AtariAge + Atari Q&A

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

This iteration of Atari is not a giant corporation. They are a newer much much smaller version of Atari trying to rebuild a dead brand for the people they are supposed to be appealing to. Atari hasn't gotten enough props for all of their latest efforts IMHO. What I see here with Atari purchasing AtariAge is them again trying to connect with it's community and keep the brand alive, refreshing and new Just as Albert has done over the past 20 years with the AA store, what I'm seeing in the Q&A is a lot of push back from the community on every single thing that they can think of to try and hold over Atari. It's not fair. The long running gag of the VCS being a taco box was a stupid unfunny joke that went on for far too long. It was a contributing factor to the group minded disinterest in the console and the wide spread disinformation that the console was just an Android device (its not) or a Retro pi. I'm seeing the same trend with the 2600+ people trash talking it before it is even in peoples hands. The reason the VCS was dead on arrival is because it was never even given a chance by the very people who it was targeted for. Half of you still have no idea what exactly it is or what it even does. There is also some blame on Ataris part due to lack of marketing, slow distribution and non existent international sales but that's a whole other story. If you have the mind set that this is some sort of evil corporate takeover and that Atari is the devil then you aren't even giving Atari a chance. My girlfriends mom is convinced that the government is watching in on her through her laptop camera and they are evil. I told my girlfriend "Honey the government doesn't want to see your mom naked, nobody wants to see that." Guys Atari doesn't want to see you naked either. Stop looking for a hidden evil when all Atari has done up to this point is tried to rebuild and RECHARGE the brand that you supposedly love! Some of these people at Atari have been going through pure hell just to try and do a good job with such low numbers of staff and resources and here we are a community (A LARGE COMMUNITY) of talented individuals, coders, tinkerers and Atari fans who can now CONTRIBUTE to Ataris mission and help them become the Atari you want them to be. Lets not waste that opportunity, let's support Atari and give them a fighting chance instead of being closed minded and shunning them away as if they were some sort of evil entity. Lets give them new ideas and tell them what it is we are wanting or expecting. Let's put all of our many talents together and help Atari integrate into the community that was made for Atari. Let's not repeat what happened with the VCS. Look at all of the games that have been distributed though the AA store, look at all of the funky controller and console mods you have all shared and in some cases even produced and sold over the years. The pictures of your collections you show off in threads. This is what Atari is here for. Don't be closed minded and slam the door in their face before they even have a chance to say hello. I saw one user who posted that they would be leaving the forums for good because Al sold his soul to the devil. Really the devil? How exactly are these people who go to work everyday to try and rebuild the brand you come here everyday to discuss the devil? It's just silly.

 

Be nice guys and give this whole thing a shot. The ball is in the communities court of how you want things to go from here, Keep an open mind and help Atari. Don't be a negative or toxic force towards Atari as how many times has your favorite brand been destroyed over the years before? Nobody wants that anymore.

 

In closing I will just say one more thing. I found the long running taco box jokes about as lame as why did the chicken cross the road, it was never really funny, just lame. And a bit disrespectful to ask an Atari employee trying his best to do his job about tacos as its a direct reference to said negativity.

 

But with all of that said I hope some of you can consider changing your mindset as embracing Atari with open arms is the only thing that makes any real sense.

 

 

 

[t.skid]

Well, I really don’t know… hope Atari did this trying to “bring back” some of the heritage that the Fuji logo implies - even if we all know actual Atari have nothing in common with the real one -. But , as someone has already wrote, it’s a Company, not a charity organization, and have to make money. We’ll see… anyway, best of luck to Al 👍🙂
 

I usually don’t like things like 2600+ and other modern “emu-replicas”*, but in this case seems that will not be expensive, and is somewhat official; that’s a good thing. 
 

 

* need to clarify: I prefer real hardware, and love that now we have the chance to get new replica-motherboards to repair our old computers, and/or new chips -I.e. Hokey or new CIAs for the Commodore 64s -. 
 

 

[SegaSnatcher]

So just to for more clarification.  The forums will continue to allow sub forums of brands/hardware not related to Atari for the foresseable future, or will there be a situation where it will be only Atari talk? 

[+jgkspsx]

23 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Well, the country code for Austria is AT like in .. wait for it .. ATARI !!

AT… Austria

TA… Tristan de Cunha

AR… Argentina

RI… Rhode Island

 

WHAT COULD IT MEAN???

 

[+jgkspsx]

15 minutes ago, SegaSnatcher said:

So just to for more clarification.  The forums will continue to allow sub forums of brands/hardware not related to Atari for the foresseable future, or will there be a situation where it will be only Atari talk? 

The former. Nothing is changing on the forums for the foreseeable future. Forsooth and forthwith.

[carlsson]

6 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

WHAT COULD IT MEAN???

We also have one that never got released: PANama THailand ERitrea.

[+jgkspsx]

6 hours ago, Zoyous said:

In an unfortunate way it shows how the incredibly high standard of artistic excellence from the original Atari gradually declined over the course of many years.

Uhhh…

 

 

vs.

 

 

I’m going with option B.

[+jgkspsx]

22 hours ago, Stephen said:

I'm curious about the Jaguar logo as well.  As far as I know, Hasbro released the system into the public domain around 2000.  It would be sort of shitty to go back on that some 20+ years later.  However, recent Songbird re-release of Towers-II does not have the Jag logo on it.

Hasbro opened the platform and released all NDAs on the development stuff but they explicitly refused to authorize the use of the Jaguar or Atari names or trademarks.

[+CharlieChaplin]

5 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Uhhh…

 

 

vs.

 

 

I’m going with option B.

 

Okay, I am going with the girl then. 

(But only if she still looks like that, which I doubt.)

 

[+Stephen]

2 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

22 hours ago, Stephen said:

I'm curious about the Jaguar logo as well.  As far as I know, Hasbro released the system into the public domain around 2000.  It would be sort of shitty to go back on that some 20+ years later.  However, recent Songbird re-release of Towers-II does not have the Jag logo on it.

Hasbro opened the platform and released all NDAs on the development stuff but they explicitly refused to authorize the use of the Jaguar or Atari names or trademarks

If that is true then it's a pretty closed case then.

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

5 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Hasbro opened the platform and released all NDAs on the development stuff but they explicitly refused to authorize the use of the Jaguar or Atari names or trademarks.

Are you sure about that? The Atari logo you are correct however the Jaguar logo was in fact released as public domain

[+Stephen]

2 minutes ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Okay, I am going with the girl then. 

(But only if she still looks like that, which I doubt.)

Here's the deal though.  If you had a car that looked like that, you could get all the girls that looked like her, that you wanted

[hizzy]

One thing that will make me less worried about this merger is if I can get a 2600+ in Canada. Also a firmware update that can get the 2600+ to play everything in the AA store.

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

8 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Hasbro opened the platform and released all NDAs on the development stuff but they explicitly refused to authorize the use of the Jaguar or Atari names or trademarks.

 

"Hasbro Releases Jaguar Publishing Rights

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACTS:
Dana Henry
Hasbro Interactive
978-921-3759
dhenry@hasbro.com

Beverly, MA (May 14, 1999) - Leading entertainment software publisher, Hasbro Interactive announced today it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar.

Hasbro Interactive acquired rights to many Atari properties, including the legendary Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong games, in a March 1998 acquisition from JTS Corporation.

This announcement will allow software developers to create and publish software for the Jaguar system without having to obtain a licensing agreement with Hasbro Interactive for such platform development. Hasbro Interactive cautioned, however, that the developers should not use the Atari trademark or logo in connection with their games or present the games as authorized or approved by Hasbro Interactive.

"Hasbro Interactive is strictly focused on developing and publishing entertainment software for the PC and the next generation game consoles," said Richard Cleveland, Head of Marketing for Hasbro Interactive's Atari Business Unit. "We realize there is a passionate audience of diehard Atari fans who want to keep the Jaguar system alive, and we don't want to prevent them from doing that. We will not interfere with the efforts of software developers to create software for the Jaguar system."

Hasbro Interactive, Inc. is a leading all-family interactive games publisher, formed in 1995 to bring to life on the computer the deep library of toy and board games of parent company, Hasbro, Inc. (ASE:HAS). Hasbro Interactive has expanded its charter to include original and licensed games for the PC, the Playstation(R) and Nintendo(R) 64 game consoles and for multi-player gaming over the internet. Headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, Hasbro Interactive has offices in the U.K., France, Germany, Japan and Canada. For more information, visit the Hasbro Interactive Web site at http://www.hasbro-interactive.com."

 

 

doesn't actually say Jaguar logo just publishing and the console itself were public domain. Now I'm curious as I was always under the impression that the Jag logo could be used

[+jgkspsx]

18 hours ago, bloodreptile said:

New Atari? The people who sued Jeff Minter. 

That was the previous CEO and a very different company. The current company are the people who are publishing awesome new Jeff Minter games on every platform imaginable and he seems pretty excited about working with them.

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

2 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

That was the previous CEO and a very different company. The current company are the people who are publishing awesome new Jeff Minter games on every platform imaginable and he seems pretty excited about working with them.

 

THIS

[+jgkspsx]

9 minutes ago, WAVE 1 GAMES said:

Are you sure about that? The Atari logo you are correct however the Jaguar logo was in fact released as public domain

Actually, now that I reread it, I am not sure.

 

Quote

Beverly, MA (May 14, 1999) - Leading entertainment software publisher, Hasbro Interactive announced today it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar. 
 

Hasbro Interactive acquired rights to many Atari properties, including the legendary Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong games, in a March 1998 acquisition from JTS Corporation. 

 

This announcement will allow software developers to create and publish software for the Jaguar system without having to obtain a licensing agreement with Hasbro Interactive for such platform development. Hasbro Interactive cautioned, however, that the developers should not use the Atari trademark or logo in connection with their games or present the games as authorized or approved by Hasbro Interactive. 

This is a press release and may not be legally binding. I don’t know if there was any other legal paperwork related to this.

 

However, Atari is currently filing for the trademark on the Jaguar name and the Jaguar logo. So regardless of what Hasbro did if that trademark is granted then Atari will own the logo again and may be obliged legally to protect the trademark or risk losing it again.

 

I suspect that a very easy solution would be to have a low-friction licensing system in place that would allow homebrew developers to legitimately use the Jaguar logo for small scale physical releases.

 

I hope @TrogdarRobusto and company think about this sort of thing going forward. I know relabeling all of @Songbird’s games is costing Carl quite a bit of money, because he said so:

 

And Songbird is one of the more successful homebrew publishers out there. It would go a long way to build trust with the community to not make small-scale hobbyists rework everything, as that won’t make Atari any money anyway.

[Albert]

9 minutes ago, WAVE 1 GAMES said:

Are you sure about that? The Atari logo you are correct however the Jaguar logo was in fact released as public domain

The statement Hasbro released doesn't explicitly say anything about the Jaguar or Lynx logos, so it's definitely not clear based on that statement.  Just because it wasn't mentioned doesn't mean it was released into  the public domain.  I'm guessing at the time that Hasbro really didn't put a great deal of thought into the details of this statement, except to explicitly call out the Atari logo, as obviously they didn't want anyone using that.  It's a moot point now, though, if Atari has successfully trademarked those logos.

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

7 minutes ago, hizzy said:

One thing that will make me less worried about this merger is if I can get a 2600+ in Canada. Also a firmware update that can get the 2600+ to play everything in the AA store.

Well, the first one is easy enough to rectify, the second one, that's a tall order since I also have Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, and Atari Jaguar games in the store. 

 

 ..Al

[CapitanClassic]

1 hour ago, WAVE 1 GAMES said:

My girlfriends mom is convinced that the government is watching in on her through her laptop camera and they are evil. I told my girlfriend "Honey the government doesn't want to see your mom naked, nobody wants to see that."

well???….Tesla…NSA. They are evil too (mostly incompetent, but also evil).

[cubelindo]

Hi Albert

 

Congrats for the deal, I really hope this is for the best.

I wish you lots of luck

[+jgkspsx]

8 hours ago, TrogdarRobusto said:

Over time I migrated from Tabasco to Cholula Original Hot Sauce, I mean, I am always open to recommendations. I live in Northeast, not really the hot sauce capital of the world.

Cholula is great but let me introduce you to a life-changing sauce:

 

 

https://heathotsauce.com/products/smokin-marie-smoked-habanero-pepper-sauce?variant=31057669699&currency=USD

[+jgkspsx]

8 hours ago, cvga said:

Not a FAQ but here's a quick summary (not necessarily in chronological order) to help people catch up...

 

• Congrats Al!
• I hate Atari, I'm out of here
• Can we still talk about Intellivision?
• This good for Al and us
• Corporate greed will takeover, I'm out of here
• Can we still talk about Colecovision?
• Yay! Good news
• Corporate bastards will wreck everything, I'm out of here
• Can we still talk about the TI-99?
• Congrats Al
• Terrible day, just as I predicted. I'm out of here
• Can we still talk about Vectrex?
• What tacos do you like?

This is a great summary for those just joining us.

[+Charlie Cat]

2 hours ago, bent_pin said:

Is it light beer?

Quick question bent.  

 

Anthony...

[+frankodragon]

 

I do believe this needs to be recreated.  It just screams, "I'll be in the hot tub until 4PM so hold my calls."