Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Wanted: Swiss Atari Games

by Beat Suter

The CH-Ludens research project has compiled a corpus of video games from the period 1980–2000 that were either developed in Switzerland or have a close connection to Switzerland. In addition to many other games, this corpus contains a good two dozen Atari games. The Atari games listed are spread across various platforms that emerged during these years and were used for the development and release of console and computer games.

search for atari games
Figure 1: Searching for Atari games from Switzerland on old floppy disks – GameLab ZHdK. Source: Suter

Continue reading Wanted: Swiss Atari Games

Curiosity and Computer Stores: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #1

by Eugen Pfister, Aurelia Brandenburg, Adrian Demleitner, Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele. Additional research and editing by Corinne Hirter

At the end of the 1980s, four young people met in the Basel area and started developing a game called GATE for the Apple IIg in their free time. They came together partly through ice skating, a computer store and an early fascination with computers. The result was an unlikely reinterpretation of Gauntlet for the Apple IIgs, unlikely because the computer was already fourteen years old at the time of programming. The game itself even found a publisher, first in France and then in the USA, but it failed to achieve great success.

Continue reading Curiosity and Computer Stores: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #1