By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff)
Way back when Atari was trying to capture home computer market share from the Apples and Commodores of the world, they created the first ever Evangelist Position in consumer software development. Chris Crawford was tasked with informing the world about the magical capabilities of the Atari 400/800 computers and how they could be used to create incredible (at the time) applications that were far ahead of the contemporary competing home systems.
Under the name Atari Computer Enthusiast Support, Crawford created videos, manuals, demos, his own incredible games, and also circled the nation, bringing the magic of the Atari systems to user groups and software developers. This project resulted in unprecedented growth in the library of Atari computer software (especially games) and a 2-3 year span (1981-1983) where there was no better system on the market for games. The entertainment value of 8-bits was ignored by Atari from 1984-1986, but they resurrected the platform and tried to push out the XE Game system with new titles and rep-packaged older games. That was too little, too late.
Luckily for us, we had an Atari 800 (then later an 800XL) right at the end of 1983, before the C=64 virtually shredded the market and became the gaming system pre-cursor to the NES. In fact. There was still an abundance of software available for the Atari computers between after 1984 with many new and incredible games to come (Ultima IV anyone?).
In fact, to personal computer game players, there really was no video game crash, because as Atari stumbled, Commodore took the reigns with the inexpensive C=64 and the games market for personal computers continued on despite the crash of the much larger video game market. With companies making cash hand over fist in the Commodore market, they still put out a limited number of titles for the Atari 8-bits. When the XE (repackaged Atari 800XL computers) were introduced to the European market at cheap prices, an influx of game software again came to the Atari machines. I can only think that these videos and other information provided early helped the new developers harness the power of the systems.
Video #1 Overview of all graphics features
Video #2 Player Missile Graphics, Color Registers, Re-definable Character Sets
Video #3 Display List Interrupts, Vertical Blank Interrupts, Hardware Scrolling
Anyone who programmed on an Amiga will quickly see that many of the features of that awesome machine came straight it’s old brother, the Atari 8-bit computer systems. This is because they were designed by the same teams.