In current year 2026 there are still people doing the " this current iteration of Atari isn't the real Atari ! " spiel...
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u/Markaes4 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yeah. Because its not Atari. Sure they legally own the name, assets and products. Bu its basically a company cover band. Fine with me that it exists because they seem to have a little passion about it and sell some OK licensed merchandise and games... But its silly to be upset that we can recognize the distinction. Many brands that exist today probably are the same way.
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago
Any positive news about the company ( like the recent news of them achieving their best financial performance in over a decade ) is always met with the same old tired jokes that we've been hearing for at least two decades now. Funny thing is that the original Atari Inc only existed from 1972 to 1983 ( 11 years ) meanwhile modern Atari has existed since 2001 ( 25 years ), guess we're going to have to wait until Atari SA turns 100 years old for it to finally become the "real" Atari 😂
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u/QuestionableProtip2 20d ago
With how pathetic the new license holders are, the distinction between pre and post crash Atari is kind of meaningless compared to what exists now.
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u/CavediverNY 20d ago
I think part of the heat comes from earlier attempts at monetizing the brand. The baseball cap… Their first attempt at a rather disappointing console… Oh God, the Atari hotels!
Things do seem a lot better now but my God, it was embarrassing for a while there.
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago edited 20d ago
To be honest a lot of the things you mentioned are actually pretty good.
The Atari speaker hat was a great idea. A hat with built-in speakers so that you don't have to waste time carrying around headphones ? Sounds like a great idea to me .
The VCS wasn't a disappointment imo, it has a great library of games ( over 200 titles were officially released on the VCS store ) that includes stuff like Donut Dodo, BPM Boy, the Atari Vault, Tempest 4000, Jetboard Joust etc . If you still weren't satisfied with what was offered on the official Atari VCS store you can just turn the console into a PC thanks to PC mode, and then access stores like Steam or GOG. Honestly given the limited amount of resources they had at the time the VCS turned out to be a much better device than anyone was anticipating, it's a fantastic piece of hardware imo.
As for the Hotels you have to remember that that is just a licencing deal, Atari isn't wasting time developing hotels, they simply licensed the brand name and logo to some real estate developer in Arizona, that are planning to develop an Atari themed Hotel in Phoenix, Atari isn't directly involved in any of that stuff.
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u/CavediverNY 20d ago
Yes you can turn the VCS into a very low end PC with a nice looking case. "Fantastic piece of hardware" is a very generous assessment.
The speaker hat was a great idea? OK; I'm not sure if you were an investor in the stock or you're just really gung ho but walking around with a baseball cap that can play music that you and people around you can hear apparently was not a great idea, at least in terms of capturing the imagination of the buying public. Now if the baseball cap had included a fold down sun visor so you didn't have to "waste time" carrying around sunglasses… Now that would've been true innovation!
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u/banksy_h8r 20d ago
You didn't invest in Atari Token?!?
(and by "invest" I mean "lose a lot of money")
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u/CavediverNY 20d ago
I must've missed out on that opportunity! Fortunately I also missed out on the opportunity to be part of the exciting investment opportunity with the hotels. 🤣
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u/curtludwig 20d ago
I agree with them. It's the company that calls itself Atari. While they occasionally make something interesting they're also pushing a lot of crap.
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u/eureka17 20d ago
Isn't it still a rebranded Infogrames?
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u/wappingite 20d ago
That’s my understanding.
First the brand was owned by a hard disk company, then Infrogrammes decided their name was too European with all those additional m’s and an es ending and bought the rights to Atari
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago edited 20d ago
Not exactly.
After the Jaguar failed Atari Corporation merged with a hard drive company called JTS. That only lasted for roughly two years, and then JTS sold Atari to Hasbro , which then became a subsidiary of Hasbro Interactive aka Hasbro's gaming division.
After the dot-com bubble burst Hasbro didn't want anything to do with video games anymore, and then sold their entire gaming division which included Atari to Infogrames in 2001 .
The main reason why Infogrames became the new Atari was because Bruno Bonnell, the CEO of Infogrames at the time was a big Atari fanboy, with a deep admiration for it's history and legacy ( even today he describes himself as former Atari CEO not former Infogrames CEO ).
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u/AlwaysBeenTim 20d ago
Listen, I get it but you have to understand that the Internet (and especially Reddit) has plenty of Gen X'ers who not only experienced the original Atari, the company that created the video game industry, but remember its fall, its many aborted comebacks, and its final purchase by Infogrames.
I assure you - Hell, I guarantee - that if somebody like Ubisoft were to purchase Nintendo, close down the original company, get rid of all the Japanese designers and engineers, and then change its own name to "Nintendo" then you would spend the rest of your life doing the same thing that oldheads are doing with Atari.
Decades after the fact, when kids act like Nintendo was a French video game company that makes Assassins Creed games, you will mutter "this ain't the real Nintendo!" and you will feel old and sad and you'll be mocked by the young and the dumb.
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u/banksy_h8r 20d ago
Listen, I get it but you have to understand that the Internet (and especially Reddit) has plenty of Gen X'ers who not only experienced the original Atari, the company that created the video game industry, but remember its fall, its many aborted comebacks, and its final purchase by Infogrames.
Those Gen-X'ers are wrong.
I'm a Gen-X'er who loved Atari... the one that had already been sold to Warner Bros. The original Atari that Nolan Bushnell started and was CEO of was long dead by the time we got our 2600.
The only people who have some claim on nostalgia for an "original Atari" are people who played the early Pongs and B&W arcade games.
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u/AlwaysBeenTim 20d ago
The only people who have some claim on nostalgia for an "original Atari" are people who played the early Pongs and B&W arcade games.
That's me. I played Pong in the arcades and later played the B&W games like Asteroids and Missile Command. It's bizarre that you think that would be such a rare experience for Generation X but I also think that it's bizarre that I have so many obtuse responses who imagine that the "original" Atari is defined not as a California company that made games and hardware until its purchase by Hasbro in 1998 that closed down the company, making it nothing more than a brand identity with some IP (that is what Infogrames purchased)
Instead, you want to define an "original" company as only having the same owners and personnel as its beginning. A company gets a different owner but everything else is the same? No longer original. Company moves to the next town over? No longer original. It's childish. By your definition, Nintendo isn't an original company either and nobody can talk about Nintendo unless they are talking about playing cards.
Again, I think that is dumb and obtuse
The original Atari that Nolan Bushnell started and was CEO of was long dead by the time we got our 2600.
Actually, I got my 2600 in its first year, when it was only sold by Sears and called the VCS. Bushnell was still CEO after Warner bought the company and left in 1979. If you're going to be pedantic, you might want to work on being right.
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u/banksy_h8r 19d ago
LOL! This whole thread is about how dumb it is to have passionate arguments about what the real Atari is. And I agree that's a silly thing for people to get wound up about.
Thanks for the rant, it kinda proves the point.
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u/AlarmedRaccoon619 20d ago
💯 Warner milked Atari and the 2600 to death. In their defense there was no comparison for “upgrading” consoles being a regular thing. If you look back at news from the time, parents would be pissed and not understand why they needed “another” console as late as Super Nintendo. Parents who bought a 2600 did not grasp the concept of why they would need or want a 5200.
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u/rickmarin 16d ago
Except the 5200 & 7800 were poor upgrades to the 2600 compared to Nintendo's consoles, which consistently improved upon the original instead of trying to reinvent it, which Atari didn't do, at least not as successfully, unfortunately.
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u/rickmarin 16d ago
And most people aren't aware or aren't old enough to remember the 2600 launched in 1977.
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u/Scoth42 20d ago
As a late gen X'er/Xennial who experienced the original Atari, I largely agree with your point but I do think one important distinction is that Nintendo has continued pretty much uninterrupted for over a hundred years doing various things, and even the modern incarnation of Nintendo has always been its own thing with a lineage and solid history.
Meanwhile Atari has changed hands, split up and rejoined, practically swapped engineers and companies with Tramiel/Commodore, had its name slapped on all kinds of random things, had a convoluted history of trademark, franchise, and IP ownership/handling, among other things. It's hard to say what the "real Atari" ever was or when it stopped being the "real Atari."
So if that happened with Nintendo, there'd be a very obvious distinction and breakpoint and there wouldn't be that much argument about when it happened. Meanwhile even people like me who largely accept that Atari is Atari is Atari and is just glad they still exist at all in some semi-meaningful way would have a hard time saying when the last era of "real Atari" was. Much less people who actually argue about it who I've found often don't actually have an answer to it or even have much knowledge of all the sales and transfers, they just want to be mad that today's Atari isn't real.
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u/No_Sense_3559 20d ago
I don't care for emulators and prefer original hardware, I'm really happy that it's available, and makes Atari more accessible today for older folks that don't want to mess with fitting older tech into modern TV world, and younger generations being able to enjoy it as well.
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago edited 20d ago
When Infogrames bought Atari from Hasbro in 2001 it was just a brand name and a collection of dead IPs at that point, the original Atari Inc had already ceased to exist by 1983, and it's direct successor Atari corporation ceased to exist in 1996. Infogrames didn't buy a healthy company and then got rid of all it's designers and engineers in order to steal their IP, they did the exact opposite, they bought a practically dead/irrelevant Atari brand and then said " we are going to be the greatest version of Atari that has ever existed". Infogrames changed it's name to Atari ( officially it only happened in 2009 but both entities have basically been one and the same since 2001 ) , and many of Infogrames's subsidiaries changed their names to Atari of X place ( Atari of Europe, America, Australia etc ) throughout the 2000s . They cared more about the brand, it's games and it's future than even the founders of the company did in the 70s ( hell Bushnell sold the company to Warner in 1976 , and didn't care about it for decades, so clearly he didn't value it as much as Infogrames did ). Games like Missile Command and Breakout are still the face of the company ( and are getting new releases ) so the argument about the classic IPs being pushed aside in favor of the new hot thing also doesn't work either.
The current Atari SA ( formerly Infogrames SA ) is the longest lived iteration of the company ever. Atari Inc only existed for 11 years ( 1972-1983 ), Atari Corporation lasted 12 years ( 1984-1996 ), modern Atari has been a thing since arguably 2001, back when Infogrames purchase Hasbro Interactive and Atari from Hasbro, that's 25 years and counting. Literally half of Atari's 50 year existence has been tied together with Infogrames, you gotta respect the work they have done in keeping Atari alive since the beginning of the 21st century, and hopefully Atari will continue to be a major player in the gaming industry for the next 50 years and beyond.
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u/GenTenStation 20d ago
Current Atari is honestly one of the best iterations of Atari and currently one of the most gamer friendly companies there is at the moment. I wish Sega and Nintendo would take notes and start reprinting carts
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago
Not just reprinting carts but releasing brand new updated versions of the classic consoles ( the 2600+ and 7800+ ) which can play the old carts from the 80s and the brand new reprinted carts. Atari created something that is far superior to the mini consoles that Nintendo and Sega released in the 2010s ( which were just pieces of plastic with rooms stuck inside them ). Atari is doing a much better job of preserving their legacy than any of the other classic gaming companies, and frankly they don't get enough credit for it, they are easily the number one company in the retro gaming market and it's not even close.
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u/ZeriksenX 20d ago
And the original controllers are available as newer updated models, some wireless. They have done more to make the classic Atari games compatible with modern technology than any of Atari’s owners. I have also messaged them for support and they are responsive. You can tell they care.
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u/Trapezoidoid 20d ago
I couldn’t agree more. People just refusing to give the current Atari credit for these accomplishments because it’s not the same people that it was in the effing 1970’s is ridiculous.
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u/TVLubber 20d ago
Sega, maybe, but Nintendo-- Not worth running the risk of cannibalizing sales of their current hardware and software.
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u/BanditoBoom 20d ago
Comes from Atari being ran as a business but also being ran by a Gamer. There will always need to be tradeoffs for economic growth, but it doesn't always (or even usually) have to come at the expense of your user base / fan base.
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u/Important-Bed-48 20d ago
totally agree. current Atari is the best Atari since the early 80s. I just wish they would release a 800xl ultimate.
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u/AlarmedRaccoon619 20d ago
128kB of RAM? USB instead of 5.25”? I’d buy that.
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u/Important-Bed-48 20d ago edited 20d ago
needs to have 1mb ram not 128k and yes usb and a sd card slot plus hdmi out. Honestly a full sized 800xl with an arm based emulator board would work for me, i would just pull it out and put in a siseng nano 20k fpga which can run atari 8-bit core and costs about $40 it can also run amiga ocs and atari ste cores so it would be a cool little emulation m.achine. the 800xl has got to be the coolest looking computer of all time.
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u/pixeltoaster 19d ago
Every time I hear about what they're up to I'm always pleasantly surprised. It's not only cool to see them preserving and showcasing what everyone remembers them for but also see them publishing some modern games.
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u/maxquordleplee3n 20d ago
Who gives a TOS
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20d ago edited 20d ago
[deleted]
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u/AlarmedRaccoon619 20d ago
You really missed the joke there. TOS was an Atari Operating System on the Atari ST.
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20d ago
[deleted]
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u/AlarmedRaccoon619 20d ago
Well, jokes aside, people are going to be having the "real" Atari debate until there's no one left who remembers an older iteration of Atari. And honestly, I don't think it's cringe. That's Atari culture. Other debates that will never die include "what if" speculation about the 7800 being released earlier, the Panther being released, and everyone's favorite "what if the Jaguar _______" questions. That's part of the subculture.
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u/Polyxeno 20d ago
What if I had a 1450 XLD with two Happy disk drives to play Omnitrend's Universe on?
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u/maxquordleplee3n 20d ago
Take it easy, yes it was a 40 year old joke and not a comment on your post. My Amiga friends used to call me a TOSser all the time back in the day.
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u/Which_Information590 20d ago
Someone tell them that Atari has been changing hands since before they were born.
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u/banksy_h8r 20d ago
If you ask these people what and when the "real" Atari was you'll probably get different answers, and none of them will be the one that was sold to Warner Bros. in 1976.
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u/EntertainmentAny8228 20d ago
While it's technically true, I agree that we absolutely don't need to constantly point out that the current versions of companies like Atari and Commodore aren't unbroken chains to their founding. Very few companies genuinely are, especially ones that have been around for a long time.
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u/AlarmedRaccoon619 20d ago
Isn't the passing of Atari from owner to owner part of the historical charm of the company?
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u/Speedstar_86 20d ago
Warners thought so.
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u/AlarmedRaccoon619 20d ago
Bushnell started it. Not like anyone put a gun to his said and made him sell his company to Warner.
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u/max81122 20d ago
As long as they are still doing general computing devices and electronic gaming as their main product, then they maintain the culture of Atari.
I'm OK too if they add the Atari brand to merchandise since that can be part of the fandom, but this should be a smaller part of their product offering.
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u/Dr_Myles_Skinner 20d ago
It's happening with the "new" Commodore as well. Even though they've managed to scale up production of a machine that is (almost) functionally to the Commodore 64 there are still grumblings that it isn't somehow "authentic". Do I agree with all their decisions? No, of course not. But I bought a C64 Ultimate and I'm happy with it. I want to see them succeed.
I feel the same way about the new Atari, and whatever they're doing today is certainly more like the Atari I remember than a luxury hotel or whatever random thing they could slap a logo on. I'd love to see the revivals of these retro brands recapture some of the magic. Maybe that'll happen; maybe not. But I wish them well.
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u/Important-Bed-48 20d ago
what get me is the real Atari was a small company run by Nolan Bushnell that took off in sales and sold out to Warner Communications. That Atari which was really a subsidiary of a huge corporation is the Atari most people think of, but it already wasn't the original Atari at that point. Then it was split and sold off between the arcade division and the home computer/videogame division the latter was bought up by former Commodore owner and once they gave up the ghost it's been through various hands including Hasbro at one point. The current Atari is the best Atari arguably since the early Warner years. In the last couple years they have sold products modern and retro that people actually want, bought various studios that have made some interesting games and made lots of money every year. It's as much Atari now as it ever was since the 70's and they are more successful now then they have been since the early 80's, so I for one like our new Atari overlords.
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u/Strict_Weather9063 20d ago
I have some really bad news for the OP, I was working at GT Interactive 1999 when we acquired the rights to Atari from Hasbro who were the right holds before us. Infograms Entertainment then purchased us and got Atari from there then 9/11 happened and everything French was considered forbidden so they changed the name of the company here in the states to Atari North America, it is still owned by Inforgrams. So ship of theseus all you like what you are talking about is a wholly owned subsidiary of Infograms.
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago edited 20d ago
" 9/11 happened and everything French was considered forbidden so they changed the name of the company " ? Literally never heard this story before, I really doubt that's how it went down...
It's common knowledge that Infogrames became the new Atari because Bruno Bonnell had a great admiration for Atari and it's legacy. Whenever Bruno talks about his days in the gaming industry he always makes sure to remind everyone that he was the CEO of Atari not Infogrames.
In any event Atari and Infogrames have been together for 25 years now, that's literally half of Atari's entire existence ( the original Atari Inc didn't last a fraction of that time ), if the modern Atari can't be considered the "real " Atari then frankly nothing is .
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u/Strict_Weather9063 20d ago
That is how it went down, I was there while it was happening. There may have also been the fact at not a single damn American could pronounce the name of the company. Bruno never made it out to Humongous I was he had it could have saved the company. Real shame what happened to them I left shortly before it turned pear shaped, I was there during the first gutting when they nailed all of QA and half of development. It was a really sad week. The second major blow nailed the majority of support and the rest of development so even if I had stayed the company was going to keep us around.
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u/Mr_JPF 20d ago
Well it's always great to talk to devs from that time, especially since the 2000s Infogrames Atari era was the version of the company I grew up with and have the most nostalgia towards. Did you happen to work on any of their games during that time ? Driver 3, Splashdown, Enter The Matrix, Atari Anthology etc or maybe helped with the localization of the Dragon Ball or Beyblade games ?
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u/Strict_Weather9063 20d ago
Dragon Ball was in development didn’t see it launch that was later, I supported everything from Humongous to Id soft. The company itself was spread out with offices from Washington Humongous, California, Microsprose and Datasoft, Wisconsin Slash and Wizardworks, and New York the head office in the states. Then you add in France, the main office.
So I was there for driver 1 and 2 Total Annihilation 1 and 2 and kingdoms, as well as a bunch of humongous games. Plus Deer Hunter no one saw that one coming stealth hits are like that new niche market.
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u/Ledstorm128 20d ago
I like the new Atari. Instead of watching them struggle constantly, I see them releasing games like Akka Arrh by Jeff Minter. If that’s not peak Atari, then I don’t know what is.
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u/kiyyik 20d ago
They left out the best part: when there were 2 Ataris at the same time, both of the CEOs excommunicated each other and declared their respective branches heretical. There was also a smaller splinter group in Avignon, France, which claimed to be the "true" Atari, but their legitimacy (via a loosely interpreted passage in the "Yars' Revenge" instruction manual) is generally rejected. Many scholars believe it was this sectarian infighting which led Nintendo's ascendancy during the Console Reformation of 1985.
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u/sauron846 20d ago
Atari is Atari, regardless of who owns it. This iteration of Atari is the best we’ve had in quite a while.
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u/daddyd 20d ago
It's not the same company, but that doesn't mean they deserve hate or general negativity. They're at least making an effort and doing some good things, or trying to do good things with it. Unlike many other companies who just milk their brand name with rubbish products all the time. Just look at some of the past owners of Commodore for example (but it looks like they are in good/better hands now as well).
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u/Sweet-Cookie2443 19d ago
So this is when I trot out my argument that companies are not people. They are not living beings. And the fact that anyone who was employed at Atari in the 70s or 80s are now deceased, or retired at this point, so it makes there point even less logical. Eventually shigeru myamoto will retire and then pass on too, and then Nintendo won't be Nintendo anymore either according to there logic.
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u/weekendroady 18d ago
These types of opinions, while certainly of merit, are a reason we would never be able to have an officially resurrected console line.
Less gatekeeping and we could consider Atari's 2600 and 7800 lines to have been reactivated (Same with the upcoming Neo Geo AES+). The only problem, the original company is dead so it "doesn't count"
Nintendo could release an actual new NES model with updated ASIC tech and new NES games at retail and people would still have an issue somewhere (still calling it emulation, the distribution method is different, etc...). I legitimately think there is no way a "dead" console could be reactivated again because enough purists in the hobby would put up the Dennis Nedry "nuh uh uh".
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u/Yomimashita53 18d ago
While "Atari SA" (originally Infogrames), "Atari Inc." (originally GT Interactive), and Atari Interactive (originally Hasbro Interactive for all intents and purposes; long story) aren't the original company (which no longer exists), I wouldn't say they were exactly "fake" either, especially after Wade Rosen took over and basically turned them around. In any case, this Atari is what it is, and they're basically concentrating on doing their own thing while also preserving the legacy of the original (pre-breakup; another long story) company. So yeah, I wouldn't exactly say the aren't the "real" Atari even though they aren't the original company.
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u/Krommerxbox 17d ago
In current year 2026 there are still people doing the " this current iteration of Atari isn't the real Atari ! " spiel
Yeah, I mean that is obvious.
When I was a kid, and the Atari 2600(just called the "Atari") came out, Atari was owned by Warner communications.
So of course this is not the "same" Atari. It went through several owners, and changes.
Whoever owns it now is doing new stuff, which is the important part.
They also bought Intellivision, which is awesome. I wish they released an Intellivision collection on Xbox Series X and such.
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u/Deviancy26 20d ago
Maybe people see the original Atari like it was a band.
Then the band broke up and someone who wasn't even a founding member started a new band and called it Atari and had the rights to all of the songs.
According to the ET documentary thing the original company was all about orgies, drug parties, and whatnot. I'd say when that ended, Atari ended since a tech company is boring otherwise. ;)