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Atari To Release Old Games and New Console System
GrueMaster writes "Atari is announcing the re-release of their older games for the PS2 & Xbox. They are also talking about releasing a new console, which is a miniaturized version of the 7800 with built in games. Check out the story here. Being a collector of old Atari stuff, I'll be in line to get mine."
For those of you that followed Atari back in the day; you may be surprised to see the name rise from the grave. The name was bought by Infogrames:
On May 7, 2003, Infogrames officially announces its name change to Atari. The Company's U.S. operations became Atari, Inc. (formerly Infogrames, Inc.) and changed its trading symbol on the NASDAQ National Market to "ATAR." Although the holding company parent in France, Infogrames Entertainment SA, retained its current name and maintained its symbol on the Euronext under the code: 5257, all of the Company's worldwide operations were renamed Atari. The Company gained all rights to the Atari license when it acquired Hasbro Interactive, Inc. in December 2000.
I guess this is a re-re-re-release (I probably don't have enough res) of the old titles; it make me wonder how long will these games will be around?
See here for more details of the Atari Flashback Classic Game Console.
Well, you won't have to. The CD is $20, the mini console with twin joysticks (Oldskool Style) and built in games is $45.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
The retro console is $45.
Next time, don;t read so fast in your rush to "fp"
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Too bad atari (the old atari, not the current owner of the brand) had an image as game console company, they made a great desktop system, the Atari ST. Man I loved that machine, I still have my Mega ST 1 lying around somewhere.
While my friends where fooling around with DOS, I had a system with a GUI (in 128KB rom) a nice high-res 640x480 monochrome monitor. I used WYSIWYG dtp and word processing software (great for school papers) while the rest still used WordPerfect for DOS.
It was cheaper than an IBM PC too.
Too bad their marketing department sucked ass, everybody assumed an Atari was a game system, and I had to explain over and over again they make desktops too.
Not quite. The 2800 was the Japanese version of the 2600. There were also several other oddly numbered systems that were and weren't released, such as the 2700 (2600 with RF controllers).
The Atari 2800 existed, in Japan, looked like the 7800
You can find info about it on the net, i found some on http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/2800.html
They also say it was sold in the USA by Sears...
100% of statistics are wrong.
The complete list of games found in Atari Flashback includes:
a nyon Bombers ®
Adventure(TM)
Air Sea Battle(TM)
Asteroids®
Battlezone®
Breakout®
C
Centipede®
Crystal Castles®
Desert Falcon(TM)
Food Fight(TM)
Gravitar®
Haunted House(TM)
Millipede®
Planet Smashers(TM)
Saboteur(TM)
Sky Diver(TM)
Solaris(TM)
Sprintmaster(TM)
Warlord
Yar's Revenge
Personally, I won't be buying this. The only Atari game I want to play again is 'Dungeon Master' - but that wasn't a console game as I recall. I used to play it on my Atari ST way back in 1988 or so. That was one cool game!
The Anthology has 18 arcade games and 62 Atari 2600 games. And the mini-console is going to be a mixture of 2600 and 7800 games.
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Here's what I think Atari should do: Create a console on par with the SNES. That sort of hardware should be extremely cheap at this point, and could easily be manufactured for retail prices in the $20-$40 range. Sell simple "smart card" games (or something equally as inexpensive to manufacture) for $5-$10 a piece.
Its called a Game Boy Advance. It satisfies all of your criteria, and games from the Atari-era forward are often rereleased on it. You can even play those games on a TV using the GameBoy Player from Nintendo, or a hardware modification available online.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
2600, 5200, Intellivision, Coleco nostalgia I can see... As well as NES, of course... But wasn't the 7800 a terrible flop? Eh. Good luck, Atari. You'll need it. Nintendo can sell us Excitebike, Zelda and Super Mario again because they always were and will be great games. Anything that could be considered "great" on the 2600 was only because we didn't have anything better.
:-P
I know I'll probably get modded for being offtopic, but there is a comparable mini-console for NES games. They have a kiosk over the mall near where I live, I think the device is called "SuperJoy" or something like that. Anyways, its $50 and claims to have 2000 NES games built in (in reality its closer to 100 or so games). It comes with 2 gamepads and a lightgun. Everytime I pass their display, I'm tempted to buy one. I'm sure if you google "Superjoy" or "PowerJoy", you might find one of these gray market devices.
Recently when I was over there, I noticed that have a new device they are selling. It's a stand-alone DDR pad (also $50), but the stupid thing is 8-bit and I can't imagine who would want to play DDR to old midi music.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Please don't confuse the two.
The old one was American this new one is French.
The old one was all about creating original games - the new one has yet to create a successful original franchise. Name one!
The old one was kinda cool. The games industry *should* be cool - watching the new Atari try to be cool is like watching your father disco dancing. It's just lame and embarrasing.
In fact the only thing they have in common is the old name. Something which resulted from Infogrames lawyers dusting off the deeds discovered in Hasboro's basement.
I really like your idea of a mini console w/ smart card based games. If they did that and did not lock it down too hard it would be a hacking dream!
You mean like the GP32?
http://www.atari.com/us/games/atari_flashback/7800 Not bad, but I don't really dig the game selection.
~Necromutant
IIRC the 7800 flopped because it was also behind the times-- it was out around the same time as the NES, but the games were just rehashes of the same old thing (Robotron, Breakout, Galaga etc.) with better graphics. What kid in his right mind would choose that over Super Mario Brothers?
Guantlet is a Midway title (something about the difference between Atari's Arcade and Atari's Console divisions being split up). If you'd like Guantlet purchase Midway Arcade Treasures
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Copied from AtariHQ.com:
In brief, Atari was split-up in 1984 following the market crash. Time Warner kept the company's coin-op (arcade) division while selling off its home console and computer divisions to Jack Tramiel (former head of Commodore). Time Warner-owned Atari became Atari Games Corp. while the Tramiel-owned Atari became Atari Corp. Atari Games was sold to arcade giant Williams/Midway the early 90's, while Atari Corp. failed with its Jaguar and Lynx machines and merged in 1996 with JTS, a hard disk manufacturer. Finally, Hasbro came along in 1998 and purchased Atari Corp. for a mere $5 million, and and released a slew of revamped classic Atari hits for contemporary game machines and PCs. Hasbro fell on hard times and sold off its entire interactive group (including Atari) to French-owned Infogrames Entertainment. Similarly, Midway was affected by the downturn in the coin-op market and has exited from the arcade business -- which spelled the end of the Atari and Bally brand names in the arcades. Don't expect Infogrames-owned Atari to bring out a videogame machine anytime soon -- if not forever. With multinational conglomerates such as Sony and Microsoft vying for console supremacy, it's highly doubtful that there will be room for another contender...
----- Oooh, Shiny!
One can be a purist and play the actual arcade game.
After 20 to 30-odd years of wear and tear and 'bit rot', that is becoming impossible.
Enter emulation and the (dubious?) success of MAME--'arcade in a PC'. The weak point is that the arcade game ROMs that 'power' it are (likely) still copyrighted and is illegal to have them unless you have the corresponding arcade game hardware.
So some arcade fans/programmers avoid all that and program 'remakes' that play (almost?) exactly like the originals.
The problem with that is that the copyright/trademark owners may/will come after you.
Case in point: Look at the way the 'Tetris' people crack down on all the tetris clone games that are out there--including the historic original IBM PC version that was first coded in Russia and was hosted at an informative 'Tetris History' website.
So all that is left is to get official, sanctioned emulated versions such as the 85 games-in-1 CD Atari is putting out in order to 'stay legal'.
In the end, isn't 'staying legal' what's it all about?