Actually, it was not seperate until 1984.
Also, for anyone who is Namco fan, Atari helped to put them on the map.
My secret hope is that Bushnell can come to his senses and, for get his “Media Bistros” , and buy the Atari name back like he attempted to do in 1996.
I would love to see the Q Score for Atari. “Atari” was what everyone called video games before they called them “Nintendo” and then “Playstation.” And if the name isn’t enough, the IP it still owns would be.
The original Atari joystick was a thing of beauty, and it worked great, to boot. That thing fit perfectly in my hand.
In 1982, Atari was the second most recognized brand name i nthe world behind Coca Cola. My parents still still call video games “Atari games” as I’m sure millions of others do as well
Atari 2600 was the second cartrige based system I owned.
The Studio II was the first (was there ever a Studio I?)
It’s sad to see Atari in it’s current state. Yar’s Revenge was my favorite Atari game.
Oh, that was a long time ago.
I know this guy who is a huge Atari nut. I imagine he was crushed, maybe even brought to tears, when Atari died the first time (getting scooped up by JTS). He was thrilled when Infogrames bought the brand and renamed themselves Atari. I was puzzled by this - it wasnt really Atari, right? I mean, it was like someone assuming some dead person’s identity. So when people say something like, “it’s sad to see Atari in it’s current state”, I just say, “well Atari has been in the same state for the past decade - deader than fried chicken”. Am I missing something here?
He’s ba-aaack!
Hey we’re not talking about Commodore here. wink
I’m with jfletch. Current Atari is an imposter. I don’t even know which old Atari IP it owns now, because it sure didn’t do anything about them for the last few years.
No.
Atari fans have had little celebrate for the past 22 years.
The last, best news for Atari fans was in 1984 when Electronic Games ran their story about the Atari 7800.
Still, there is a whole generation of fans for which Atari resonates much louder than Nintendo, Sega, Sony, ever will.
I would say the Atari Lynx hand held system and and the Atari ST computers were good as well.
I had both. I loved both. But I was suckered into them.
Little did I know that:
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Atari Corp. literally stole the Lynx from Epyx. All the best games were the 8 original Epyx designed games (Electocop, Blue Lightening, etc). It was a great machine with great promise, that the Tramiel’s stole (by holding out payment until Epyx went bankrupt) and then couldn’t figure how to make it a success.
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The ST was not the spiritual successor to the Atari 800 (when I was 15 years old I THOUGHT it was though). Jay Miner (the brains behind the 800) designed the Amiga. He tried to sell it to Atari, and they somehow f’d that one up too. Then the Tramiels went and tried to copy the Amiga with the ST, which was a good machine, but was never “great” like the 800 . Essentially, in 1984, Atari became Commodore, and Commodore became Atari.
I should have bought an Amiga.
Interesting, I thought this was common knowledge to people who had both the 8-bit and the 16-bit machines. That’s why I winked above.
I almost went with the Amiga, back then when the choices were Amiga, 1040ST and a 286 PC. I ended up with a 1040ST because it was cheaper. I never regreted the choice, because I got my fill of games on this system. My only regret is that I have never experienced all those wonderful multitasking stuff that is the Amiga.
Also, I think “copy” is too strong a word. Tramiel’s Atari knew that it had to have a successor, but I guess they wanted to make a cheaper computer, than what Miner’s Amiga came up with.
OK, I’ll give you all those points. I LOVED my 1040ST too.
The best part about it (and I know this sounds weird) was that getting software for it was like an adventure. I had to travel 2 hours to get to a European Import software store (Compouter Games + in Orange, CA) and then wade through boxes from US Game, Ocean, Ubi Soft to find something good. Oh the halcyon days.
I too had an Atari ST. Too bad I bought the black and white monitor in a ill-advised attempt to save some money. Only to buy the color monitor on TOP of all that within months.
It was a bear to find stuff for, but what I did fine ran so smoothly and looked nice. But reading about how awesome the Amiga games were, I always felt a small pang of regret that I’d bought the ST. I never was able to afford both.
Haa haa, the black and white monitor was one of the reasons I picked the ST. It was so sharp! The colour output was sharp too, even if it’s lower rez. I always found that the Amiga looks fuzzy, whenever I check it out at the computer store. Although I never confirmed this, but I thought that most games that are ported to both ST and Amiga has the same graphics anyways. On the other hand, it would have been fun to learn to program threads on the Amiga.
The Amiga needed an interlaced display mode for “high” resolutions (i.e. 400 or 480 pixels vertical, I forgot). That was one crucial drawback of the system because it made the Amiga useless for office work.
Have you seen the very amusing commercial where Andy Roddick plays tennis against “PONG”? :) He defeats Pong with a “drop shot” since the paddle can’t move up to the net (I think “Flim Flam,” an early arcade Pong clone using tiny metal joysticks, would’ve been a better competitor :D).
At the bottom of the screen is a brief copyright for Pong, including “ATARI”, I almost shed a tear…
From Gamasutra: http://gamedevelopment.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11050
[i]"
Infogrames representatives note that the plan aims to resolve the company’s debt problem by reducing debt to “historically low levels.” Infogrames currently shoulders a net debt amounting to € 197 million ($250.2 million), which the company notes has “seriously handicapped” its performance and growth.
According to an earlier Reuters report, Infogrames’ plan includes a €74 million ($93.9 million) rights issue, in order to ensure that Infogrames will be able to both continue operations and execute on its new financial plan. If successful, the complex plan will result in €55 million ($70 million) in surplus cash on top of eliminating the group’s current debt, and according to Infogrames would allow the publisher to “focus on its industrial business and capitalize on the release of next-generation consoles.”"[/i]
Could someone explain to me what they are talking about?
They have ~$250 million in debt. They are planing to wave a magic wand and use ~$94 million dollars to get rid of ~$250 million in debt AND have $70 million left over? Thats… odd…
It does say ‘includes’ so there must be more elements.
I have a feeling that ‘complex plan’ is really more a ‘cunning plan’.