Shaggy the Atarian

Yes, because those (Atari Games, Namco, Midway, etc.) were NEVER their games to begin with. Would it be great if someone with money was able to put all Atari Corp./Atari Games IP under the same umbrella again? Sure. But it's not been the legal reality since 1984 so no sense in fussing over it. It's silly to think that an Atari collection should have non-Atari games on it. Should a Namco collection have Taito games on it? Was I expecting to find Battletoads on the TMNT Cowabunga collection just because BT was inspired by TMNT? Should a Street Fighter collection have Mortal Kombat games on it or a Sonic The Hedgehog collection include Mario games? This isn't an expectation that goes with any other brand in the gaming world so Atari doesn't get some magic pass just because it makes you feel weird.

I do need to spend more time with Neo Breakout - Battle Breakout is fun. I wonder if the including of Neo Breakout in the collection is the reason they didn't include Breakout 2000 in the Jag games (don't see why it wasn't included otherwise) Quadratank is all right but could use more maps. The controls also confused my kids since it lets you change the control scheme on the fly, then you don't know what you're doing after already trying to figure it out. I did play SwordQuest Airworld a little but I never had a lot of patience for the SW games. This is one that certainly could use a strategy guide (beyond the manual, which is pretty good...but so far I've had no success in solving any clues as to item placement) Yars is cool, in that you can switch between graphics and it plays like the original. I haven't spent a ton of time on it yet though.

Sort of related, Eugene Jarvis (I imagine everyone here knows who he is - if not, he's interviewed a bit in the Atari 50th), seems to take a shot at Atari in a recent interview, without naming them directly. Last line of the quote here:

Yeah, I vividly remember the Myst hype. I played it first on PC and later the JagCD. But later on PC I discovered RTZ and had more fun playing that one, so just a personal preference Yeah, the Jag version enjoys the rich color palette whereas the PC version was just 256. I did get to the end of Myst on the Jaguar once but at the end of the day, I had more memories made playing RTZ just due to the nature of how it was designed (just say "Want some rye? Course' ya do!" to anyone in my family and they immediately know what game it is since they heard that phrase so often )

I missed out on Zaku so I'll need to fix the lack of shmups on my Lynx with this.

I know I'm quoting you from a long while back but I just have to chime in that Return To Zork would have been a far better game to have on the JCD than Myst. Apart from a sense of humor, RTZ had many people you would talk to and interact with. IMHO, it was a far more entertaining and just a better game than any of the Myst games ever were...but, Myst was hot back then so it got all the attention.

I just finished the 2600 timeline and need to get to the rest. There are some great videos there, but then I keep jumping over to play games. Haunted Houses is my favorite of the new stuff, Vctr Sctr a close second. I do need to sit down and start figuring out how to unlock some of those Atari 2600 games, one of these days

In a way, the claw marks on the Jaguar's R are a mullet too

Perhaps coming to a bar/arcade near you soon?

I also can't hate on UV because it was made in my hometown...but mostly for Volcana 😍

I think for most people, it's an ebb and flow sort of thing as to the appeal of arcades - when you are a teen and you have the right place near you, then it's a great go-to; Then you live life and probably don't think about it until you have kids. I would play games with friends at home too but the first time I came across Gauntlet Legends that was something else - I'd never played with a group of strangers like that, but it was fun as the game incentivized that kind of comrade. But everyone's different - some people get into highly competitive games like DDR, Maximum Tune, pinball or even skeeball tournaments. Others just prefer retro stuff like you and are fine with Arcade 1ups or MAME at home. Big multi-million $ chains are still trying to find attractors, be it VR, or axe throwing or escape rooms, etc. Myself, I'm still just doing the standard game room thing. I probably need to expand into food/drinks to really start making money. I do understand the appeal of home play, I've got plenty of home consoles myself but I think the arcade can co-exist with it and is still worth supporting But there is something different about arcade play that no home port can truly match - one other element of that being the "money on the line" mentality. I learned this when I brought my first cab home, a 1942. When I could just put endless credits on it, I didn't really give it my all. But when I'm at the arcade and know my money is on the line, I try much harder than I normally would and it's easier to "get into the zone." I know not everyone thinks about that but I've had a few customers realize that too. It makes getting a "1cc" much more of a real achievement, especially if the game is really difficult. This would be an exception to the rule for individual players but this guy encapsulates a lot of these things to show what makes arcades great (give it a minute - he's playacting the whole thing, cutscenes included)

Yep agree 100% - If you're going to invest millions of dollars into hardware then exclusive games have to be a part of that equation from the start, unless you've got some other goal in mind. If you can't do that then you shouldn't do it at all. Now Atari's back to losing money and hoping that NFTs will save them. Will VCS fans say it was worth it if this console does what the Jaguar did and sinks the company permanently? (There's also the thing about Fred C. trying every which way he could think of to inflate the value of the brand and the VCS being a part of that, but anyways)

I hadn't noticed that before, would be interesting if it was dynamic like that. Now I want to play some comlynxed Slime World again

I haven't either, closest I've got was Theme Park, but the point is more that when you have anything of value and you have a hardware platform, you should leverage every bit of it to make your platform as successful as possible. Doesn't mean it'll be the next Switch or whatever but it's just what you do when you're marketing a game platform that cost your millions of dollars to develop & produce. RCT, as far as I've seen, is the one IP that still can generate a lot of money for Atari, more than any of the ancient IP, so in my opinion they should have had a VCS exclusive of something from the series, right from launch. No it wouldn't appeal to a lot of people here at AA but it would appeal to the more casual buyer that they needed to buy the thing. I love Star Raiders too; Always heard that the 2013 game was trash, which is sad. Perhaps Digital Eclipse should take a crack at it. I did get Atari 50th on Switch and I do have to say - Haunted Houses is exactly the kind of thing that I think Atari should have been doing when they want to refresh old IP. It's different and it's a lot of fun, expands on the original idea while maintaining the spirit. It's only a little short but the randomness of each try makes up for it(ok and I hate those bugs when you're using anything but the torch). Vctr Sctr is pretty cool too. If the VCS had exclusives like those on the platform, then I'd have much less to criticize

I was meaning just the original Atari IP but yeah, they do have some of those Infogrames IPs left but did sell off others. I never thought of it as Atari so never paid much attention to it. RollerCoaster Tycoon is definitely their biggest one that they still have around but apparently I'm dumb for suggesting that they should have leveraged that to provide software value to the VCS.

I only argue with zzip because he makes stupid arguments and claims about it but sure, there are better things to do. Otherwise, the VCS doesn't even enter into my mind. I already laid that out, why should I continue to rehash it and rephrase it since you don't seem to understand whatever it is that I write. Lol, what? Once again you show you don't know what you're talking about - the ONLY IP they no longer own from the 1972-84 era is BattleZone, everything else people know Atari for apart from games they never owned so yeah, best to leave it at that. Go ahead and get the last word in.

I first discovered BZ arcade in the 90s when I was 13 or so. I rarely got to visit arcades. We didn't live anywhere near one, we didn't have a lot of money, and the closest 7-11 at the time was on the other side of a busy intersection so that was one of the few places I couldn't visit by myself. As it was, I had absolutely no idea as a kid how many of the games on the 2600 were arcade games first. I thought Asteroids and Pac-man were wholly original Atari creations for home - I knew about the Atari 800XL and 400 as my best friend had them but I didn't know about the 5200 or the 7800 either. I eventually got set straight but that did color my impressions of most of these games first and set certain expectations. Anyways... I liked BZ ok but it wasn't the most played cart for me. When I encountered the arcade version for the first time, I was at an arcade that was jam-packed with machines and they all worked on nickels. I gave BZ a shot because I recognized the name but also because the game I really wanted to play, T-Mek, had a line(I discovered that first and really enjoyed it. Everyone was doing the winner stays, loser leaves and next one pays thing and I managed to get a nice winning streak going, for a time). I don't know exactly what it was about BZ but I ended up going back to it over and over and enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed playing through all of Sega's Die Hard Arcade that day. Managed to get a score of 33,000, as I recall. Between that an T-Mek, I hadn't played anything like them before with the twin sticks and T-Mek's sound blew my mind. While I generally enjoy space games, that day I became a fan of Atari's tank ones. I get that arcades aren't everyone's cup of tea when you can do all the stuff at home you mentioned but my experience with the controls was different - I really enjoyed the twin stick way of moving around and generally speaking it depends on what it is and how its implemented. Driving games get a huge advantage in having those realistic controls and a properly designed cab can enhance the immersion more than you can't get with mame. It can also be fun to show off at the arcade. As an older teen I worked at one and we'd play games on our breaks. This allowed me to get rather good at several games without spending money and more than once I managed to attract a crowd of people watching me. I was so in the zone I didn't notice it unless the game went black and I'd see their faces reflected in the screen or I would finish a game and see all these people standing around. There's nothing else like that in gaming Ultimately though, arcades are best as social experiences. My best arcade memories are going with friends and having fun, more than playing by myself. Although I suppose the crowd thing was part of that too. It's just something that home arcade ports or emulation can never recreate, which is why I like them I should mention that sometimes arcade employees intentionally set the difficulty high. We did that on Star Wars Trilogy Arcade as us employees would compete on it and we discovered that the way to get the highest scores was set the difficulty to max. That was bad for customers and unfortunately we weren't really thinking about that. As an arcade operator though, I usually just leave everything at default, if there are options. I really couldn't believe it when it popped up in the classifieds. It was just sitting in a guy's mancave; Didn't power up (it was just a fuse to fix, lol). It was very good timing on my part as these days, pretty much anything of value is snatched up immediately by hawkish collectors who are loaded and swoop in on anything and everything that pops up. I love the art on the cabinet and I've always enjoyed Pitfall II but the game is balls-to-the-wall hard. There's a bug too that prevents you from continuing, which sucks (maybe it's a problem with my board?). The only other place I know of that has one is Galloping Ghost Arcade; the farthest I've ever made it is the ice caves but will need to fix continuing to make it further. Here's a review/play I did of the cabinet back in 2015. No more glasses for me though Gameplay starts at 3:11

Ain't nobody got time to read through this thread and some of it's really long posts. To sum it up, we ask the question: What is available for me to purchase right now on Dec. 26th, 2022? The Intellivision Amico or tacos? And the winner is.... TACOS! You're welcome

I played Ultra Vortek a lot but admittedly it's because it was the best the Jag had for MK clones I'd have played Primal Rage more if the loading times weren't so bad

Thanks to a comment on the YouTube video, I realize now that the Mortal Kombat actors you see were there to promote Thea Realm Fighters. I completely forgot about that connection when seeing the video. Sad that they went to all that trouble to spend money and promote the game, then it didn't get finished. Still that was a great way to grab some attention.

Interesting to see Pitfall II get a mention since so few people know of the console-to-arcade port. I got super lucky years ago when I found a PII Arcade for super cheap and it's been in my arcade ever since. It does look and sound much better and playing Pitfall with a giant balltop arcade stick is something else but the difficulty is a bit off-the-rails with the game. Personally I prefer the 2600 version (the 800 version is the best IMO) but the arcade has it's own charm. I agree with pretty much everyone else on Space Invaders; BattleZone, I dunno. I always had a soft spot for the arcade version and owned one for a few years. Nothing gets you immersed into the action like the periscope in the arcade, but the 2600 did a commendable job. It definitely looks awesome like you say; Maybe gameplay-wise I'd give Robot Tank the edge. Warlords is one that I think holds up really well against the arcade version - in some ways I like the 2600's wonky physics more and they both control the same. I think there are a surprising number of "just as good" entries for the 2600 (Frogger, Amidar, BattleZone, Space Invaders, etc.) On other games, it might be the nostalgia speaking but I enjoy Front Line more on the 2600 than I do the arcade. Granted, finding an OG arcade for this one is nigh impossible anymore and playing it emulated sucks but there's something rather charming about how the 2600 version was handled. Those sounds will forever be scorched into my brain...the game sounds weird to me when I play it in arcades. Same effect happens to me with a lot of other arcade ports - I played them so much at home that often I find the arcade ones to lack that "charm" if you want to call it that. I think Combat is worth a mention since it's basically two arcade games packed into one (Tank and Jet Fighter). While it's not as high-rez and you don't get the twin stick control, the game's in color and the variations ultimately make it more enjoyable.

YOU said it was a niche system. YOU make these proclamations like YOU are Atari then when someone like me tells you you're wrong, you act like "of course Atari's not treating it like a niche but they should be because some rando like me on the internet says so" If anyone is banging their head here, it's me. Try reading and comprehending the whole sentence instead of giving it a quick pass and spouting off. I was responding to you talking about closed vs. open. I wasn't saying a thing about company resources. The Switch is as great an example of that as the Playdate in that regard; this should be easy to understand, unless you're being intentionally obtuse. The Switch is a proprietary design and it sure sounds like "the heavily customized Tegra processor" uses custom chips. They didn't just hit up Newegg and slap some parts together I didn't claim it was a perfect system nor that it would become the next Nintendo Switch but since YOU brought up closed proprietary systems vs. open ones(remember that or did you forget already?), it's a perfect example of someone coming along with no name, no money, no fanbase and outperforming a piece of open hardware that comes from the oldest company in the video game business. The fact that the Playdate more than doubled Atari's hardware purchases in 20 minutes already tells you that Atari is so bad at this that they NEVER SHOULD HAVE DONE THE VCS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Does typing all in caps help get the point across? Which is great for the tiny handful of people who bought one. For the Playdate, it's like 99% of other consoles out there and yet you still have homebrews being made for those platforms despite being unable to load up Steam on them. How many VCS'es does the market need? Clearly it was zero. I'll clarify to say I don't think another new Flashback is worth it either, I agree it's beyond diminished returns at 10. They shouldn't be in hardware at all. I was just pointing out that if they are going to do something in hardware when they have no competence in that field, smarter to stick with what you know until you can afford to hire the talent that can come along with something more interesting. But since Atari was run by morons who aren't leaders in anything but chasing fads, we got the VCS. They saw all these projects getting funded or start-ups being bought and they needed a way to inflate the value of their company so they could sell it off for more than peanuts and retire to a beach somewhere with a gold-plated umbrella and busty waitresses. The overall lesson of the VCS is: Just because a company was in hardware decades ago doesn't mean that they *should* still be there.

Your argument was that it's a niche console and that "no one" thought otherwise. Atari marketing thought otherwise as how they promoted the machine - they also regularly were posting self-congratulatory "ATARI IS BACK" articles over and over. Sure you need some hubris in marketing but there's a line you can cross where it becomes tone deaf; Ultimately Atari's way of how they handled the machine is what matters to the VCS and its expectations, not what a couple of guys arguing on a forum think. It's fine to be critical but when you bring up an irrelevant point to the conversation or argument then you shouldn't be surprised for getting called out on it. We agreed on one thing, but you're ignoring the rest and obfuscating so forget it. I have better things to do than chase my tail. What you want and what the wider market wants are two different things and for the success of not just the VCS but of the company, the latter is what matters. Proprietary closed systems are working out pretty well for the Switch; Amico never launched so we won't know how it would've fared but on the smaller company scale the Playdate is doing well going into next year from the sounds of it, while again, Atari is facing losses. They are blaming those losses on the VCS. Seems obvious to me who had the better idea here. In Atari's case though, I've long argued that the VCS was pointless and they would be better off right now if they had just done a Flashback 11 or whatever number they were at instead of trying to compete in a space they were woefully unable to compete in. The oddest thing to me in Atari's marketing was when they would announce a new game - be it Food Fight or Akka Arrh - they would not be touting the VCS front and center, it was more of an afterthought. Even in the press releases, it was the last platform mentioned. If you have a platform, promote it any chance eyeballs will be looking at the news but from Artz to whomever is controlling the marketing now, it's like they are ashamed to mention it.

Ah, dodged the question with an irrelevant argument, just like the good ol' taco days. If you're trying to claim that exclusives don't help then the VCS' failure here isn't a win. The fact of the matter is that all of systems did offer value beyond a logo/brand name and that drove their sales. As best we know, the VCS only sold 10k units, which is pathetic for any gaming product in 2022; Unless Atari says otherwise, that's the number we have to work with. Everything you mentioned crushed the VCS in that regard, even if they all didn't have the best exclusives around. It's still more than what the VCS bothered to offer to the market and the market has clearly shrugged at it and moved on to better things. This is especially true if no name startups can sell more units of their new game console right off the bat like the Playdate, compared to a company with a 50 year legacy and built-in fanbase . The strategy and business model of the VCS was a disaster and nothing to be victory lapping over. Still moving those goal posts I see. Let's take a very quick trip down Atari Marketing Memory lane - The statement that the VCS would be a great product for Netflix moms (millions of customers is not a "niche") that could get them into gaming - The console motto GAME, STREAM AND CONNECT LIKE NEVER BEFORE that launched in conjunction with the Indiegogo trailer. Watch that initial launch trailer which boasts how great of a streaming system it would be and tell me how that was just aiming at "fan service" instead of trying to position it as a contender within the wildly popular and mainstream streaming world - Bringing up that at launch time that while it couldn't compete in power with the PS5 that it was still worth buying because it was different. A niche fan service product wouldn't even bring the PS5 up, unless the marketing guy is incompetent. Tie this into some of the VCSers touting eBay scalpers reselling VCS' at inflated prices like was happening with the PS5, implying that the VCS was as hot an item. The only thing I recall that indicated that Atari designed it for fans was Artz talking about the homebrew community here on AA. But they didn't do anything to foster that, there was no "Atari Game Maker" that came with the system and for the first couple of years any emails sent to "dev@atari.org" just went to a black hole. As far as I see, the old systems still do more by themselves to foster a community than anything the VCS has done. Odd statement coming from a guy who incessantly dredges up the past in his arguments, including up above to dodge a question. You want the old systems to stop being "put up on pedestals" then stop bringing them up. This is what I said, in different words. 🙄 You missed the point by a mile and a half. You brought up Atari's old consoles to gloat that the VCS is better because it had more games released for it. I'm saying it's not an apples-to-apple comparison because the environment was completely different for games development. Unity didn't exist in 1993 where a dev could just check off a box to do a build for the ST then the Jaguar and call it a day but that's basically what it's like for the VCS. Even without that, the sheer number of coders out there dwarfs what existed in the 80s/90s and the libraries and tools that exist are far more advanced. There was no such thing as "make a game without doing any code" back then like you can do now. Instead of comparing the VCS to consoles from 30/40 years ago, compare it to ones right now. How does it fare up against actual products competing for the same dollars? Looks like it's doing so well, Atari's teetering on bankruptcy again and hoping that NFT scams and blockchain wanking can keep them afloat. Clearly, Chesnais' legacy of screwing the Atari brand continues (I do commend Rosen for trying to fix what he can with a bad situation but the VCS plays into that). I half expect them to go back to setting up gambling machines in the slums of Africa in the next earnings report.

Is there an LED Fuji logo on your Switch? Didn't think so! In all seriousness though, this is why I've never been interested in the thing, when I should have been one of it's #1 proponents. When the Switch doesn't have stuff like Elden Ring that I want to play, I just grab it on my PC but there are plenty of ways to get my indie gaming fix that I don't have to waste and extra $300-$400 for. Just got Jitsu Squad on the Switch...great beat 'em up game with a nice sense of humor. Honest question, how many of those are exclusives? For everything that isn't, that is great that the VCS did get support and will get software support through next year, but I don't think it's an entirely fair comparison when previous the 5200/7800/Lynx/Jaguar didn't have the type of gaming infrastructure that exists today. Plus when it comes to these "officially released" VCS titles they aren't really ports...they're just the PC versions that they're paying Atari to get on the store. I'm sure you know a port back-in-the-day was a lot more work than just remapping your button layouts and picking a different platform to export to in Unity. On another note, from the article that Stephen shared: "All told, Atari made a net loss of €5.4m, up from the €3.5m loss it made during the same period last year." Sounds not too dissimilar from other companies who also failed because their hardware was a lead weight strapped to their feet. It's not a great time to be in tech - Micron just announced layoffs due to low demand+high costs; If you've been paying attention, tech companies in particular have already laid off thousands of people since this summer began. Big companies will survive but small ones like Atari could end up closing their doors if they aren't careful about it. Sorry to the VCS guys who don't have me on ignore, but hardware-wise, it's done. They would be stupid to keep sinking money into fabricating a product that's just collecting dust in a warehouse somewhere. Anecdotally, I've only seen a VCS on a shelf once, at a Best Buy...last year. Zero sighting of it all this year. I wouldn't know the thing exists if I never visited Atari Age. "Games revenue, however, was up 10 percent off the back of RollerCoaster Tycoon and new games in the Recharged series. " Had Atari focused on some new RCT plus the Reloaded games as VCS exclusives, it could have made the console a little more enticing for certain fans, but from a business perspective, it makes more sense to put it on a platform people actually own like the Switch. Therein lies the dilemma in hardware for a tiny company but saying so makes one a hater. Atari is at least wise to call it quits here before the whole niche cashgrabendeavor sinks what's left of the company. Although reading that because they made a little extra change off of NFTs so they're going to focus more on that.... Good luck, I guess.