Happy 35th Birthday, Gaming PC

35 years ago, a video game revolution was sweeping through American culture. Shopping mall arcades were crammed with teenagers blasting menacing Space Invaders and lethal Asteroids to fading phosphorous particles. Cartridge-based home gaming consoles were beginning to catch on, bringing interactive entertainment into living rooms. University computer labs intended for scientific research were overrun with students programming their own electronic versions of Dungeons & Dragons. And with the coming of the 1979 Christmas shopping season, two revolutionary new home computers from Atari appeared on store shelves, machines which would forever change our perceptions of what PCs were capable of.

Setting the Stage

Computers had broken into the home market two years before with the release of the Apple II, Radio Shack TRS-80, and Commodore PET. All three were stunningly primitive by contemporary standards, but they were real, affordable PCs priced just within the means of ordinary consumers. Thousands of people rushed out to purchase these technological wonderments, enchanted by the novelty of owning a piece of the future.

The problem was, computer owners weren’t all that sure what they could actually do with the new silicon-powered toys. Commercial software was scarce and primitive. Many early home computer hobbyists programmed their own applications from scratch, learning BASIC as they pecked away and created home finance and cookbook databases. The more ambitious among these tinkerers tried their hand at creating their own video games.

Programming games on these hardware-limited machines required intense skill. Though Apple II creator Steve Wozniak famously ported his arcade game, Breakout, to the Apple II computer, few early developers could match Woz’s technical mastery. Early PCs had more in common with calculators than gaming consoles, with hardware better suited to displaying text than animation. The arcane and memory-strapped nature of these early computers made game design a test of both innovation and endurance.

A New Kind of Computer

In the late 1970s, Atari was the largest and best-known manufacturer of video games in the world. Already successful in both the arcade and home gaming markets, they were eager to expand into the new frontier of home computing. As an established manufacturer of video game hardware, Atari approached their personal computer project very differently than their competitors. Atari PCs would be capable of word processing and data management, but the Atari logo was synonymous with great gaming, and that meant Atari’s computer line would be expected to deliver the highest-quality entertainment experience on the market

Atari’s engineers decided that their home computers would be built around a standard core processor, then supplemented with custom graphics chips created just for playing games, a radical concept in personal computing. Their first PCs were built around the same 6502 eight-bit processor utilized by the Apple II, but clocked to a greater speed. Two specialized graphics coprocessors were then added, allowing the Atari to easily generate hardware-assisted sprites, play fields, and a broad color palette. A third special chip provided extra hardware functions for controller support and four dedicated sound channels for creating complex music and sound effects.

Atari created two versions of the new computer, dubbed the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The two models were fundamentally the same inside, but the 400 skewed toward the bargain end of the market thanks to a cheap membrane keyboard and a few other cost-cutting measures. Both models included the same special graphics and sound chips, as well as four controller ports for multiplayer games. The 400 and 800 could use cassette tape and floppy disk drives, but also included an input to run programs from a standard console-style ROM cartridge, an allowance which meant gamers wouldn’t have to endure the painfully slow loading times then associated with computers.

When the 400 and 800 were released, they were far and away the most powerful home gaming machines available. The two computers were harbingers to the bleeding-edge technical advantage and cost which would thereafter characterize PC gaming. While more expensive than contemporary home consoles, they were also much more capable and expandable. The multi-colored, plentiful sprites generated by Atari’s new computers looked like something from another planet, and the four-channel sound was unparalleled, allowing for superb sound and real musical accompaniment.

Arcade ports boasted tremendous fidelity, a terrific advantage in an era when arcade games were the technological gold standard for game design. Programmers quickly discovered ways to leverage the hardware toward better gaming. The ability to incorporate both a joystick and keyboard as controls led to complex, innovative new simulation games. Atari’s first-party Star Raiders forced a player to balance reflexes and resources in a fast-paced strategic shooter. The Atari’s four controller ports inspired multiplayer pioneer Dani Bunton to create the innovative and influential M.U.L.E, a fascinating and brilliant combination of cooperative and competitive game play. And Lucasfilm Games harnessed the Atari PC’s capabilities in some of their earliest work, including the extraordinary exploratory shooter Rescue on Fractalus. The hardware was so ahead of its time that a homebrew programmer successfully ported Sega's arcade classic Space Harrier to the platform in the early 21st century.

The multi-channel sound chip was also light-years ahead of the competition. Engineers harnessed up to four simultaneous instruments to duplicate popular musical themes and create original compositions. The chip also allowed complex, layered sound effects which granted games a special audial richness, a capability unparalleled until the introduction of the famous Commodore SID chip several years later.

Unfortunately, Atari unwisely choose to keep the deeper workings of their new computers secret. In an effort to maintain control over software distribution, they refused to release details of their powerful graphics hardware to hobbyist developers. This arbitrary barrier drove many creators away from the 400 and 800 and toward the much more open Apple II design. The Apple may have been less powerful, but its well-documented architecture made it far more accessible to a generation of garage programmers. Later competition from Commodore VIC-20 and 64 models further depressed Atari’s market share. By the time Atari realized the mistake, it was too late, and fortune had passed them by. While Atari computers would remain relevant for a decade, they would never achieve the kind of PC industry dominance their initial technological advantage might have allowed.

Still, we contemporary gamers owe a great deal to the Atari 400 and 800. The graphics and sound chips designed for these computers were forerunners of the graphics accelerators and dedicated audio hardware which are now standard equipment in gaming PCs. Atari’s first computers helped launch a graphical arms race which would continue from the late seventies through today, a focus on increasingly-impressive GPU capabilities which would eventually inform the designs of the graphics processors powering both our PCs and the current generation of home consoles.