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Atari as a brand has been sort of a mess since the 80s. Once the undisputed king of the video game industry, Atari fell hard and continued to stumble for decades thanks to a number of buyouts, power restructurings, and bizarre business decisions. They seem to have found themselves an interesting little niche lately though, and with the release of their first actual original game in quite some time turning out surprisingly well, things might just be turning around for one of gaming’s most important legacy brands.
Back when Atari was the king of the hill in video games, games themselves were considerably more simple. Atari brought the world arcade hits like Asteroids and Missile Command. They revolutionized the home console market by popularizing the concept of interchangeable cartridges with their Atari 2600, and rose to even larger popularity by bringing other companies’ arcade hits home like Space Invaders and Defender in terrific forms. But the bottom fell out once the industry started growing beyond their control. Many of their best programmers left to form Activision. Warner Bros. bought the company and divided it up. They tried to hang on with the releases of the ahead of its time Lynx and the um… let’s say considerably less ahead of its time Jaguar, but neither really caught on and then they left the hardware business altogether.
They had a pretty good stint as a third party publisher for a while after being purchased by Infogrames from Hasbro where they published stuff like Splashdown and Enter the Matrix, but it wasn’t long before they fell into irrelevance once again.
Atari started to break their pattern a few years ago once again by trying to make something of their brand in a number of cockamaime ways. Most notably was their infamous speaker hat, which was a baseball cap with a pair of speakers built into the brim so wearers could annoy everyone around them and look ridiculous at the same time.
This relaunch culminated in a move that many thought was the latest in a string of vaporware scams, a project called Atari Box. This micro PC had an incredible look that was a throwback to the original Atari 2600 VCS design, but in a market packed to the brim with readily available machines that would basically do the same thing for less, it failed to grab much mainstream attention. It did, however, get enough to successfully complete their crowdfunding campaign, and following a rebranding from Atari Box to Atari VCS (a move that ticks me off to this day because there already is an Atari VCS, aka the 2600) they successfully launched the machine at retail, beating both former competitors Coleco and Intellivision to the punch. Amusingly enough, both the Coleco Chameleon and Intellivision Amico were at one point favored with better chances at success than Atari, with the VCS being the one that a lot of folks had the least chance of actually seeing the light of day. Funny how that worked out.
stoneagegamer.com
Back when Atari was the king of the hill in video games, games themselves were considerably more simple. Atari brought the world arcade hits like Asteroids and Missile Command. They revolutionized the home console market by popularizing the concept of interchangeable cartridges with their Atari 2600, and rose to even larger popularity by bringing other companies’ arcade hits home like Space Invaders and Defender in terrific forms. But the bottom fell out once the industry started growing beyond their control. Many of their best programmers left to form Activision. Warner Bros. bought the company and divided it up. They tried to hang on with the releases of the ahead of its time Lynx and the um… let’s say considerably less ahead of its time Jaguar, but neither really caught on and then they left the hardware business altogether.
They had a pretty good stint as a third party publisher for a while after being purchased by Infogrames from Hasbro where they published stuff like Splashdown and Enter the Matrix, but it wasn’t long before they fell into irrelevance once again.
Atari started to break their pattern a few years ago once again by trying to make something of their brand in a number of cockamaime ways. Most notably was their infamous speaker hat, which was a baseball cap with a pair of speakers built into the brim so wearers could annoy everyone around them and look ridiculous at the same time.
This relaunch culminated in a move that many thought was the latest in a string of vaporware scams, a project called Atari Box. This micro PC had an incredible look that was a throwback to the original Atari 2600 VCS design, but in a market packed to the brim with readily available machines that would basically do the same thing for less, it failed to grab much mainstream attention. It did, however, get enough to successfully complete their crowdfunding campaign, and following a rebranding from Atari Box to Atari VCS (a move that ticks me off to this day because there already is an Atari VCS, aka the 2600) they successfully launched the machine at retail, beating both former competitors Coleco and Intellivision to the punch. Amusingly enough, both the Coleco Chameleon and Intellivision Amico were at one point favored with better chances at success than Atari, with the VCS being the one that a lot of folks had the least chance of actually seeing the light of day. Funny how that worked out.
Atari Recharged
A Recharged Approach That Might Just Stick Atari as a brand has been sort of a mess since the 80s. Once the undisputed king of the video game industry, Atari fell hard and continued to stumble for decades thanks to a number of buyouts, power restructurings, and bizarre business decisions. They...
