We’re going back a bit in this article. Everyone will remember Atari, which was engraved in memories with the red and blue colors of a period and its giant game cartridges. Atari was actually a brand on its own, not the name of the game console, but the children of the time identified the brand with the game console. And if you remember, Atari took out a pistol from their box. How did the Atari pistols that almost every child spends days learning to use work and how did they hit targets? Here are the details…
He ate our childhood! What was the working logic of the Atari pistol?
The most iconic product of the 90s was undoubtedly the Atari. However, there is an important detail here. Atari was not actually the name of the game consoles. Atari was a brand that produced game consoles and special games on its own. In Turkey, consoles have become so identified with the Atari brand that people like game consoles etc. They preferred to say Atari directly instead of saying it.
We will continue to use the name Atari in our article. When you open the Atari box, there was a small console, 2 arms (Ataris are not stingy like Sony PS), a keyboard and a gun. Most of us could never figure out the logic of Atari guns, so we put almost all of them in our toy basket and used them as toy guns.
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So how did these pistols work? In fact, we do not expect a great technology. Atari pistols were working with a very simple technology. The whole system was based on a physics law called the photoelectric effect. According to the photoelectric rule, when you hold the electrons towards the light source, the electron movement will start. In other words, in a way, light will liberate electrons from the surface to which it is attached.
The same goes for the Atari pistol. You played the famous duck hunting game Duck Hunt on your old tube television. so called old generation CRT televisions It could render 60 to 85 frames per second. In other words, if we think in the logic of a computer game, there is the image quality that we call “frame by frame” progress, but at that time no one was obsessed with such details. The main thing was fun.
This feature of CRT televisions was useful for the gun. When the game opened, the duck was starting to run away from you. You were aiming and pulling the trigger. If you didn’t notice when the trigger was pulled, the screen actually went black for 1 second. And the area where the duck was at that time was completely white. The photoelectric diode in the gun removed an electron when held up to white light. That meant you hit the target.
Of course, we are talking about a very simple system here. In fact, all you have to do is aim the gun at the light source that illuminates the room. In this way, you would have hit all the targets in the game. All your curiosity about the Atari pistol and that magic world is over for you right now. But don’t worry, it was fun even not being able to hit the targets with it.
So how do you think Atari pistols work? What do you think about our news?