John Harris over at Gamasutra.com has a fantastic new artical named “Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games” in which he spends a massive amount of time (23 pages!) discussing the brillant game designs that came out of Atari’s coin-op division from 1972-1998.

At the beginning of the article, John asks a very ligitimate question: “Where Are The Atari Fan boys?”   He’s not referring to the console fanatic at places like Atari Age,  Atari Protos or Atari Mania, but rather the people who played and loved Atari coin-op games. 

I’m not sure I have an answer for John because, frankly, I have the same question.  I’m stunned about how little information there is about Atari coin-ops and their designers.   Check out John’s article, as it goes a long to rectifying the situation.