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PS2, secretly one of the Atari's best systems?


JPF997

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I mean in terms of Atari produced and published games obviously ( credit for the console itself belongs 100% to Sony of course ). It really was a wild era for the company, being transferred from Hasbro to Infogrames and then releasing all kinds of games, many of them being stuff that people would  never have associated with Atari before or ever since, here's a few examples of Atari's output in that generation :

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Edited by JPF997
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41 minutes ago, zzip said:

This is what I thought the thread was going to be about before I clicked on it,  haha

It is indeed pretty funny how closely the PS2 resembles this old Atari computer prototype, almost makes you think that Sony purposely ripped off this design because of how cool it looked 😉

 

 

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1 hour ago, JPF997 said:

It is indeed pretty funny how closely the PS2 resembles this old Atari computer prototype, almost makes you think that Sony purposely ripped off this design because of how cool it looked 😉

I thought it was confirmed they did use it, but acquired the rights?    It seems strange though as I thought Sony did their own design and wouldn't be shopping at fire sales for designs to use haha. 

 

Also that Falcon prototype looks like it has USB ports on the front, and I thought Atari Corp folded before USB was released.   Maybe they are joystick ports?

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Posted (edited)
16 hours ago, zzip said:

I thought it was confirmed they did use it, but acquired the rights?    It seems strange though as I thought Sony did their own design and wouldn't be shopping at fire sales for designs to use haha. 

 

Also that Falcon prototype looks like it has USB ports on the front, and I thought Atari Corp folded before USB was released.   Maybe they are joystick ports?

The conspiracy  theory that Sony simply stole the Falcon prototypes design has existed as a sort of urban legend for a while now  , I don't think they ever payed Atari a single cent for the original PS2 fat design.

 

Wasn't Atari the one that invented the progenitor of the usb all the way back in the Atari 800 days? Makes perfect sense that the Falcon 030  Microbox would have USB ports.

 

Edited by JPF997
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1 hour ago, JPF997 said:

Wasn't Atari the one that invented the progenitor of the usb all the way back in the Atari 800 days? Makes perfect sense that the Falcon 030  Microbox would have USB ports.

The guy who created SIO went on to work on USB.   Atari didn't continue the development of SIO after the 8bit line, and an SIO port looks nothing like a USB port.   

 

USB was developed by a group of companies mostly in the PC space,  Atari wasn't one of the developers.   It was also introduce only a month before the Tramiels decided to merge Atari with JTS and a few years after they abandoned the Falcon,  so it's not likely that Falcon prototype would have usb ports.

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6 hours ago, JPF997 said:

The conspiracy  theory that Sony simply stole the Falcon prototypes design has existed as a sort of urban legend for a while now  , I don't think they ever payed Atari a single cent for the original PS2 fat design.

 

Wasn't Atari the one that invented the progenitor of the usb all the way back in the Atari 800 days? Makes perfect sense that the Falcon 030  Microbox would have USB ports.

 

I don't believe they paid anything for the design, but the Falcon040 "microbox" design is directly referenced in the PS2 patent documents.  

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The PS2 was the era of Atari as a third party publisher, so the rights to a ton of those games are long gone. 

 

I think the PS2 may be the secret best console for retro gaming due to how many extensive collections are available. The Taito collections. Capcom collections, Namco collections, etc put it towards the top in terms of getting a ton of retro games cheap that play well. Atari's collection is good, and the PS2 still got the Activision collection. 

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Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

The PS2 was the era of Atari as a third party publisher, so the rights to a ton of those games are long gone. 

 

I think the PS2 may be the secret best console for retro gaming due to how many extensive collections are available. The Taito collections. Capcom collections, Namco collections, etc put it towards the top in terms of getting a ton of retro games cheap that play well. Atari's collection is good, and the PS2 still got the Activision collection. 

Hey Mockduck  have you ever thought about making a video talking about this era of Atari's history (2001-2013 ), maybe even review some of the games like Enter the Matrix and Driv3r ? It  seems to be the most forgotten one even more so than the Hasbro era , that's probably because a lot of the games Atari developed and published during this time period are not stuff typically associated with the brand, still I think it would be great if modern Atari managed to reach the same level of influence and relevance  in the industry that they had during the 2000s.

Edited by JPF997
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There were tons of collections and re-releases for XBox 360 as well - both digital and physical.  I think about the 360 as probably the most overlooked console for classic gaming of all time.  If you like Indy stuff, XBox Live Indy games was like a whole other console for fully licensed classic releases (like Jet Set Willy 360) and classic inspired releases (but I don't think you can browse those anymore).

 

Atari however was fading a bit from publishing during the PS3/360/Wii, but they still had some major titles.  That Test Drive license was likely underused.  It could have been bigger than Forza.

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1 hour ago, Mockduck said:

The PS2 was the era of Atari as a third party publisher, so the rights to a ton of those games are long gone. 

 

I think the PS2 may be the secret best console for retro gaming due to how many extensive collections are available. The Taito collections. Capcom collections, Namco collections, etc put it towards the top in terms of getting a ton of retro games cheap that play well. Atari's collection is good, and the PS2 still got the Activision collection. 

Multiple Midway collections too which I think had some descendent relationship to the Atari arcade business.

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1 hour ago, JPF997 said:

Hey Mockduck  have you ever thought about making a video talking about this era of Atari's history (2001-2013 ), maybe even review some of the games like Enter the Matrix and Driv3r ? It  seems to be the most forgotten one even more so than the Hasbro era , that's probably because a lot of the games Atari developed and published during this time period are not stuff typically associated with the brand, still I think it would be great if modern Atari managed to reach the same level of influence and relevance  in the industry that they had during the 2000s.

Imagine if Nintendo decided to completely get out of videogames, abandoning all their consoles in the process.

 

Then five years from now, Ubisoft changes their name to Nintendo after acquiring Nintendo's IP.   They change the Logo a bit from the classic one  and suddenly you see "Far Cry by Nintendo",  "Assassins Creed by Nintendo"  Nintendo's "Rainbow Six" series.    Maybe you like some of these games, and maybe you are kind of happy to see the Nintendo name come back from the dead.  But your brain cannot compute that this is really Nintendo.  It feels so wrong,  there's no more Nintendo consoles,  a few reimagined games using the old IP that mostly miss the mark.   Nintendo?  More like Pretendo!

 

That's what Infrogrames Atari was like and I suspect that's why there isn't a whole lot of nostalgia for it.

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Posted (edited)
46 minutes ago, zzip said:

Imagine if Nintendo decided to completely get out of videogames, abandoning all their consoles in the process.

 

Then five years from now, Ubisoft changes their name to Nintendo after acquiring Nintendo's IP.   They change the Logo a bit from the classic one  and suddenly you see "Far Cry by Nintendo",  "Assassins Creed by Nintendo"  Nintendo's "Rainbow Six" series.    Maybe you like some of these games, and maybe you are kind of happy to see the Nintendo name come back from the dead.  But your brain cannot compute that this is really Nintendo.  It feels so wrong,  there's no more Nintendo consoles,  a few reimagined games using the old IP that mostly miss the mark.   Nintendo?  More like Pretendo!

 

That's what Infrogrames Atari was like and I suspect that's why there isn't a whole lot of nostalgia for it.

Using that same logic Hasbro Atari wasn't the real deal either, and yet everyone speaks highly of that era ( 1998-2001 ) and the remakes of Atari classics that came out on the PS1. Trust me on this  in a few years when more late Millennials and early Zoomers ( like myself ) start  getting more nostalgic for they're childhood games that's when the Infogrames Atari era will finally receive the respect that it deserves.

Edited by JPF997
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21 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

Using that same logic Hasbro Atari wasn't the real deal either, and yet everyone speaks highly of that era ( 1998-2001 ) and the remakes of Atari classics that came out on the PS1. Trust me on this  in a few years when more late Millennials and early Zoomers ( like myself ) start  getting more nostalgic for they're childhood games that's when the Infogrames Atari era will finally receive the respect that it deserves.

The Hasbro era is even more ignored from what I've seen,  it was very short and they didn't release a whole lot before they sold the name.

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10 minutes ago, zzip said:

The Hasbro era is even more ignored from what I've seen,  it was very short and they didn't release a whole lot before they sold the name.

Not from what I've seen here on Atari age or the internet at large, the Hasbro Atari era was very successful, far more people bought and played Atari games during those three years that on the Lynx or the Jaguar.

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The other Atari iteration that doesn't get the nostalgia or respect they deserve (at least around here) is Atari Games.   People act like it's not really Atari but its tragic they got separated and should be reunited to make Atari whole.   You don't see all that much discussion about their games here.

 

Seems like the Atari Corp side gets all the fandom and nostalgia simply because they had the consumer hardware business.

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Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, zzip said:

The other Atari iteration that doesn't get the nostalgia or respect they deserve (at least around here) is Atari Games.   People act like it's not really Atari but its tragic they got separated and should be reunited to make Atari whole.   You don't see all that much discussion about their games here.

 

Seems like the Atari Corp side gets all the fandom and nostalgia simply because they had the consumer hardware business.

Not just because of that, the primary reason why Atari Corp is more well known and respected than Atari Games (Tengen) is because it's the direct ancestor of modern Atari (SA),  Atari Games died in the 90s, all that's left is a bunch of IP's collection dust in Warners vault.

Edited by JPF997
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On 3/19/2024 at 12:29 PM, JPF997 said:

The conspiracy  theory that Sony simply stole the Falcon prototypes design has existed as a sort of urban legend for a while now  , I don't think they ever payed Atari a single cent for the original PS2 fat design.

Sony mentioned Atari Falcon 040 and Atari Falcon Microbox 030 in its design patent:

https://www.feedme.design/was-the-playstation-2-design-really-based-on-an-old-atari/

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Edited by Cyprian
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37 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

Not just because of that, the primary reason why Atari Corp is more well known and respected than Atari Games (Tengen) is because it's the direct ancestor of modern Atari (SA),  Atari Games died in the 90s, all that's left is a bunch of IP's collection dust in Warners vault.

That's why I would think people would be more nostalgic for it.    Every compilation Atari SA puts out has the basics of Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Crystal Castles.   But if you want a compilation with games like Gauntlet, Marble Madness, Klax, APB..  good luck!   None have been released in over a decade let alone modern "recharged" versions of such games.

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5 hours ago, JPF997 said:

Not from what I've seen here on Atari age or the internet at large, the Hasbro Atari era was very successful, far more people bought and played Atari games during those three years that on the Lynx or the Jaguar.

No it wasn't, otherwise they wouldn't have needed to offload all of Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames just three years after purchasing Atari. Like zzip said, Hasbro did very little with the Atari name while it was under their stewarship, with the most notable thing from that era being that they opened up the Jaguar thanks to a bunch of us overwhelming their customer support department. 

 

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Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No it wasn't, otherwise they wouldn't have needed to offload all of Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames just three years after purchasing Atari. Like zzip said, Hasbro did very little with the Atari name while it was under their stewarship, with the most notable thing from that era being that they opened up the Jaguar thanks to a bunch of us overwhelming their customer support department. 

 

The reason why Hasbro got rid of Atari and Hasbro Interactive ( the gaming division ) was because of the dot-com bubble , the Wikipedia article on this is actually pretty solid, Hasbro Interactive managed to become the third largest third party publisher in the world in a incredibly short amount of time, but then the Dot-com bubble burst, Hasbro panicked and tried to get out of gaming as fast as possible, which is why they sold the entirety of the gaming division to Infogrames for a  remarkably cheap price.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Interactive

Edited by JPF997
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TBH,  I was surprised they put out that many games for PS2...Who knew?

 

I mean I had Frogger, Pong, Asteroids, etc, for PlayStation...And  (later) Any anthologies, Transformers, Stuntman, Matrix (?), Test Drive, Driv3r?, Kya?... maybe even some others...HMmmmmmm...

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9 hours ago, MrZarniwoop said:

Don't forget their Wii games. I kind of liked the re-imagined Centipede.

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Anyone knows how the IP-story went with this one? 

 

My guess, spread in pieces all over the universe…(as usual)? 

Edited by Giles N
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