Atari adds more than 100 classic PC and console games to its vault

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? Atari's future may very well be as a purveyor of classic PC and console games. Less than a month after agreeing to purchase retro gaming specialist Nightdive Studios, the legendary gaming brand announced it has acquired the rights to more than 100 PC and console games from the 1980s and 1990s including titles from the Bubsy, Hardball and Demolition Racer series.

Atari CEO Wade Rosen described the haul as a deep catalog that includes award-winning games from Accolade, MicroProse and Infogrames. Many are part of Atari's history, Rosen noted, adding that the company also picked up the trademark to the Accolade and GTI brands.

Atari aims to re-release several of its newly acquired classics in digital and physical formats, create new games based on their rich IP, and perhaps even explore merchandising opportunities. Some games might even get the modern console port treatment, Rosen teased.

The acquisition, like the one before it, is part of a multi-year effort to transform Atari into a modern industry player. The company is already reportedly working on reimagined versions of Asteroids and Missile Command and has even dipped its toes into cryptocurrency.

The software-focused turnaround is already showing signs of success. Rosen told Axios that Atari's 50th anniversary bundle was the company's best selling release last year. The collection features over 90 classic games spanning more than half a dozen platforms including Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Atari 8-bit computers, Lynx, Jaguar, and arcade. It is also a pretty solid value at under $30 on your choice of platform.

Its latest console, however, failed to meet expectations. Rosen told the publication there was not enough unique and special about the Atari VCS, but teased new hardware due out later this year – either as an add-on or functioning independently – that could help matters.

If you are dead set on owning a VCS, Atari still has them in stock starting at $199.99 for the base model.

Image credit: 2600 by Digitals Kennedy, Cartridges by Kevin Bidwell

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98390-atari-adds-more-than-100-classic-pc-console.html

 

[BadThad]

Interesting, they need to give away a LOT of games to get people to buy the hardware. I would expect to get 500+ games included free since they are all ancient.

 

[Soulburn74]

I'm sure Lucasfilm/Disney will not give the rights without an arm and a leg, but I'd love to see the 2600 version Raiders of the Lost Ark make its way back onto the scene! Definitely one of my favs! (And if Activision would re-release their 2600 collection that plays properly on win10/11, that would be excellent as well!).

 

[LetTheWookieWin]

I owned an Atari 2600 as a kid and played it regularly (along with the NES and SNES later).

Last Easter, my brother surprised me by giving me his wife’s old Sears Video Arcade II along with a collection of classic games. This console was built for Sears by Atari and was basically an Atari 2600 (actually it’s an Atari 2800, but those were made for the Japanese market). I’ve since gone to retro gaming shops and added to the collection.

Original hardware is still available and the cartridges are cheaper to collect than NES or SNES cartridges. Emulation is fine, but it’s hard to mimic the paddle controllers. So that’s always an option too.

These games may look primitive, but when you consider these were often running on 4K (as in 4 kilobytes) ROM chips and a system with only 128 bytes (!) of RAM, it’s amazing to think about the clever tricks designers used and how much they had to know about the hardware itself.

 

[Hodor]

Is there Flying Shark for Atari? Like it was for Spectrum: