Atari Cosmos

[HP Atari King of Michigan]

As Curt Vendel of the Atari Museum had noted, the Cosmos unit was created by Al Alcorn, the creator of Pong, Atari's first arcade game. Also involved was Harry Jenkins and Roger Hector. This unit was a cartridge-based unit, but used holographs to give it a 3-D effect. But the towel-czar Ray Kasser was afraid to sell it because he didn't think it would sell. And the plug was pulled on what would've been a groundbreaking machine, causing Alcorn to leave Atari. I would like to know your thoughts on this never-released system.

 

P.S. (Open Letter to Curt Vendel)

Hello Curt,

 

If you can, can you list the eight games made for the Cosmos? Thanks!

 

HP

[Tempest]

As Curt Vendel of the Atari Museum had noted, the Cosmos unit was created by Al Alcorn, the creator of Pong, Atari's first arcade game.  Also involved was Harry Jenkins and Roger Hector.  This unit was a cartridge-based unit, but used holographs to give it a 3-D effect.  But the towel-czar Ray Kasser was afraid to sell it because he didn't think it would sell.  And the plug was pulled on what would've been a groundbreaking machine, causing Alcorn to leave Atari.  I would like to know your thoughts on this never-released system.

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In this case the 'czar' was right. I played around with Curt's Cosmos and to put it bluntly, it sucked. The games were created using a grid of way too large red LED's, so they were very limited and very simplistic. The holographic backgrounds were neat, but they were just that, backgrounds. They didn't interact with the game at all, so they were just some eye candy (similar to the way laserdisc games used backgrounds). The holograms are interesting as they actually had two (or three?) pictures on them that could be alternated between by shining a light in a certain direction. This allowed the background to change during the game.

 

The Cosmos may have sounded neat on paper, but in truth it was a lousy system.

 

Tempest

[Curt Vendel]

Hi,

 

I'd need to go dig up the game boxes flyer I have, but off the top of my head:

 

Asteroids

Destroyer

Basketball

Football

Space Invaders

Outlaw

Road Runner

Superman

???

 

Forgetting the last one, sorry.

 

 

Curt

 

 

 

As Curt Vendel of the Atari Museum had noted, the Cosmos unit was created by Al Alcorn, the creator of Pong, Atari's first arcade game.  Also involved was Harry Jenkins and Roger Hector.  This unit was a cartridge-based unit, but used holographs to give it a 3-D effect.  But the towel-czar Ray Kasser was afraid to sell it because he didn't think it would sell.  And the plug was pulled on what would've been a groundbreaking machine, causing Alcorn to leave Atari.  I would like to know your thoughts on this never-released system.

 

P.S. (Open Letter to Curt Vendel)

Hello Curt,

 

If you can, can you list the eight games made for the Cosmos? Thanks!

 

HP

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