The Greatest Video Game Flops #3: Atari’s Gravitar and Black Widow
You could look at 1982 as both Atari’s best and worst year. As Atari celebrated it’s 10th anniversary it had the most popular home gaming system on the market, a thriving home computer business, and were a leader in coin operated arcade games. In addition, they had over 10,000 employees, made 1.45 Billon Dollars in the first 3 financial quarters of 1982, owned several factories, and had a consumer level of trust unrivaled by most companies of the time period.
Atari was on its way to becoming the IBM of entertainment. During this same period the cracks within the company’s foundation were starting to show. By 1983 the damage was hard to stop, and by 1984 it was all over. Atari became financially beyond repair after a record loss of over 500 million for end of year 1983. It was then swept up into two boxes and sold off in order to save parent company Warner Brothers from financial ruin. There warning signs in 1982 despite the record profits. Without getting into too deep into the weeds with Atari’s bank ledger let’s review the major reasons Atari started to falter in a handy bullet point format.
The newly released Atari 5200 home gaming system sold below expectations due to a lack of backwards compatibility, lack of exclusive games, and terrible controllers
A huge price war in the home computer market hurt Atari as well as other companies
Revised 8-bit computers from Atari, especially the Atari 1200XL did poorly due to multiple issues around compatibility and availability
Consumer trust in gaming and home computers faltered over a crowded marketplace and lack of compatibility between brands
A glut of terrible 3rd party home gaming software
A glut of terrible software made by Atari including the famously bad E.T. game
Atari executives participated in insider trading
Atari had become management heavy adding to bureaucracy in the company
Atari had lost critical talent who started their own companies (Activision, Imagic, Chuck E. Cheese)
One sector Atari was still performing well in was its coin-op arcade division. The titles that proved the most successful in 1982 for Atari were however, not developed in-house by Atari but licensed from other companies. Dig Dug and Pole Position both were developed by Namco of Japan and licensed to Atari for US distribution. They were massive hits selling well over 20,000 copies and making decent profits for arcade operators. In house developed titles such as Gravitar, Space Duel and Liberator proved to be the opposite.
For comparison sake in the previous year Atari had sold 56,006 Centipede machines, one of the all time classic arcade games. Over at the competition, Bally Midway would end up selling over 125,000 Ms.Pac-Man machines (maybe double this number) with production starting in 1982, and Williams sold around 50,000 Joust machines. Gravitar on the other hand would go onto manufacture less than 6,000 machines with hundreds of them sitting in Atari’s warehouse unwanted by operators. Many would be sold at a discount or converted to Black Widow. Had Atari’s in-house development team lost its touch? Was Atari no longer understanding what players wanted? Was Atari’s bureaucracy destroying creativity?
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Atari programmers and developers were not happy employees and had animosity towards Atari management by ‘82. The reasons were plentiful including a lack of profit sharing, lack of programming credit, and heavy corporate bureaucracy repressing creative freedom. When Atari was originally founded in 1972, then President Nolan Bushnell developed a company mantra of hot tub parties, no dress codes, and little of the typical formal stuffy business atmosphere associated with corporations. As long as the work got done, no one cared when you showed up, what you did the night before, or what you wore to the office. That all started to change in 1976 when Warner Brothers bought Atari, gradually replacing the Woodstock mojo vibes for more traditional Wall Street corporate structure. Out with the flip flops, in with the pinstripe suits.
One of the most famous documents identifying this lack of company cohesion came from Gravitar developer Rich Adam on April 5th 1982. Rich called out Atari’s desire to quickly license and release titles not developed by Atari that he felt were substandard products (he specifically calls out the licensed titles Kangaroo and Fly Boy (which would be renamed Fast Freddie). In his memo, Rich expresses the push to get these two games tested and to market, limited the testing for Gravitar giving designers less than adequate data to use to improve Gravitar. The subject line of the memo perfectly summarizes his emotions “Why am I working so hard to make a quality product?” Kangaroo would go onto sell over twice as many units as Gravitar.
On location testing was a big part of Atari’s developmental process for new arcade titles. New games would be tested as prototypes in west coast arcades and monitored against the competition’s titles for overall revenue earned and general player enjoyment. Only games that would finish in the top three earning titles for the week at the arcade in which they tested in would go onto production.
Testing could be insightful leading to player insights for a more rounded and fun game. It could also lead to delays to the marketplace with endless tweaking or even shut down the development of a promising title. This obsessive testing created a fine line over figuring out if something is appealing or letting the customers design something personally appealing to their particular tastes. In the business world this is known as mission drift, and can be dangerous to someone attempting to create something with any artistic merit.
Gravitar development started in early 1981 and would be released in August of 1982. The coin op game was designed by Mike Hally, Rich Adam, and Joe Coddington. It is a space themed, multi-directional shooter with similar themes to earlier Atari titles such as Lunar Lander, Asteroids, and Space Duel. It also shares themes with the classic game Space War. Originally titled Lunar Battle, the game uses a color vector monitor for striking wire-frame visuals and smooth animation.
Much of the game concept deals with carefully navigate thin caverns to attack enemies with your space craft and make finite adjustments to pick up items or land. Gravity is a factor in the game as well and makes a player have to constantly readjust movements via the ship’s thrusters and direction. The creators of Gravitar have often been quoted as not being able to finish the game without cheating. Gravitar is unforgivingly difficult. The scaling up of difficultly compared to other games from this era is intense. There is no training level and few on-screen instructions or hits for the player. This is not a game for a casual player or those in 1982 who didn’t have a bag of quarters to spare.
Upon release, it was met with mostly positive press by the coin-op trade magazines at the time. Atari was positioning Gravitar as it’s premium new coin-op offering for the 3rd quarter. This included the development of an Atari 2600 home version of the game. The 2600 version is fairly decent adaptation considering the hardware limitations of the 2600. It would only originally be sold though the mail order “Atari Club”. This was likely due to it’s less than stellar reception in the arcades.
Internally there was a bit of concern over Atari’s fixation on space themed games by 1982. After the success of Donkey Kong by Nintendo in 1981 the public seemed interested towards cute story based platform style games and away from space themed shooters. Although the space shooter Space Duel, released by Atari earlier in 1982 had sold well, its long term revenue dropped off quickly compared to other competing titles. Internal Atari documents when discussing the failure of another 1982 Atari coin-op space shooter Liberator specifically point out Atari’s space themed games as “out of date with current trends”. In an internal marketing report dated September 21, 1982 speaking of the failure of some recent Atari titles: “…operators are well aware of Atari’s 1982 track record, there have been no internally developed “hits” and especially no “hot space themed Atari games”. In the same memo it is also stated that… “demand/appeal” for space themed games have dramatically changed (in the market).”
Gravitar was also likely the indirect victim of envy for another company’s product. That product was Williams’ Defender arcade game. Williams’ titles had a reputation of being more challenging and catering towards more mature players. Defender with it’s multiple buttons, fast paced action and complex rule set became the go-to game for players seeking a challenge. Williams would go onto sell over 60,000 Defender machines. In 1982, it’s new title the multi-directional fast paced shooter Robotron: 2084 was gaining a similar reputation as an “expert” player’s title.
Upon release, feedback from disappointed operators and players was quick. Gravitar was just too hard. Earning were solid at first, but many players did not return to the game creating a dramatic fall off in revenue for arcade operators and game distributors. Atari would eventually admit the game’s difficulty was too severe, and also eluded to some of Atari’s testing protocols might have been to blame for the failure of Gravitar. A planed cocktail and cabaret cabinet version of the game would not be released. A very obvious product placement in the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again did little to spur any public interest.
"We let a bad game get into the market” John Farrand, the then President of the Atari Coin-Op Division stated during an interview to PlayMeter Magazine. "We tested it. It was an error we made. We didn't necessarily choose the proper location. We don't test that way anymore ," he added. “Nevertheless, at the time, it was a Number One game (meaning it tested well at the test locations), we went to market with it. It was far, far too difficult for the average location. As a result, many distributors have had to carry a large inventory of the game and operators have not gotten a return on their investment.”
The comment from Farrand about testing is interesting, because Atari was obsessed with testing new products and sometimes not in the best ways. This also seems to confirm Rich Adam’s feelings per his memo that Gravitar was pulled from testing in favor of fast tracking Kangaroo and Fast Freddie. Consumer testing during development was fairly commonplace for many industries by the 1980’s and could be valuable if properly implemented. The ketchup bottle that opens on the bottom? A wider Nutella jar? The reason Atari 5200 controllers fit in the back of the console… yeap all due to consumer testing. Consumer testing also brought us famous failures such as New Coke, the McDonald’s Arch Deluxe and the Pontiac Aztec.
Atari attempted to go into damage control quickly. They had hundreds of assembled Gravitar machines unsold in a warehouse and countless unhappy operators with profitless machines in their arcades. Atari had another color vector game in the development pipeline which used similar hardware developed by Bruce Merritt called Black Widow. Black Widow is a twin stick multi-directional shooter similar to William’s Robotron: 2084. Black Widow had been in development at Atari since early 1982 and was originally intended to be its own game.
Atari would put release Black Widow as both a conversion kit for Gravitar units in the field in early 1983. They retrofitted unsold Gravitar machines at Atari selling them now as Black Widow uprights with new control panels and stickers over the original Gravitar side art. Any Black Widow factory conversion will have the original Gravitar art under the Black Widow side art, and often have hand written serial numbers on the PCB. In Ireland, Atari would do the same retrofitting unsold Atari “Euro” style uprights into Black Widow machines to clear out inventory. Gravitar and Black Widow use exactly the same hardware PCB, just with different ROMS. Converted Gravitar PCBs still silkscreened with the Gravitar name on them would get a sticker overtop declaring the PCB now to be Black Widow.
During 1982-1983 a big change to the coin-op gaming industry was the rise of conversion kits. These kits allowed operators to easily change a no longer profitable title into a new one. By reusing the original cabinet, monitor, and some hardware (coin mechs, control panel, etc.) the kits are less expensive (and less risk) than a whole new game allowing for more profits to an operator. Atari was against conversion kits since they offered less profit compared to selling a new full size game. This stance was reiterated when discussing Gravitar and Black Widow to the gaming press at the time.
From a 1983 PlayMeter magazine Marketing Vice President Don Osborne explained Atari’s position, “Last spring the company offered a conversion kit for its Gravitar called Black Widow”… he then emphasized “… that the kit did not indicate a shift in the company policy avoiding kit production. Osborne would call Black Widow a "sacrificial lamb to help guys who can't make money on Gravitar”. ”The kit was developed strictly to help move some inventory,” explained Atari Public Relations Manager Margaret Lasceke in another PlayMeter article. "We remain adamant against conversions.”
Atari either backpedaled on this quickly or just were’t being honest. Likely they had no choice as the marketplace had spoken and operators liked conversion kits, especially as the market downturned for arcade earnings. By 1983 Atari offered conversion kits for select older Atari cabinets to the games Crystal Castles and Millipede. Pole Position II conversion kits were made available for original Pole Position cabinets as well. In 1984 Atari offered Cloak and Dagger conversion kits to retrofit into several Williams titles. Once Atari coin-op was separated from Atari Inc. in 1984 and became Atari Games, conversion kits became a mainstay in their offerings like most other coin-op companies.
So are Gravitar and Black Widow bad games? No, not in my option. Gravitar is a challenging and beautiful game in the tradition of Space War and Lunar Lander. Black Widow is a fun take on a twin-stick shooting adding elements of Robotron: 2084, Galaga, and some original fun ideas with a unique theming. But they were the wrong games for the wrong time. Atari had lost the ability to read the temperature of the room in the arcade market in 1982-1983 but they were not the only ones. Gravitar was however a big public relations fiasco. More importantly it became a large loss of income for operators and Atari during a critical time in the industry.
Next Time: We pick on Atari some more, when they try to trick people into buying some crappy adventure games with comic books by offering prizes made of gold.
