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

[+Sauron]

54 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

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

True enough, but the Atari name had little to do with their pre-bubble-burst success. Most of their big hitters were still published under Hasbro Interactive, with the Atari name mainly just used for their retro-themed games, none of which were huge sellers. Take it from someone who was there at the time, the Atari name had little value during Hasbro's ownership. 

 

[JPF997]

11 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

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...

Oh GoldLeader this is just the tip of the iceberg, Atari's output during the 6th generation is nothing short of legendary, if you include all the other platforms (Xbox,GameCube, Gameboy Advance) you end up with an absolutely massive lineup  of games, no other version of Atari ever managed to be that prolific, I don't fanboy for this era of the company just because it happened when I was growing up. Wade Rosen is doing a great job as CEO but modern Atari still has a long way to go until they can reach this level of success again.

 

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

Edited March 21 by JPF997

[roots.genoa]

But once again, at the time it was just Infogrames, which was already that successful before, that changed its name to Atari. Like someone says earlier, it's as if Nintendo changed its name to Atari; you would be amazed by how successful Atari is, the incredible IPs they've got, etc.

[zzip]

14 hours 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. 

 

I remember there was an article at Onion or other satirical site during the dot-com era that was something like "12 year old kid accidentally buys Atari with allowance money".   That indicates how dead and worthless the brand seemed among the general public at the time.    Hasbro did little to revive the brand name, that was all on Infrogrames.

[zzip]

On 3/20/2024 at 11:31 AM, Mockduck said:

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. 

I've been trying to get my hands on some of these old collections I missed at the time.   Was there ever a collection of Sega Arcade games?  It's one I haven't seen (yet?)

[+wongojack]

22 minutes ago, zzip said:

I've been trying to get my hands on some of these old collections I missed at the time.   Was there ever a collection of Sega Arcade games?  It's one I haven't seen (yet?)

You didn't ask me, but I can't think of any. There have been versions of the arcade games on other collections like Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast collection and a few arcade favorites such as Congo Bongo, Altered Beast and Zaxxon on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (both for 360).

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, wongojack said:

You didn't ask me, but I can't think of any. There have been versions of the arcade games on other collections like Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast collection and a few arcade favorites such as Congo Bongo, Altered Beast and Zaxxon on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (both for 360).

I've never seen one except for Genesis collections,  but I didn't realize there was a Taito collection until this thread so thought it was worth a try  

[JPF997]

2 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

But once again, at the time it was just Infogrames, which was already that successful before, that changed its name to Atari. Like someone says earlier, it's as if Nintendo changed its name to Atari; you would be amazed by how successful Atari is, the incredible IPs they've got, etc.

So when did Infogrames truly become Atari in your view, was it when they changed their name to Atari SA (2009), or after the company restarted from zero following the 2013 bankruptcy, or maybe  was it only  after Wade Rosen took over as CEO from Fred Chesnais (2021) ?

Edited March 21 by JPF997

[zzip]

17 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

So when did Infogrames truly become Atari in your view, was it when they changed their name to Atari SA (2009), or after the company restarted from zero following the 2013 bankruptcy, or maybe  was it only  after Wade Rosen took over as CEO from Fred Chesnais (2021) ?

There's been  A LOT of skepticism around here about whether or not Atari SA is the "Real Atari".   I think Wade Rosen's moves have soften a lot of people's stances.

Edited March 21 by zzip

[Video]

PS2 was so prevalent that it was the number one system for all kinds of companies. If not for the "buying good reviews" fiasco, atari could have made a real comeback in the early to mid 00's era. A lot of the op's game list were great games too. Well, maybe not but I enjoyed a lot of the ones I played, wasn't aware there was so many. I'll have to look for some of those.

[Mockduck]

There was the somewhat limited "Sega Classics Collection" for Playstation 2 which included some arcade games, but the PS2 also has the Sonic Mega Collection and Sega Genesis Collection (28 games).

[jhd]

On 3/21/2024 at 1:25 PM, zzip said:

I've never seen one except for Genesis collections,  but I didn't realize there was a Taito collection until this thread so thought it was worth a try  

 

There were actually two Taito collections. I only ever saw the second collection once (in a random pawn shop in a small city), so it is quite obscure.

 

As far as I can tell, this is a comprehensive list of the various arcade games that have been ported to the PS 2 and what compilation they are a part of:

https://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ab443/arcade_games.htm

 

 

[zzip]

2 hours ago, jhd said:

 

There were actually two Taito collections. I only ever saw the second collection once (in a random pawn shop in a small city), so it is quite obscure.

I see that.   Looks like the games on the second collection are pretty obscure too,  other than Front Line and Qix, I've never seen any of the others in an arcade.

 

2 hours ago, jhd said:

As far as I can tell, this is a comprehensive list of the various arcade games that have been ported to the PS 2 and what compilation they are a part of:

https://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ab443/arcade_games.htm

Thanks, I was looking for something like this!    The Taito and Sega arcade collections are the only ones I had never seen before.