
Once upon Atari
How I Made History by Killing an Industry
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Narrated by:
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Howard Scott Warshaw
About this listen
Video games set the world on fire, and Atari lit the match. This is an intimate view into the dramatic rise and fall of the early video game industry, as seen through the eyes of one of its most iconic pioneers. This book offers eye-opening details and insights, laying bare the issues and dynamics still taking place in modern software companies. A must-hear for anyone in high-tech production, delivered in a compelling narrative, with a fresh voice and unorthodox style.
How much fun can you have inventing video games in a creative paradise? What behind-the-scenes corporate intrigue went on while making billions of dollars and launching a new medium? What really caused the video game crash of 1983? Once upon Atari is the inside story of how it all happened and how it upended the life of one of its key players. An innovative work from one of the industry’s original innovators, delivered in a creative style that mirrors the industry it reveals. It is a compelling tale of innocence, joy, greed, devastation, and ultimately redemption.
©2020 Howard Scott Warshaw (P)2022 Howard Scott WarshawListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier's Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry.
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Only the Interesting Stuff
- By R. Squyres on 10-05-21
By: Sid Meier, and others
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Console Wars
- Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation
- By: Blake J. Harris
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 20 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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A mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video-game industry. In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video-game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But all that would change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a former Mattel executive who knew nothing about video games and everything about fighting uphill battles.
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Was hoping for so much more...
- By Rob G. on 11-17-14
By: Blake J. Harris
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Masters of Doom
- How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
- By: David Kushner
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history - Doom and Quake - until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry.
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How it was
- By Ryan on 08-27-13
By: David Kushner
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Long Live Mortal Kombat, Round 1
- The Fatalities and Fandom of the Arcade Era
- By: David L. Craddock, John Tobias - foreword, James Rolfe - foreword
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 21 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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To politicians and parents, Mortal Kombat was a menace to society. To gamers, it was a way of life. From dedicated hustlers who put thousands of miles on their odometers driving coast to coast to challenge the top players in arcades, to fans who devote their free time to collecting action figures, setting world records, and plumbing the depths of its lore, the Mortal Kombat franchise has topped sales charts for thirty years, and its popularity shows no signs of waning. But before Mortal Kombat offended politicians and sold over 12 million units, executives at Midway saw it as filler.
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A lot of filler, and very little substance
- By Fred on 12-09-23
By: David L. Craddock, and others
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Press Reset
- Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry
- By: Jason Schreier
- Narrated by: Ray Chase
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jason Schreier's groundbreaking reporting has earned him a place among the preeminent investigative journalists covering the world of video games. In his eagerly anticipated, deeply researched new book, Schreier trains his investigative eye on the volatility of the video game industry and the resilience of the people who work in it.
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Audio Quality is Inconsistent
- By Amazon Customer on 09-14-21
By: Jason Schreier
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Think Like a Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential
- By: Justin Gary
- Narrated by: Justin Gary
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you love gaming? Do you have ideas for games of your own and want to learn how to produce them professionally? Longtime game designer Justin Gary has the answers you seek. After 20 years in the gaming industry, creating such games as Solforge, Ascension, and the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game, Justin is now sharing all his secrets in Think Like a Game Designer. Best of all, Justin’s secrets are really simple, practical, and common sense steps you can take yourself.
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Do you like quotes?
- By Reaver on 04-05-24
By: Justin Gary
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Disrupting the Game
- From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo
- By: Reggie Fils-Aimé
- Narrated by: Reggie Fils-Aimé
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Reggie Fils-Aimé, retired President and Chief Operating Officer of Nintendo of America Inc., shares leadership lessons and inspiring stories from his unlikely rise to the top. Learn from Reggie how to leverage disruptive thinking to pinpoint the life choices that will make you truly happy, conquer negative perceptions from those who underestimate or outright dismiss you, and master the grit, perseverance, and resilience it takes to dominate in the business world and to reach your professional dreams.
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Engaging Autobiography
- By Ryan on 12-07-22
By: Reggie Fils-Aimé
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All Your Base Are Belong to Us
- How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture
- By: Harold Goldberg
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most-beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon. Over the last 50 years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment.
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A History of Game Developers, Not Games
- By Brandon on 05-06-16
By: Harold Goldberg
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The History of the Future
- Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
- By: Blake J. Harris
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey - then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer - invents a device that has the potential to change everything.
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Fantastic book
- By Rodney on 04-01-19
By: Blake J. Harris
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Service Games
- The Rise and Fall of SEGA: Enhanced Edition
- By: Sam Pettus
- Narrated by: Tom Racine
- Length: 17 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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New Edition! More content, images, and corrected text and facts. Monochrome edition. Starting with its humble beginnings in the 1950s and ending with its swan-song, the Dreamcast, in the early 2000s, this is the complete history of Sega as a console maker. Before home computers and video game consoles, before the Internet and social networking, and before motion controls and smartphones, there was Sega.
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The Story of the Fall of Sega
- By Austin on 01-05-15
By: Sam Pettus
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8-Bit Apocalypse
- The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command
- By: Alex Rubens, Jeff Gerstmann - foreword
- Narrated by: Ryan Burke
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking listeners back to the days of TaB cola, dot matrix printers, and digging through the couch for just one more quarter, Alex Rubens combines his knowledge of the tech industry and experience as a gaming journalist to conjure the wild silicon frontier of the 8-bit ’80s. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command offers the first in-depth, personal history of an era for which fans have a lot of nostalgia.
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Absolute waste of time!!
- By Talal on 03-30-19
By: Alex Rubens, and others
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Inspired Therapist
- My Inner Journey from Wannabe to Healer
- By: Howard Scott Warshaw
- Narrated by: Howard Scott Warshaw
- Length: 3 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Wise and real. This book offers a glimpse inside the mind of a therapist who is always pushing to be better while keeping the well-being of clients front and center. The author’s authentic and humorous voice comes through in a series of reflections about therapy, what it means to be a therapist, and what it means to live an authentic life. The quotes sprinkled throughout are poignant, and Warshaw’s unique blend of wit and insight make it fun as well as enlightening.
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An eye opening look into the mind
- By Bonnie on 04-13-23
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Super Mario
- How Nintendo Conquered America
- By: Jeff Ryan
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Nintendo has continually set the standard for video game innovation in America, starting in 1981 with a plucky hero who jumped over barrels to save a girl from an ape. The saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game. Jeff Ryan shares the story of how this quintessentially Japanese company found success in the American market.
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Not Exciting
- By TM on 08-18-14
By: Jeff Ryan
What listeners say about Once upon Atari
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- Lee
- 02-04-25
Narration
I didn’t really like the way this book flowed but Dr Warshaw is a great narrator and should do more voice work.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-22-23
Awesome story from start to finish !!!!
I loved this story from start to finish . A great look at Atari from it's glory days from the inside . What a roller-coaster ride it was for one of the greatest video game engineers of all times . The unbelievable time crunch that he faced and the end of the great gaming giant is all here to be learned about from someone that witnessed it all first hand .
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1 person found this helpful
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- Thunder
- 08-04-23
Must Read if You're Into Videogames
This book is such a great look at the heyday of Atari, it's culture and the fall of the industry. it's written with such great humor and do well read, I found myself laughing often and sometimes hard. I love Howard's way if putting things and he's got a good delivery. Tons of amazing stories.
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- P.D.TZEREFOS
- 12-16-23
Funny and reminiscent
if you ve lived through the 80s as a teenager and been into the video games era, this a must "read".
delivered with humor and sarcasm, I found myself chuckling often, which is not something I can say for many books.
higly recommend trip to memory lane
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- Fraser
- 04-14-23
Very funny and insightful
A great tail of a very important time in tech and pop culture history brilliantly read
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- Phillip M. Singleton
- 05-05-23
Finally! A memoir of a creative that rivals Stephen King’s On Writing.
Finally! A memoir of a creative that rivals Stephen King’s On Writing. The writing is excellent. The editing by his wife Sherri, is perfect.
The wisdom hiding in the pages should be mandatory reading for anyone in game design. The daily workout routine at the arcade I hope is a standard prescription for Dr. Warshaw’s clients in 2023.
Now that we have enough rumination time, how about a re-issue of E.T. with the changes described in Chapter 15? Or even better, a Raiders of the Lost Ark schedule of almost a year to give 2600 fans the E.T. sequel we’ve always wanted. Steven Spielberg is 76 now, and this could make a great reunion. The 45th anniversary is only four years away!
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- Becky Poe
- 08-13-23
Loved it!
This book is a must-read if you are into retro gaming. I enjoyed hearing the stories behind the games I loved as a kid. And, as a fellow software developer and game designer, I found it interesting to hear what life was like at Atari.
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- Ben G
- 02-01-24
An Entertaining and Insightful Ramble of a Book
How to rate this book. As a narrative, it is one of the more frustrating historical tales I’ve heard. Whereas some autobiographers opt for understating some of the various big moments, Howard (aka “HSW”) goes hard in the other direction, greedily squeezing every single little drop he can from the (frankly few) interesting anecdotes in the book. You get the up-front tease, so you know the anecdote is coming; then you get the narrative that almost gets to it; then you get the random diversion(s) to try and build the tension; then you get back to the anecdote only to veer off again; and so forth.
Having said that, I loved listening to HSW. He’s got a nerd’s wit, and he employs it constantly, but, hey, it works for me. He’s is just constantly nuancing the sh*t out of the prose, with all kinds of fun little wordplay. It should be obnoxious. If I were reading this, I’d probably find it insufferable and quit. But when he delivers it (at the 1.2x I use for playback) it’s just so much fun.
And so I found myself liking HSW’s delivery, and how it prolongs what ought to be an article-length little thought piece on the collapse of Atari, into a prolonged time machine into a bygone charmed era that I enjoy living through again, with HSW as my proxy.
So, four stars for this thing. I enjoyed it. And four stars for HSW’s delightful performance. These are solid ratings in my book. I can only give the story two stars because, geez HSW, you really, really, really milked the stuffing out of your little tale. But I did enjoy it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-14-24
humorous and insightful
absolutely loved it. funny and a wonderful insight into a part of gaming history I find fascinating. performance was great. 10/10
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- Buck Sexton
- 02-28-24
Loved hearing HSW talk about his history at Atari in his own words!
Howard is corny and loves puns. His character shines through this work and I truly loved every bit of it. If you were like me and you knew about the dig in New Mexico I was initially concerned there wasn’t going to be much to this but feel assured he packs a lot in between the book ends of the historical dig! Really fun hearing more behind the scenes bits of Atari!
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