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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 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!
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.
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
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
----- Oooh, Shiny!
ST = 8 Mhz
Amiga = 7.2 Mhzzzzzzz...
Well, I had an ST and I had an 800XL before that. You know what? If I had it to do over again, I'd rather have had the Amiga. The graphics chipset more than offset the slight speed difference between the two processors. Don't get me wrong, the ST had some GREAT games and software but the Amiga graphics setup was simply more capable.
Thanks to Amiga inheriting Atari's old hardware engineers, the Amiga was MUCH more like an Atari than the ST itself. Display lists, graphics hardware that can work off any area in memory, a wide color palette, graphics coprocessors, and all sorts of ways the hardware helped you when trying to animate anything were all Atari 8-bit features that were done bigger and better in the Amiga. The Atari 8-bits owed quite a bit to Jay Miner's genius. The Commodore 16-bits felt like the next generation of those machines and have his handiwork as well.
Ironically, ex-Commodore engineers had a hand in the ST. Some aspects of the ST do indeed feel like a Commodore 64 16 bits wide.