Spector
Designed by Roy Nishi and built by Linda Whitten. From Roger Hector: "This was a prototype model was made to house the 'Killer Satellite' game. The Spector model never worked, but it was designed by Roy Nishi in Consumer Products. I remember illustrating a few different approaches for 1, 2, 3, and 4-players. Spector was a 3-player game."
From Roger Hector: The "Killer Satellite" did not have a project name, but it was a space satellite that rotates inside a lenticular (drum) hologram, and the player had to learn how to shoot it down. This physical model was about 4 feet tall. It was internally lit and fully animated (remotely-controlled by wires) while being filmed. It was filmed in action on a stage set up in Atari's Holoptics lab. I thought I had other shots showing our staff operating the various pieces of the satellite from off-stage, but I couldn't find them.
A lenticular drum hologram is where each frame of a 35mm film is compressed into
a vertical lens (line), and is stacked next to each other on to a strip of clear
plastic. By wrapping the plastic into a cylinder, and illuminating it properly,
the net effect was that of looking into a clear vertical cylinder and seeing a
3-D scene or object inside. By rotating the cylinder in front of you, the viewer
sees different frames of the film, and it becomes nicely animated. In the case
of the "Killer Satellite", it would slowly revolve, the dish antennae would
revolve in the opposite direction at a different speed, the guns would swing to
fire at you, and the internal lights would come on to indicate which were
shooting at you and which targets were available to shoot. The player had to
learn when to attack and when to defend. This all happened visually inside the
hologram image which stood about 4 inches tall inside the clear cylinder, and
you could see all around it for 360 degrees. I wanted to experiment with
multiple superimposed films with multiple light sources, which would give you
several parallel tracks of animation and would allow for more interaction and
more gameplay, but we never got the chance. It's pretty obscure now, but at the
time we had big plans."