Enterprise: All In The Game: The Making of Atlantis (1983)

Enterprise was a show, hosted by veteran CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid, about the business of business. This episode however was all about this new upstart video game company called Imagic, and followed the development cycle of their latest game, Atlantis. This is a rare beast indeed, as it follows a new video game company, its CEO Bil Grubb, and one of its founders and star developers Dennis Kobel, at the height and into the beginning of the decline of video games, for the better part of 1982, showing details you wouldn't find about any other video game company of the time. There are an absolute ton of great behind-the-scenes shots here, as well as some nostalgic looks at electronics and video game stores of the day. At the end there is a bittersweet hint of the market crash that was just around the corner.

Some highlights and trivia include:

- Early prototype screenshots of Atlantis throughout its development and a blurry look at the code printed out on wide printer paper

- 8" floppies and what seems to be an HP 64000-series microprocessor development system (or similar) that Dennis works on

- In-game sprites ("players" for 8px wide sprites and "missiles" for 1px wide sprites in Atari lingo) were designed on an Atari 800 by Imagic video game artist Michael Becker, and likely transferred to 8" floppies via the 850 interface hooked up to the 800

- Another Atari 2600 video game company, Data Age, was right next door to Imagic.

- The postponement of the company's IPO near the end foreshadows the major video game market crash that occurred in 1983. Imagic never got that second chance at an IPO.

- The balloon ride at the end with Bill Grubb and Brad Stewart was research for a hot air balloon racing game that was to be called Sky Patrol. It is the only known 2600 game by Imagic that was announced but never released.

- Imagic laid off 40 of their 170 employees after the crash, but they still did manage to turn up at CES 1984 for a last ditch effort, announcing planned games for the IBM PC Jr. that never materialized.

- Activision bought the rights to Imagic's games in the late 1980s, and re-released a few of Imagic's most popular titles on plain blue label cartridges with white text during the Atari 2600 Jr. resurgence.

- Music in this video includes American Garage by Pat Metheny Group, and I Robot by Alan Parsons Project.

Тэги:

#enterprise #all_in_the_game #the_making_of_atlantis #imagic #atlantis #atari #video_game

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