Atari Holdings, Inc. - MobyGames (original) (raw)

Syzygy (the suffix is unknown as the company was never formally incorporated; sources vary between Syzygy Engineering and Syzygy Company) was founded in 1971 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Their sole project was Computer Space before the company was incorporated as Atari, Inc. in 1972 (California).

Atari quickly became one of the biggest players in the US arcade industry and was bought by Warner Communications, Inc. in 1976. Technically it was merged with WCI Games, Inc, a Time Warner subsidiary which was founded three months earlier for that purpose, and the business was continued by a new company also named Atari, Inc. (1977, New York county).

Atari continued to thrive with the introduction of its VCS console (1977) and their 8-Bit home computer systems (1979), but were hit hard by the videogame crash of 1983. This lead to the sale of the consumer and computer divisions to Tramel Technology (founded by the former Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel for that purpose) in 1984. The new company was Atari Corporation.

The arcade business remained at Time Warner as Atari Games Corporation. This entity (after briefly being called Atari Games, Inc. between 1984 and 1985) became Atari Holdings, Inc.until it was dissolved in 1992.