What does Atari mean? | Hacker News Reader

What does Atari mean?

japanthis.com

38 pointsjmstfv35 comments

Atari is also a term from the game go. Based on the Atari logo it is obvious that this is the source of the name (the logo resembles the simplest atari configuration in go), and wikipedia confirms this:

> Before Atari's incorporation, Bushnell considered various terms from the game go, eventually choosing atari, referencing a position in the game when a group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent.

Now that you mentioned it, the first association that came to my mind is with the character 八 (eight) which is part of 八つ当たり (yatsuatari), which in turn means venting anger or frustration on someone who does not deserve it. Heh.

I'm learning Japanese and this is quite an interesting thing to hear. I am surprised by the number of things that do not quite have a simple analogue in English. It's a nice and compact phrase, though of course the danger with many of these is that they may be uncommon so risky to use, especially as a learner.

I'm actually not a native speaker either (I'm Finnish).

I think 八つ当たり might derive from the same idea as 八方 which means "every direction" even though it's literally "eight directions". I'm guessing the idea is that you're hitting things all over the place, even if it's not a suitable target.

EDIT: oh, I forgot to add that 八つ当たり is very common, so you definitely should look out for it to get an idea of how and when to use it.

Can you link to the Atari logo that looks like this? I can only find the 3 lines "mountain/A" logo.

That's the logo I meant. I mean it's not an exact depiction of the position in go, but I had imaged that the three lines were an abstracted representation of three black stones on three sides of a white stone that's not depicted in the logo.

Actually it seems like this is just a coincidence though (and it wasn't supposed to represent a mountain either):

> Opperman designed it with two things in mind: the first was that the overall silhouette was to look like the letter A, matching that of the company, while the second was that its three "prongs" were based on Atari's first hit game, Pong.

http://kotaku.com/5864035/the-glory-of-ataris-original-logo

How about the other way around?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Atari.pn...

(imagine it upside down)

I don't see the resemblance between the Atari logo and anything on a Go board?

The middle line is being compressed by the two lines on the side, and it is either escaping or being completely engulfed depending on whether you read it up or down. I never saw the resemblance before, but it was pretty obvious once it was mentioned. I'm also around 5k go rating.

I thought it was a term from Shogi, meaning "Check!", equivalent to the term in chess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Go_terms#Atari

In go, you capture your opponent's pieces by surrounding them, and "atari" is when a group of pieces will be captured with one more move. It's comparable to a "check", in its own way.

Who's Marky Star, why are people asking him what Atari means, and, if he doesn't know the answer, why did he make a post about it?

I generally go to tofugu.com for really interesting articles about Japanese culture/language. The writing there is awesome, and the site is better designed.

http://www.tofugu.com/

A nice short, informative article on this from 1981:

    Bushnell and Dabney submitted the list to the 
    Office of the California Secretary of State.  
    A few weeks later, their incorporation papers 
    came back; the Office of the Secretary had 
    selected their second choice, ATARI.

http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-how-did-at...

It was likely submitted because someone thought it was interesting. It got to the front page because other HN members thought it was interesting as well.

You've provided another useful resource, which is great! (Thanks!) Your lead-in distracts greatly from the resource. Leaving that out detracts nothing from your comment while avoiding gratuitous negativity.

Edit to add: I appreciate your edit. It's a great addition to this thread!

You're right. Although I really wasn't intending negativity, I think it's good to have a reminder now and again to just stick to a point, and that some remarks probably aren't worth making and don't contribute anything. Thanks.

Mh, I had always assumed it was inspired by the term from the Go board game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Go_terms#Atari

It absolutely was. Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, went on to found another company called Sente [ http://senseis.xmp.net/?Sente ].

This was my impression too. Pretty sure I read it in an Atari magazine back in the 80s (Most likely "ST Format").

Useless article; the name was not chosen at random. There were a number of candidates, they decided to go with Atari. The Fuji logo was a separate decision.

My god I've been bilingual my whole life and this never occurred to me (because the intonations make the words sound quite different).

This happens to me all the time with song texts and band names. At some point they suddenly flip from a stream-of-samples to a meaning and I realize I've been missing something for years (sometimes for decades). Very strange phenomenon.

It's when a group of stones is in danger of being captured in the game of Go, by only having one remaining liberty.

Well, there's yet another meaning for it in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries; "video game console". It became a genericized trademark for those who grew up in the 1980s. The phrase "Hey, did you get that new Atari, the SNES?" somehow made sense here back in the day.

Bushnell plays go. Atari is a go term meaning approximately "almost dead".

I always thought it was Japanese for "check" in the game of chess?

I can't speak to chess, but it is the word for "stones are about to be captured" in the game of go. Its the English word for this as well (most go terms in English are taken from Japanese).

As gizmo686 has said, it's from go, and it isn't really that similar to check in chess. In shogi (the traditional Japanese equivalent to chess) the word for check is "ōte" (literally "king move").

The misconception is because sometimes beginners are introduced to the term by relating it the way the player says "check" in chess when a configuration of pieces would result in danger for the king. It's a similar idea but in go the stakes of Atari is a lot lower (lose 1 stone instead of the whole game).

A lot more than one stone can be (and often is) at risk in an atari, and an atari situation can absolutely determine the winner of a game.

Sorry, I posted the same before seeing your response.

« the Japanese word 当たり atari which means something like “hit” or “strike” or “to be right.” »

I'm going to be pedantic here, but that's what you would translate it in english in some contexts, not what it means (and I am, in fact, incapable of translating its meaning ; there's a dimension of contact in it, but that's not entirely that either).

To add to that the wikipedia page claims : "In Japanese, atari (当たり, あたり, or アタリ) is the nominalized form of ataru (当たる, あたる, or アタル) (verb), meaning "to hit the target" or "to receive something fortuitously". The word 'atari' is used in Japanese when a prediction comes true or when someone wins a lottery."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Go_terms#Atari

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