Word: atari
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...Music Construction Set (MCS) program ($40 for the Apple II, with Atari and Commodore 64 versions to come), the joy stick controls a movable hand on the video screen that picks up notes, sharps, clef signs and other music symbols, and sets them down on a staff. At any time, the computer will play them back so the user can hear how they sound. Up to 1,400 symbols can be displayed on two staffs, from whole notes to 1/32 notes, from simple melodies to six-voice chords...
...without its flaws. To improve on the tinny speaker that comes installed in an Apple, users must invest an additional $100 for a plug-in sound-effects generator called a Mockingboard. (The Atari and Commodore versions will play three and four voices without any additional equipment.) Serious composers will find that the program's 1,400-symbol capacity allows them to write only about 70 measures at a time, requiring them to print out long pieces in sections. Moreover, using the program at full capacity causes the tempo of the machine to slow down, while short pieces whip...
Warner Communications' Atari, which pioneered home video games with such classics as Space Invaders and Asteroids, has lost $356 million so far this year, dropped 3,000 employees from its payroll of 10,000 and finished moving all its manufacturing facilities to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Plagued partly by sluggish sales of Intellivision games, the electronics division of Mattel has run a $201 million deficit in 1983, while laying off 37% of its 1,800-member work force. Activision estimated that it lost $3 million to $5 million in the past three months despite scoring hits with...
Considering the philosophical, pedagogical and financial problems ahead, the supposed computer revolution in schools seems barely under way. "What you have now," says Alan Kay, chief scientist at Atari, "is a bunch of people attempting to teach violin who have had a six-week course in what the violin is and who have never heard violin music before...
Typical of the new games is Pong, a popular version of electronic table tennis manufactured by two-year-old Atari, Inc. (estimated fiscal 1974 revenue: $14 million) of Los Gatos, Calif. Atari sold some 8,500 games to U.S. amusement parlors and other businesses last year...