Atari Karma
The Atari Karma is part vision, part fiction, and overall fuel for self-growth.
I've been trying to think of ways to talk about my mental health issues. How do I organize and present my stories and ideas?
If only my depression was some long lost gaming console, and the trials and coping techniques were the games, this would be so much easier to talk about.
Oh. Atari! I got it!
Here I mean "Atari" in two ways: old video games, of course, as well as the term's verbal meaning in the much older strategy game Go, which people have played for over 4,000 years. I wonder if people will play Adventure thousands of years from now.
According to every article about Atari ever, players of Go in Japan say "atari" the way we say "checkmate" in chess, though further research shows the term is closer to "check," because the player is about to win and has not yet technically won. I think. The term “atari” can also be used as "hit a target" or "strike," and especially for a fortuitous success like winning the lotto. In this case, "Bingo!" works overall as a simple translation. (Would “Uno” work?) To be thorough, "atari" can also mean "surroundings" such as "neighborhood."
This is why Atari is called Atari. The founders used the term from Go, and it sounds cool. That, and “Syzygy,” the company’s first namesake, was already taken. (My Atari knowledge paid off when I encountered the word “syzygy” in The Three Body Problem, a sci-fi book I recommend.)
Atari!
So, fiction and vision. To be clear, my fictional vision; I invented the Atari Karma console and all its totally believable lore in order to talk about my mental health. I made it up. Thank you for playing along.
Let’s play! Here you will find all lore and documents, if any, regarding the rumored Atari Karma, a long-lost gaming console never witnessed beyond prototype. Thankfully, we can play the dumped ROMs on an emulation of the original hardware.
Development on the Karma began in 1981, the year of my birth, and was reaching completion when it was cut short by the video game crash of ’83. When the fortunes fell, the Karma was among the first to be tossed.
Years before the crash, Atari had the extra millions to develop various experiments, such as the Atari Video Music, a trippy visualizer, and the Atari Cosmos, the 3D tabletop console.
The Atari Karma was unique in that it was concocted by Dr. Nerman, a brilliant recluse with a PhD in Applied Ontological Digital Stratagems. Nerman was hired with his idea that we could use video games for something more than fun.
Atari had already defined the use of games, of course. Imagine the 2600 box with its images of friends and family hooting it up, hands clutching joysticks, grinning wildly and clustered around a wood-paneled television. Games equal fun and connection. That’s great, of course. But Dr. Nerman saw more.
As a psychologist living with deep depression, Dr. Nerman believed games could be used to help a player come to terms with their own lives and issues. He visualized a “Playlife” game in which a mentally ill character must fill their “stabilimeter” to win. As the stabilimeter fills, the character becomes less depressed, and more paths open in the game, such as the ability to talk to others, or watch the setting sun. These in turn fill other point meters such as “wonderment” and “gratitude,” and the character levels up, like the evolution in an RPG. Ultimately, the player wins at the game of Playlife.
Dr. Nerman’s vision became too complex for a single 2600 title. Nerman needed his very own console with an entire series of titles. In the end, the Atari Karma was essentially a 2600, with the addition of an extra chip for memory. This allowed for more sprite variety, musical effects, and many different screens per game. No more bank switching! It also allowed for the Playlife master code input. Wanting a visual connection to the 2600, Nerman used lilac wood from his backyard for the Karma prototype, resulting in the purplish-tan stripe on the top. He also embedded the controller ports in the back of the console for purely aesthetic reasons, if inconvenient. (The extra memory was also too pricey at the time, and likely pushed the Karma to extinction before it had a chance to breathe.)
“Playlife” is presented in first person, with a simple arrow used to select items and change screens. The other games, such as “Mad House” and “Off the Trail,” are often presented in the same point-and-click fashion, but not always, as is the case with “INSOMNIA!” and “Pill Popper.” You can thank Dr. Nerman for the names.
Other than the first-person gameplay, which largely focuses on interaction with surroundings and people, Nerman’s games are considered revolutionary in regard to the master codes. Each game gives you a code based on your best score. By inputting the code into the main “Playtime” game, it upgrades the player, so they can access more material in the “main game,” as many call it. It’s like karma, except instead of actions in a past life influencing the current life, it’s actions in other games influencing the main game. In other words, Nerman built a large, long, interconnected game of many parts, and due to technical limitations, had to spread the parts over many cartridges. The code feature allowed him to do this, and you can replay any of the games for a better score and therefore better code. Of course, to win at Playlife, you’ve got to get the best codes in all of the games and input all of them, which can be tiring when you’ve got twenty codes at forty-eight characters each, some of which are strange symbols that look alike.
No one has yet filled their stabilimeter to one hundred percent. Hell, I don’t think anyone has topped seventy, and many say without the discovery of more games, it may not be possible. I’m going to try anyway.
*Thanks to Atari Background Builder for allowing me to design the humble title mock-up and Atari Label Maker for the text label.
