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January 2014 Retro Gaming Article


January 20, 2014 Retro Gaming Blog Post:

Atarian Video Game Magazine was yesterday's “social media” for Atari's brand expansion

Atarian Patch I became an Atarian Certified Game Player in the mid 90's when I purchased this sew-on patch in a retail store. It may have been at a Hot Topic store or somewhere similar. For a while, Hot Topic was selling Atari-branded shirts among other select products. At the time, I thought little of it, but now I wonder how that patch came to be in a retail store since the Atarian concept (particularly the magazine) ceased in October 1989.

Many gamers originally began joining the Atarian movement in 1988 when Atari began promoting this "club" to expand awareness of the Atari brand and maintain interest in the 2600, 7800 and XE Computers. For $15 you received a t-shirt, patch, membership card and 1- year (six issues) subscription to the Atarian Video Game Magazine. They began with the May/June 1989 issue.

You can view Atarian issues on the AtariAge website.

Other game developers, at the time, were already pushing their own brand-oriented magazines to keep gamers informed and focused on their products. These included Sega, Nintendo and even NEC/Hudson who were supporting the TurboGrafX.

Become An Atarian ad A 1988 "Become An Atarian" ad showcasing the club's offerings. They try hard to show the value in the $15 membership fee by line-listing the actual costs. It was all a wash considering they only published 3 issues!
The Atarian patch on an Atari 5200 Field Service Manual I photographed my Atarian patch on top of my copy the Atari 5200 Field Service Manual since that was the one console not included in the promotional focus of the Atarian campaign.

The focus of the Atarian Magazine is interesting as the 5200 console was ignored while the 7800 with it's meager game library was part of the focus. It shows the significance of the aging (yet insanely fun) 2600 library as a major factor in sustaining/driving the 7800.

In today's market, it seems like overkill to publish a magazine in support of a brand. Keep in mind that some of these "magazines" were just a few pages in length and might be more correctly categorized as newsletters - Atarian was about 30 pages per issue. On the other hand, there is both an official PlayStation as well as Xbox magazine. However, back in the 80's Major companies, like Atari, and individual developers were publishing promotional magazines. Companies like Activision and Imagic were sending their branded publications to subscribers.

The Atarian Video Game Magazine covers The Atarian Video Game Magazine issue 2 cover The Atarian Video Game Magazine issue 3 cover Click the Atarian covers to see a slide show of the 3 available covers. Given the times, publishing information to keep consumers excited about your brand or games, wasn't too far from what happens today. The Internet, e-mail and social media are tools that have evolved since the postal service was packing gamer mailboxes full of upcoming title announcements. These days all that former snail-mail effort is simplified into an HTML newsletter, with a Facebook contest and daily tweets to engage and seek out more gamers... maybe even an image-laden Tumblr account.

Former brand expansion by snail-mail has today evolved into e-mailed newsletters and social media.
We often forget the relative youth of the Net and more so social media. It wasn't all that long ago that nearly all news came from printed newspapers and even magazines. But the Internet has extended it's utility far beyond merely conveying information - it's a virtual library of formerly printed gaming history. You can find all sorts of amazing video game publications in the form of Jpeg image files or PDFs. This includes official publications, newsletters and fanzines.

I love foraging through these bygone publications to see what sort of advertisements were circulating in their heyday. From game announcements that never appeared to printed pricing, it's a captivating history lesson!

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