Atari
The company that presently owns the Atari title and logos has determined to provide house owners of the previous Atari Video Computer System (aka the Atari 2600) one thing new to do. Mr. Run and Jump is a new Atari-published platformer that is coming to classic Atari consoles in cartridge kind, full with a field and instruction guide. Preorders for the cartridge start on July 31 for $59.99.
The model of Mr. Run and Jump coming to the 2600 is a primitive model of a a lot different-looking sport with the identical title that is coming to PCs and all main sport consoles on July 25. We’ve acquired at hand it to Atari right here—as a PR gambit for a new sport, porting a tough model of your sport to a 46-year-old sport console after which giving it a bodily launch full with field and guide is fairly good.
Atari is billing this launch as “the primary 2600 cartridge launch for a new Atari title since 1990,” although there have additionally been some limited-run cartridge releases for video games like 2005’s Yars’ Return. There have been additionally a few new 2600-inspired video games and remakes, together with Vctr Sctr, in Atari’s Fiftieth-anniversary assortment, which additionally acquired a bodily launch on fashionable consoles.
Here is Mr. Run and Jump, operating and leaping in all his blocky glory.
Atari
Although fashionable sport growth for the 2600, NES, Game Boy, and different retro consoles are largely the provenance of homebrew builders working in emulators, bodily cartridge releases aren’t unusual. Limited Run Games and different impartial and crowdfunded outfits have launched loads of bodily cartridges for previous consoles, together with a Smash Bros-style NES sport that features a Wi-Fi chip to assist on-line play.
To keep away from the issue of unsold stock—one thing the previous Atari had some expertise with—most of those bodily releases go up for preorder, after which the company makes roughly as many cartridges because it has preorders for. That appears to be the route that Atari is utilizing for the Mr. Run and Jump launch.
Atari however not Atari
Today’s Atari has completely nothing to do with the company that launched the Atari VCS in 1977, and the model’s historical past and possession defies a straightforward abstract. After the online game crash in 1983, the previous Atari was break up into two divisions by father or mother company Warner Communications and offered. Atari Games continued the arcade enterprise, and Atari Corporation managed house console releases.
Atari Corporation took a few unsuccessful stabs on the console market within the late ’80s and early ’90s with consoles just like the Jaguar and the Lynx. It in the end merged with a now-defunct producer of unreliable laborious drives in 1996 earlier than being offered to Hasbro Interactive in 1998. Hasbro was purchased by Infogrames Entertainment in 2001, which dropped the “Infogrames” title in favor of “Atari” in 2009. That company’s US operations, already many levels faraway from the unique Atari, filed for chapter in 2013. The company that emerged is the one which’s nonetheless working as “Atari” as we speak, and it is linked to the previous company by its title and its logos and never a lot else.
This model of Atari primarily focuses on nostalgia performs, like this Fiftieth-anniversary assortment, bodily reissues of probably the most well-known Atari 2600 video games, or this $300 Ryzen-based mini PC-slash-retro console. The company’s focus in 2023 has been on buying defunct IP for re-releases and potential sequels.
The company has additionally engaged in different less-savory actions, like making authorized threats in opposition to different builders, getting into the “social on line casino” gaming market, and a non-specific dedication to blockchain-based applied sciences. The official Twitter account for this “Atari X” initiative tweeted once about an NFT in September 2022 and has been silent since; it has 13 followers.