Not every logo that I talk about must be from the sports universe, a fact highlighted during the logo alphabet journey. But here we get into some of my most nostalgic choices, and one of my all time favorite logos.
This first sits in that lofty spot I mentioned one short half-sentence ago. Some sources have said that it's a stylized "A", while others claim it's a stylized Mt. Fuji, which makes less sense. This is the logo for Atari:
Atari was synonymous with video games from 1977 until, eh, today? Atari, the word, is a play in a Japanese game similar to saying "checkmate". It was chosen by Nolan Bushnell when he founded a computer-game making company in the '70s, back when "computer-game" meant "a game displayed on a screen that could be 'played' with external controls", what we today call video games.
Atari made cabinet consoles for arcades, and were the major player in the industry when they weren't the only player in the industry. They then got to the home console market heavier than their competitors, and ruled that universe until the collapse in 1983, which was caused by the flooding of shitty games for their home console, the Atari 2600.
We had an Atari 2600, and a few games. It was all second hand to us, and the games were okay, but our imagination wasn't so piqued.
For me, hearing the name "Atari" reminds me of just something cool, and I can't really explain why. And then that logo. I'm not the biggest video game guy. I've watched a bunch of the AVGN, and keep up mostly with IGN's website, and even have a Wii....between the websites, I probably know more about games than I've ever liked really interacting with them (except Ocarina of Time, the best video game ever).
But the Atari logo has always ranked very high on my short list for favorite logo ever. Ever.
Today, the name Atari and the logo are intellectual property owned by a French company that's begun producing some video games under the name, and have nothing to do with Bushnell and his LSD taking game designers of the 1970s.
Next along the stroll down amnesia lane is of the highest selling home computer ever. Seriously, in this day and age of cheap compys and lappys, the Commodore 64 remains the home computer that's sold the most units in history, at something like 30 million. We had one; it was our first computer.
Commodore started by making typewriters, and then calculators, and eventually they moved into the home computer market. Through shady business practices (like buying a bunch of supplies, not paying for them and thereby forcing that supply company to fold, then buying that company and forgiving the debt) they were able to pass the savings they'd made onto you, the consumer.
The company made a few different computer consoles that were basically keyboards that plugged into televisions, ad by the Commodore 64, they had a highly powerful machine that could do many things, one of which was play video games.
Ironically, the Commodore 64 and later and to a lesser extant, the 128, kept alive the video game playing world in the US after the crash in 1983. With many good games, the torch was kept alive until Nintendo finally exploded in '86.
I remember fondly many games from our old 64: Save New York, a cartridge; Summer and Winter Games, Olympic simulators; and one of my favorite games ever, especially by sheer number of times played, Space Taxi.
Like Atari, the name "Commodore" and logo seen here are intellectual property owned by a Dutch company getting ready to bring a computer to market (or maybe already have).
All I have to say is:
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