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Ex-Atari CEO charged with insider trading
Months after his resignation as CEO of Atari, Ray Kassar is hit with charges of insider trading by the Securities & Exchange Commission. At issue, according to the SEC, is the sudden sale of 5,000 shares in Atari’s parent company, Warner Communications, 23 minutes before a statement was issued indicating that Atari would not meet shareholders’ expectations in the fourth quarters of 1982. Other Atari executives are also charged with similar last-minute sell-offs.
The first episode of Glen A. Larson’s superhero series Manimal premieres on NBC, starring Simon MacCorkindale (Quatermass, Falcon Crest), Melody Anderson (Flash Gordon), and Michael D. Roberts (Baretta, The First Family). Terry Kiser (Weekend At Bernie’s) guest stars in the series premiere, concerning a man who has the ability to shapeshift into any animal.
NBC airs the 19th episode of the Marvel animated series Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, starring the voices of Dan Gilvezan, Kathy Garver, and Frank Welker.
The third and final game in Epyx’s “Apshai trilogy” is released for various home computer platforms. 
Konami introduces the arcade game 
Having claimed from the start that a computer add-on for its Colecovision console would be forthcoming, Coleco delivers on the promise with the first shipments of Adam home computer systems. Compatible with Colecovision games, Adam proves to be an immediate setback to the company due to serious technical problems and product failures, leading to a startling fourth-quarter shortfall at the end of 1983.
Activision releases the 
After a six-month loss totaling over $200,000,000, Texas Instruments puts its computer division out of its misery immediately, ending all manufacturing and support for the TI 99/4a home computer. Prices on the remaining stock of TI computers drop well below the $100 mark, and the company lays off thousands of employees; third-party software and peripheral vendors such as Milton Bradley take a hit by the end of the year as a result. Company executives describe TI’s losses in 1983 so far as the worst that the company has ever suffered.
The first video game company to produce only software without a hardware platform of its own, Activision is heavily dependent on the Atari 2600 – and Atari’s falling fortunes bring Activision down with it. After third quarter losses of $4,000,000, a quarter of Activision’s workforce is laid off; Activision CEO Jim Levy cautiously predicts better results in 1984.
Atari’s arcade game 
The eighth album from Split Enz, 
Activision releases the 
The 
Returning to space after nearly a year of refits, Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off on the long-delayed first manned mission of the Spacelab laboratory module, which is installed in the cargo bay. (The nearly month-long delay was the result of a solid rocket booster issue that led to the first-ever return of the shuttle from the launch pad to the Vehicle Assembly Building.) The ten-day mission also boasts the first six-person shuttle crew, featuring the first Spacelab scientists from the European Space Agency, who have been training for this mission since the 1970s. Columbia’s crew includes Commander John Young, Pilot Brewster Shaw, mission specialists Owen Garriott and Robert Parker, and ESA payload specialists Byron Lichtenberg and Ulf Merbold.
The 
Hobbled by the recent half-billion-dollar losses of its Atari division, Warner Communications finds itself vulnerable to a potential hostile takeover by Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch, who isn’t shy about his plan to acquire a controlling interest in Warner’s very slowly recovering stock. To stave off Murdoch’s takeover attempt, a 19% stake in Warner is traded for 43% of Chris-Craft Industries’ broadcasting division, BHC Communications. This transaction later has unforseen consequences, including BHC’s near-successful 1989 attempt to block the Time Warner merger, and the creation of the short-lived PTEN television network, a failed 1990s venture whose main claim to fame will be the science fiction series Babylon 5.