Atari Arcade Division Closes

Bill Kendrick writes "Today Midway dropped the axe on 'Midway Games West' (Formerly Atari Games Corporation). The remaining 30 people working there have been laid off. The other half of Atari, who went on to make the Atari ST line of computers and Jaguar and Lynx game systems, is still alive and kicking, as part of Infogrames. Still, it's a sad day for gamers."

Comments

gonna miss them as much as me??

[peculiarmethod]

Midway's list of free games include:

- Defender
- Joust
- Rampage
- Spy Hunter
- Robotron 2084
- Tapper
- Defender II
- Bubbles
- Satan's Hollow
- Sinistar

http://www.midway.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FT Co ntentServer?pagename=FutureTense/Apps/Xcelerate/Mi dway/Play

pm

Very sad, but Atari arcade never evolved

[totallygeek]

I love old video games. Maybe it is just because the new games are too difficult, require too much memory of secret moves or play areas, or are too jazzed about graphics than about game play. I think many at Atari felt the same way I do. The simplicity of game play for Atari arcade games was attractive for me. The fact that I had the Atari 2600 and most of the games in the game room were Atari made my arcade experience get named "playing Atari". However, most kids today wouldn't want to play Joust or Defender. If they did, Joust would be a first-person adventure in 3D where you would run around looking for a good bird to climb onto, while running from bad birds and flying dinosaurs. Defender would need to be a console game with 42 CDs where you are role-playing in your fight against mutant alien invasions. Atari's death is sad, but they never attempted to sell arcade games that satisfied the audience of today.

They ran out of inspiration long ago

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

All they have put out since their Atari classics are nothing more than lame rehashes of their old games -- which are available for FREE with MAME -- sold for the latest consoles and PCs for $50.

They have produced nothing of value since, and though it would have been shameful had they been aborted before they put out their classics, they were headed to the dustbin of history due to their lack of inspiration.

Hopefully, Midway will hire 30 young, ambitious, and talented programmers in their place.

Embedded Links are your Friend!

[ackthpt]

Making this a link rather than trying to get fr1st p0st helps.

I spent much of my first meager paychecks at Aladdin's Castle in Saginaw, MI, playing Crystal Castles and Gauntlet. There was some later version of Asteroids which i really liked, and wouldn't mind sharing my apartment with one of the full-sized arcade machines. And probably most favorite was Tempest, which I have for the PC. There's a knob for sale which I believe works with it. Best game ever with the sound cranked way up!

They made the best arcade games, period

[MilenCent]

Atari's passing is a real blow to the industry, even if they haven't made too many games lately.

For starters, Atari was the first successful arcade game company. For a little while, if you talked about videogames you meant Atari.

Second, throughout their entire lifespan, Atari produced original games. They always tried new things. They always looked for something different to do. Of all the other companies in the industry, there are precious few who can claim that. Nintendo certainly does it. Some of Sega's splinter development teams do it. Blizzard does it by copying lesser-known games (like Dune II and Rogue). Maxis does it once in a while when they aren't releasing The Sims add-on packs. Who doesn't do it? Namco, Capcom, Square, EA, Microsoft, and Infogrammes (including their "Atari" devision).

By the way: a previous comment stated that Defender, Stargate/Defender II., Joust, Robotron, Rampage, Tapper and Sinistar were Midway games. They are, but they are not Atari games.

Here are the most noteworthy Atari arcade releases, to my mind:
Pong
Asteroids (and Asteroids Deluxe)
Missile Command
Centipede (and Milipede)
Tempest (tied with William's Robotron: 2084 for the title of Twitchiest Game)
Star Wars (still the best of all the many Star Wars videogames!)
Crystal Castles
Marble Madness
I, Robot (the very first 3D polygonal game)
Hard Drivin' (the first successful 3D polygonal game) (also Race Drivin')
S.T.U.N. Runner
720 Degrees
Gauntlet (the game that invented the idea of joining in any time, and an incredible amount of fun) (and Gauntlet II)
Toobin'
KLAX
Tetris (arcade)
Rampart (the best-designed game ever made)
San Franscisco Rush (which is actually like a high-tech update of Hard Drivin')
Gauntlet Legends (pioneering with characters that persist between games) (and Gauntlet: Dark Legacy)

So, unlike what a previous correspondent said, Atari was not a one-hit wonder.

What most of these games have in common is the creation of an entirely new kind of game. They didn't produce endless strings of one-on-one fighting games like some companies I could name. It's true that a few games were released that didn't measure up to these (California Speed stands out in my mind), but no other game company has this track record of innovation, not even Nintendo (and hey, I love Nintendo).

In the early days of the arcade game industry there were few precedents, so you couldn't mindlessly ape someone else. Atari stood out then. But even in their later years, they still tried new, nutty things. That era gave us Rampart, which, I'm not kidding, is an amazing design and should be studied, in an era when side-scrolling things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the rage. They were just about the only reason for thinking person to enter arcades for a while.

To think that Ed Logg may have been escorted off the premises by police! Man, that just makes my blood boil.