Atari Centre, Mosney?

Dr Bob

Does anyone else remember this at all .
Basically it was a large-ish shed in the middle of Mosney (Irish version of Butlins),When you entered the building you walked in to a large dark room , which had laser etched 3d holograms (of if I remember , a vase, a pharoah's mask and a few others), and large screen TV's embedded into the walls , running Atari 2600 games (which you could play Miner 2049er and centipeded being two ).To the right side of the room there was a series of large windows looking into a smaller room and a door.Every hour a new batch of kids would be let in, and an the old set would be kicked out.
Inside you had maybe 30-40 atari 800xls , each with a joystick (or in a few cases a tablet)and each running one of about 4-5 different games (from memory they were Montezuma's revenge ,boulderdash,Pac man, Bruce Lee, and umm.. my memory escapes me as to the others), some educational software and a few art packages.
I dont know if they were setup in a rudimentary network , or whether each one had a disk drive attached, but I remember iin later years you could call up a menu to pick what you wanted to load.There were a few "adults" (although I guess they were probably first year comp.sci students earning a bit of summer cash) looking after the computers .I remember by and large they were a nice bunch.(had a great chat with one once , for the life of mea I cant remember what it was about other than he was quoting a bit of monty python).
I remember being massively impressed with the whole setup as a kid , and would go , play on the atari 800's , leave on the hour , and then go and queue again to get back in.
The whole purpose of the centre was to sell the Atari computers (Atari actually still having a presence in Ireland at the time), and in my case it worked ,(when we bought our first "proper" home computer the following year , it was an 800xl from Peats , complete with montezuma's revenge , boulderdash and (I think) "English software's greatest hits Vol.4" .)
A few years later I'd sold the atari to buy a c64 (as there was feck all Atari 8 bit games being released ), but I'd made friends with a few guys in school initially because they had Atari's as well .I'm still mates with them today ,and I met my wife though one of them years later , so I'm not saying the atari centre changed my life or anything , but........;)
A year or two later ,(88?) the centre was closed and reopened as celtworld (or something similar) .But I've always had a special place in my heart for it.
Google throws a blank on it , but I'd love to see a few photos , or find out more (like HOW they set up the Ataris etc)..
Anyone else remember it?

cruachan7

I vaguely remember it, actually all I remember was the 3d images and being completely spellbound by them!

monkeyfudge

Yep. I remember it as well. But I never got to go down to the section with the computers.

So all I ever got to see were the Holograms which were pretty cool and this was back when Holograms were actually very expensive to produce.

I remember seeing the film War Games in the Mosney cinema at about the same time as well.

JackieChan

I remember going there on a school tour,it must have been 1985/86 and seeing the holographic images....don't ever remember the Atari's though. Although I bought a 2600 out of confirmation money in 1987!!
I think I spent about 125 quid on one!Would that have been right?

monkeyfudge

Actually searching around the web there are very few photos of Mosney in general which is a shame.

It was always pretty crappy, but a lot of us would have childhood memories of the place.

sasmac

I don't remember going to the place as a child but I did go to a star trek convention there when I was about 19 or 20.

Unpossible

A year or two later ,(88?) the centre was closed and reopened as celtworld (or something similar) .But I've always had a special place in my heart for it.

We used to go to mosney every year. They also had some keyboard classes (as in the musical instrument) years earlier. I remember seeing the computer stuff but never went in to play them (wasn't there windows where you could see into the room?).
That Celt thing was great, they showed stories about the Fianna.

I don't remember going to the place as a child but I did go to a star trek convention there when I was about 19 or 20.

For a whole summer they turned the old theater into a Star Strek exibit, they showed the model ships and some of the sets of the ship.