Agreed. I think NES is the farthest back you can go to where normal people would enjoy playing. 2600 games are just too primitive for people unaffected by nostalgia.
@Fat Tiger the second gen isn't that bad. I was born in 92 the year the 2600 was discontinued the 2600 still has some great games a lot of trash but that's true of most consoles. Look at the Nes/Famicom how many of them are unplayable. Sameis rue for the genesis/mega drive, snes, PlayStation, really anything that had a large library. I know the second generation gets a lot of garbage that only made sense in that generation slots and hangman for examples
It is even weirder then mentioned. After the Jaguar failed, Atari reverse merged with a hard drive manufacturer (JTS) in 1996, two years before Hasbro bought its assets. There was literally a two year gap where there was no Atari (or no one using its assets). And the Jaguar mood later was used to make dental equipment.
I find it hugely amusing and coincidental that the modern Atari are scamming people with their bullshit new console, as the company is now so watered down and removed from the original it's the business equivalent of homeopathic remedies. Funny that aint' it?
Might be how they infamously lost the original source code to Bubble Bobble. Some intern got sloppy drunk and spilled vodka on the computer the source code was stored on.
The Atari 2600 is a lot like CBGB was with rock bands: people remember the great ones that played there fondly, but forget all of the crap that filled it through it's history.
This reminds me of all the people saying games were better "back in the day". I mean, some leeway can be offered to pure opinion and newer, less admirable practices, but you still have people who forget or don't know that stuff like releasing unfinished games, soulless cash grabs, obsession over graphical power, or just general low quality games actually existed beyond 15 years ago. Even the earliest form of microtransaction that I can think of was Double Dragon 3 for arcades, where you needed real money to purchase items from the in-game store.
The very first drawings on caves are interesting for a historical sense, but children can draw like that today. Nobody considers them masterpieces. The first music and musicians were the same way. The first works of fiction were undoubtedly awful too. They are all important from a historical perspective but not as a form of art.
I'm not old enough to be a "fan" of atari, but I was excited for the vcs. I didn't know the company was sold so many times so this video really puts things into perspective.
Sorry if this sounds off topic, but nobody is too old or too young to be an Atari fan. You could be 10 years old but if you like the games, then it's all right by anyone else. With that being said I was also excited for the vcs.
@@darthkai8242 The Gen X'ers are gonna get mad. I feel the same way. NES games are still enjoyable to play. Atari 2600 games are not. And it was my 1st game system. Now Atari's arcade games from the 80s are a different story, the ones that were later bought by Midway and were on their Arcade Treasures vol. 1+2+3 are top notch. Xenophobe, Xybots, Paperboy, APB, Rampage, Rampart, etc.
Rerez skipped over their late 90's Midway alliance era of Atari. Imo it's the underrated prime of Atari. Primal Rage? Mace The Dark Age? Area 51? San Francisco Rush?
@@HipsterBlackMetalOfficial Yes ! Im still trying to goto Galloping Ghost (although I just got a Tier 3 Mitigation warning on my phone for Illinois so thats prob not gonna be too soon) to play Primal Rage 2. I live like 35 mins from there and have yet to go.
2:52 "Thousands of parents everywhere questioning their children's life choices." been there mate. been there. Twice. One as a protagonist, and the other as a spectator.
First of all, when Atari fans say, "Atari" they mean pre-Tramiel Atari. That's what they love. Some even love the Tramiel Atari with the Lynx and Jaguar and Atari ST computers (count me as one of them.) As you said, Atari today is nothing but a collection of properties that the current owners are leeching off of. Why didn't Atari continue their games like Nintendo? Because their style of games are TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Nintendo games are almost 100% character driven but Atari never had any characters (besides Bentley Bear.) Their games were Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede, Battlezone... NO CHARACTERS. So to imply Atari would still be Atari if they had kept making games in those franchises is incorrect. (They tried, but gamers had moved on to character driven games.) The true hope for Atari fans no longer lies within the company, but within the homebrewers who continue to make quality games for the older systems. Anything new is just leeching off the corpse of the past.
Yes, pre-Tramiel all the way. My nerd circle was all Apple ][ and they laughed at my Atari, but tech historians agree that Jay Miner's design was vastly superior and matched up well even against the C64 which came out years later. I still think some of the things Woz did in the ][ were insanely, amazingly, fiendishly clever, but they resulted in low manufacturing cost, not impressive capability. Anyway, along comes Tramiel and quickly throws together the ST, essentially a cheap 68K MS-DOS box, which I stupidly bought out of loyalty to the logo, while Jay Miner ends up at Commodore to make Amiga, the true successor to the Atari 8-bit line.
Part of the problem: Most of Atari Inc's hits were arcade games first. After 1984, Atari Inc. was split into two companies: Atari Games & Atari Corp. Atari Games made arcade games, like Paper Boy & Marble Madness. These were still hits, & Atari Games continued to produce new games till the early 2000's. Atari Corp made home consoles & computers, like the 7800 & ST. They sold well enough, but they lacked good games, so it became harder & harder for Atari to compete against Nintendo & Sega. There were other problems too; few people wanted to deal with Jack Tramiel, so Atari had trouble finding distributors; IBM had an early-mover advantage on microcomputers, so the ST eventually lost out on that, etc.
Pre-Tramiel 2600 was my childhood. By ‘81 I moved on to the Atari 8-bit line of home computers. I also bought and loved the Atari Lynx, just a logo, but I knew that going in, and the hardware was truly better than the other handhelds. But in classic Atari style they went for the “easy to learn, hard to master” style games, while the rest of the gaming industry had moved onto the mascots and platform styled games. I didn’t pre-invest in the new VCS, but if it makes it to market, I will more than likely buy one, mostly for nostalgia, but because I’m hoping...hoping...that the new company will make the system relevant in today’s market. Would love to see my grandkids playing on an Atari system.
When the Atari Vault was in early access on Steam, and they were taking requests for games to add, I suggested "Blasteroids", the obscure but completely awesome 2 player sequel to Asteroids. Wouldn't you know it though, THAT game is owned by the piece of the original Atari that now belongs to Warner Brothers, so no dice. Atari's name is such a clusterfuck.
Nah, they are pretty well-established in the modern day, such as Test Drive Unlimited, which practically invented the genre Forza Horizon,The Crew and other games are in right now.
There is one slight issue with Atari now.... they are being sued by Frontier Developments for unpayed royalties for the development of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3
Not only is Atari incompetent, they are also sleazy businessmen. That's a recipe for disaster. This current incarnation of the name will flop and they've devalued it so much, there's a chance no one will bother buying it.
I was wearing an Atari shirt but I got worried about having the Atari logo show up so many times in any single frame of the video so I switched it out!
Rerez please can you try to see if there is a saga genesis knock off of the classic edition like you did with the playstation classic as the fakestiation
A quick sneak peek: Nintendo started as a company that made gambling games for the yakuza, at one point tried love hotels, and it took them like a century to start breaking apart - now they're fine, other than their draconian legal policies, and some even claim it's Japan's richest company. SEGA was made by an American guy that tried luck with the very first arcades, and the company went (almost) bankrupt after drama in Japan due to losing a legal case for retaining people in a room until they accepted being fired (oh and there's something about the kidnapping of a developer's sister due to involvements with Nintendo) and they ended up merging with a pachinko company, Sammy. Capcom is Capcom, etc.
@@mjetektman9313 Activision Blizzard contains Sierra Entertainment with all the scandals and frauds that happened, that'd be a whole season of content ^_^
Oh I know Atari. They're the company responsible for massacrering my favorite franchise Roller Coaster Tycoon just to continue to release games when most of the fanbase lost interest ot just doesn't care due to how repeatedly bad they've become.
@@phet1211 yeah there Tycoon 3 which was pretty good. Tycoon 3d for 3ds which sucked. 4 which was a shitty mobile game. Tycoon world which I heard bombed and one more but I forget its name. There was also a mobile port of the classic games called Tycoon classic which I heard was acceptable.
@@phet1211 heck they released one for the Switch.... basically the mobile version shoehorned on the Switch almost as-is. Didn't play, won't play. If you're curious about who's making those, definitely not Chris Sawyer. He made 1 and 2, and 3 is heavily based on those (it's said to be mostly just incremental upgrades and full 3D graphics), the rest are something whatever else.
Nintendo, sony and, Xbox all evolved like real animals. Atari evolved like a pokemon. And Sega evolved like Digimon. and Magnavox, Celeco, Ea are going through a Evangelion type crisis. while apple is "Evolving, just backwards" Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk -Certified Zinnia fanboy
Hasbro didn't buy Atari from Trameil. The company was merged into a hard drive manufacturer, JTS and at that point ceased to exist. Hasbro simply bought the Atari assets like intellectual property from JTS. Atari, the company started in the 1970s, totally ended in the mid-90s. There was no company left - just trademarks and rights that Hasbro purchased.
Additionally, Infogrames/Atari went belly up around 2013 and many properties were sold off to try and climb back out of the red. The only thing they do own are the Flashback properties, Alone in the Dark, and Roller Coaster Tycoon.
The new Atari VCS is basically "Ouya Part II". The last thing that had an Atari logo on it that was good was "Rollercoaster Tycoon 3". All us Atari fans want is an actual re-release of the original Atari VCS and it's entire library of games on cartridges. We want the actual console back. But the problem really comes with the games. A LOT of the cartridges that gave that console it's life, and heart, were made by MANY different companies. There were dozens of companies making games for the Atari. That's why if a new Atari console came out, it would be missing half it's catalog. One only has to look back at the Atari Flashbacks to see that. All the games on the Flashbacks are either games made by only Atari, and cheap, crap, Atari rom hacks. The Flashbacks are not much better than those cheap Chinese 100000000000 games in one consoles where all the games are just hacked Nintendo or Sega games.
I do curious what is the largest ###-in-1 nes cartridge that have all its games working and none of the duplicates? I have encounter 20-in-1; 22-in-1; 42-in-1 (which combine both 20 & 22 -in-1 in single cartridge) and lastly 76-in-1 (have all the games of 42-in-1 plus another 34 games)
I'd say that NWN2 was the last good Atari release. After that, they sort of died off, left to a group of investors who bought the company and only seem to market on nostalgia instead of making more new good times.
@@NaviciaAbbot You're right with that. I forgot about NWN. This is funny considering that I just re-installed the first one on my computer with all it's official add on packs not more than two days ago. It's funny that the NWN community is still there and still making content for it. I never got into NW2 because after I installed it, I discovered that there was very little user made content for it, or nowhere NEAR the complete mountain of content that the first one had. I don't know if that's changed, but I really AM a builder and a creative when it comes to games like that. I prefer the building and creating much more than playing. This is the reason that to this day I still think that "The Adventure Construction Set" for the Commodore 64 is the best RPG maker that's ever been made right up till today. It lets you build, create, and customize EVERYTHING right in the interface.
They most likely assumed that the number of consoles sold in it’s shelf life being second only to PS2 ensured it would be available on the market in some form
Irving Gould killed Commodore. Atari died because it was too ahead of its time in the console space, and Moore's Law was in full force. Atari died, sure, but so did half of the home computer space, which was their golden goose. It also didn't help that atari's name was tainted in the states.
Warner seemed to be doing a pretty good job of killing Atari before Jack got his hands on it. It may have died sooner had he not bought them, but who knows. And without knowing what would be coming in the 90's, Jack's strategy of focusing on computers and putting video games on the back burner seemed reasonable at the time.
I haven't given that company a dime. When I want to play something from Atari, I'll pull out my VCS, Lynx, Jaguar (Shudder) or arcade compilations. People that invested in that vaporware were conned.
"What was the last thing they made that it affected you?" I'm not sure if they were the developers, but i clearly remember seeing their logo in that horrid Dragon Ball Z Sagas for the PS2.
This is something that he didn't touch on, yet it is one of the many reasons they remained relevant in the modern era and were able to generate cash flow. Dragon Ball (Z) is a cash cow franchise, like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. Atari hopped onto Dragon Ball hoping to gain that cash and they succeeded until they lost the rights several years later. Atari even footed the bill to publish Budokai 2 on Gamecube when Bandai had no plans to do so themselves possibly due to the allegedly low sales of the first Dragon Ball Z game on Gamecube in Japan. Atari is the only reason Budokai 2 was even on the Gamecube in North America and Europe and Atari knew that a worldwide release of the game would allow them to get profit.
Back when I was nine or ten I was given a Wheel of Fortune game on the Playstation 2 that happened to have Atari's logo on it. I had never heard of them before. My parents got into gaming via the SNES and SEGA Genesis.
Man, this doesn't even tell the whole story, missing stuff like how they've desperately milked the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise and tried to fund one of their games by recruiting crowd funders as investors.
@@2Scribble That was Steven Spielberg demanding the game be on store shelves in time for Christmas '82. In an interview just before its release, he was asked if the game was completed, he doubled down on people's awareness of the very short development window by saying, "Of course it's completed [...]" (paraphrased). You cannot imagine how aggressive the merchandising around E.T. really was if you're under a certain age. Atari wasn't even the only victim. Ever wondered why the first "Tron" film didn't capture the imagination of, well, everybody in 1982? It had to compete with E.T. showing in theaters at the same time.
No offense, but most Atari games are awful. Most Atari games were terrible games that were confusing to understand. And people will say, “ No that’s just ET.” No, ET was one of the better games on the 2600, considering it was made in 6 weeks by one guy, and was one of the few games that had a concrete goal outside of high scores
They're awful in *comparison*, but that's due to you knowing what you consider "better" games. Most games back then had dozens of variations which required a manual. These games weren't as "pick up and play" by any stretch.
I played the hell out Raiders Of The Lost Ark as a kid. Didn't really know what was going on. Didn't care either. I knew I was a pixel Indiana Jones. That's all that mattered.
Not true. As someone who’s first console was a 2600, I can tell you that the games were, in fact, not awful, but pretty fucking great. And the fact that I was 7 or 8 years old and figuring them out quite easily, as were many of my friends and cousins in the early 80’s, shows that they were actually NOT confusing. And by the way, ET sucked back then too.
Atari games are wayyy too primitive for anyone to appreciate who didn't play it back in the day. To most people who don't have nostalgia, playing 2600 games would be like trying to drive a Ford Model-A.
The only time Atari mattered to me is that they are the ones originally responsible for the Primal Rage fighting game. That's the first time encountered Atari. 😞 Still saddens me that Primal Rage 2 wasn't mass released during that time.
"Video games t-shirt company Atari" hehe that was savage, and well deserved (oh, not to mention the next reply!). What I just can't forgive (new) Atari for is what they did to Roller Coaster Tycoon. I have no nostalgia for the company, but can definitely respect the old Atari that was one of the most important companies on the video game industry... even when we consider the USA video game crash... oh well.
I’m so happy to see content outside of Just Bad Games and The Worst Ever Series. As much as I love both of those series, I miss the reviews, the hot takes, and I ESPECIALLY miss the Positives and Negatives series. Hopefully this marks a return to form for Rerez.
The Atari VCS (Video Computer System) was marketed under that name during its first few years in the market until the release of its follow up the Atari 5200 at which point the VCS was renamed the Atari 2600 ( the 5200 was followed by the 7800, the final in that line). Most people call it the 2600 these days but some old school gamers who had the original version in the first few years of its release call it the VCS. There was also a cost and sized reduced version know as the 2600 Jr. that came out in the mid 80s.
Hasbro atari was awesome, they made those 3d pong and frogger games for pc. So much character. This is very different from usual content but I love it!
@@rerez I wonder how big their arcade business still is, too. Far as I've heard, that business never died in the slightest, the year they went third party.
Not even talking about the whole Yakuza actual involvement stories out there, I don't mean the game, I do mean the real world mafia. Those are stories of course but dunno how far they're real, as far as I know they do make pachinko machines.
It's not a giant like EA, TakeTwo or Activision, but Sega is still considered a major publisher. Its name still carries some weight and they do still put out some good products.
You’re not gonna talk about the 1980s video game crash? and how they were FORCED to switch to computers? Or how Nintendo really had to force their way into the American video game market? Just gonna skip over that huh?
This actually really helped me understand what's going on, I was so confused on how this is even Atari. Apparently it's just an imposter selling out to be relavant. Quite a sad story.
At least the roller coaster going from left to right on the Frontier logo was cool, but dang it that Atari logo was loud indeed. Still play the original RCT3 on CD here, still works on Windows 10.
When I told my dad that Atari was making a return with the new CVS, he got really excited even though he doesn't care about the new gaming consoles or the new gaming world. I think I'm not going to tell him about all this, just to still keep him excited until the console releases. We'll see what happens after that, and if it's any good, then I'll be sure to buy it cuz I know this is the only gaming my father will also enjoy with me 😄
We definitely don’t at this point. They’re not Atari of Sunnyvale. They’re just a name that gets slapped on crap to fool people nostalgic for their past.
6:42 Just imagine the logo he's talking about is the SEGA logo and I can relate :D I like the message of this video. So many people have had their nostalgia milked in the form of money by new owners of classic IPs. There's a retro gaming market that grows ever so popular ever since AVGN inspired countless copycat channels (this one included) to do what he did. And naturally, people are trying to exploit that market, and retro gamers' nostalgia.
Milking nostalgia is pretty much a constant. You know you're old when you hear a favorite song from your teen years used in an ad for health products :)
Had an atari growing up, but my older cousin (he lived with us) was addicted to it and my dad sold it. This was before Nintendo entertainment system existed. That crowd funding system didn't get my attention.
AFAIK, people regarded Atari Games (the arcade division) as the true successor of the original Atari, as they kept making arcade games such as Marble Madness, Primal Rage and Mace: The Dark Age to name a few titles. They also distributed games developed by other companies such as Gaelco's World Rally and Radikal Bikers, as well as Toaplan's Knuckle Bash...
"Sony is still the same company" You haven't been reading the same press releases I have. They cut off their own sacks the moment they moved to Cuckifornia.
Infogrames ... The name that make us (French) screeeeaaaaam in terror !!! They created some of the most terrible European comics videogame ports ! 😱 And "modern specs"... for an average chromebook maybe.
Considering how "well-adept" Infogrames (I rather not call them by their current name) has been with such "classics" like Alone in the Dark: Illumination and the buggy launch of Driv3r, I'm expecting the same disaster with the VCS.
@@natenbox64 aaaah infograms... the company that turned our european comics heroes into some kind of dungeon mistresses ! lol You like pain young player ? No ? Too bad cause this is not a place to have fun ! mwahahaha ! You never fully recover ! 😭
I'm an Atari fan in 2020. Some of my favorites are Pitfall, River Raid, and Laser Volley. I especially like the homebrew games from Atariage. Games like Draconian, Scramble, Juno First, and Lady Bug are pretty good.
This is good information you have brought to light. As a hardcore gamer as I am, I never knew this backstory. I knew it was sold and bought again and again but "That Atari is not This Atari" I never knew. Thanks a lot for this valuable information.
Now the VCS is discontinued but a new console is coming, along with a handheld and an arcade mini You kinda skipped over the crash. Atari made bad choices like rushing ET out in five weeks and getting cocky on PacMan. People hated them. Other consoles came out like Intellivision and Colecovision and Atari couldn’t stop all the shovelware. People got skittish about games and although the 5200 came out, it couldn’t play 2600 games. The adapter came late. People thought games were a dead fad and were over. In the US anyway. And Atari kept screwing up…it wasn’t able to make a deal with Nintendo or Sega for their consoles and the president didn’t launch the 7800 til after Nintendo grabbed the market. But the 7800 didn’t have enough good games and wasn’t as good as the NES. Their computer repackaged as a console was decent and did launch Flight Simulator but it again had fewer games and was more expensiv. Lynx ate batteries like crazy and was more expensive then Game Boy. Then they kinda lied about Jaguar. It was ok but couldn’t compete with snes and Genesis/Mega Drive.
i hope the only reason there doing the extremely high 400 dollar price tag is to stay above water in money so they dont die then if people buy it it would atleast be 200 dollars
Atari hotel at 2 minutes in omg. This is presented quite well. I loved the ending parts about the people teaching their successors in the other companies and your "advice" to the current Atari.
so what you're saying is that against these companies that started in something else and then became prominent in gaming, Atari started in gaming and then became something else. Right then. Realtalk I knew the current Atari was just wearing the skin of old Atari but I didn't know that happened _two other times._ Great informative video. I don't know why this is all coming off as sarcastic; I'm being sincere.
As a recipient of an Atari 2600 as a Christmas present, it's hard to describe the "magic" of controlling what was on the TV screen. At the very beginning, it didn't matter much if you were playing pong or some other Atari 2600 game... you were controlling what was on the screen... THAT was the fun... at least at the start.
But if you're wondering who owns the IPs to arcade titles developed by Atari Games (the arcade division)? Well, Warner Bros. owns them all so yeah, its a clusterfuck of rights holders there...
When I saw one of those somehow-still-existent videogame magazine websites claim that Atari was going to "rain on the PS5's parade" by launching their new console the same day, I almost died laughing. Keep on journalisming, guys.
Infogrames was a big part of my childhood. They were the publishers of the Humongous Entertainment games. Pajama Sam, Putt-Putt, Backyard Sports, and multiple other games were some of the first gaming experiences I had, and the majority of them are still fun to this day.
It more or less is, especially compared to Atari. The move of their HQ to California had questionable results but I'm not one to hate censorship purely due to it being censorship.
It's funny - how you feel about Atari SA is how I always felt about Atari. I was a nerd as a kid and, even though I knew nothing about computers (there weren't any, at least not outside of academia), it seemed underpowered even then. Also, the fact that you couldn't program the 2600 yourself and the cartridges were expensive and of rapidly declining quality meant that I never wanted one. Now, the ZX80 I would have purchased but by the time I could afford it, the C64 was available. Then when Atari came out with the ST, it seemed like a cut-down Amiga so that didn't appeal either.