any info on these gold Ataris ?

I was a video game tester there '96-'97. My uncle was the shipping manager there for a lot of years and got me the job. I'm fairly certain he had something to do with those ET cartridges that wound up in the desert. I had tried to talk to him a couple times about it, but he always refused to answer questions and would say "I don't want to talk about it". Unfortunately he passed away a few years back. He had the final say-so on shipping anything in or out of Atari. I can't imagine he didn't know about those cartridges.

I did testing for Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3D on N64 and arcade. There was a bug with the goalie pathing that moved them in a half circle. The half circle didn't quite cover the corners of the goals. I figured out how to score on every possession.

I brought it up to the programmers, and they called me a liar. I challenged him to a VS match and beat him 120something to nothing. I literally scored on every possession, and every possession was 3-4 seconds. I confirmed this bug still exists in the N64 version after it was released. None of my friends would ever play me in this game, despite their love of hockey games. I've never seen the Coin-op version in any arcade, so I've never been able to test that. I would assume it wasn't fixed.

When I started there, the N64 was still in late beta development. We had about 6 consoles and a copy of all the games available at that time (like 3 or 4 I think). Some asshat in the office stole all the games and one of the consoles. I don't know if they ever caught the person. I was laid off a month or so after that happened.

We play tested San Francisco Rush coin-op... the one where you sit down. It was 8 players all linked up. Our job was to test it for the day and try to break it. We played for a couple hours, then decided it was time for a break. We went out behind the shipping dock and smoked a bunch of weed. Then we went back to testing the game.

Well, after 4 hours of testing, I was getting kinda bored. Boredom + Weed + Giggles = mischief. I started driving backwards on the track and tried to ram everyone else. Our testing session devolved into a digital demolition derby. Easily one of the best times I had at that company!!

Also worked with a guy that NEVER showered (and this wasn't Steve Jobs either). I sat at this guys lunch table and he dribbled gravy down the front of his shirt and pants. Two days later he was STILL WEARING THE SAME CLOTHES, complete with gravy stains. He was sent home to shower and change his clothing 3 times in the almost year that I worked there.

I playtested Area 51 (older light gun game). I played that annoying fucking game for 10 weeks straight... 60-70 hours a week. I got so good at it that I could beat the entire game on 4 credits. And the only time I would die is when the bad guys would start shooting before they show up on screen. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger... the way video games SHOULD be!

I also used to sell weed to half my coworkers. Video game testers LOVE getting high. It was a really fun place to work. There was a gaming room that had free video games. We used to do tournaments in there during our breaks. (Yes, we would play video games on our break from playing video games.)

I got some classic NES games, still sealed in the package, a couple t-shirts, and some other stupid promotional items. I don't have anything left from my time at Atari, but my Uncle had an entire room of arcade machines that he "acquired" from working there. He used to trade some of his doubles with the manager of the Namco arcade near Milpitas CA.

TL;DR - Stories from my time at Atari!!

Sorry, but I can't leave this up too long. These stories make it easy to identify me, and I don't want to be identified in this sub. Gonna leave this up for about 15 minutes, so... copy/paste it if you're a slow reader! :)

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