Atari

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Keening_Product
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Atari

Post by Keening_Product »

Microsoft went digging for an untold number of abandoned Atari E.T. cartridges recently. Why? That game's massive sales flop was rumoured to be one of the reasons for the company going under, but nobody had any idea of exactly how bad it was.

Anyway, Microsoft found what it was looking for. The company is making a doco called Atari: Game Over. Strikes me as an expensive gloat that XBox hasn't sent them under yet, but hey, could be interesting. Certainly interesting from the perspective of MS trying to get into more entertainment sectors.

Story: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/26/micr ... n-success/

Other pictures: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/27/et-a ... -pictures/

Not being a console gamer and being too young to have ever had much exposure to Atari, I can't make any comment for the quality of the game or consoles. I just found the story interesting.
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Post by StupidBunny »

The console gaming market today is very different from what it was in the early 80s when the video game crash happened. Back then the problem as I understand it was an oversaturation of cheap but poorly tested games on a lot of different consoles (though blame goes especially to bombs like ET and the Atari port of Pac-Man), whereas today we have only a handful of extremely expensive consoles with increasingly overproduced and expensive games. I doubt Microsoft has much to gloat about, though I don't doubt they might try and spin it that way.

I of course never grew up with the Atari myself, though the console has always appealed to me and I got my hands on one last summer. The Atari ports are for the most part inferior to the original arcade versions of the games in question, though still lots of fun to play. I don't have ET but given that I could get a copy of it for just a couple dollars it might be worth a shot (but probably not.)
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Post by Levellass »

I'm just going to note that the Dingo Pictures 'game' Dalmations 3 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmjC5GaMZKo 'in-game movie') was given an official Sony seal of approval. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKZQb-jH-7A

And yet the PS2 and its parent company lives. There is no justice.
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Post by StupidBunny »

Levellass wrote:Dingo Pictures
I'm still amazed anything these people made was licensed by anybody. It makes Wand of Gamelon look like Wing Commander or something.

On these notes, relevant YTP
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Keening_Product
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Post by Keening_Product »

I think I'm going to throw up, and I've only watched the first minute.
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Post by Levellass »

Jitterydragon, look off youtube for most of their stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_StRy5WXCnY


Also... 13 Land Before Time movies?!
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Re: Atari

Post by DHeadshot »

Keening_Product wrote:Not being a console gamer and being too young to have ever had much exposure to Atari, I can't make any comment for the quality of the game or consoles. I just found the story interesting.
I've played the game emulated. It is really bad, but not disappointingly bad like the Atari 2600 version of Pacman...

It's worth noting that the Great North American Gaming Crash never made it to Europe as the Home Computer Revolution had already started so by then no-one was buying consoles anyway!
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Post by chrissifniotis »

All this talk about gaming makes me wish I were in a country with a gaming pedigree. :(
Oh well!

I love to learn more about gaming history, and that's a weird looking gem of a story right there.
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Post by Keening_Product »

This is the great thing about versatile PCs: although graphics took a few years to catch up with the early dedicated consoles, at least a few bombing games didn't wipe out the platform.

We keep talking about bad titles, but clearly Atari had some success given the name is still known so long after the company's collapse. What were the consoles' good points and games?
chrissifniotis wrote:All this talk about gaming makes me wish I were in a country with a gaming pedigree. :(
Eh, having Good Game on TV (several times a week if you count SP on ABC3) is enough for me.
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Post by chrissifniotis »

Keening_Product wrote:Eh, having Good Game on TV (several times a week if you count SP on ABC3) is enough for me.
I'm sure I can find out my self, but what times is it on?
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Post by DHeadshot »

chrissifniotis wrote:All this talk about gaming makes me wish I were in a country with a gaming pedigree. :(
I know of two Australia-exclusive home computers and presumably you had access to the C64 and its ilk - surely there were Australia-made games for those?
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Post by Plasma Captain »

Ah yeah, I read about this a few days ago.

This is tangentially related, but Romero Tweeted this a few days ago:

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/22/564011 ... seum-icheg

Someone else has unearthed a bunch of historic Atari documents, including source code, including some unreleased games.
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Post by guynietoren »

Plasma Captain wrote:Ah yeah, I read about this a few days ago.

This is tangentially related, but Romero Tweeted this a few days ago:

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/22/564011 ... seum-icheg

Someone else has unearthed a bunch of historic Atari documents, including source code, including some unreleased games.
So yes that's another story of people attempting to throw away valuable pieces of gaming history. Lots of sentimental value to its creators I'm sure. Must be painful to see what companies do with your hard work when they don't want it anymore.
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Post by chrissifniotis »

DHeadshot wrote:I know of two Australia-exclusive home computers and presumably you had access to the C64 and its ilk - surely there were Australia-made games for those?
I'm sure there may have been, I'm still working on my gaming history so I can't really comment one way or another yet. But I have recently taken a look at local developers and publishers, not a great deal to mention in recent history; Fruit Ninja, L.A. Noire. As far as I know the only great Aussie made game right now is Real Racing 3 on the iPhone.
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Post by DHeadshot »

I thought "L. A. Noire" was Scottish-made, like other big Rockstar titles like RDR, GTA and Lemmings - shows what I know...

[Edit] I tracked down the names of the Australian home computers I knew of: The EDUC-8 and the MicroBee. The latter has a great deal of games available, presumably mostly Australian-made.
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