The original Atari Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid 1980s.

In 1976 the Atari 2600 console (also known as the VCS - Video Computer System) was released and enabled one or two players to play a selection of basic Atari video games, including Pomg and breakout.

As the home computer market started to gain momentum, Atari moved onto to release computers, with the Atari 400 and Atari 800 their initial computers released in 1980.  Atari also released a newer games consoles based on this technology (but without a keyboard ) - the Atari 5200 in 1982.

In 1984, Atari Corporation was purchased by Jack Tramiel (the founder of Commodore) and produced an Atari XE range of 8 bit computers, Atari ST range of 16 bit computers and Atari TT range of 32 bit computers (between 1984-1990).

Atari also did not forget its games consoles and released the 2600jr and the 7800 console in 1984.  It also released handheld consoles - the Atari Lynx and Atari Jaguar, although none of these were a great success.

Since the 1980s, the Atari company and brand has passed through a series of hands and is currently owned by Infogrames Entertainment, SA.