Tales from the Arcade Factory Floors

Very nice. I love the pics. I have seen the Ms. Pac video half a dozen times. The lady doing the play testing must have been bored out of her skull by the end of a 100,000+ production run.
 
Cool article.

On a side, it was neat to see Janet from Three's Company at 30 seconds in.

I also wonder what the readhead's thinking about while she's putting on the zip ties.

Gotta love the Ladies from the 80's!
 
Wonder if one of my games was in the photo. Wish I could've toured the factories back in the day. And found the gold defender ;)
 
I read this again and I still love it. Original factory pics are great. I love that kind of stuff. But now, I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and see it all.
 
Thanks gents. I thought it would be cool to pull all those pics into one place and tie them all up in an article.

Here's that video that the Atari screen caps came from. Good quality shots of Atari's factory:

 
Seems weird to say that Missile Command sold for "around $3000" when the actual price ($1,995) is in the production numbers document.
 
Seems weird to say that Missile Command sold for "around $3000" when the actual price ($1,995) is in the production numbers document.

$1995 was probably the price from Atari to distributors. $3000 was probably the retail price from distributors to arcade owners.
 
$1995 was probably the price from Atari to distributors. $3000 was probably the retail price from distributors to arcade owners.

Maybe, but it makes no sense to compare those numbers that way. It was explicitly discussing profit based on Atari's production costs, so Atari's sale price is the relevant number.
 
Maybe, but it makes no sense to compare those numbers that way. It was explicitly discussing profit based on Atari's production costs, so Atari's sale price is the relevant number.

Thanks for pointing this out - you are correct. I guess it's rather moot against the wider point of profitability I was trying to make, but still. I can't remember where I got $3k from (might have been a placeholder I dropped in there, but I forgot to check the number).

I'll amend that now.

Tony
 
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