By BARBARA ORTUTAY
NEW YORK (AP) — A scruffy, young Steve Jobs worked at Atari before he founded Apple. “Pong,” one of the world’s first video games, was born there, as was “Centipede,” a classic from the era of quarter-guzzling arcade machines. “Call of Duty” creator Activision was started by four of Atari’s former game developers.
The iconic video game company turns 40 years old this week, much slimmer these days as it tries to stay relevant in the age of “Angry Birds” and “Words With Friends.”
But Atari’s influence on today’s video games is pervasive.
Although it wasn’t the first company to make video games, Atari was the first to make a lasting impression on an entire generation. At arcades — or at video game bars such as Barcade in the trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn — nostalgic patrons still gather around such Atari classics as “Asteroids,” ”Joust” and “Centipede.”
The Atari 2600, launched in 1977, was the first video game console in millions of homes, long before the Nintendo Entertainment System (1985), Sony’s PlayStation (1994) and Microsoft’s Xbox (2001).
Today’s younger iPhone gamers might not remember how “Pong,” that simple, two-dimensional riff on Ping-Pong, swept across living rooms and arcades in the 1970s. But they might recognize elements of it in easy-to-learn, hard-to-master games based on simple physics — among them, “Angry Birds.”
