==================================================== This text is a timeline of the events of the life of the Emerson "Arcadia 2001" as well as we know it at this point. (See the "Emerson Arcadia 2001" FAQ for a list of those who helped put this text together.) Ward Shrake April 9, 1999 ==================================================== Before March 1982 -- Magnavox had some early ideas that Atari improved upon, the result being the arcade coin-op game "Pong" in 1972. A couple of years later the game had been translated to an inexpensive "home" format, which became hugely popular. The primary flaw of this type of system was that it could only play one type of game. The market evolved over the next few years, slowly tending towards a new concept -- a game machine that took game cartridges. A few companies made machines that were mildly successful in the marketplace, but none were as widely accepted in the home as Atari's "video computer system" of 1977. Atari also had almost all of the big arcade hits of this era. By 1981, however, Atari's dominance was being challenged by a number of competitors. Atari had proven there was big money in this market, only to find that everyone wanted a significant portion of the market to themselves. "Pac-Man" was a huge (non-Atari) hit in the arcades, and the VCS was beginning to look dated compared to competing machines. 1981 also saw the introduction of the first third-party computer software company; Activision. Atari tried to take the new company to court, to prevent them being able to write software for Atari's game system. Atari lost their case, and Activision was allowed to compete with Atari's own software programmers. Activision posted millions in profit in their first year of operation. Others wanted to follow in their footsteps, also hoping to make millions. No one could know it at the time, but many companies all planned to enter the marketplace, either with hardware or software, at the same time. The result was a market that was crowded, with much quickly-produced junk being sold by those who thought gamers would buy almost anything. A common flaw was thinking of Atari as the competition, in a time when Atari was suddenly just one player of many. Another flaw was in going just one step beyond what was currently out, when everyone else was doing that as well. Emerson's initial plans probably seemed sound enough. At the end of 1981 or beginning of 1982, they probably felt they could not lose, so long as they acted quickly and got their product to market before Atari could recover from its problems and dominate the marketplace once more. The system they were designing was superior to the game systems on the market in 1981. For instance, its one kilo byte of RAM memory was a full eight times the RAM memory of the Atari VCS. Emerson also understood that if a game system had all the hot arcade titles, that it would sell. Emerson's first mistake was in underestimating how far some of its competitors were willing to go, to own this market. While Emerson's system was designed as a modest, incremental improvement over what was then out, Coleco was planning a system with 48 kilobytes of RAM; nearly fifty times what companies like Emerson were planning. Emerson's second mistake was in thinking that it could just copy the hottest arcade titles of the time, without having legal permission to do so. That may have been what happened in the past, but that did not mean it was going to continue forever, as will become clear in August.... (Ad mode on.) See Leonard Herman's book "Phoenix" for a lot of interesting and useful info on the state of the video game market place. The book is not perfect, but I highly recommend it, as it is the best I've seen so far. It does give a very good feel for industry-wide trends, and it is an interesting read, to boot. (Ad mode off.) I learned from reading "Phoenix" that there were two "crashes" gamers don't discuss, that in hindsight, look like a 4-year cycle the market should have seen coming: one crash in 1976, another in 1980, before the one we all know as "the video game crash of 1984" took place. (With all of them caused by the same basic conditions.) Some of the companies that barely survived these early game crashes (Coleco) learned some hard lessons, of big use to them in 1982. Other companies, including Emerson, were not prepared properly for the medium and long range realities of the market, and paid a heavy price for it. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - March 26, 1982 -- The official "birthday" of Emerson's system. According to the Trademark application that Emerson filed, this was the first date their new trademark was in use in commerce. The application specifically mentions a video game system as the product displaying their new trademark. March or April of 1982 -- Hanimex approaches a UK-based gaming magazine, giving them the information they print in June. (This presumes a printing delay of two to three months. Keep in mind that although the article came out in June, that the actual information was passed on at this point.) June 1982 -- A short article in a UK-based gaming magazine says that the "Hanimex Home Arcade Centre" would be on sale at the end of June 1982. (See the FAQ for full article text.) The article mentions six arcade games being part of the planned software line-up, ready for release with the game system itself. They say three other arcade titles would be available soon after the system's initial release. The titles discussed were called by their proper names, openly. They said they were going to make home "versions of Phoenix, Defender, Crazy Climber, Pac-Man, Galactica and Berzerk" during the launch. After the launch they planned to release versions of three other arcade games according to the article; Centipede, Jungler and Galaga. One interesting thing is that the article says that all the games were written by an "American subcontractor". All the game's copyright messages found to date say that the games were written by a company called "UA Ltd." June or July 1982 -- Emerson talked to "Electronic Games" magazine about the upcoming release of their new gaming system. (The article came out in September 1982. It was only a pre-announcement, not a review of the system.) July 1982 -- This was the date that one of the original six planned arcade titles was finished. (We know this because there is a message hidden inside the game's program code. It indicates the author's name, gives this date, and has a reference implying this game's name was "Galaxian".) This helps establish that while Emerson may have been a bit behind in their schedule, that they were doing just what they claimed they were going to do, back in March; making blatant copies of various popular arcade games. August 1982 -- The Atari video game company begins filing lawsuits for copyright infringement, against a number of companies it competes with. The first lawsuits are meant to protect only one game: "Pac-Man". Atari aggressively files suits and/or threatens to, against companies both big and small. (Commodore Business Machines was sued, as were the makers of the Odyssey 2 system, and a number of other companies.) Note that "Pac-Man" was only the second arcade mega-hit put out by someone other than Atari. (Space Invaders being the first.) Atari paid handsomely for the home distribution rights to this game, on the idea that if you could ONLY play "Pac-Man" on their (aging) game system, competitors with technically superior hardware could not really compete. Up until this time, it was the industry's standard practice to produce a clone or knock-off of any product that seemed to have sales potential. From 1972 onward, that had been the way things were done. (Any good idea gets copied to death, even today, in the gaming industry. Just the way things are.) This time seems to be the dividing line, between the old and new eras. Atari, fearing a total loss of its multi-tens-of- millions-of-dollars-a-year market, fought fiercely to keep as much of the market as it could, all to itself. Ironically, Atari was well aware that lawsuits could be effective, since Magnavox had sued Atari previously over the "Pong" idea that Magnavox had created, and Atari had then improved upon and sold in both arcades and homes, all without acknowledging Magnavox' early involvement. August or September 1982 -- At approximately this time, Emerson showed their system to "Electronic Games" magazine, for a review which was printed in their November 1982 issue. (Note again that while the article was printed in November that Emerson was talking to the magazine at this point. The timing is important, to show probable causes and effects.) September 1982 -- A short article in Electronic Games magazine announced the American release of this system. (See the FAQ for full text.) It was to be sold by Emerson Radio Corporation in the US. The system's U.S. name was going to be the "Arcadia 2001" by Emerson. Not much more was said; this was simply an announcement. (See June or July 1982, for when this was all discussed.) October 1982 -- Date codes on a "Crazy Climber" cartridge show that the game was put into ROM chip form during this month. This indicates a number of interesting things. Most obviously, Emerson or Hanimex or one of the companies involved with this system had ordered an outside company to begin producing the memory chips it would need to make game cartridges with. Meaning that someone was still going to make game Emerson-compatible cartridges at this point. (We have no solid idea what company ordered the ROMs made. It could have been Emerson, Hanimex, maybe even others?) However, aside from one cart found for the MPT-03 system (in what seems to be cheaply made "pirate" form), this game cartridge was never "officially" released anywhere. The obvious question is, "what happened"? Why did someone have a game completely written, had ROM chips made up, but then decided not to release the game? The best guess is this; Atari did not always own the rights to this game. However, before 1982 was over, Atari bought up the rights to this game. What most likely happened was that the company that had ordered ROMs made of this game, decided it was not worth the legal risk to release the actual cart in completed form, compatible with the Emerson game system. It was worth the risk, before Atari was involved. Not after. So this unnamed company was apparently "stuck with" many ROM chips that were worthless to it. We can only speculate what they did with them. The obvious answer is that they sold the whole lot to a third party, who made cartridges with it. Since the carts that were made were nowhere near compatible with the Emerson system's pin layout, and since these carts would simply not even plug into an Emerson game, we have a brand new set of mysteries! (Ain't Digital Archeaology grand?) Who made the MPT-03 system? Why did they make it so different externally, but internally the same exact thing? And was it even a third party at all that did this? Or was it one of the companies that produced the "legitimate" Emerson systems? And when did all this happen? (It could have been years later, for all we know, but 1983 seems most likely, or so it seems now.) November 1982 -- Another article by Electronic Games magazine. This one was a full review of the system, not just a short blurb announcing it. (See August, when Emerson had shown the system to the magazine, for more info on all this.) Note a few interesting things; the system itself was ready for production at this point. However, the press had heard about the ColecoVision by now, and knew that it was going to have 48 kilobytes of RAM memory. (48 times what Emerson had in their system.) Note that Emerson's spokes people told the magazine that their system had 28 times what it actually had, apparently in an effort to seem competitive. This sounds rather desperate, on their part. Note also that the magazine seemingly saw through their dishonesty and was upset that they were being told something so very untrue. It does not take much reading between the lines to see this! The handwriting was already on the wall, at this point. At launch, this system had virtually no chance of popularity. Gamers reported huge price drops, almost immediately upon release, which verified the system had no real chance. This system was effectively "dead" upon its initial release. The hardware advantages Emerson had planned, were not even close to being enough to compete with the ColecoVision. And Atari had closed the door on Emerson's plans to sell its system based on the strength of hot arcade games. Note also that the software that was reviewed, seemingly was changed from what the company had originally intended. (This seems more like desperation, than real planning. It looks like Emerson was willing to give it a shot, at least at first, even though its odds of success were not good.) Here's the list of titles that were discussed in March.... "Phoenix" -- this was widely produced as "Space Vultures". As far as we can tell, this was made "as is". We don't know if there was a more-infringing version. However, most people do see it as a Phoenix copy. Note that copyright suits didn't take place till 1983, which might explain why it was released? "Defender" -- best bet is that this title was originally made as Space Squadron, then altered to be less blatant of an illegal clone; see Space Raiders. Note that Space Raiders is much easier to find than Space Squadron is. Space Squadron was at first widely thought to be common, but it is not all that easy to find this cart, in most places. (We still need to see a copy of Space Squadron, but overseas collectors say it is like Defender.) "Crazy Climber" -- was found labeled as such, in a cart for a system that itself seems to be a modified version of the original Emerson sytem. In other words, a pirated cart on a pirate-style system. (Again, that idea opens up brand new mysteries.) "Pac-Man" -- Crazy Gobbler was released overseas, and was only 2k of ROM memory. I have to wonder at the unusually small memory size; was this so that it could be cheaply mass produced, as the pack-in game to be included with all Emerson systems? But good luck finding this game title in the US! However, Cat Trax, which seems to be a legalized version of Pac-Man, is as common as dirt. Note that an updated version of this game (Super Gobbler) came out exclusively outside the US. It all points to two different markets with two very different ideas of what was marketable, and a distinct fear of being sued within the US. "Galactica" -- this is the overseas name of Galaxian in the arcades. See Space Attack, whose hidden internal messages call that game "Galax.002" This may have been changed, or perhaps not? Perhaps the code was left alone, since the game Galaxian was by then not a hot title, having been replace in arcades with Galaga? "Berzerk" -- the overseas game Robot Killer is a blatant clone of Berzerk. Very much so! But Escape, the legalized version, is less recognizable at a glance. Again, Robot Killer seems to be another overseas-only game, and fairly rare at that, while Escape seems to be extremely common. It makes one think Robot Killer was planned as the original version, Escape was last minute. (That ends the first six they discussed; the ones they planned to have out along with the system, at launch. The next three were part of a second planned wave.) "Centipede" -- No collector has found a game exactly like centipede just yet, and it was one of the games scheduled for the second wave of games. This may or may not mean it was never written. The fact that the original was made directly by Atari, probably stopped all development? However, Spiders is pretty close to being a Centipede clone, although its a legal port licensed by the company that made the coin-op. "Jungler" -- possibly the first legal port of this game system's library. It was properly licensed from the company that created it for the arcades. "Galaga" -- No collector has found any game exactly like this arcade title, nor is there any known game that appears to be a legalized clone. Note that this popular title was both technically hard to copy at home, and that Atari licensed the game. Note that between the first and second waves of releases, there was a complete attitude change. And that even in the first wave of releases, the worst offenders, legally speaking, were "cleaned up" before they were released. But the non-cleaned-up versions saw overseas release, where they were most likely outside the range of courts. Early 1983 -- Atari kept up its copyright lawsuits against its competitors. Successfully sueing any one company seemed to have the effect of sending a "chilling" message to many other companies that were engaged in similar practices. In other words, every time Atari fought one company directly, it warned many others companies indirectly that Atari would not tolerate any violations of copyrights that it owned. Note that "Phoenix" was now the subject of at least one lawsuit; Atari sued Imagic for its Intellivision version of Demon Attack, as it seemed to be a copy of Phoenix. Commodore had talked about making a version of Phoenix for its VIC-20 home computer, but it quietly dropped the idea about the time Atari began sueing to protect the home distribution rights it had recently bought, for Phoenix. 1983 -- Modern-day video game collectors noticed similarities between the game "Cat Trax" and a little-known game for the Atari 2600. It turns out that the same company that held most (or all?) of the Emerson system's software copy rights, ("UA Ltd.") ported this game over to the Atari 2600 system, according to the copyright messages onscreen. (Thanks to Jack Spencer Jr. for being so eagle-eyed!) Having found that out, we looked for other such titles. So far, "Funky Fish" and "Pleaides" have turned up as also having been ported over to the Atari 2600. As far as we know, all these ports were done by "UA". (Thanks to Bill Esquivel and Alexander Bilstein for this info!) During this same year, many carts showed up overseas. It appears that the US market never got much more than the original software written during 1982, but in Canada and Germany (and others?) new software was still being written. It is also possible, however, that Emerson was not very interested in selling anything but its remaining inventory, and so it did not release the newer games within the US, even if they were available for release? One possibility is that -- in the US market at least -- the software copyright holders decided to release certain games for the Atari 2600 system, after realizing or being told that Emerson had no plans to support the system within the US? It had apparently paid for certain game licenses, so why not? (If anyone has an official date when Emerson decided to get out of the video game business, please pass that info on!) There is no solid reason to believe this is anything too critical, but in the 22nd week of 1983, the same company (Grandstand) that had made up Crazy Climber cartridges using ROMs made in 1982, had ROMs made up of Alien Invaders. (We can speculate it means the MPT-03 system started then, but that is just a wild guess, based on some sketchy info.) As far as we can tell (by copyright messages and such) "UA" wrote all of the software for the Emerson and its clones, throughout the system's lifetime. 1984 -- "Video game crash". This ended the commercial lifetime of this game system, at least in the United States. All of the games found so far, are dated either 1982 or 1983. As far as we know now, no games were written in 1984 for this system. However, this does not mean no games were produced. There is still the mystery of when the MPT-03 system came about? And various overseas (End of document.)