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From: rjung@sal22.usc.edu (Robert  allen Jung)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: The meaning of 'Atari'
Message-ID: <3382@nunki.usc.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 89 16:41:18 GMT
References: <890404-063300-6253@Xerox>
Sender: news@nunki.usc.edu
Reply-To: rjung@sal22.usc.edu (Robert  allen Jung)
Organization: O-Mayer V BBS, Los Angeles, CA  (213) 732-0229
Lines: 36

In article <890404-063300-6253@Xerox> "chaz_heritage.WGC1RX"@XEROX.COM writes:
>A trivium from this month's 'ST World':
>
>"The word 'Atari' is shouted in the ancient oriental game called 'Go' to
>indicate victory."

  That's an old story, and not even complete. The whole story goes like this:

  Nolan Bushnell, founder of the _original_ Atari (you know, before Warner and
Jack and the Sears Tele-games system), needed a name for his new company. He
wanted something exotic and unique, and tossed out lots of ideas even wilder
than Atari.

  He eventually fell on the word "Atari" because of the Japanese game of Go.
In Go, the player says "Atari" when he is in a position to almost completely
conquer his opponent; The Western analogy is "check" in chess.

  It gets stranger. If you will recall, Nolan Bushnell started up a new
arcade game company about 5 years ago, called Sente (now part of Bally games,
guess it didn't do so hot  B-). What does "Sente" mean? "Checkmate".

>Just think of all the other possibilities that they must have rejected
>before picking this one. 

  Ya gotta admit, that Fuji logo looks neat. (The most popular rumor is that
the logo is a stylized "A", with some symbolism for the game of Pong)

						--R.J.
						B-)

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