LA Times Article: Atari Reboot
Posted on August 07, 2010Atari was one of the original video game leaders, although the company had all but disappeared during the last few decades. Â It was sold to various companies around the world, eventually ending up in France. Â However, starting around a year ago, we started seeing rumblings of a corporate rebirth. Â Licensing stepped up, with a Universal Studios film deal for Asteroids among the more news-worthy items.
Recently, Atari’s website has been growing, offering both classic games for online play, plus the announcement of new initiatives, including the re-imagining of older titles (again, Asteroids). Â Then, with echoes of Steve Jobs’s return to a floundering Apple, there came the news that Atari founder Nolan Bushnell was back on the board of directors.
The LA Times has just published a fairly comprehensive article detailing the past and future plans for the company. Â Read it here:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-atari-20100803,0,3552511.story?track=rss
Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell Returns
Posted on July 23, 2010Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has just returned to the board of directors for Atari.
It’s been 28 years since Nolan Bushnell founded Atari for just $500. The businessman, who used Pong to first launch the arcade craze in 1972 and later brought gaming into the living room in 1984 with the Atari 2600, is now back with the company.
Bushnell is now on the board of directors for Atari. A lot has changed at the company since he sold it to Hollywood’s Warner Communications for $28 million back in 1976. These days, the French-owned Atari has struggled to re-establish its brand with the type of game experiences that early titles like Asteroids and BattleZoneheld (and still hold) with gamers. Nolan, who’s early Atari days are the subject of a new Paramount Pictures biopic with producer Leonard DiCaprio, believes the timing is right to capitalize on what made Atari successful in its heyday.
Read the full article and interview by John Gaudiosi at Gamepro:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/215893/atari-founder-nolan-bushnells-return/
California Extreme 2010 – Ephemeral Classic Arcade
Posted on July 17, 2010This weekend is the 14th annual California Extreme, the classic arcade show that Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb calls “the best arcade I had ever been to, stocked with obvious classics, obscure gems, prototype and bootleg machines, and a bunch of stuff I’d simply never heard of.”
He’s posted a video (below) of a walk-through of this year’s show in Santa Clara. Â He pauses for a quick game of Asteroids Deluxe (cocktail) at 4:15.
Jon Koolpe has his Asteroids machine on display, with an advance version of the Asteroids multikit. Â He says, “Let me say that this kit is beyond cool…you get Asteroids (easy and hard), Asteroids Deluxe (easy and hard), and Lunar Lander. Dipswitch settings are handled by an on screen menu, high scores are saved in Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe, and you even get that extra 6th digit in your score in Asteroids (so you can obtain scores for beyond 99999).”
Also, take a look at Wired Magazine’s “5 Things I Learned at California Extreme” (2009).
=== FOLLOW UP ===
Dan at One Of Swords has a good overview of the event, with lots of photos:
http://oneofswords.com/2010/07/california-extreme-2010-report/
1982 Asteroids record broken
Posted on April 06, 2010John McAllister just scored 41,838,740 points, beating Scott Safran’s 1982 high score of 41,336,440. Â This had been the longest-standing record in arcade history.
Full Wired article here — http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/04/asteroids-record
Twin Galaxies official scoreboard here — http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&pi=2&gi=4017&vi=643
Asteroids Movie in development
Posted on July 02, 2009Universal Studios just won a 3-studio bidding war for the rights to Atari Asteroids. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers 2, Imagine That, G.I. Joe) is set to produce, with Matt Lopez (Race to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories) as writer.
Variety article — http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005638.html?categoryid=1079&cs=1&query=atari+asteroids
di Bonaventura says:
“When I was called about the property – I was called because of what I’d done with ‘Transformers’ and ‘G.I. Joe.’ Atari reached out to me and said, ‘We have Asteroids,’ and I had an immediate reaction ‘Yes.’ The reason was not because playing the game, we thought somehow that game could be translated into a movie, it can’t. The word ‘Asteroids’ connotates a large-scale experience, so the challenge, which was great, was ‘Okay, so how do you get a mythology that will support that?” We really went after a mythology on the level of ‘Star Wars’ and we’ll see if we succeeded or not but it’s not a simple thing of the asteroids are going to hit the earth. We never come to earth. The entire movie takes place in the asteroid field. We do some homages to the game for sure, but I like the sense of scale.”
[UPDATE]
Variety article “Videogame companies set-up studio pics,” citing Asteroids:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118010994.html?cs=1&query=atari+asteroids
Wired’s idea of what the script will look like:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/07/asteroids-movie/