The History
The original Atari Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as
Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid 1980s.
To come up with the name Atari, Bushnell wrote down several words from the game Japanese game "Go", eventually choosing atari, a term that in the context of the game means a state where a stone or group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent. In Japanese, atari is the nominalized form of ataru, which literally means to "target" or "aim at" something. Loosely, it can be translated as "prepare to be attacked".
The Atari 2600 helped spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and from it's initial release in October 1977, Atari sold over thirty million of the consoles, and together with other companies sold hundreds of millions of games. Cartridges for the system were produced across three decades, and there are still new games being produced today.
Competition in the video game industry quickly increased and Atari needed a mega-hit in 1980 in order to squash the competition, and they found it in the home version of a very popular game from Japan called...Space Invaders. It was so popular that people were buying the Atari 2600 just so they could play Space Invaders at home and now days would be termed the video game industry's first' killer-app'.
In 1982, Atari released disappointing versions of two highly publicised games, Pac-Man and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, causing a pileup of unsold inventory and depressing prices. In 1983, in response to a massive number of returned orders from distributors, Atari buried millions of unsold game cartridges in a New Mexico desert landfill with the bulk of them consisting of those same two titles
These problems were followed by the infamous video game crash of 1983, which caused losses that totaled more than $US500 million. Warner's stock price slid from $60 to $20, and the company began searching for a buyer for its troubled arcade game division.
As the 80's progressed Atari also began to run into some management problems. Its home computer, video game console, and arcade divisions were operating independently of one another and rarely cooperated. Faced with fierce competition and price wars in the game console and home computer markets, Atari was never able to duplicate the success of the 2600.
Still, Atari held a formidable position in the world video game market, and was the number one console maker in every market except Japan. It was about this time that a little known Japanese playing card company by the name of Nintendo was going to be released their first programmable video game console, the Famicom which became known to the rest of the world as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Looking to also sell the console in international markets, a partnership with Atari seemed a good match and Nintendo approached Atari to offer a licensing deal whereby Atari would build and sell the system, paying Nintendo a royalty.
In late spring and early summer of 1983 Atari and Nintendo began a flurry of talks about having Atari license and package the Nintendo prototype "FCS" (Family Computer System) as an Atari video game product. This deal was nearly completed when Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was let go due to questionable Stock sale activity and Atari's top management was in disarray for several months. Nintendo, lost its patience and walked away, allowing the future NES to be a solely Nintendo released product in early 1985...and the rest as they say is history...or at least another puzzle cache!
The Statistics
Year of Release: 1977
Retail Price at Launch: $US249
Media Type: cartridges, cassettes via SuperCharger
Processor: 6507 (8-bit)
Processor Speed: 1.19 MHz
Screen RAM: 128 bytes
Screen Resolution: 192 x 160
Color Palette: 16 colors, 4 max on-screen
Max Sprites: N/A; player-missile graphics (5 max)
Sound: 2 sound channels
Launch Line-up
Air-Sea Battle
Basic Math
Blackjack
Combat
Indy 500
Star Ship
Street Racer
Surround
Video Olympics
The Puzzle
Below you will find a series of pictures - screen shots of Atari 2600 games:
What you need to do is to work out the name of the game from the screen shots below (the 2 rows of 3). The number of letters in each game title will give you a number towards the final coordinates that you are looking for.
IMPORTANT If a game has 10 or more letter then only count the last number. For example if the game has 17 letters then the number to use is 7, or if it has 10 letters than the number to use is 0. Do not count full stops, hyphens, semi-colons etc.
This site might be of assistance: www.atariage.com
The Cache
Once you have the final coordinates you should find a pleasant location by the river. Depending on the weather there may be muggles aplenty. You are looking for a small cache container that should be camouflaged to look like it matches the surroundings. There is only room for a log and pencil for this one, but we managed to squeeze in a couple of scratchies for the FTF.
Not many people know this but Activision used this local area to film the many 'cut-scenes' that were planned to be used in their blockbuster hit River Raid. Sadly, due to memory constraints these cut-scenes had to be left out.
Please keep an eye for snakes, and drop bears! We aplogise in advance as occasionally the locals tend to have difficulty cleaning up after themselves. It is generally a nice area and we will keep tabs on it and tend the CITO as required.
Difficulty will depend on how well you know your atari games and Terrain may increase if a little wet.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.