(Atari Book Press Release)
Authors tell the fun and inspirational stories behind the iconic founding brand of the video game industry.
New York, June 27th, 2012 — Today, people ask, “Do you play video games?” but in the 70’s and 80’s, people asked, “Do you play ATARI?” The video game historian team of Martin Goldberg and Curt Vendel have poured their blood, sweat and lifelong passion into writing the definitive book on the history of the very first video game industry icon, Atari Inc.
Hundreds of pages and over seven years in the making, ‘Atari Inc. – Business Is Fun’ is the TRUE, unvarnished accounting of a brand that became not just a household name, but a cultural phenomenon. Published by Syzygy Company Press, it’s now available for pre-order at _ataribook.com <http://ataribook.com/>_ and will be available from Amazon.com on July 27th.
With this book, we really wanted to make it more about the stories and people that worked there” said Goldberg, former site director of IGN/Gamespy’s ClassicGaming.Com and a current freelancer for Retro Gamer magazine. “More then just the usual facts, figures, and oft repeated personalities, really give fans an unparalleled look in to what it was like to work at a place that created fun for a living.”
Goldberg and Vendel’s goal was to create a lasting tribute to the unsung heroes who created the Atari legacy, but through the course of their interviews and painstaking research, wound up having just as much fun compiling the history as the people who lived the history did. Thousands of original documents and internal resources were procured in the creation of this book and intertwined with hundreds of interviews with former Atari employees and company founders – ALL in a concentrated effort to document exactly what it was like to work at one of the most influential electronic entertainment companies of all time.
Vendel, founder of the Atari History Museum – the only organization dedicated to the preservation and archiving of Atari’s history, said “To most people, Atari was the logo, the hardware and a culmination of myths and lore almost as treasured as the products themselves. What most people never knew were the hearts and souls that created the company, the real lives that unfolded within its hallways. So many triumphs and defeats, arguments and inspirations, that all germinated in to incredible products, games…as well as spectacular blunders. This is about the people of Atari, and the story of going from a risky idea in an industry that didn’t exist to smiles, laughs, arguments and defeats while holding onto the wildest ride in high-tech history.”
Atari Inc. – Business Is Fun is an entertaining and enlightened adventure, taking the reader on as close to a first-person journey as they can possibly experience, providing never-before told stories by the people that worked there, exposing the reader to the hearts and souls that created the company – the real lives that unfolded within its hallways, rather than just recanting the usual facts, figures, and lore which has been repeated over and over in so many prior publications.
Regardless of whether you’re a ‘gamer geek’ or an aficionado of biographies, history or corporate intrigue, Atari Inc. – Business Is Fun has it all – and offers readers an unparalleled look into the inner workings of what it was like to work in Silicon Valley in the 1970’s and 1980’s… and what it was like to work at the most outrageous and innovative company founded to date whose sole intent was to create FUN for a living!
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About The Authors
Martin Goldberg – A writer and programmer in the video game industry, Goldberg has had a lifelong fascination with all things electronic entertainment since first playing PONG and Tank as a child at his local arcadesin the 70’s. As the former site director of IGN/GameSpy’s ‘ClassicGaming.Com’ and a current freelancer for Retro Gamer magazine, Goldberg has been writing about video games for 13 years. Along with Dan Loosen and Gary Heil, Goldberg is also a co-founder of the Midwest Gaming Classic, one of the largest electronic entertainment expos in the United States open to the general public. In 2004, Goldberg also founded the Electronic Entertainment Museum (E2M), a non-profit archive whose mission is to help preserve the history and artifacts of the video game and home computer industries. In line with this goal, he’s also a member of the International Game Development Association’s (IGDA) Game Preservation SIG, a hub and community for those interested in digital game preservation and history.
Curt Vendel – A former IT Systems Engineer, Vendel is also a self-taught Electrical Engineer with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. In the 1980’s, Vendel had begun collecting Atari products, engineering logs, schematics, drawings, and technical materials from former Atari employees – even making trips to Atari’s buildings in California to salvage Atari’s valuable history from its dumpsters. Founding the Atari History Museum in 1998, the Atari History Museum archives have amassed over 15,000 files, folders and documents, two archival rooms of schematics, mechanical drawings, artwork and PC board films. Vendel is frequently tapped as a valued resource for Atari insight and archival information by Atari, SA., Atari Interactive, numerous research institutions, trade publications and entertainment magazines, television networks and movie studios.
A preview of the book is available at _www.ataribook.com_
For more information –
Web: _ataribook.com <http://ataribook.com/>_
Facebook: _facebook.com/syzygycompany <http://facebook.com/syzygycompany>_
Twitter: twitter.com/#!/ataribook
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