The Atari JTS Merger and What Happened During That Time
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- There are some lost years when it comes to Atari that nobody ever talks about. And it all starts in 1996 when Jack and Sam Tramiel did a reverse merger with JTS and their Atari Corp. So what happened with Atari and its properties during this time? Did any Atari games hit store shelves? Or was it as bleak and dark as some people would have you believe? In this first edition of the Lost Years of Atari, we are going to find out!
This video covers the years of 1996-1998, or late 96 to early 98. In the next edition of this mini series we will take a look at the Hasbro era from 98 to 2000 or so. So subscribe for that!
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So a few things I think I couldve touched on better or explained more. First Atari was not doing well financially at all. The merger was necessary on there end as they werent going to survive much longer.
On top of that Sam Tramiel had some health issues and Jack was not as hands on as he once had been. Although he did step up in Sams absence. So they needed to sell Atari, merge it with somebody else, or go bankrupt.
I could not find a clear answer as to why JTS was interested in Atari to begin with. They had sold off and lost a lot of the stuff that made them so attractive to the Tramiels to begin with. They must've had enough infrastructure left to make it worth while I supposed...
Finally I didnt hit everything about the story. I tried to keep it relevant to Atari and only the most entertaining things. Theres a lot more to the story and a lot more details that we can dive into here in the comments if you all want.
Thanks for watching guys and stay classy!
I never thought I would see Activision, PlayStation, and Asteroids in the same Atari related context 6:45. I really appreciate The Network looking into the time when I assumed Atari was dead. And wow, at one point Orange Julius in the mall had more employees than Atari!
Wow when you put the employee thing like that it really puts it into context. This was a dangerous time for our brand. If nobody saw value in it the properties could've been split up and that would've been that. Coleco and Intellivision didn't survive in any real way but Atari did!
Thankful Atari survived!
I remember when I first heard the news about the JTS reverse merger. I was devastated.
That could've been it for the brand really. The fact that Atari survived at all shows the value of the name and it's importance to the industry because that's all that it had of value at certain points
Same here. I read about it from ST Format magazine. While I was sad and knew it was end of the road, for some reason Atari ST series scene kept me going and I never sold my machines, just continued enjoying Atari as usual to this very day.
I hope through some bizarre twist of fate you somehow end up owning Atari 😀
That's either the nicest or the meanest thing anybody has ever said to me
Nice video! Cool part of history, I was getting into the jag in the late 90s and I remember these Telegames, at the time nothing interested me so did not order anything.
Did you learn of them online? I'm just curious how you heard about them back in the day.
@@TheAtariNetwork Yeah, I just remember reading everything I could back then about Jag, my best friend got one too at the same time and we just always dug up new info together. My only Jag regrets are not buying the CD when they were super cheep new and not using the Jag Link with my buddy, as we both had doom, that would have been sweet…
@@C_Money206 thanks for sharing. I had an opportunity to get a Jag when it was being clearanced from a KB Toys and kinda wish I would've. So I'm always intrigued when I hear from people who had one back then and what it was like.
Lol that game boy game was the first version of battlezone I ever played
How was it?
I recall trying to drive to the mountains in it at some point so it couldn’t have been bad at all
Great video thanks. Have always been very interested in the time leading to and immediately post Borregas Ave exit. Didn't they move into a little Bank of America building for a time? Also what happened to the contents of Borregas - presumably a LOT of history sadly ended up being thrown in skips amd forever lost.
The Bank of America building was demolished some time ago, and 1196 Borregas (and other ex Atari buildings) were demolished by Google in 2020. I find the latter to be an absolute travesty.
Now my research is by no means the most in depth or complete but from what I remember JTS sold the Atari assets to Hasbro but it mostly consisted of intellectual properties and the various rights. However Jayson Hill, Atari historian and Hasbro employee during the time had seen and handled a ton of plans, designs, promotional items and more regarding Atari. Some of it was given to a videogame museum but he did not know what happened to those items that Hasbro had acquired.
Ultimately I assume a ton was lost between all the changing of hands for the company along with the changing of locations. I didn't really focus on the result of the properties themselves unfortunately so I'm not sure what became of most of them.
Another very informative about the Atari, It's quite a saga !!! Thanks Jon @
Thank you for watching!
Another entertaining yet, stil scholarly endeavor!! Very interesting breakdown about a time in atari's history I didn't know much about. After watching the two interviews you all did you start to realize Atari's story almost is just getting started after the video game crash.
I wonder how difficult it would be to get Wade Rosen on?? I'm always fascinated by interviews with him for some reason. It would be cool to find out how sales of the 2600 plus, the GSP, and the other projects they've had have panned out.
Keep up the great work and stay classy!
I haven't reached out to Wade because I think he's probably too busy to deal with me but you know what, I'll see what I can do. Nothing to lose right?
There's so much to Ataris story that's completely ignored. I wanted to just explore some it that people don't think about. It's not the most entertaining time of Atari but it's part of the story! Thanks for watching!
I vaguely remember the Telegames publishing leftover Jaguar games at the time wasn't mentioned as being connected to the JTS deal. It figures Atari would be screwing over the devs even beyond the grave.
Grerat video, lots of informative stuff there..
Thanks! I didn't see much out there about this time but really there wasn't much going on. I could've gone more into the whole merger thing but it was a bit boring. A lot of money being moved around and little negotiation bits.
Jaguar, Lynx & Falcon were all they had; every other product got axed.
Portfolio, STacy, ST-BOOK all faded away.
you'd think they would have designed a "pocket Calculator" that could trade Data between Ataris ...
i think the Tramiels just didn't want to go thru the Commodore process again.
JTS did not have a clue/ambition to do anything with the Brand.
Didn’t Telegames also get the rights to produce Worms on the Jaguar through this deal in 1998?
I remember 4 Play/Scatologic having a hard time trying to produce BattleSphere during this time with little to no support from Atari/JTS corp.
Yes they did acquire the rights to Worms and you can still get that in North America from Songbird Productions. Or from Telegames in Europe.
I remember too reading about the issues with Battlesphere but I promise that there was nobody left to support them. And those left behind probably didn't care much. It was maybe the darkest time in Atari history...
Must have been an awkward Christmas office party at Atari knowing what was about to come…
You ain't kidding. Truth is Sam Tramiels health was declining and Jack was semi retired. At least from what I understand in my reading and talking with former employees. The company was bleeding money and only kept a float from a settlement won over Sega.
What I haven't figured out is why JTS wanted Atari. For the property? Atari sold off a lot of stuff prior and I don't believe they had much production and absolutely no chip fabrication left. Maybe they still had some infrastructure for production that was attractive?
@@TheAtariNetwork I like the idea if the requirement to support the Jag for an addition year came from Sam as a condition to sign off on the JTS deal. He was still recovering from his heart attack and his father wasn't going to fight him over it. That was as likely to happen as anything I guess.
@@TheAtariNetwork My understanding is that it was a way for JTS to become a publicly traded company. At the time, I remember they called it a "reverse merger." It's much easier for a private company (JTS) to go public through a reverse merger than it is for them to do an IPO. There was zero synergy between the two companies.
Atari just seemed to dwindle down to nothing. Not even a household name anymore. A shell of its former self.
That happened in 1996
Until a French company used the Atari name once again.
All the real Atari employees who were involved with the Jaguar were gone by early 1996. Atari was dead not long after 1996 started. Anything Jaguar related that came out after Feb or March 96 was like dead stock incomplete Jaguar games basically. with maybe the exception being Iron Soldier 2 which is a large finished solid game. worthy of being an official Jaguar game. Same with Battlesphere which didnt come out until 1999. But ya basically when the PlayStation came out in 1995 September it killed all the competition. Atari knew there was no point trying to compete with Sony or PlayStation. They would lose badly. So Atari sold out and started liquidating quickly in 1996. early 96. some dead stock Jaguar stuff trickled out in the following couple years but most of it was barely enjoyable as to be any kind of officially backed Jaguar game. Fight For Life and Brain Dead 13 were the last OFFICIAL official Jaguar games released in January 1996 before Atari started firing everyone. I think it was January when the decision was made to end Atari and liquidate quickly and sell out and get out.