All Geeks

Breastplate by Giovanni Paolo Negroli, Milan c. 1540

12 by 12 inches, original Nintendo controller on board

price upon request

Forty years. That's a long time in the tech industry and Atari knows it. Today it celebrates four decades in the game, and quite the tale it is. Highs, lows and everything in between, Atari has been there. As one of the most influential brands both in gaming and technology, it only seems right to take a look over the company's history and chart some of the more significant twists in its less than straightforward journey. After the break we speak to the man that started it all and the one currently at the helm, as well as some of the many people whose lives were irreversibly changed by its influence. Happy birthday to you, Atari!

The ’80′s and early ’90′s were a magical decade for gadgets for kids. Computing power and display technology were evolving and cost effective enough to penetrate the toy market in a big way. Purely mechanical toys evolved into electromechanical toys and gave birth to the digital toy revolution. For example, LED games of the ’70′s were replaced by Tiger LCD games which were replaced by the Nintendo Gameboy and so on.

 

Companies also began to innovate on educational toys for kids, whether it was teaching them about electronics, programming, or offering educational games. Additionally, electronics became cheap enough to expand what toys were capable of doing, from playing music to increased interactivity. As a child of the ’80′s, I had many of these toys and played with them much longer than a kid’s attention span would dictate.

 

A year ago, one of my first posts for GeekDad was a popular article reminiscing about five of these more educational toys. I’ve taken those and added five more that I have the fondest memories of – whether they were my own or my neighbors toys which were coveted the most. And hoping to instill that same child-like wonder in my kids, I’ve also included what the modern equivalents are in the market today....

New photographs have emerged showing candid and relaxed shots from the making of the second film in the original Star Wars trilogy - The Empire Strikes Back.