Tag: atari
Atari Reaffirms Commitment To VCS Console After Cancelling Its Manufacturing Contract
Atari recently released its half-year earnings report for the current financial year, and it didn’t seem to have much good news for the Atari VCS console. As picked up by Tom’s Hardware, the report pointed to a decline in Atari’s hardware sales, along with a reorganization of the hardware side of the business that would involve suspending relationships with the VCS’ manufacturer.
The report points to a 92% decrease in hardware revenue year-on-year, dropping from $2.44 million to only $212,466. Atari points to a decline in “cartridge activity” to account for this drop, as well as “underperformance by the VCS.” Overall, Atari reported a 27% decrease in revenue from the same period last year.
The report also mentions that Atari have been busy with a reorganization of its hardware business for the first half of the financial year. This includes “the suspension of direct hardware manufacturing relationships, notably with regards to the Atari VCS.” Atari specified that it wouldn’t be giving up on the console, instead opting for “a new commercial strategy [that] has been implemented as of the end of calendar year 2022 and that will continue in calendar year 2023.”
Atari suspends VCS manufacturing contracts, likely signaling the end of its short life
Atari revives unreleased arcade game that was too damn hard for 1982 players
Atari is revivingAkka Arrh, a 1982 arcade game canceled because test audiences found it too difficult. For the wave shooter’s remake, the publisher is teaming up with developer Jeff Minter, whose psychedelic, synthwave style seems an ideal fit for what Atari describes as “a fever dream in the best way possible.” The remake will be released on PC, PS5 and PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Atari VCS in early 2023.
The original Akka Arrh cabinet used a trackball to target enemies, as the player controls the Sentinel fixed in the center of the screen to fend off waves of incoming attackers. Surrounding the Sentinel is an octagonal field, which you need to keep clear; if enemies slip in, you can zoom in to fend them off before panning back out to fend off the rest of the wave. Given the simplicity of most games in the early 1980s, it’s unsurprising this relative complexity led to poor test-group screenings.
Since Atari pulled the plug on the arcade version before its release, only three Akka Arrh cabinets are known to exist. But the Minter collaboration isn’t the game’s first public availability. After an arcade ROM leaked online in 2019, Atari released the original this fall as part of its Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection.
Atari and Minter worked together in the 1990s, as his company Llamasoft created games like Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar. Unfortunately, the two had a falling out in 2015 when Atari blocked Minter’s spiritual successor of that title from release. However, the two sides patched things up by 2018 when they released Tempest 4000, a Minter-helmed sequel with the IP holder’s blessing.
Atari says the remake has two modes, 50 levels and saves, so you don’t have to start from the beginning when enemies inevitably overrun your Sentinel. Additionally, the company says it offers accessibility settings to tone down the trippy visuals for people sensitive to intense light, color and animations.
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Review
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Is A Virtual Museum For 50 Years Of Gaming History
Anyone who’s ever been told to “respect your elders” will now get the chance, as Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration commemorates the full 50-year history of the developer.
Atari has partnered with Digital Eclipse–whose last release was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection back in August–to restore and compile over 100 games from the Atari library into one package. The collection features games from every console Atari manufactured, including for the first time on modern consoles the Lynx and Jaguar.
Atari 50’s launch trailer shows off a few of the games that will be available in the compilation, including Asteroid Deluxe, Breakout, and Fatal Run. Digital Eclipse also reimagined or remade six games for the collection as well, including Airworld, the fourth game in the Swordquest series which famously was never finished and never released.
Lego’s Atari 2600 is a brilliant bit of weaponized nostalgia – and we need a Sega console next
It’s now official, and irrefutable: Lego is no longer just for children. This has always been the case, of course, but in recent years the company itself has started to embrace this fact. First there was ‘Creator Expert’, a line of larger, more complicated and expensive sets. Then came adult-driven packaging, signaled by sleek black boxes and a marketing campaign that gleefully declares ‘Adults Welcome’. Like a lot of the best kids’ toys, Lego is for kids first – but is perfectly good for adults, too.
The Lego Group’s latest foray into the world of sets aimed at those hurtling towards their middle age at alarming speed is set 10306, the Atari 2600. This is exactly what you think it is – an almost but not quite real-life scale model of one of the most significant consoles in gaming history, dating all the way back to 1982.
Truth be told, the 2600 is quite a bit before my time (my first console was a Mega Drive), but I’m nevertheless definitely squarely in this set’s target audience: a video game nerd who also loves and collects complex-scale Lego, with an appreciation for the artistry of the older video game consoles. I mean, the machine has a wood grain finish, for goodness sake. You just don’t get that any more.