Atari is turning 30 this year. It’s also, in its current incarnation as a games publisher, about to die. Again.
Rather than focus on the sad state of a once legend, soon to be relegated to bankruptcy courts and nostalgic t-shirts, remember fondly Atari’s golden years in Gamasutra‘s twenty-page retrospective of the company. (And it only spans the years ’71 to ’77!) It is almost certainly more than you ever wanted to know about Nolan Bushnell’s influential company.
The History of Atari [Gamasutra.com]
Previously: Atari 2600 (VCS) 30-Year Anniversary [BBG]
I’m sure Atari won’t die for good; as before, someone will buy out their trademarks, rename themselves Atari and start using the brand to sell games (or flash drives à la Commodore, or hipster apparel or what have you).
I’ve still got my 2600 (and original NES). Funny how modern gaming consoles don’t quite have the same appeal to me. (Then again, I also don’t have several hundred dollars to drop on anything so spurious.) Oh, I enjoy them when I play them, but there’s something about 4- and 8-bit graphics that appeals to me on a very primal level. Maybe it’s only a certain segment of society, now in their 30′s, that will ever feel this way; more’s the pity for those too young to have to imagine that a red splotch is Spider-Man or a khaki blob is Pitfall Harry. How strange to feel fogeyish about this sort of thing.
How did Infogrames fuck this up? They had the Dragon Ball Z license, they brought Ikaruga to the US…. oh right, those Matrix games. That explains it.
I wonder if Activision or EA will buy the name. Maybe Ubi Soft.
it is still amazing to me that, even with an almost total monopoly on the home videogame market, they still managed to go bankrupt…
I received an Atari Flashback 2 for Christmas last year, and had a great time playing with my nephews. They were 14 and 12. I think they’re just good games: simple, enjoyable, etc.
Many of the modern games are too much like work. (I’m looking at you, GTA: San Andreas.) Who wants to work out and get nagging phone calls from your girlfriend in a video game? As an adult, isn’t that what you play to “escape?”