Atari Oddities

The wacky Atari you don't know: Its digital photo booth, video phone, "Puppy Pong," and more.

Posted by  | Sunday, February 12, 2012


The 1976 Atari Digital Camera
Atari’s early products from the Nolan Bushnell era often carried a sense of creative exuberance that would later be ironed out by corporate structure. Take the Compugraph Foto, a 1976 coin-operated amusement. This monstrous computerized photo booth took a subject’s photo, digitized it, and printed out gag portraits on 11″x14″ tractor-feed printer paper.

I say “gag portraits,” because the photos came out as ASCII mosaics, composed of alphanumeric characters automatically arranged by the computer to match light and dark areas of the photo. I’m not sure exactly how they pulled it off, but I do know that it predated TTYQuake by 23 years.



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9 Comments For This Post

  1. JM_Brazil Says:
    February 13th, 2012 at 4:49 am

    Thanks for the nostalgia Benj, this brings back many fond memories.

  2. Martin Goldberg Says:
    February 13th, 2012 at 1:26 pm

    A little off on the Tank console and joystick history there. It wasn't the Tank console first and then the VCS/2600 and the sticks weren't chosen for one over the other. They were in development simultaneous. In fact the Tank console (called Tank II in the Atari version), the last of the dedicated consoles, was there simply in case something went wrong with the VCS. It didn't and the Tank console was cancelled accordingly. Additionally, the sticks used in this and the VCS were not CX-40's, they are the spring loaded CX-10's.

  3. Benj Edwards Says:
    February 13th, 2012 at 4:48 pm

    I had a feeling I'd hear from you on this one, Marty. Thanks for clarifying that murky bit of Atari history for us.

  4. Martin Goldberg Says:
    February 20th, 2012 at 7:48 pm

    Benj, not a problem. Great article otherwise!

  5. Mem Says:
    February 13th, 2012 at 1:30 pm

    Wasn't that F-1 game in Dawn of the Dead?

  6. Guest Says:
    February 13th, 2012 at 1:59 pm

    I actually owned a Hercules pinball game. It was easily the heaviest piece of electronics I have ever purchased for home use. It cost $500 from a Denver arcade refurbishing shop and came with free shipping back in 1993. Never broke down once in the 2 years I owned it but don't recommend putting this in the basement. Gave it away rather than trying to move it to my new house. Still, it was a lot of fun.

  7. Puffers Rabbinald Says:
    February 14th, 2012 at 8:47 am

    Just as a comment, the guy who eventually created programming to supercede scrolling as approximated in F-1 was Steve Hanawa, who worked as head of R & D for Sega of America during the Master System's initial launch. The game he did this in, which revolutionized racing games forever, was Turbo.

  8. Daniel B. Says:
    February 24th, 2012 at 12:34 am

    "Puppy Pong" did in fact get some kind of national exposure — it was a one-bid prize on a nighttime (Dennis James) episode of "The Price Is Right" during the 1974-75 season. Janice Pennington and Anita Ford were shown playing it.

  9. Daniel B. Says:
    February 24th, 2012 at 12:38 am

    AnitRa Ford, sorry. Also, here's the segment where Puppy Pong was offered (audio only, sorry):
    http://j-shea.com/TPIR/nighttime/750715b.mov