The History of Atari

For the video gamer geek in you, here is the (ultimate) history of Atari from 1971 till 1977 in 20 pages! From Gamasutra:

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell was a Go player who learned the hacker ethic at the University of Utah. When Bushnell finally decided on the name for his pioneering video game company, he called it “Atari”. In Go terms this is like saying “watch the hell out, I’m just about to win the game”. A couple years later, Atari would adopt a curious looking logo -- a three-part, vertically split triangle, that looked a bit like an “A”, but more like a mountain.

This symbol would commonly be known as the “Fuji”, and it was under its shadow that an entire new industry was created. It was also under this shadow that the simple lessons of Go would affect the design of video games in their first decade. The “simple to learn, difficult to master” game design philosophy is the one that helped propel Atari’s games from mild parlor amusements into the psyche of an entire generation.