Pssst! Wanna Buy Pong? - Atari US Filed for Bankruptcy Monday

[Lord Avalon]

The U.S. arm of Atari, the iconic video game company that created "Pong," filed for bankruptcy on Monday.


But Atari will live on. The move is aimed at breaking the American branch away from its unprofitable French parent company.


In particular, Atari U.S. is looking to "secure independent capital for future growth, primarily in the areas of digital and mobile games," the company said in a written statement.


Over the next three to four months, Atari U.S. will seek buyers for some of its assets, including the Atari logo and the company's games catalog. Atari as a whole owns or manages more than 200 games and franchises.

link to rest of the article


Asteroids (arcade version) was one of my favorite games as a youth.  At college, too, in the dorm basement.  Centipede was OK, though I much preferred Millipede when that came out.  (I hated when they rotated those games to other dorms.)


I have those games (and others) on my PC in the Atari Anniversary Edition set.  Also have a separate Asteroids, which has some different versions with "updated" graphics, though that's not currently installed.  Maybe I'll play some for old times sake.

[Unorthodox]

I was ludicrously good at asteroids.  My brother and I had the top scores on a machine at the drive in, purposely arranged to be a score of '0'. 

My favorite, however, is missile command.  Loved the old track ball control scheme, but it had to be one of the cabinets with the bench and extra readoouts down low. 

It's about time I get new versions of the lot, since the only place I have Atari games now is on my (still working) 2600...

Been wondering how well those 'throwback' machines hold up.   

[Green1]

Thing is... how long has it been since Atari put out anything?

And, rose colored glasses and childhood memories aside, the vast majority of the Atari console games were utter crap they wanted 40 to 60 USD for back in the day at 1980s prices! After destroying Commodore, Nolan Bushnel destroyed Atari, too!

Do not ask me the last time I saw an actual arcade machine other than the rail shooters and driving games at a train station or in front of Walmart.

[Zoid]

The many deaths of Atari (fourth or fifth time, depending on how you count)

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/todays-atari-bankruptcy-latest-in-a-long-history-of-corporate-deaths/

[Green1]

Yeah, Zoid. The Atari of the 1980s is not the Atari of the 1990s which is not the Atari of the 2000s+.

Different folks just get to use the name.