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BUSINESS
The following is reprinted through the
courtesy of STAR'TECH JOURNAL, P 0.
Box 1065, Merchantville, NJ 08109.
“On the Service Trail,”
April 1983
By Todd Erickson, Summit Amusement,
Paul,
St.
Atari
Atari
MN
Customer/Field Service
has had the reputation for having the
finest customer/field service in the indus-
Under the
newly-promoted
Dari Davidson, the company is making an
try.
direction of
extensive effort to increase its lead. Dari
has become the man at Atari who you can
if you have a problem. No factory has
call
had a high official like Dari soliciting pro-
blems in the field. If you have comments,
good or bad, about their games, fill out
the card that comes with each game. If
you feel that your problem is a major one,
you can reach Dari at 800/538-1611.
Pole Position* Atari's latest hit, has been
as trouble-free as any game made today.
Every manufacturer depends on sub-
contractors for their supplies. They may
have a small percentage of failures with
one component which, in the end, the
field may spend thousands of hours diag-
nosing. Dari's group published each small
problem that occurred in early production
game. Too many manufacturers
want to admit that their games have
of the
don’t
problems. Hopefully,
will
all
manufacturers
follow Atari’s lead.
Atari Millipede™
Setting
and Tempest®Option
Recommendations
Millipede has already established
a
game that is going to last as well
itself
as
as
its
predecessor, Centipede.® The bonus on
Millipede is 15K. feel the life should be
12K, concurrent with Centipede. As the
player learns the game, other features can
be tightened up. The playing time will be
I
between 2 Vz and 3 minutes
setting.
By
giving the player
if left on this
an extra
20-30 seconds, a game has never been
killed. Being 20-30 seconds short, how-
ever, has killed games.
Atari’s Tempest has been one of the
finest games have owned in the last few
years in the arcade market. It has not
I
done
a
some locations because is
game. The normal playing time
well in
difficult
it
under 2 minutes. Many good games to-
day are over 3 minutes playing time. Plac-
ing the game on 5 lives in many locations
will bring the income up considerably.
The easy setting can also be a help if your
is
players aren't as skilled as others.
'Pole Position is engineered and designed by Namco
Manufactured under license by
Atari, Inc,
Ltd.
Trademark and
© Namco 1982.
gives time checks and weather, reports
WDVE
of Pittsburgh,
listeners with
its
pre-programmed news, and even takes
telephone calls on-the-air!
But WDVE’s computer orientation does
not stop with the marvels of Hal. The sta-
tion also conducts computerized music
research polling to gain stats on its listen-
ership. And it recognizes a real interest on
the part of its audience in another aspect
of computerization— video games. So
what could be more effective than a pro-
motional event tying WDVE to the video
entertainment form? Thus, the inspiration
gave rise to the WDVE Video Olympics
which recently completed its 2nd annual
Pennsylvania rocks
more than album-oriented
The station promotes through the
waves a focus on computer technolo-
gy to present what’s here-and-now as well
music.
air
as
to help usher in the future.
Playing a key role in these efforts is an
named Hal who
electronic disc jockey
was introduced
in September of 1982 and
has since received widespread national
attention. He’s the world’s
synthesized, computer-operated voice de-
veloped by WDVE's chief engineer, Gary
Marince. In other words, Hal is able to
generate his own 100% synthetic human-
like voice— not the synthesized version of
first fully-
someone else’s.
His gift of gab is heard
each weekday on the station’s “Morning
ehow. Sharing the time with
his two human co-hosts, he tells jokes,
Alternative"
WDVE listener concentrates on passing
the
other car for extra points and bonus time!
Atari Hosts Recording Stars
competition. Even Hal attended!
Co-sponsors of the tournament which
ran April 8-10 were Computer Tech, a local
computer school, and Monroeville Mall,
one of the largest suburban malls in the
mid-West and the locale where the event
was held. Registration took place on-site,
and more than 1,100 WDVE listeners—
ranging in age from 5 years to 60— com-
peted on each of 3 coin video games:
Pole Positon* Millipede™, and Sinistar** A
three-minute time limit was imposed— un-
less game play expired first!— to achieve
respective scores. Six finalists, determined
by combined scores, returned on Sunday,
April 17 to go another round of 15 minutes
maximum on each
of the same 3 games.
David Greene, a 19-year-old Carnegie
Mellon University engineering student
from Churchill, Pennsylvania, was the
grand prize winner and received an Atari
5200 Super System™.
The Atari coin video games used in the
competition were supplied by the Pitts-
burgh distributorship, Banner Specialty
Company. Three banks of machines ac-
commodated
buzzed
all
the participants and
all the action. Fur-
was created
furiously from
ther on-the-scene excitement
Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson, recording artists, recently spent the day at Atari, Inc.
on a whirlwind tour of the facilities, including the Coin Games Division. Pictured (I to r) are
Dan Van Elderen, VP of Engineering, Jerry Marcus, Executive VP of Sales, Jones, Jackson
and Don Osborne, VP of Marketing for the division.
by challengers competing head-on with
the locally renowned WDVE D.J. No, Hal
did not get in on the game play, but then
again, there’s always next year!
’Pole Position is engineered and designed by Namco Ltd.,
manufactured under license by Atari, Inc. Trademark and
©
Namco
1982.
’’Trademark
of Williams Electronics, Inc.