Irish Atari?

[usedelectronics]

So in the bottom of a recently aquired championship sprint cab, I found this...

Notice the part number on the CPU board from the same cabinet.

Coincidence?

[paigeoliver]

One of Atari's  major divisions was in Ireland back in the old days. THey used to put out slightly different cabinets there as well.

[JoyMonkey]

I remember visiting Mozney holiday camp in Meath, Ireland (sort of like Butlins in England, only worse) many many years ago and the arcade there was stuffed full with beautiful Atari machines.

They also has some kind of Atari 'Computer Zone' where you could join a room full of easily excitable children playing Atari 7800 games.

ArcadeFlyers.com lists 5 games under Atari-Ireland, none of which were Atari games anywhere else in the world. Incidetally, Dragon's Lair and Space Ace were both animated in Ireland (by Sullivan Bluth Studios).

[paigeoliver]

There were Ireland versions of a lot of Atari games. Usually the cabinet was slightly different. For example, the dedicated Ireland version of Kangaroo had woodgrain sides and no marquee (glass to the top).

Although, in general Europe pretty much got completely different versions of games from every company. not just Atari. It makes it much harder to figure out what is "original" over there. I think I recall reading something on Andy's site about some of the UK Moon Patrol machines being assembled in his garage.

[Ken Layton]

In the heyday of it's operations, Atari was so busy trying to keep up with worldwide demand for their games that they opened up an Ireland manufacturing plant to take care of European areas and some USA games were made their as well.

[Minwah]

I seem to recall noticing the Atari Ireland division when looking at flyers at arcadefylers.com.

Interestingly, there were some Atari Ireland flyers for games which had no normal Atari flyers - Dragons Lair sticks in my mind.  I wonder if that means all Dragons Lair machines were made in Ireland, or they just haven't found a US DL flyer??  I would have thought a US flyer would usually be more available than an Irish one...

[paigeoliver]

The reason you are only seeing an "Atari Ireland" Dragon's Lair flyer is because Dragon's Lair was a Cinemtronics game. Atari just kicensed it for the European market.

[neuromancer]

here's some interesting stuff about Atari's Irish operations:

http://www.alsarcade.com/Andy/arc/atari/

Bob

[Richy]

When did the factory shut?