New Atari Games Revealed

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Posted by Zonk on Thursday October 21, 2004 @05:45AM from the go-macedonia! dept.

Thanks to HomeLANFed for the news that several new Atari games have been revealed on the official site. These include the action title "Chronos", and the much anticipated Civilization IV.

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Anyone else... by Lendrick · 2004-10-21 05:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

Did anyone else think that someone tried to implement Civilization on an Atari 2600 cartridge as a joke?
1. Re:Anyone else... by Treeluvinhippy · 2004-10-21 05:54 · Score: 1
  
  No.
  
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  >
2. Re:Anyone else... by gl4ss · 2004-10-21 06:11 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  nope..
  
  but do you know what's amazing?
  civ1 only needed cga, 640kb and 8088 cpu to run(not sure if it required hd too), and gameplaywise the newest variants aren't that far off from it.
  
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  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
3. Re:Anyone else... by The+Briguy · 2004-10-21 06:18 · Score: 1
  
  sadly yes. When I saw the headline I thought it was talking about some new homebrew atari 2600 games or something. I'm only 20 and I'm already old....
4. Re:Anyone else... by Lendrick · 2004-10-21 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Wow. I never tried running it on anything less than a 386 with a VGA. It's surprising how much games back then were able to scale down to run on older systems.
5. Re:Anyone else... by DavidLeblond · 2004-10-21 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  It would be sweet if they could still do that. Then again, Doom 3 wouldn't be the same if the only colors it could use were cyan, magenta, black and white...
6. Re:Anyone else... by AuMatar · 2004-10-21 09:27 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I don't know, isn't 90% of the game shades of black anyway?
  
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  I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
7. Re:Anyone else... by Jacek+Poplawski · 2004-10-21 18:55 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Cyan, magenta and white would be crazy, you need just black.
Civ IV by OrangeStar · 2004-10-21 05:56 · Score: 3, Funny

With a new title! "Almost as good as the last one!" Which was almost as good as the last one..

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This .sig was pirated on BitTorrent, costing the MPAA millions of dollars.
1. Re:Civ IV by Daetrin · 2004-10-21 06:30 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  With a new title! "Almost as good as the last one!" Which was almost as good as the last one..
  Actually, if you'd been paying attention to previous news on the subject, you would know that a more proper title would be "As different from the previous game as we can make it and still call it Civilization," which will doubtless please some people and cause them to declare that it's the best Civ other while enraging others and causing them to declare that it's the worst Civ ever.
  And generally speaking, the majority of people seem to agree that Civ2 was a big improvement over the original Civ, while opinion is split on whether Civ2 or Civ3 was better.
  And in other news, as the updated article now says the games are no longer listed, which makes sense since as far as I can tell the list consists entirely of already released games.
  
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  This Space Intentionally Left Blank
2. Re:Civ IV by Dolly_Llama · 2004-10-21 07:40 · Score: 1
  
  And generally speaking, the majority of people seem to agree that Civ2 was a big improvement over the original Civ, while opinion is split on whether Civ2 or Civ3 was better. ...and Alpha Centauri remains the best of any games spawned out of the series.
  
  --
  Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
3. Re:Civ IV by great+throwdini · 2004-10-21 09:37 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  ...and Alpha Centauri remains the best of any games spawned out of the series.
  
  Though, in my opinion, it was by far the easiest of the bunch to "win" against AI opponents. The buggiest, as well. The unit customization was an interesting feature to add, but I think, in the end, it was simply something that the AI couldn't effectively cope with (among other things). More fun than Civ III, but pretty flawed in terms of balance.
4. Re:Civ IV by Daetrin · 2004-10-21 12:12 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  and Alpha Centauri remains the best of any games spawned out of the series.
  Well that goes without saying :)
  It might be nice to see a sequel to Alpha Centauri, however they'd either have to stick to just updating the graphics and AI or redo the entire thing from scratch. The old storyline was great, with compelling voice acting for the various quotes and other story bits and Baraka was a gold mine for the video clips.
  
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  This Space Intentionally Left Blank
5. Re:Civ IV by RogerWilco · 2004-10-21 20:34 · Score: 1
  
  Appart from AP I realy like CTP II, at least much more as Civ3 and ctp1
  
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  RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
6. Re:Civ IV by DjMd · 2004-10-22 00:49 · Score: 1
  
  I liked the unit customization, but there were limits...
  I wanted to make a orbital drop transport to load my units into and the drop them anwhere on the map. Should be possible under the system, but it wouldn't work right...
  Definately a great game with the video clips for techs and wonders... loved that..
  
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  DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
You sure about that? by Orne · 2004-10-21 05:59 · Score: 4, Informative

Because i just clicked on Show All (after visiting Atari's page linked in the article), and Civilization IV is no longer in the list. Perhaps someone noticed, and retracted the listings.

The internet, it is fleeting...
1. Re:You sure about that? by ben_degonzague · 2004-10-21 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see anything either. And I got my hopes up for nothing. Just like StarCraft 2 :(
You mean 'New Infogrames Games' of course.... by bear+pimp · 2004-10-21 06:00 · Score: 0, Redundant

Sigh, just because they bought the name, doesn't mean the have to whore it about the internet.

Oh no, it does doesn't it..
Wish they would list the Linux titles seperately by wowbagger · 2004-10-21 06:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

I wish they would list those titles that are available under Linux seperately, rather than having a small footnote in the PC-CDROM section.

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www.eFax.com are spammers
Atari 2600 by cbx_cbx · 2004-10-21 06:29 · Score: 1, Insightful

With this 2600-one-button joystick picture besides the news, its impossible to any Geek that was born before 76 to not think of those games as new home-brew games, for thr Atari2600.

hmmmm, Civ4, kind of creepy...
1. Re:Atari 2600 by Masami+Eiri · 2004-10-22 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  Parent isn't flamebait.
  And for the record, despite being born in '84, I had the same initial reaction to the headline.
WTF? by dogbowl · 2004-10-21 06:58 · Score: 2, Funny

Are these 2k or 4k cartidges? There wasn't any mention of that.
Do I get to finally use my paddle controllers?

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These pretzels are making me thirsty.
"Revealed?" Not likely by outspoken · 2004-10-21 07:13 · Score: 1

CIV4 was announced a year ago and reports of it were out back in May of 2003, check out the Aplyton (civ fan forums) section on it: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid =103185
Advertise it more why don't you? by Scrameustache · 2004-10-21 08:53 · Score: 1, Funny

Remember people, they're not just new games, they are new Atari games! Atari! A name to trust.
This article brought to you by Atari, Atari, we make life worth living.

Is anyone working on a astroturfblock plug-in for Firefox? I think we're about due for one of those...

P.S. Atari!

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You can't take the sky from me...
1. Re:Advertise it more why don't you? by WhatAmIDoingHere · 2004-10-21 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  Some Atari developers have actually been working on that plugin with their Atari spare time.
  
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  Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Atari 2600 Score :-1, Flame bait by Scrameustache · 2004-10-21 08:59 · Score: 1

I can't see anything even remotly flamebaity in that post, so I'll karma-burn and revive it:

With this 2600-one-button joystick picture besides the news, its impossible to any Geek that was born before 76 to not think of those games as new home-brew games, for thr Atari2600.

hmmmm, Civ4, kind of creepy...

--
You can't take the sky from me...
1. Re:Atari 2600 Score :-1, Flame bait by superpulpsicle · 2004-10-21 16:12 · Score: 1
  
  Boy I actually tried out the atari one button joystick and it was actually better than the atari 2 button joystick. Now that's sad.
  
  I am so glad they stopped making hardware. They would have been responsible for destroying the wrists and thumbs of an entire generation.
2. Re:Atari 2600 Score :-1, Flame bait by hal2814 · 2004-10-22 02:08 · Score: 1
  
  They stopped making software too, but Infogrammes bought their name and pretends to be Atari now.
"offical" statement from Atari by pjgunst · 2004-10-21 09:10 · Score: 5, Informative

There truly is a Civ 4, but we are not announcing anything definitive about it just yet. The majority of Firaxis's programmers at this point are focused on the Sid Meier's Pirates! release this November. But a team has been working on Civ 4 for sometime already.

We'll have more information available in 2005, including features, screenshots, and some sort of launch date.

Best,
Jeff Foley
Sr. Brand Manager
Atari
1. Re:"offical" statement from Atari by pjgunst · 2004-10-21 09:22 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  always forget to refer to my sources: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.ph p?s=d9cc8b2fb7f30464c464300cdb8d5f43&threadid=4084 92
  
  quickly scanned the forum for more info... but they seem reluctant to comment on users wishes for Civ4.
  Thanks Sid for the great games, been playing them ever since Civ1 was released.
Pollution by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 09:20 · Score: 0

I hope they do something about the pollution in this version. If you had a really huge empire with big cities, all you did from that point on was clean up pollution. Killed the fun, and I never finished any of those games.
1. Re:Pollution by AuMatar · 2004-10-21 09:30 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  BUild more workers, and keep them spread over the map. Pollution was a very small amount of the game.
  
  What they do need to do is work on combat. It would be nice to see different units having different abilities. If two stacks fight they should fight as armies, not as individual units.
  
  --
  I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
2. Re:Pollution by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 13:58 · Score: 0
  
  More about fighting is what I'm talking about. If you have 30 cities, all with a pop. of 30+ they all pollute. So for every turn, you have to send 30 workers to clean up 30 different pollution spots. Taking away from the time for real enjoyment, fighting. It would be nice to have an advancement at that stage of the game that just completely eliminates pollution.
3. Re:Pollution by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 23:40 · Score: 0
  
  Might I suggest the "Al Gore" wonder.
4. Re:Pollution by Hassman · 2004-10-22 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  Or the "George Bush" wonder...oh wait, that divides your empire in two and turns the whole world against you, while 15% of your workforce is 'laid off'.
  
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  -Mark
  Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Emoticons... by TLSPRWR · 2004-10-21 10:40 · Score: 1

I must use way too many emoticons. :-1
Re:I've been saying for the longest time by curtlewis · 2004-10-21 11:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's not the same Atari. The original Atari folded for good in the mid to late 90s. Somehow, these pretenders managed to snake the name.
The way I read this.... by jmcmunn · 2004-10-21 13:06 · Score: 1

...I got all excited thinking they were releasing new versions of the classics. I was getting all hyped up to play some Asteroids and some Frogger!

But no, instead I am greeted with Civ IV, which I am sure will be graphically stunning, and totally engrossing...but where's the little green blob hopping across the road!? The sad thing is that most games today don't live up to Centipede, Asteroids, Missile Command and the other classics. Those were the good old days.

Let's not go too far back though...Pong blows. :-)
Re:I've been saying for the longest time by Scrameustache · 2004-10-21 13:17 · Score: 3, Informative

The original Atari folded for good in the mid to late 90s.

80's, actually, this is like the 5th fompany or so to use the name. Highly recognised name brand, people feel confident about it, more than about "infogramme" anyway.

Sneaky? You betcha!

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You can't take the sky from me...
Re:I've been saying for the longest time by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 13:57 · Score: 0

Pacman is a Namco property, dolt!
Re:I've been saying for the longest time by TechniMyoko · 2004-10-21 14:23 · Score: 1

Atari made the original pacman though
Re:I've been saying for the longest time by chrispyman · 2004-10-21 14:34 · Score: 2, Informative

No, Atari never had anything to do with Pacman at all. Namco was the company that made the original Pacman, and the licensed out their US distribution to Bally Midway. Atari did have a few US distribution licenses with Namco, most notably with Pole Position and Dig Dug.
Re:I've been saying for the longest time by Dragoon412 · 2004-10-22 02:51 · Score: 1

The sad thing is that all they're known for these days is putting some really nasty copy protection on their games.

I can't think of a single Atari release since Neverwinter Nights that hasn't had some significant problems, like just refusing to play on peoples' machines.