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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."
1. How is this different from the joysticks you plug into your TV? I personally like the idea of the joysticks, but I'm not sure I would pay $45 for a PS2 CD.
;-))
2. Nostalgia can be ruined by pushing quantity over quality. Since they'll be packing 85 games on the disk, there will be little incentive for players to play any one game for long enough to "master" it.
3. Who has the patience to master these games? Back in the day, we were bored. I remember spending hours on end in front of my GW-Basic interpreter, because it was rewarding. Now I can just pop on the internet and find all the information about BASIC that was so hard won. Alternatively, I might find something quicker and easier. I think the later would be the result for many Atari players.
4. The Atari games were pathetic compared to their arcade counterparts. Why bother with a pixelated version of Defender, when you can grab the arcade version in one of those joystick thing-a-ma-bobs?
5. Profit!!! (Hah! Pre-empted you on that one!)
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. This should give them several major selling points:
1. It mini, it's cheap, and it's cool!
2. The low cost will cause parents to consider it for a quick present for their kids.
3. The low cost games will encourage "impulse buys".
4. Very little expense would need to go into R&D.
5. Profit!!! (Did it again!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
On Sunday, at Futureshop (a friend wanted to go) we saw a PC cd of 80 classic Atari games, some of the ones that jump to mind are: asteroids, defender, combat, circus, joust. It was about $20 (CDN) The screenshots looked like the games I remember playing as a kid. I love some of those games, but I'm scared to play them again as I wonder if I'll ruin my memories where I actually enjoyed these games.
....if you don't have to blow dust from the connectors when sticking in the cart?
And knowing which of your joysticks is a bit stiff and giving that to your friend?
And will it be the same when you see it on your massive widescreen TV instead of a little 14" that made anything seem high resolution?
This is one of those cases where justifying "abandonware" sites becomes much more difficult.
Just because they aren't selling it today, doesn't mean that they never will.
Abandonware sites work on logic somewhat like: "Well, you have this car, but since you've left it parked in the driveway for 6 months without using it, you shouldn't complain if we hotwire it and go joyriding in it... we'll return it so you don't lose anything!"
So long as there is a concept of "Intellectual Property", however fictitious in reality, these issues will remain. It's either the law, or it's not - and if you don't like it, change the law!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
These games should be public domain already... Patents and copyright are supposed to increase innovation, but they are doing the exact opposite. When a company can simply repackage and sell the same ol' stuff over and over again, why should they invest their money in new (potentially risky) endeavors?
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.
Free ET cartridge with every purchase.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
Off-topic, but nostalgic:
What I remember is the *Sears* branded Atari console. I'm not sure why, but the Sears console was my first exposure to non-pong video games. I remember our old Sears, too -- it had that Sears smell (which exists to this day in any Sears store) -- and I remember the Sears Atari rigged up in the "sporting goods" section of the store -- which seemed to have a lot of tennis rackets, tennis balls, and lawnmowers -- surrounding the big television.
We'd plant ourselves in Sears, play Combat for hours, sip Orange Julius's, and eventually make our way to Aladdin's Castle (with the requisite 'Aladdin's Castle smell'), get 20 (25?) tokens for five bucks, and play stuff like Pac Man, Tron, Pole Position, and that "Journey" game -- they released it during their 'Frontiers' tour, I think -- where you hopped Steve Perry over rock formations and guided Neil Schon (sp?) up and down some weird cave without touching the side.
Wow. It's all coming back now.
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!
Dude, if you can find the landfill, your hearts desires will come true:
From www.sjfanboy.com:
"Myth has it hat Atari expected E.T. to be such a popular game that they produced more cartridges than there were systems. When the game failed they supposedly buried millions of copies of E.T. in a desert landfill. The truth is Atari actually made 6 million E.T. cartrdiges and there were 20 million systems out. According to a former chief engineer at Atari there were more E.T. cartridges then there were VCS's in active use. By the time E.T. came out the VCS was 6 years old. According to Ray Kassar, president of Atari in 1983, the story about burying E.T. and Pac-Man cartridges in the desert is an "absolute lie." He claims they were dumped in discount stores. One ex-Atari vice president stated "Bullshit! They drove 14 freight trucks onto New Mexico, dug a pit, dumped millions of cartridges, drove a stram roller over them, then poured cement on top
of them."
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
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.
Just a note or two...
Nostalgia can be ruined by pushing quantity over quality. Since they'll be packing 85 games on the disk, there will be little incentive for players to play any one game for long enough to "master" it.
But I think we're missing the target audience here. I have a tough time believing that Atari thinks they can realistically sell these to anybody who hasn't gown up with them, let alone a pokeboy. At least not in large enough quantities to make a dent in sales. No, this disc is for old skoolers who might very well attempt to master it for old time sake.
1. It mini, it's cheap, and it's cool!
Come on. Any kid whose only exposure to gaming is a modern console is not going to find these games cool. My cousin has a knock-off system with 500 clone atari games on it or soemthing, but given the choice between the DC I gave them and that thing, the clone-boy gathers quite a bit of dust.
3. The low cost games will encourage "impulse buys".
And the GBA is already there. The SP's might be up there in price, but the old style GBAs are will within impulse buy range. The games are about $20 more expensive, but then, the graphics are lightyears better AND the unit is portable.
Not saying that these aren't worth picking up, just that they won't have anywhere close to the traction with the kids as they do with us.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
http://www.atari.com/us/games/atari_flashback/7800 Not bad, but I don't really dig the game selection.
~Necromutant
They or whoever owns Atari's corpse in 20 years will just keep re-releasing this stuff on new systems forever. And of course Congress will oblige with copyrights that never expire. Sorry but I already shelled out for the real catridges once I'm not doing it again. Emulation is the only way to go IMHO. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to buy this but let's not turn this thread into a emulation users are stealing from the artists thread. I doubt most of the original programmers are even getting a dime from this.
"But Bonnell downplayed the impact bootlegging could have on sales for "Atari Anthology" and the Atari Flashback console."
"You're right to say that a lot of them are bootlegged, and the code is not the right code, and the color is not the right color."
Uh sure buddy. Whatever you say.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Christ, your son is going to be made fun of left and right at school.
Don't do it, shielding your children completely from popular TV, movies and games will turn them into lonely, bitter youths.
My parents thought it'd be a good thing that I watched Seasame Street all the damn time, and now look at me, I post as an Anime persona on fucking Slashdot.
Trust me... your kid will be better off with some exposure than none.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
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!
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.
;-)
I've been thinking about just such an idea for awhile now too, but with some variations/additions related to my open-system sensibilities:
* Use proven (if dated) technology based on off-the-shelf designs like Z80 and 68K processors. System functions (graphics, sound and I/O) would be handles by separate CPU cores working in tandem--a "quad Z80 system" perhaps. Development costs would be low as a result, and with a good design performance would be quite adequate. One FPGA could even hold most of the logic.
* Not only would it be mini, cheap and cool--it would be non-proprietary at the peripheral connectivity level at least. Games and memory cards would be distributed in the compact flash format, or maybe even on USB ROM keys. Users could connect the system to a PC's USB port like a palm pilot to load in games form the 'net. Same with game controllers--they'd use USB--none
of this oddball crap like consoles have today (blatanly implemented to screw consumers over).
* The hardware architecture would be simple enough (as would the BIOS/OS/API firmware) that hobbyists could develop their own creations. The manufactured device could even come with software along the lines of LEGO Mindstorms programming software, or STOS BASIC from the old Atari days or some such thing. Kids could make their own games on a PC, save them, share with friends, have contests.
* Once the device was released to production with stable specifications, said specs would be released as a gaming platform that could be implemented by other vendors. Hasn't worked for consoles (yet) but it made the PC industry what it is today.
Don't kow how well it would go over in the industry, given its MPAA/RIAA closed, protectionist culture. It basically takes the floor out from under the games software industry as it is now so I wouldn't expect publishers to clamour to develop for it. However, unless Atari or Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony made it getting developers on board would be a struggle regardless of how open the system was (hence the strategy for making development appealing to the mass public).
I think that even though it might be much harder to make billions with this strategy, I think that we've lost a lot in terms of creativity in computing since the "good old days" just prior to the shakeout in the 80s when computers were not only cheap but simple and oriented towards development (it's been a long time since you could boot into BASIC and create). It'd be great if somehow we could re-ignite that hobbyist culture again. Such a culture is barely a flicker now--and it exists almost solely because of Linux and the Free Software movement. I'd like to think that there are millions of geek-parents with a mindset similar to mine who'd put down $39.95 for a cool little digital camera-sized box that hooks to a television to play and can be loaded with little Johnny's latest creations.
Anyways...just in case someone DOES try to take and pervert this idea and patent the crap out of it, etc, I hereby copyright this idea and grant use under the Creative Commons License on this day, the 7th of September 2004
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.