Atari 10-1 and flashback

carmel_andrews · March 8, 2005

Who would have thought that putting out a Pong type gaming system (from a design/technological viewpoint) would be considered a good business move

And yet we have Infogrammes/Jakks bastardizing Atari's technology (so far as the 2600/7800 are concerned) and reproducing it in a pong type machine which essentially play 10-20 different flavours of pong

How would infogrammes like it if we took one of their leading best selling software titles and began porting it over to the spectrum or ZX81 and selling the software under the infogrammes name

If Steve mayer and Joe Decuir (the main 2600 h/w designers) were dead today, they'd be turining in their graves

I was lead to believe that the idea behind the 2600 (and laterly the 7800) was to advance the games systems technology beyond 'dedicated gaming systems' (AkA PONG machines) by producing 'programmable games sytems'

And yet it would apear (according to infogrammes/Jakks) that the 2600/7800 might as well have never existed (so far as technology is concerned)

Is it no surprise then that 'gamespot's website recent reported that infogrammes (Atari) are loosing money (Again), not surprising when they want to screw their customer base by releasing/selling them 'substandard' or '2nd rate' products like the infogrammes/jakks devices

And further more, insulting Atari users (computers and gaming systems) by demeaning and denigrating the very technology Atari were founded on

People and consumers might have wanted 'Pong' type products 30 years ago, they certainly don't want them now

If infogrammes/Jakks were serious about releasing these types of devices, a better solution would have been to have added a cartridge port (hence keeping in with the design/technology capabilites of the aforementioned emulated systems)

Alternately bringing out an official Atari endorsed version of one of the more popular, cross platform emulators, and supplied the disk with a small selection of between 4-500 legal roms, and providing an internet link so that users of this product could acquire additional roms (for a small charge) or updated versions of the aforementioned emulators, at least this solution wouldn't have been as substandard or 2nd rate a product then the SHIT they released

But there again i guess that Jakks/infogrammes are more interested in screwing their customer base and don't believe in retaining their existing customer base

But there again, what DO i know about the videogame business

Zonie · March 8, 2005

I think you missed the point of the 10-in-1 joystick and the Flashback.

The 10-in-1 joystick is a cheap ($10-20) impulse buy item that capitalizes on the nostalgia..."Hey, look! An old Atari joystick" I haven't played Atari in years! Cool, it's got games built in." Cha-ching. Another sale. It has a certain visual appeal sitting on top of the TV set by itself.

Sure, Jakks bastardized it with famiclone hardware, but it did bring "back the fun" to everyone who picked the thing up at my house. The sound was off, but most people aren't anal enough to notice like us hardcore Atari fans.

I bought one, and gave it to my 10 yr old son. He plays it all the time. To him and all the other kids these days, the thing is just fine. It's "different."

The Flashback console, which I haven't played, is just Infogrammes taking notice and trying to capitalize on the nostalgia wave that the Jakks game started.

As for the other units, The Arcade emulations on some of them are top notch. The Ms. Pacman one for example, Almost perfect. The Taito one is so-so, SI and Qix are good, but Lunar rescue is missing sound effects.

The purpose isn't to release the 2600 or 7800 all over again. If they did, you would see more red ink than there currently is. Sure a flashback console with a cartridge slot would be cool, something I'd like to see, but then the GENERAL PUBLIC (folks who are actually buying them) would expect new cartridges to become available...something that is not likely to happen. What do you think the Public's reaction to that would be?