This video was originally released in May 2018. If you saw the old version, you will notice this is not a simple re-upload. I decided to go back and clean the video up, re-record it and update a few pieces of information because I enjoyed the topic so much! Now the video is closer to the vision I originally had. If it's your first time watching or second or third, thank you and enjoy!

Having seen the original version of this video, I'm glad to hear Tramiel (tra-MEL) pronounced correctly. The downside is the CM with Space Invaders in it ("Supēsu Inbēdā") is gone.

As a 52 year old dude that grew up with Atari, I really enjoyed this video! ❤️🕹

Another day, another video game history lesson from one of the most undersubbed channels on this site

The lynx in terms of hardware was really impressive. Too bad it didn’t get a stronger lineup of games.

_Ouch,_ I can't imagine what it feels like to have your brand name directly associated with an economic crash like that

It’s so weird man, when I think of Atari I think of Narc, Area 51 , Toobin , Klak, Roadblasters Primal Rage , Paperboy. I’m glad you mentioned Atari Namco Story. That’s the 1st thing I was looking forward too.

If Atari had been willing to release their 7800 when it was made, it might have been different. But they thought they could sell obsolete hardware forever.

Out of curiosity, did Activision have much foothold in Japan with their games at the time? Most of the software I see like Pitfall and HERO Etc. were licensed to people like Sega. But did they publish anything themselves?

Lynx sold that much units, that is impressive.

Despite being a Japanese-sounding name brand ("Atari" being derivative of the Japanese word "ataru" meaning something along the lines of "hitting a target on a go board") with a stylized Mt. Fuji logo, Atari was about as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pies, McDonald's and a Chevrolet...

It was a great day a couple years back when I was able to get Nolan Bushnell to autograph my VCS' woodgrain front panel.

This is gonna be good! EDIT: Another amazing video!

very interesting topic! thank you for covering.

LOL that damn Atari Flashback music! That will get stuck in your head!

Love to see a new vid on a Friday woo woo. Love your content sir.

Another banger of a video! Keep it up, your content is great!

Warner Atari management: "Hm....we could either start giving credit to our programmers and allow our engineers to remain competitive with the market - no cheaping out on the joysticks this time, we don't want a repeat of the 5200 disaster - or........let's just shovel out old 2600 games - effort is overrated. There's no way we can fail in Japan. We have expensive licenses." LJN, Bandai, and US Gold: "Wow, that is such a good idea."

Thank you so much for your work GTV!!

In terms of design i pretty much like 2800. Four joysticks ports on the front, easy to use buttons instead of switches and hybrid joysticks. Just wow!

Fascinating retrospective, as always! Looking forward to another year of your videos.

Your content just gets better and better!

I know it's almost 40 years ago, but, hmmm... Math Gran Prix. Yeah, that's going to move some units...

Your channel never ceases to impress me. Love everything jp related, thanks.

Thanks GTV for another great informative video!

i learned a few things and loved how colorful this episode is

Holy shit the Namco Museum music popping in at 1:39 was such a nice touch. Those games were such a big part of my growing up.

I see many interesting topics on your channel, like this many tries of Atari to conquer video game market in Japan. Probably i will stay here for some time to watch other videos :D

The sheer chutzpah of trying to peddle ancient hardware with the Atari 2800 shows how American companies like Atari and Commodore failed to innovate. My personal pet peeve is how Commodore had a thing going with the C64, but when it was time to release a new system with the +4 it was objectively worse in terms of capabilities important for gaming. No hardware sprites and worse sound.

Awesome video! The Lynx bits were so interesting! 😎 It always bugged me how young the kids often were in the ads in the early days, which painted bad stereotypes that video games were mere"kid stuff." It took many years to undo that lol.

Another fascinating insight into gaming history. I just started going through all the pitfall games so this was timely. It's interesting to see the early days of Japanese game development but even more so seeing the west trying to crack that overseas market. Alfred Milgrom tried when he reverse engineered the Famicom, too. I noticed your channels finally starting to grow to the heights this series deserves, around 10,000 in the last year or so - well done man you deserve it!

I wonder how well those Luma phones worked back in the 80's.

Great video. Seeing those Japanese game centers and building street fronts was incredible. Atari was a late 70's icon for entertainment. It's a shame they didn't get the home console directive to improve and increase memory until others did it for them.

Thank you for uploading a video about ATARI It's a little-known company in Japan, but I like ATARI very much I'm a Japan person and can't speak English, so I'm a machine translator. I think it's dirty English, but please forgive me.

"Bandai Intellivision" god that sounds so weird hahaha 😅 Also, the woodgrain background made me feel I was watching LGR 😂

I love these history lesson videos.

Oh man, after a month of a lot of school paper work its summer holidays! Some weeks off from teaching, that means my Sunday GTV, chicken wings and beer marathon! Glad to see that there are more vides uploaded. Not enjoying the 38ºC+ summer days (Its devils crotch hot) but at least some days to relax. Thanks for the videos!!!

This was a great documentary to begin with, and you've made it even better! The name Atari sounds cool in English, but I wonder how good it sounds to the Japanese, since Atari is actually a Japanese word. But even if the name was good, the 2800 had no chance against next-gen systems like the SG-1000, MSX1 and the early Famicom, which were all comparable to the Colecovision in the US. And the Famicom was about to take an even further step in 1985 by improving the cartridges to make big 128K games. Atari was far behind the times. They made a mistake in selling the company to Warner Bros. They should have sold it to a smarter company.

As the 2600's version of ET is remembered in popular imagination as one of the worst games ever made which precipitated "Atari Shock" (interesting phrase!) hearing you describe it completely deadpan as a killer app that people back then believed would help sell the 2800 is fascinating!

You'd think Sega would learn with the Dreamcast from the 7800 but nope. I still love Atari though, the simplicity of 2600 and arcade games back in the day gave you so much imagination and addictive gameplay. Namco made some of the greatest games as well. Great retrospective!

Glad I found this channel by accident. High quality content!

I had the Sears Video Arcade II. The controllers were terrible.

The Atari Lynx was such an impressive handheld. It was a shame that Atari treated it was such indifference it seems. But great piece about Atari in Japan. And they're right, the logo and name makes for a great tee shirt.

I'll be honest, on the service, I initially assumed it was a case of nothing more than "Japanese consumers preferring Japanese products", especially given the performance of domestic consoles over the years, and as a case in point, the rather lackluster performance of Xbox consoles leaving much to be desired. However, having never even know about Atari's ownership history, I can see how that definitely came into effect. I say this a lot, but this channel always has the best history lessons that scratch the nichest of itches!! On a side note, having read the pinned comment, I really appreciate this video being a revision of a past one. Helps to make already plentiful videos feel even more rewarding to watch!! And let me just say, I always enjoy a GTV upload~!! ^w^

Atari was internationally good, even other game companies can do that too to across the world.

I wanted a Lynx so bad as a kid, but I was never disciplined enough to save up my allowance for one lol

Atari has become so, so irrelevant that they decided to fuse NFTs and Lootboxes into one during their 40th anniversary celebration. Both of these are a match made in hell.

Anecdotally, America USED to be the center of the Gaming Universe (Sunnyvale, California to be exact), but now it was Kyoto Japan until it migrated to become Tokyo! Seasons SURE do change...

Excellent video! Yes, I have played Atari today!

Wow, great video camarada. When the tv commercial of pole position show i thought the maxell cassette. Atari wey got a japanese name and our logo its the mount fuji, what can going wrong. Saludos camarada

Be neat to see a video of all the competition it had at the time, maybe like, the Consoles From Japan That Weren't Nintendo. Something like that.

Thus was really fun to watch, GTV.

I had no idea the Lynx did well in Japan. What happened to Atari in Japan was really no different to what happened to it across the world which was that the company failed to move fast enough with the hardware. With the market share that Nintendo had there was no way people were going to buy a Jaguar, when brand loyalty meant they'd wait for the N64. 🤔

Your content is awesome thanks for the great work

18:48 That looks odd to me.

Fantastic work as always.

Thank you for your videos GTV!

Those Lynx games look really good especially the shooter!

Atari should have released a handheld along side the lynx that could play thier regular game carts like Sega had with the Nomad.

Its a shame that the Lynx could never find a strong postion in both the West and East, because by the hardware it had inside it was practically a state of the art machine that if marketed wisely and given more attention in the software departament it could have waged war with both the GB and GBC

This was dope as hell keep ‘em coming 👏⚡️🔥

Apple in Japan would make a neat video. Even during their struggles in the 90’s, Apple did disproportionately well there with machines like the Color Classic and various PowerBooks.

I also get the feeling that an American company co-opting a Japanese term to sound like they're a Japanese company probably turned off a lot of the Japanese consumers. I'd assume that it came off as either laughably cute or some sort of insult towards their country's electronics.

Great work Sir thank you

Atari(their heyday) was before my time, but that didn't stop my family from pulling out my dads 2600 and putting it beside the S/NES. They were simple fun little games, but next to Super Mario, it didn't hold my brother's and my attention long, nor did we want the new Atari consoles more. became an exclusively Nintendo household until my brother traded a bunch of magic cards for a Playstation around 98'. It's not surprising that the cheaper domestic consoles of the time did better in Japan.

I wish they sold 2800s here in North America, for it had a sweet looking case and controller. The design and port locations were also superior.

ATARI: "No one will ever stop us MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Assistant: "But what if someone competes against us...?" ATARI: "WHAT?!"

Norm aint got nuttin on this!!

A Hill to die on : Atari Jaguar needed to grab all the games from midway and should have made them all exclusive timed games. I’m not sure if I’m speaking pure out of nostalgia but man most the games from Atari / Namco / Midway were my childhood man. Especially Rampart and Narc. It’s a weird story hot Atari Games and Atari was totally separate but were the same especially Warner reclaimed Atari after 1993 (Atari Games that is) and then Resold to Midway in 95.

A new slogan. 'GTV, a weebs paradise' LOL I can hear my son making that joke. Since I love video games, anime and Japanese food, he calls me a weeb. But I hope my joke made you laugh.

And here I was thinking this video would be about the main human character in Isle of Dogs

Also just wanted to add this... it is ironic that despite the failure of Atari in Japan, that didn't stop Nintendo (who at the time they were in talks, did not have a subsidiary branch established for marketing, distribution, Public relations and supporting the Nintendo fan club or fanbase... remember that many things in the 80s had fan clubs?) From basically offering Atari a crazy "Harmony Gold" like exclusive rights for selling the Nintendo FamiCom and games where basically Atari "could" have renamed it as the "Atari Entertainment System" (insert roflmfaoooo) or Atari Genesis or whatever weird name we were actually saved from since Atari Corp management basically laughed at them, believing videogame systems were no more and that Atari Computers were the future... But then wait... some years later SEGA Enterprises LTD JAPAN actually comes to Atari Corp too (apparently they most likely had no clue about Nintendo's offer to Atari) and holy moley and gee wizz golly geewillikers Batman! But SEGA's Japanese management basically offered the cutting edge and affordable mass production hi-tech SEGA MegaDrive hardware and games with full exclusivity (again I'll mention Harmony Gold because it's evil) because despite SEGA's Japanese management actually spending multiple millions of dollars to establish the subsidiary branch named "Sega of America in 1986" to do that job, the management there proved unreliable, most likely had no real plan, did not study the competition and its said that the first SoA president didn't even believe in home videogame systems anyway like he was trapped in 1983 mindset. You could correct me if I'm wrong but that's what goes around for the information. However BOTH Nintendo and Sega's hi-tech powerhouse machines (remember that at least from 1983 to 1986 the Nintendo FamiCom and NES was super high powerful affordable hardware) to Atari Corp... a reformatted company that has a history of controversial leadership with hugely toxic egos... and it's not like they should have taken those deals but the fact that they were practically being handed a showroom prize beind door number 1 and basically Atari didn't want nor did they see any potential... in BOTH times... Which basically left Nintendo in 1984 to take the huge risk just to see if the NES would fail or not and likewise for Sega but TWICE since Sega of America was a mess in shambles by 1988 and in no position to have been cultivating a "Sega Master System fanbase" or even start hyping the Sega MegaDrive for launch in 1988 just weeks to a month after the Japanese launch... could you imagine if that happened too? It kinda makes me wonder if NEC offered Atari the PC-Engine..., hopefully they did, hopefully Atari Corp brass laughed at them and they went to reformat NEC America to prep the TG16. Also by late 80s and early 90s before 1993 there was a developing videogame system and arcade culture where we didn't just talk about the games and hardware but argued about why Nintendo's Super FamiCom CPU had a "lower perceived" clock speed number. Also Nintendo of America's management and staff had truly developed during the 80s and early 90s to the point that while many people do that "blame Nintendo" here in the U.S.A... the fact is if we talk high school sports of back then, it's like the coach of the other team took to blame the rival team but never bothered to watch their games and study their strategies and tricks.

Technically the game Go, which Atari derives it's name from, is Chinese in origin. The actual term "Atari" is used to similar effect as "Check" in the game Chess.

I'm amazed E.T. didn't end Atari's prospects then and there.

What exactly was remastered in this episode?

Tha k you for another great video!

I really thought the Atari 2800 was a typo! Must be, along with the localized cartridges, interesting to collectors.

For how many tech companies has the acquisition by a regular media corporation that doesn't understand the customer or the product sounded the death knell? Atari and Warner comes to mind, as does MySpace and Fox.

Most of my Japanese friends don't even know about Atari. Actually I have met only 1 Japanese person who knew a few things about Atari. I also never spotted any Atari product on retro game shops. Until watching this video, my impression was that Atari never sold anything in Japan.

I don't know if it was ever explained but why *did* they rename the system to the 2800?! my theory is 2600 is a multiple of 13 and there's the superstition that it's unlucky. and I imagine Japan has a lot of those so I have to wonder if that was the reason? but I hadn't heard until now how their later systems fared over there, man the Jag just got dogpiled on!

12:46 Sega also would've also used their own Trojan horse if they beat Nintendo to revitalizing console gaming in North America, the Sega Master System's 3D glasses.

USA: Atari's presence in Japan was an epoch failure. (pronounced epic) UK: Atari's presence in Japan was an epic failure Mentioned the mispronunciation of Tremiel's name, but not the mispronunciation North Americans do everyday to the word 'epoch', there's no I in it. (pronounced e pok). Sorry I just found that funny. The video itself though was very informative. :)

Interesting how a brand means different things in different countries: Atari in France is neither synonymous of Atari 2600 nor synonymous of failure. Atari in France is mostly synonymous of Atari ST. The Atari 520 STF was THE gaming machine of the late 80s; in the time window between the Amstrad CPC (mid 80s) and the 16-bit consoles (early 90s) - the 8-bit NES/MS were never big successes... struggling vs the Atari ST and the soon-to-arrive 16-bit MD & Super Nintendo.

WOW! Only 3K Jaguars in Japan?? Bet the Japanese version of that console is worth a BUNDLE now & extremely hard to get ahold of!

So japanese people seem to prefer local when it comes to games. But when it comes to smartphones and PCs, most stick to Apple. Curiously, and correct me if I'm wrong, Sharp does not sell smartphones outside of Japan. It really amazes me the amount of brands or products manufactured and sold only in Japan. When it comes to household items, they're truly unique. Nice job with the video, as always. Hadn't seen the previous one.

Great video as always but I just can’t shake off the sales number for Lynx. Doesn’t pass the smell test. Around 500.000 units would be around as much as the Neo Geo Pocket line in Japan… Where are those consoles? The Lynx is quasi non existant in used stores, it seldom appears on auction sites. I get that you did your research but this has to be some early journalistic typo that kept being reprinted in books unquestioned.

I was hoping to learn more about the climate of the Japanese market previous to 1983. It seems like every documentary skips straight from space invaders to famicom and sg1000, msx, etc. But we don't hear much about the tv manufacturers making pong clones or the PC market of the late 70's early 80's. The atari VCS hardware was a little bit junk compared to its own other offerings and so many follow-up and contemporary consoles. The atari 800 was a solid platform and Japan had the pc88 and 98 and before that the Sharp mz80k and the Sord m200. I'm just curious what Japanese people who had those computers back then were like?

Wasn’t Atari aware of the famicom from there failed attempt to become the North American distributor of what would become the Nintendo entertainment system?

Nice ken real nice :)

Atari's biggest mistake was presenting the 2600 like a premium console vs a budget one. The system should have been made as cheaply as possible as a budget option compared to the Famicom. There was NO WAY they were going to succeed with a sales price that was the same or higher than the Famicom.

The total Xbox One sales record is broken monthly by the switch... It's nuts >.>

The Atari Jaguar lol.

I think the original casing of the VCS didn't appeal to Japanese aesthetics. Furthermore, the Japanese market can be very discerning - the fact that arcade ports on the 2600 were just utter crap, like Pac-Man. Consumers in Japan could see that the home system tech was decidedly inferior to arcade technology. Being more technologically literate, I could see that they demanded more powerful home consoles as well.

TLDW: It couldn't compete against Famicom and SG1000.

Yeah, I was going to say, even Xbox is still not so hot here

Well, at least Godzilla gave them a helping hand for a short period.

Guess atari wasn't one, after all...maybe they should have called themselves shippai, or something.

Looks like the industry is going through Atari shock again except this time the company is Sony.

Is there any particular reason Atari stopped promotion and sales of the Lynx in Japan if it was doing well? Were the returns not good for America?

Awesome, now please do the UK.