What would you want to be able to buy from Atari…

[Crazy Climber]

On 1/24/2023 at 12:04 PM, English Invader said:

Consumer Electronics 101

 

Products that claim to do everything rarely do anything well.

Oh Snap!! Thats true!

Change my vote to the Lynx

10 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Nostalgia seems to be getting old now.

Yeah, I'm kinda over it...

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

34 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Nostalgia seems to be getting old now.

Remember when nostalgia was still cool?  Those were the days!

 

[Giles N]

40 minutes ago, zzip said:

For a modern Atari to capture the kind of fun they used to deliver, I suppose they'd need to discover the next big gaming franchise,  and they probably don't have the funds to do that.

I don’t think novelty needs to be super-expensive.

 

But one needs to see it from the perspective of the gamer, not from a perspective of how it looks to proffessional analysts comparing trends in gaming-evolution and history.

 

I come to think of Minecraft.

 

After that a world bloxels/voxel-games popped up, where the gamer thrmselves could set up their own games within the given paradigm.

 

Wasn’t Minecraft originally made by one single gamer/indie-developer…?

 

Only trying to put polish and light-effects on the vectors in games from 1978-1983 isn’t going to help much.

 

A game for the VCS, where the gamers could set up their own World-of-Missile Command (open, buy new stuff, share with others etc, with lots of options to viewing-angles, bases, weapons, online-tournaments etc, would be much more like whats gamers are into today.

 

The same with Star Raiders or Solaris - gamers could make their own ships, starbases, planets, upgrades, insert missions with objectives etc.

 

Or a bloxel/voxel World-of-Haunted Mansion, where you could set up your own characters, set up and upload your own mazes, mysteries and scary-stuff to share with others.

Make your own Haunted ________, make it be Haunted your way, with your spooks and monsters, and make it be winable your way - exit, boss-fight, key, solve mystery etc. Select from 100 preset haunted grounds grfx, open new stuff, use the grfx editor to change, warp and design new things, upload, share and get scared…!

 

What about that…?

 

And so on with the other classics.

 
World of Night-Drivers - put up tracks in the night, city-tracks, deep woods with no visibility, get better cars and better lights, - fog, mist, road-lights that comes and go, deep cracks in the road, driving through broad highways at 320 mph with only your own car-lights to give you a clue…

… every new combination of tracks, landscape, of car-gear/power ups csn be shared…

… have everything from porcupines to dinosaurs (in tropic storms), come and cross the road incoveniently etc etc…

 

Give some power to the players,  - give -  open things up, and lot could get novel, renovelized.

 

Some thoughts.

[zzip]

47 minutes ago, Giles N said:

I don’t think novelty needs to be super-expensive.

True, you can sometimes stumble on something like Tetris and make it a sensation

 

48 minutes ago, Giles N said:

I come to think of Minecraft.

 

After that a world bloxels/voxel-games popped up, where the gamer thrmselves could set up their own games within the given paradigm.

 

Wasn’t Minecraft originally made by one single gamer/indie-developer…?

Yeah it was created by one or two people

 

And I was actually thinking of "finding the next minecraft" when I wrote my post as what Atari could do to get back in the game.

 

But the problem is nobody really knows what the next minecraft is.

 

Corporations are not good at developing the next big thing.  They'll do market research to determine what they can sell, and when you ask consumers what they want they'll answer "more like this".   So corporations tend to produce things that are derivative of what already exists.   Now they could find a developer that created something unique, and buy the rights and fund it.   But another issue is executives don't have a great track record of recognizing the next big thing.   Most adults would look at early Minecraft and not see what the appeal is, but it resonated with younger kids.    And not every strange new idea will turn out to be great, the executives are right to be skeptical.  

 

So for Atari to get in early on the next big thing would be mostly sheer luck,  not the kind of thing they can plan for.

 

Oddly enough the old Atari was full of one-man programming teams who often had the freedom to create new game ideas and see what stuck.   That's not something you see anymore

 

1 hour ago, Giles N said:

Or a bloxel/voxel World-of-Haunted Mansion, where you could set up your own characters, set up and upload your own mazes, mysteries and scary-stuff to share with others.

Make your own Haunted ________, make it be Haunted your way, with your spooks and monsters, and make it be winable your way - exit, boss-fight, key, solve mystery etc. Select from 100 preset haunted grounds grfx, open new stuff, use the grfx editor to change, warp and design new things, upload, share and get scared…!

 

What about that…?

 

And so on with the other classics.

 
World of Night-Drivers - put up tracks in the night, city-tracks, deep woods with no visibility, get better cars and better lights, - fog, mist, road-lights that comes and go, deep cracks in the road, driving through broad highways at 320 mph with only your own car-lights to give you a clue…

… every new combination of tracks, landscape, of car-gear/power ups csn be shared…

… have everything from porcupines to dinosaurs (in tropic storms), come and cross the road incoveniently etc etc…

 

Give some power to the players,  - give -  open things up, and lot could get novel, renovelized.

Many of the old Atari franchises are too generic to be fleshed out.

Night Driver?  There are a ton of driving games, some set exclusively set at night, what's a modern Night Driver going to bring that hasn't been done already?

Haunted House?  Again lots of great horror games,  I do remember Atari rebooting Haunted House on the Wii and it kinda sucked.

 

Maybe something like Crystal Castles could have been turned into a platform franchise with Bentley Bear up there with Sonic and Mario

 

Maybe Swordquest could be rebooted into an actual game based on the comics or Adventure could have gotten deeper lore and future games.

[gilsaluki]

...a time machine to return to 1982-1985 to slap the S()it out of Atari execs and marketing idiots for missing the boat SO many times.

 

[+GoldLeader]

16 minutes ago, gilsaluki said:

...a time machine to return to 1982-1985 to slap the S()it out of Atari execs and marketing idiots for missing the boat SO many times.

 

 

I was gonna say their soul*...but maybe this is better!

 

 

*So I could redeem it

[Giles N]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

But the problem is nobody really knows what the next minecraft is.

Perhaps not as of yet, but that is what inovation, and playing with ones creativness could produce.

So, one would have just get creative.

For my own part some of that happens by thinking quite freely, allmost like indulging wishful thinking deliberately, - then later things can get more concrete by comparing with the limitations of the practical realities at hand.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Many of the old Atari franchises are too generic to be fleshed out.

Night Driver?  There are a ton of driving games, some set exclusively set at night, what's a modern Night Driver going to bring that hasn't been done already?

Haunted House?  Again lots of great horror games,  I do remember Atari rebooting Haunted House on the Wii and it kinda sucked.

I think some of my examples were just taken from the top of my head, not properly fleshing out just how out-fleshed such games could end up being.

 

So, - if we start with the general drift of my concepts:

- how many comedy-horror maze games are there, where many players can contribute their their own things into a online-world, where many categories can be rearranged in almost endless ways…?

 

Now, - I know visuals and feel, are big things, and I just didn’t describe all sorts of styles and options etc, so it may look quite dead to other peoples imsgination…

 

Night-driver: sure, lots of driving games - lets one slapped everything Atari-made driving-franchises into a online driving world; how many online driving worlds exist that just grow, are unified and everything sort of works with everything…?

 

Now, it may be that you saw in mind just another bloxel/voxel-world.

I mentioned that as just a thing that caught people by surprise. 
Such games (game-worlds) as I mention here, may have other visual paradigms, making them look stylish, neat, smooth, crisp and inviting.

 

And what about an shared open-world Star Raiders Univers, with every gamer (that so wishes) contributing own crafts, own missions, own planets, factions, conflict-areas, local plot-lines, charachters etc (using random-generation through setting of parameters with the possibility of altering any detail prior to posting and publishing it)? 
 

I know there are game-maker engines, but I was thinking more of something where you could create by choosing from several levels of involvement: 

—> new area (auto-randomize), (randomize and change), (create independently - easy, normal, detailed, highly detailed, proffessional), - and the grfx looking like advanced PC space-games from say, 2010-2020 (or it could be more cartoonish, but highly stylised elements)…

[Giles N]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

 The fact that we could control what happens on a TV screen might be taken for granted now, but in the 70s it was completely a new thing for most of us.   So most games delivered some measure of fun if only because it was a completely new experience.

So, what kind of media-fun can you experience somewhere, in some form,  which brings a sense of novelty or just wonder & fun, - which could be needed to be taken to home-use, or be easier to use for common gamers, who don’t want to spend years of formal education in IT, hardware-design, work in Hollywood, have a personal hangar of connected PCs, or special equipment and gear that just are in use for special displays (Ads or in amusent parks)?

 

- - -

 

What I ask for here is beginning in the other end of the line of novelty-in-gaming, than the stuff concerning Minecraft and gamer-made worlds…

 

Every venue is nice to explore.

[+CyranoJ]

Fun With Math Recharged.

[Giles N]

1 hour ago, gilsaluki said:

a time machine to return to 1982-1985 to slap the S()it out of Atari execs and marketing idiots for missing the boat SO many times.

If not possible yet, it could perhaps be the plot-line of the next Mega-blockbuster-movie, starring Keanu Reeves being visited by an elderly Cyborg (Schwarzenegger), that tells him the future as of 2100 has turned into a global dystopia due to Atari-decisions run amok, which has in turn made a population of vengeful cyborgs that wants to destroy a lot of stuff because their AI was designed by fusing all Atari-gaming-and-console-release decisions as the core of their AI-discernment. Now these cyborgs, pretty messed up as to discernment, yet functional enough to recognize how messed up they are, are in search of a way to hack all anti-nuke bases on Earth so they can blow an Atari-run global dystopia sky-high…

… and only Keanu Reeves’ character can stop them if he learns the secrets of the way Karateka-Golf-Martial Art-combat from a strange oracle hiding in an old neo-gothic skyskraper… this is a hologramic, blue AI-image, looking strangely enough uncannily similar to Al Lewis, … and in the end the charachter played by Keanu Reeves, buys a inter-galactic rocket from Elon Musk, and the happy ending is where he and Musk departs into another galaxy, far, far away as the Robotronic mad cyborgs blows up the Atari-ruled dystopian Earth…

 

- - -

 

1 dollar from every ticket, every blu-ray, or stream-view, will go directly to into the private finances of someone in Atari (whose names are disclosed, and will be disclosed until 2372) due to copyright and license issues).

Edited January 27, 2023 by Giles N

[Giles N]

21 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

Fun With Math Recharged

 

I’m actually looking forward to links to the franchise-inventing and probably game-bending original…

Edited January 27, 2023 by Giles N

[+Defender_2600]

On 1/25/2023 at 12:56 AM, MrMaddog said:

I already have ways to play "digital" copies officially from Atari like a couple of Flashbacks, Vaults and VCS style Pi cases so I'm good in that department. 

 

What I really would like though is a way to play my existing 2600 carts without having to recap my collection of non-working consoles, especially if they're re-releasing game carts under the Atari XP label.  And at those insane prices, you'd think Atari would release a current console that actually places the friggin' things...

 

 

On 1/25/2023 at 3:11 AM, Stephen said:

Biggest pile of internet crap that I wish would go away already.  I can guarantee that not a single Atari console has bad capacitors in it.  A tube radio from 1940 with paper.wax capacitors, yeah, I might be concerned.

 

I don't want to generalize, however these things are really getting old...

 

 

 

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

9 hours ago, Defender_2600 said:

I don't want to generalize, however these things are really getting old...

Which is a fair point.  But for every machine that's been recapped because one or more caps let go, there are many, many more that were recapped because someone believed the Internet and did it unnecessarily.

 

Recapping itself isn't necessarily a problem, and can be needed in certain cases.  However, it would be better if people understood what they were doing, why they were doing it, and the ramifications of doing so before they assumed that it's an automatic requirement for hardware more than about three weeks old, but they usually don't.

 

Of course, I'm typing this with a keyboard sitting next to a full cap kit and set of replacement transistors waiting to go into an 800XL, so my judgement may be suspect 

[Crazy Climber]

17 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Remember when nostalgia was still cool?  Those were the days!

 

I'm starting to have nostalgia for things I purchased because of nostalgia (Older AA homebrew games, Midway arcade Treasures collection, etc...)

[zzip]

13 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Fun With Math Recharged.

Oh great, Atari making us Do The Math again...

[Giles N]

14 hours ago, gilsaluki said:

...a time machine to return to 1982-1985 to slap the S()it out of Atari execs and marketing idiots for missing the boat SO many times.

Think I can smell the general drift here,

… but on a serious and more boring note, concretly - your line-up of bad-decisions, either from worst-bad, or from console-to-console…

[zzip]

13 hours ago, Giles N said:

So, one would have just get creative.

For my own part some of that happens by thinking quite freely, allmost like indulging wishful thinking deliberately, - then later things can get more concrete by comparing with the limitations of the practical realities at hand.

The flip side is most creative ideas don't pan out.   One reason executives and investors miss out on the next big thing is they are inundated with crazy proposals all the time that they rightly turn down.   But sometimes the good one slips through the cracks.   In the end it ends up being more luck than anything.

 

14 hours ago, Giles N said:

- how many comedy-horror maze games are there, where many players can contribute their their own things into a online-world, where many categories can be rearranged in almost endless ways…?

But what does any of this have to do with "Haunted House"?   If you're going to introduce a bunch of new gaming elements and stylized graphics it is going to feel like an entirely different horror game, and you are probably better off giving it a new less generic name.   It would give you more freedom instead of being forced to put in callbacks to the original game.   I just don't think this is one of the better reboot candidates.

 

14 hours ago, Giles N said:

Night-driver: sure, lots of driving games - lets one slapped everything Atari-made driving-franchises into a online driving world; how many online driving worlds exist that just grow, are unified and everything sort of works with everything…?

I've yet to see an online-driving game where the online element enhances the game in any way.   Usually it's a bunch of griefers who just want to crash into you and wreck you once they discover you.   This is a more generic title than Haunted House,  and I think Atari has other driving/racing games with more reboot potential.

 

Atari used to have an online racing franchise in Test Drive Unlimited, but unfortunately it's one of the IPs they lost.

 

14 hours ago, Giles N said:

And what about an shared open-world Star Raiders Univers, with every gamer (that so wishes) contributing own crafts, own missions, own planets, factions, conflict-areas, local plot-lines, charachters etc (using random-generation through setting of parameters with the possibility of altering any detail prior to posting and publishing it)? 

Now this is one with more potential I think!   Star Raiders was a beloved franchise with a bunch of built-in lore that could be fleshed out.

 

 

 

 

[+wongojack]

I would love for Atari to make something I actually want to buy.  I think mine would be:   A 100% new 2600 portable, plays carts, has joystick ports and video out.  So the thing could be a portable or a console and will play all my carts.  I DO want it to play 7800 games too but would take only 2600.  Heck - any quality made new version of the 2600 that plays all the carts would be incredible.

[zzip]

27 minutes ago, Giles N said:

Think I can smell the general drift here,

… but on a serious and more boring note, concretly - your line-up of bad-decisions, either from worst-bad, or from console-to-console…

1. The insane growth you've seen in the video game market the past couple years won't last forever, reign in your spending now before it's too late.

2. fix the damn 5200 controller before you release it

3. stop the peripheral arms race, nobody really wants a keyboard for their console, a mindlink or even a 2600 adaptor when they cost as much as a real 2600.

4. All the big-name arcade games outside of the laserdisc games have been ported, and people are getting tired of the formular  now focus on a new generation of games that don't originate in the arcade and don't follow the coin-op model (3 lives and you're done)

[Giles N]

13 minutes ago, zzip said:

Now this is one with more potential I think!   Star Raiders was a beloved franchise with a bunch of built-in lore that could be fleshed out.

Ok - but, I’d also like (…and I think many modern players would too…) to have the players themselves be able to create things and post it into shared game-world (of course within a preset line-up of parameters so things wouldn’t end up a complete mess), but stiil let players be creative.

 

Not only have Atari make a fixed Star Raiders Recharged…

[+GoldLeader]

22 hours ago, Giles N said:

I don’t think novelty needs to be super-expensive.

 

 

 

Or a bloxel/voxel World-of-Haunted Mansion, where you could set up your own characters, set up and upload your own mazes, mysteries and scary-stuff to share with others.

Make your own Haunted ________, make it be Haunted your way, with your spooks and monsters, and make it be winable your way - exit, boss-fight, key, solve mystery etc. Select from 100 preset haunted grounds grfx, open new stuff, use the grfx editor to change, warp and design new things, upload, share and get scared…!

What about that…?

 

 

 

Some thoughts.

 

Personally I love this idea!

 

Though it could end up being super expensive.  I guess it would depend on the number of choices and whether or not people could upload their worlds and share their designs...

 

Myself, I imagine a game starting out like a platformer like Ghosts 'N Goblins or Castlevania.  After you decide how many levels you have there;  Fire and ice, rivers and streams, forests etc., to get to the Haunted Mansion (or Haunted House),  you could add a graphic of the house and you'd pick the color and trim of the house, which house, whether it had rattling shutters or glowing red eyes coming from inside, whether there was a graveyard or skeletons in the front yard and whether or not bats would fly out or the whole place be covered in fog,...The number of dead trees or evil looking weeping willows etc.

 

After seeing the house and going inside, the game could be like Adventure or maybe an Addams Family game on NES, or a different platformer etc. except you'd design the mazes and levels and pick the colors and collectible objects,  and types of enemies...Yeah Nutari would never spring for something so fun!

 

 

 

[Giles N]

49 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

 

Personally I love this idea!

 

Though it could end up being super expensive.  I guess it would depend on the number of choices and whether or not people could upload their worlds and share their designs...

 

Myself, I imagine a game starting out like a platformer like Ghosts 'N Goblins or Castlevania.  After you decide how many levels you have there;  Fire and ice, rivers and streams, forests etc., to get to the Haunted Mansion (or Haunted House),  you could add a graphic of the house and you'd pick the color and trim of the house

As to costs - sure, thats a realm where I won’t try to be bombastic, only noting that Minecraft originated from 1 or 2 gaming nerds, loving gaming.

 

As to number of choices, yeah - the game could use a 3D engine, where the different areas could be played from a variety of angles/views, - or the uploader/designer of a stage to World of Hauntcraft-server, could set playing-view for the different areas.

 

If it wanted to allude to original Haunted House, one could have scaro-meter, - if over-scared you loose, you couid have lights of many types - starting with candle (scares away the most common enemies), to high-tech Rock-Stadion-portable lights that both incinerates Bosses, burn through walls,,etc (if the humorous side still is of interest to retain).

 

Characters could of many types - from easily-scared, to moderatly frigthened, to fairly careless.

Easily scared is fast to die/swoon of fear, but is really, really fast… runs like hell really from anything… ants, spiders, even cobbweb, 

- careless cab face lots, but moves lazily away from actual dangers like undead dragons living in the basements of old, haunted places.

If comical - then you could actually have an option for emtying your scared-meter, but letting out hilarious B-movie screams.

 

Or all the above could be put as categories to be switched on/off.

Just running it as a Haunted Maze-game.

 

Actually my liking is to have an interactive game-world that rewards the creativity of gamers… 

 

Like Minecraft or MarioMaker etc.

 

- - -

 

Guess a question that seems to crystalize is: just how dependent is Atari right now, on using allusions, franchises, names and/or titles from past games…?

 

I guess what they’d want would be to catch the interest of both retro-gamers who have followed Ataris many productions and inovations and stunts, while also grasping the attention of those born after 1995.

[Giles N]

5 hours ago, wongojack said:

portable, plays carts, has joystick ports and video out. 

Yeah - portable could be cool feature, which I should have mentioned in the options to choose from.

 

A portable VCS the size of the Wii U but a little wider, with one 2600/7800-slot, a 5200-slot and Jaguar slot along the top-ridge, and a Lynx-card slot at bottom-ridge with output to modern tvs, would be cool.

 

Bulky it would be - yeah - but cool… at least I’d want one…

Edited January 27, 2023 by Giles N

[Giles N]

36 minutes ago, Giles N said:

a little wider, with one 2600/7800-slot, a 5200-slot and Jaguar slot along the top-ridge, and a Lynx-card slot at bottom-ridge with output to modern tvs, would be cool.

…uhm… well, - thinking about what this may actually have to look like, it may challenge the very meaning of portable…

[zylon]

1 hour ago, Giles N said:

Yeah - portable could be cool feature, which I should have mentioned in the options to choose from.

 

A portable VCS the size of the Wii U but a little wider, with one 2600/7800-slot, a 5200-slot and Jaguar slot along the top-ridge, and a Lynx-card slot at bottom-ridge with output to modern tvs, would be cool.

 

Bulky it would be - yeah - but cool… at least I’d want one…

A portable with a set of cart-dump adaptors, with internal memory for your games, would do the job.