Atari took its name from Go and even secretly launched its own rival
Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney named their 1972 company after a term from the board game Go, meaning a group of stones about to be captured. Atari went on to define early video gaming with Pong and the 2600, briefly becoming the fastest-growing company in American history before a spectacular crash.
Before Atari, the founders' small firm Syzygy Engineering designed Computer Space, the first arcade video game sold commercially. Atari was incorporated in California on June 27, 1972, and its first design engineer, Al Alcorn, was asked to make an arcade take on a tennis game from the Magnavox Odyssey. The result was Pong, and George Opperman's Fuji-shaped logo was meant to resemble both a letter A and the players and midline of a Pong court.
Atari played clever games offline too. Pinball distributors demanded exclusive deals, so in 1973 the company quietly created a fake competitor, Kee Games, run by Bushnell's next-door neighbour Joe Keenan, letting it sell near-identical machines to two sets of distributors. Keenan became Atari's president when Kee was folded back in the following year.
The Video Computer System, later called the 2600, launched at $199 with two joysticks, paddles and the Combat cartridge. Needing money to bring it to market, Bushnell accepted $28 million from Warner Communications for the company in 1976, and he was fired in December 1978 after clashing with management. Under chairman Raymond Kassar the firm sold millions of consoles and at its peak earned a third of Warner's income. Then the 1983 video game crash brought losses of more than $500 million, and Jack Tramiel bought the home console and computer businesses in 1984.
Tramiel's Atari Corporation launched the ST computer and, in 1989, the Lynx, the first handheld console with a colour, backlit screen, which still lost out to the cheaper Game Boy. The 1993 Jaguar was Atari's last home console. The brand has passed through many owners and now belongs to Atari SA, formerly Infogrames, which employed 90 people as of March 31, 2025.
Source: Atari
