The company that currently owns the Atari name and trademarks has decided to give owners of the old Atari Video Computer System (aka the Atari 2600) something new to do. Mr. Run and Jump is a new Atari-published platformer that is coming to vintage Atari consoles in cartridge form, complete with a box and instruction manual. Preorders for the cartridge begin on July 31 for $59.99.
of note on why the headline specifies “A company called Atari”, for the unfamiliar. it’s both a bit of snark but also an actual thing because Atari’s history is not unlike the Ship of Theseus:
[…]Today’s Atari has absolutely nothing to do with the company that launched the Atari VCS in 1977, and the brand’s history and ownership defies an easy summary. After the video game crash in 1983, the old Atari was split into two divisions by parent company Warner Communications and sold. Atari Games continued the arcade business, and Atari Corporation controlled home console releases. Atari Corporation took a few unsuccessful stabs at the console market in the late '80s and early '90s with consoles like the Jaguar and the Lynx. It ultimately merged with a now-defunct manufacturer of unreliable hard drives in 1996 before being sold to Hasbro Interactive in 1998. Hasbro was bought by Infogrames Entertainment in 2001, which dropped the “Infogrames” name in favor of “Atari” in 2009. That company’s US operations, already many degrees removed from the original Atari, filed for bankruptcy in 2013. The company that emerged is the one that’s still operating as “Atari” today, and it’s linked to the old company by its name and its trademarks and not much else.
in 50 years: A company called microsoft is releasing a brand new Xbox S game this year.
The wording is spot-on because it’s not the same Atari that made the 2600, but it is in fact a company called Atari.
Reminds me of the “Polaroid Story”
The company that owns the Polaroid brand and IP, PLR IP Holdings, LLC, was just sold by an ownership group led by the Pohlad family to an ownership group led by the Smolokowski family. The Pohlad family, which owns the Minnesota Twins baseball team, purchased its majority stake in Polaroid back in December 2014 for $70 million.
Although its iconic instant film and cameras may be out of production now, Polaroid the brand is still alive and well: through licensing agreements, a huge range of Polaroid products are still being sold in over 100,000 retail stores in over 100 countries around the world.
I’m impressed they spent the time and money to make a new 2600 game. I’ve watched a few interviews of the original game developers in the 80’s and the development experience was far from what modern software development is today. A developer had to make sure the game and graphics logic were done in a specific number of cycles and everything is written in 6502 assembly.
Micro Mages came out a few years ago on Steam and on NES. It’s a short game, but an audiovisual treat. 4-player, all on 40kb. The Atari is quite lower fidelity than an NES. Curious how it will turn out.
Anybody remember the Atari VCS? It was such a total disaster that the developer of the first exclusive game on it wasn’t notified that his game was going to be on the console.
It was before my time. I’m a first was NES generation. How many Atari’s were there? They all seem the same to me.
It was released 2 years ago! The fact that nobody’s ever heard of it is another testament to modern Atari :^)
I see, I had no idea the old 2600 was called the VCS.
I guess that’s yet another example of how confusing modern Atari is
The very fact that there is such a thing as modern Atari is, frankly, confusing. I haven’t quite gotten over that revelation yet.
I’m still struck by the realization that, apparently, Hasbro no longer exists. It’s like a part of my childhood just died.
Wait, what happened to Hasbro??
It was renamed to 2600 after the release of the 5200.
I bought one. I just run Ubuntu on it as a htpc. I played with the Atari OS for about an hour. I still think it’s a pretty box to run a pc in.
