor to manufacture electronic components and soon became pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and integrated circuits.
In the mid 1970's, they began the development of their own video game system based on a design licensed to them by Alpex Computer Corporation employees Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel a few years earlier in 1974. the result was the Fairchild Channel F, launched in 1976 for $169.95. It was the very first video game system to use interchangeable ROM cartridges rather than having built in games in ROM or using analog circuit cards.
The Fairchild Channel F (1976)
Nolan Bushnell, the co founder and head of Atari, had become aware of the Channel F's Introduction and already had a superior console in development through Atari's Cyan Engineering division codenamed Stella.
Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell in 1975
The only problem was, Atari didn't have enough money to continue development. So looking for the cash for both development and operational flow for the upcoming holiday season, he sold the company to Warner Communications in 1976, for $28 million dollars (Or around $158.19 million dollars today adjusted for inflation). Bushnell not only received $15 million dollars from the acquisition, was also kept on as chairman.
Warner Communications' logo (1972-1990)
However the acquisition came with a catch, and that catch was a company culture shift. Prior to the acquisition, Atari was famous for its laid-back work culture, In fact it was so laid-back, it was almost more like a hippie commune than a business. Work attire consisted of everyday wear like tee shirts and jeans, everyone was under 30, employees came in and punched out whenever they wanted, parties and meetings in hot tubs were held constantly, and yes, employees often did recreational drugs. So much so, that there was a popular legend that if you walked by the Boraga Street building and you breathe deeply by the air vents you'd get stoned from the excess pot smoke from the Atari Martin Avenue facility nearby!
Now this did lead to problems (As you would probably expect!), but on the plus side, it was a creative environment. But when Warner took over, that started to change as the laid-back work culture was replaced with a more traditional corporate work culture. Now everyone had to wear suits, come in and out at a certain time, and the hot tubs and pot smoking was a thing of the past.
In the meantime, Stella move along fine thanks to the extra cash, and Stella soon became The Atari Video Computer System (Or VCS), Better known as the Atari 2600, and made its debut in September of 1977, for $189.95 (Or around $1,011.06 dollars today adjusted for inflation).
The first model Atari 2600 nicknamed the "Heavy Sixer" (1977)
While the initial sales were good, As they had sold around 350,000 to 400,000 units out of the intial 800,000 manufactured, by 1978 the number only reached up to 550,000 units. Warner were not happy about this and as a result, Bushenell was replaced with former Burlington Industries vice president Ray Kassar.
Ray Kassar in 1983
Around the same time, tensions between Atari's game designers and programmers, and Warner's management began to arise. Before the acquisition, the company did not award bonus pay to programmers who worked on profitable games, nor credit the programmers publicly, to prevent them from being recruited by rival game companies. While Warner Communications' management style was different from Bushnell's, the concept of credit and recognition remained, only worse because Warner management treated developers as engineers rather than creative staff, creating conflicts with staff.
Four developers in particular were unhappy about this, and those four were Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller Bob Whitehead and David Crane.
Left to right: Bob Whitehead, David Crane, Alan Miller and Larry Kaplan in 1980
The four were just a group of friends that work together and were the designers of the most popular titles on the system, making up 60% percent of sales , but were frustrated with Kassar's Management. When they approached him on giving them more recognition Kassar said quote: You are no more important to that game than the person on the assembly line who puts it together.
This did not sit well with the four of them and soon they left the company to make their own game company to publish their own games for the system. That company was Activision, founded on October 1st, 1979 in Sunnyvale, California, and they began working on their first games to be released the following year.
Activision's first logo (1979-1988)
Meanwhile, Warner Communications were still trying to boost 2600 sales. But the problem was that most of the games on the system were ports of Atari's own arcade games as well as a few clones of other arcade games, and none of them were popular enough for anyone to buy them. Around the same time, Taito's Space Invaders had arrived on US shores, and was beating Atari in arcade revenue by a wide margin.
Atari Programmer Rick Maurer was particularly interested in the game. He previously worked for Fairchild Semiconductor developing games like Pinball Challenge and Hangman for the Fairchild Channel F.
Rick Maurer in 1997
Maurer was impressed by Space Invaders, specifically the sound of the game, and came up with the idea of developing a version of Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 and began development in 1978. After a few months of development, he had a playable prototype, but the consumer division instructed Maurer to cease further work on the game to focus on Maze Craze.
Atari's management also took note of the game, and after looking at it, Kassar had an idea: If Space Invaders is a big enough hit to beat Atari in the arcade market, If they cant sell the 2600 with ports of their own arcade games, maybe they could sell it with ports of arcade games from others. So in 1979, Kassar flew to Japan and approached Taito for the rights to make an official port for the 2600.
Taito agreed, and since Maurer already had a playable prototype, He had the greenlight to continue development. After getting additional help for cover and sprite art, and condensing the ROM code from 7K to :4K, Atari introduce the 2600 version of Space Invaders on March 10th, 1980, making it the very first officially licensed port of an arcade game.
Space Invaders (1980)
It was an immediate success, selling over 6 million copies and causing the 2600 sales to go from 1 million in 1980 to 3 million by 1981. A few months later Activision debuted their first games for the system: Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing.
Left to right: Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing (1980)
Ahead of the release, Activision obtained space to showcase their titles at the 1980 Sumer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. When Atari learned about this they were furious about this and soon filed lawsuits against them, claiming the four had stolen trade secrets and violated non-disclosure agreements. But by 1982, the lawsuits were settled and the two ended up coming to an agreement where Activision would pay royalties to Atari for each cartridge sold, Making them an official third party licensee, and legitimizing third party licensed games.
By 1982, A number of third party publishers had appeared with the goal of making games for the Atari 2600 and other systems, and the idea of a console manufacturer having exclusive arcade ports on their system caught on as well. Several video game console and home computer manufacturers had signed on with popular arcade manufacturers to make ports exclusively for their system. For example, Atari had Namco Williams Electronics and Stern (Berzerk only), Mattel had Data East, Commodore had Bally Midway, Coleco had Nintendo, Exidy and numerous other manufacturers, and so on.
But there was a problem, when a game was licensed system, there was no standard for who was involved with making the port for what system. See today if Ubisoft made a game for the PC and wanted to port it to other systems, they would be the one publishing it, But back in 1982 if Sega made a new arcade game and wanted to bring it to other systems, It could go to multiple different companies depending on whether it was for a console, a home computer, and which part of the world it was sold in. So Coleco could get the rights for consoles in the US, Datasoft could get the rights for computers in the US, US gold for Computers In Europe, CBS Electronics for consoles in Europe, themselves for all systems in Japan, Etc.
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But it didnt take long before some console manufacturers decided to bring their exclusive ports onto competitors systems. The first to do this was Mattel Electronics, when staff at APh Technology Consulting (The company that helped design the Intellivision) suggested to company head Glen Hightower that should try their hand at programming for the Atari 2600, either for Mattel or for a higher bidder, as a way to get around the initial deal with Mattel to sell each game to Mattel for less than $30,000.
Fearing Mattel's lawyers might try to claim any work they did on the 2600 was covered as part of their video game contract with Mattel, the senior programmers took a leave of absence from APh, and worked as private contractors paid directly by Hightower to reverse engineer the Atari 2600, figured out how the games worked, and put together demos showing they could write their own.
Hightower then approached Mattel and to say, semi-truthfully, that he knew an outside group of programmers that had expertise on the Atari 2600, and if Mattel was interested, APh could purchase their development tools and start producing Atari 2600 games. Mattel ended up agreeing and and soon began the a project to make games for the system under the code name Irata ("Atari" spelled backwards).
This obviously created a bit of controversy with Mattel's staff as some argued that it would help sell the competing game console, and on a more aesthetic level, that it would add credibility to an inferior system. But considering there were 10 million 2600's in peoples homes at the time compared to the Intellivisions 1.8 million, and it made logical sense to tap into that market.
The games were introduced in July of 1982 under the tradename "M Network" (M for Mattel). All of the games were Atari 2600 versions of already released Intellivision cartridges, but under different names to avoid poor reflection with the Intellivision.
Early ads for M Network (1982)
M Network had a line up of 5 games. The first 4 were ports of the most popular games on the Intelivision: Astroblast (Astrosmash), Armor Ambush (Armor Battle), Super Challenge Football (NFL Football), and Super Challenge Baseball (Major League Baseball). But the 5th game was Lock 'N' Chase, which was a port of the Data East Arcade game of the same name that Mattel got the exclusive license for to have for their systems. The games sold well and soon Matell began brining their other games into the line up like TRON Deadly Discs, Burger Time, and Bump 'N' Jump. They also expanded to bring the games to the IBM PC and Apple II.
Coleco also took a stab at this concept and ported several games they made exclusive for the Colecovision for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision like Donkey Kong, Venture, and Zaxxon.
Left to right: The Coleco vesions of Donkey Kong, Venture, and Zaxxon for the Atari 2600 (1982)
By 1983, Atari was loosing revenue fast, going from being the market leader at $2 billion in 1982 to losing half a billion dollars in 1983. Not only did they lose a considerable amount of customers and 2600 sales due to the disastrous reputation of Pac Man and ET games for the system the previous year, but they also were losing market share with their Atari XL computers after a price war with Commodore and competing with the C64, VIC 20, and in small part the TI 994a.
But in the process, they came to a realization. Just because they owned the rights to an arcade game that was popular, didn't mean everyone was going to buy their computers or consoles just so they could play the game. For some people it was hard to justify buying an Atari 2600 with Pac Man when they could buy something like a C64, Apple II, or even an IBM PC to play the same thing. Many of the computers available had more memory and better graphics than what the 2600 could provide and could also be used for doing more productive tasks like word processing and spreadsheets.
Not only that, but if they could get their games on those machines they could target not only kids and families, but also people like office workers and school students looking for a way to unwind in their spare time during a break from their usual activities. Combine that with all of the Pac Man clones Atari noticed and filed lawsuits with on other consoles and home computers while developing their own versions, and they realized that the market was clearly there to bring their games to other systems.
Top to bottom: Snoggle, Jawbreaker, and K.C. Munchkin (1981)
So in May of 1983, Atari formed a new division they called Atarisoft, with the goal of distributing games on non Atari systems. They announced seven games to be sold under the brand: Pacman, Centipede, Defender, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Stargate And Robotron 2084. They would have them available for Apple II, The Commodore 64, The Commodore VIC-20, The IBM PC, The TI 99/4A, The Intellivision, and the Colecovision, with all these ports shipping in November.
An early ad for Atarisoft seen in Compute! Magazine (1983)
Each box used the same format. The Atarisoft label did not bear Atari's recognizable "Fuji" logo nor the official logos of the games, rather, the game names were written in a basic bold typeface diagonally with a small "Page peel" cutout of artwork for each title. Each box was specified by color for which system it was for: Red for Apple II, Orange for the ColecoVision, Yellow for the TI-99/4A, Green for the Commodore 64, Blue for the IBM PC, Purple for the VIC-20, and Magenta for the Intellivision. with each box containing the manual and game on either a cartridge or floppy disk.
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Left to right: The box and contents for Dig Dug for the Apple II and the box and contents for Centipede for the C64
Lacking the developers it needed to program for non-Atari machines in house, Atari contracted with outside developers to port its titles, which Atari would then publish and distribute. One notable developer was H.A.L Labs (Not to be confused with HAL Labratory) founded by Brian Fitzgerald and Greg Autry in 1981. Fitzgerald wrote a Pac Man clone for the Apple II called Taxman while in high school, and had distributed the game through the company.
Taxman (1981)
It was one of the companies Atari had gone through legal issues with when developing and preparing for their own version, and as part of the settlement they got the source code to use for their own version. The Atarisoft version was exactly the same as Taxman but had the proper music, bonuses, and cutscenes instead of the original ones used in Taxman.
Atarisoft Pac Man for the Apple II (1983)
It wasn't too much of backstab for consumers since the game was already a very good translation of the arcade original, and the rebranded version was no different as a result either. The rest of the conversions were also fateful translations of their counterparts, with many of them being even better than Atari's own versions. Some even took advantage of the systems hardware for enhancement, In particular, a few of the IBM PC versions took advantage of the Composite artifact color mode of CGA to give extra color.
Left to right: The RGB and Composite versions of Atarisoft Jungle Hunt for the IBM PC (1983)
The division proved to be a commercial success withthe games getting very good sales and reviews. By Christmas of 1983, Atarisoft ended up being atari's major source of profit in their sea of dwindling sales. Because as 2600 sales slumped, consumers bought Atarisoft titles for whatever system they had. By then, the library grew to about 20 titles available including Jungle Hunt and Galaxian for every major platform, including rival game consoles from Coleco and Mattel, and even the business-oriented IBM PC. They also published 2 titles developed by Synapse Software: Picnic Paranoia and Shamus.
The success continued well into the new year as well, By mid-1984, Atarisoft had an additional six titles available including Ms Pac Man, Moon Patrol, Track and Field, and Joust. Track and Field even came with the same custom controller that mimicked the control panel of the arcade game that the 2600 version came bundled with.
The packaging for Atarisoft Track and Field for the Apple II (1984)
They also began bringing their games to the UK and European market by introducing ports for the ZX Spectrum, BBC Model B and Acorn Electron (Colored Aquamarine and Bright Purple respectively). as well as a game based on the hit movie Gremlins.
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Left to right: The packaging for Atarisoft Pole Position for the ZX Spectrum and Atarisoft Robotron 2084 for the BBC Model B/Acorn Electron, Atarisoft Gremlins for the IBM PC (1984)
They were becomning so succesful that there was a rumor that Atari would abandon hardware entirely, and become a software publisher, But Atari denied these claims. Despite this, Atarisoft still continued to grow as they were also planning to make ports of games like Mario Bros for the C64 and Apple II, Vanguard for the Apple II, C64, VIC-20, IBM PC, Intellivision, and TI-99/4A, and Missle Command for the Apple II, ColecoVision, C64, VIC-20, IBM PC, Intellivision, and TI-99/4A, A port of the Atari 8bit typing tutor game Typo Attack and even some games for the ill fated IBM PCjr, But a shift in Atari’s overall business model cause all of these plans to be put on halt.
As explained before Steve Ross, the president of Warner Communications, who owned Atari, felt the losses were too much and their turnaround attempts were not doing well, and soon made the decision to split the company and sell them for as much as possible to recuperate whatever losses he could.
Steve Ross
Atari was split into two different companies: Atari Corporation and Atari Games. Atari Corporation handled consumer products, such as their line of personal computers and video game consoles, and Atari Games handled arcade games.
On July 2nd 1984, The majority of Atari Corporation was sold to Jack Tramiel, the founder and former CEO of Commodore.
Tramiel had no interest in the video game business and wanted to focus on the computer business, specifically with the upcoming Atari ST.
Although he didn’t axe the Atarisoft brand right away, he phased it out rapidly, and soon the planed titles were never released. With the brand being officially defunct by the end of 1984 and most of their ports and their source code had been sold and resold by other companies including DataSoft, Thunder Mountain Software, and even INTV Corp.
So was Atarisoft a success for Atari? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because it gave Atari a much-needed boost in cash flow, and publishing titles for non-Atari systems was the easiest way to get it. Knockoffs of Atari titles were popular on non Atari systems, so Atari made the right choice in guessing that officially versions would be as well, And No because it ended up giving their competition a boost and cut into atari exclusivity and product lines Especially supporting the C64, which had effectively killed the Atari 8bit line in sales by 1988.
But on the flip side of the negatives, the Atarisoft branded games gave systems a boost that desperately needed it. When the Atarisoft brand made its debut, the C64 had only been on the market for a year up to that point and while there were plenty of games available from both Commodore and other third party publishers, If you wanted to play a port of an arcade game, You had to either chose from the Midway exclusives from Commodore, or a knock off from a third party. The Atarisoft games gave the C64 a good boost in reputation as a gaming platform and in part, ultimately helped it sell millions of units to make it become one of the best selling home computers ever made.
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The TI 99/4A also was in desperate need of good third party games. Like Atari, Texas Instrument's machine also lost in the price war with Commodore and wasn't very popular with developers due to TI's notoriously closed market and strict licensing. TI already had announced the discontinuation of the TI 99/4A by the time the Atarisoft titles for it were available and retailers were selling all of their remaining stock by the end of the Christmas season. Atarisoft managed to give the few lucky owners of the TI 99/4A and even when the system was discontinued in March of 1984, they still ended up being some of the best titles for the system.
The IBM PC was no different when it game to being a game machine. Remember, this was November of 1983, and at that point the PCjr had only just been announced and the Tandy 1000 did not yet exist. IBM were still selling the IBM PC for the business market, with very little focus on the home market. while there were games available, most of them were text based with minimal sound effects and only a few software publishers released games for it. The only company that produced games on par with Atarisoft was Orion Software, who published PC Man, and along with it were the very first games on the IBM PC that used CGA graphics instead of ASCII text characters. Along with Orion Software, Atarisoft was one of the first companies to legitimatize the IBM PC as a gaming platform.
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Today, Atari is a software company, much like the rumors stated in 1984, only the took 14 longer than expected when Hasbro interactive bought the Atari IP's in 1998, and through various acquisitions became Atari Interactive. As for getting ahold of the original Atarisoft releases, with the exception of the Colecovision and Intellivision ports, most of them can be found easily sealed and loose on Ebay for around $10 to $40 dollars and are well worth a look if your interested.
In conclusion, the Atarisoft titles remain an interesting footnote in the history of video games, and a reminder of the complicated liscensing systems used to distribute games on systems in the golden age of video games. That wraps up this blog entry today, and as always, Thanks for reading! see you next time!
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