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One thing unusual has been happening at Atari in recent times: Underneath CEO Wade Rosen, who’s held that place since April 2021, Atari has overseen some good re-imaginings of its previous titles, culminating in a fiftieth anniversary sport smooshing collectively components of the corporate’s historical past that was fairly nice.
Atari has now introduced through press launch it is acquired “greater than 100 PC and console titles from the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties.” The video games appear to be principally from the again catalogues of three publishers: Accolade, Infogrames and Microprose. Included amongst them are video games from the Bubsy the Bobcat collection, Hardball, Demolition Racer, and the 1942: Pacific Air Battle, F-117A, and F-14 air fight collection. Following the acquisition Atari goes to look to re-release sure of those titles, promote merch, and most significantly “create new video games based mostly on the IP.”
“It is a deep catalog that features groundbreaking and award-winning titles from Accolade, Infogrames and Microprose,” stated Atari CEO Wade Rosen. “Many of those titles are part of Atari historical past, and followers can stay up for seeing many of those video games re-released in bodily and digital codecs, and in some instances, even ported to trendy consoles.”
As a part of the deal Atari’s additionally acquired the Accolade and GTI manufacturers, the previous of which particularly makes me fairly nostalgic: Accolade was a giant participant in video games publishing till it went down in 2000. This follows scorching on the heels of final month’s announcement of the acquisition of the (thus far glorious) Nightdive Studios, which might pretty be referred to as a retro specialist studio, and the acquisition of the basic Berzerk sport.
“There’s been a whole lot of disappointment with Atari for a very long time, and me saying that issues are going to be completely different is not going to alter that,” stated Rosen in a current interview with Axios (opens in new tab). “I simply ask that folks simply proceed to look at what we do and simply let the actions of the corporate within the coming years hopefully converse for themselves.”
For the primary time in many years, the trendy type of the corporate (the unique Atari being long-defunct) is definitely producing some first rate merchandise. It isn’t all been improbable: The corporate’s reborn VCS {hardware} appears to be like the half, however is fairly underpowered for what you are paying. The curiosity in NFTs and the blockchain stays robust, with the corporate having a complete division devoted to those applied sciences. However as somebody who’s watched Atari stumble via numerous zombie phases the place it appeared extra like a t-shirt firm than the gaming large it as soon as was, for the primary time in endlessly it appears like Atari has one thing to supply, significantly with retro video games.
I am unsure that what the world wants proper now could be a Bubsy 3D re-release, thoughts you, nevertheless it appears to be like like Atari’s current concentrate on re-releasing basic titles in appropriately good situation will proceed, and that may solely be a great factor. It is a firm with an unbelievable heritage (and one which goes far past its Seventies heyday) and, whereas it is unlikely to be competing on the prime once more anytime quickly, a video games trade with a robust Atari shall be all of the richer for it.
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