Atari VCS - the upcoming video game system no one cares about

[Pee Cola]

I actually intend to switch to a 400 for my main computer, to get away from Windows, it looks like a proper retro computer fitted for the modern age anyways.

In at least one interview, Eben Upton from the Raspberry Pi Foundation stated that the RPi 400 was heavily inspired by the Amiga A600. Makes sense, given that that the RPi 400 looks a bit like an A600 shrunken down to the size of the original 48k ZX Spectrum. Meanwhile I ordered my RPi 400 almost two months ago and it's still not here... gah

The only Atari VCS I will buy must have:
- MOS Technology 6507 CPU
- 128 Bytes of RAM
- Woodgrain chassis

View attachment 1808776
*Mustachioed 70s dad optional.

I guess a 4-switch Darth Vader 2600 wouldn't count?

 

[Pickle Dick]

Cyberpunk 2077 apparently runs like crap on the VCS

 

[Xarpho]

Atari are made up of a bunch of scumbag cocksuckers that rip off any and everyone. They've been doing this shit for years.

Who knows what Atari even is anymore? So, as a quick recap...
- Original Atari broken up in 1984 by parent company Warner Communications
- Kept arcade division as "Atari Games", bounces around for a while (including making games for the NES as Tengen) but eventually ends up with Midway, disappears before company goes under
- Meanwhile, most of the Atari assets in 1984 are sold to Jack Tramiel's company, which is renamed as "Atari Corp."
- Atari Corp. merges with JT Storage with Atari legally the surviving entity but changes to JTS Corp.
- JTS Corp. sells Atari brand to Hasbro, goes out of business a year later
- The Hasbro Interactive brand uses Atari brand in a few things before selling entire division to French company Infogrames in 2001
- Infogrames restructures U.S. division with two American subsidiaries, "Atari Interactive" (Hasbro Interactive) and "Atari Inc." (the old GT Interactive/U.S. Infogrames subsidiary) in 2003
- Infogrames renames French mothership company as Atari (Atari SA) in 2009
- Atari goes bankrupt in 2013 and basically sells off its back catalog it had acquired over the years (Hasbro Interactive, GT Interactive, Accolade, Humongous, MicroProse, Spectrum Holobyte)
- Remaining company is running on fumes of nostalgia and mobile trash, all of their "new" games have been rated poorly

 

[BrunoMattei]

Who knows what Atari even is anymore? So, as a quick recap...
- Original Atari broken up in 1984 by parent company Warner Communications
- Kept arcade division as "Atari Games", bounces around for a while (including making games for the NES as Tengen) but eventually ends up with Midway, disappears before company goes under
- Meanwhile, most of the Atari assets in 1984 are sold to Jack Tramiel's company, which is renamed as "Atari Corp."
- Atari Corp. merges with JT Storage with Atari legally the surviving entity but changes to JTS Corp.
- JTS Corp. sells Atari brand to Hasbro, goes out of business a year later
- The Hasbro Interactive brand uses Atari brand in a few things before selling entire division to French company Infogrames in 2001
- Infogrames restructures U.S. division with two American subsidiaries, "Atari Interactive" (Hasbro Interactive) and "Atari Inc." (the old GT Interactive/U.S. Infogrames subsidiary) in 2003
- Infogrames renames French mothership company as Atari (Atari SA) in 2009
- Atari goes bankrupt in 2013 and basically sells off its back catalog it had acquired over the years (Hasbro Interactive, GT Interactive, Accolade, Humongous, MicroProse, Spectrum Holobyte)
- Remaining company is running on fumes of nostalgia and mobile trash, all of their "new" games have been rated poorly

The big thing that pisses me off is that they own or at least co-own the Blood IP.

Nightdive would still be putting out patches for Fresh Supply to this day and several good devs (like Devolver Digital) would have made Blood sequels had it not been for Atari.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

The big thing that pisses me off is that they own or at least co-own the Blood IP.

Nightdive would still be putting out patches for Fresh Supply to this day and several good devs (like Devolver Digital) would have made Blood sequels had it not been for Atari.

The worst thing is that Infogrames were pretty fucking solid before they decided to buy the cursed monkey paw that is the Atari brand. If Bonnell wasn't a complete retard they would be in Ubisoft's position right now, they were the French powerhouse while Ubisoft still dabbled in Raymans.

But he was well known retard.

PARIS, April 5 2007 (Reuters) - Shares in Europe's largest video games group Infogrames Entertainment IFOE.PA jumped 24 percent on Thursday as investors hoped the cash-stretched group would take a new direction as its founding chairman and chief executive, Bruno Bonnell, left the company after 24 years.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Who knows what Atari even is anymore? So, as a quick recap...
- Original Atari broken up in 1984 by parent company Warner Communications
- Kept arcade division as "Atari Games", bounces around for a while (including making games for the NES as Tengen) but eventually ends up with Midway, disappears before company goes under
- Meanwhile, most of the Atari assets in 1984 are sold to Jack Tramiel's company, which is renamed as "Atari Corp."
- Atari Corp. merges with JT Storage with Atari legally the surviving entity but changes to JTS Corp.
- JTS Corp. sells Atari brand to Hasbro, goes out of business a year later
- The Hasbro Interactive brand uses Atari brand in a few things before selling entire division to French company Infogrames in 2001
- Infogrames restructures U.S. division with two American subsidiaries, "Atari Interactive" (Hasbro Interactive) and "Atari Inc." (the old GT Interactive/U.S. Infogrames subsidiary) in 2003
- Infogrames renames French mothership company as Atari (Atari SA) in 2009
- Atari goes bankrupt in 2013 and basically sells off its back catalog it had acquired over the years (Hasbro Interactive, GT Interactive, Accolade, Humongous, MicroProse, Spectrum Holobyte)
- Remaining company is running on fumes of nostalgia and mobile trash, all of their "new" games have been rated poorly

Goddam

At that point just let the entire brand, name, and everything else related to Atari die off forever. It seems to be cursed and can't succeed at anything after the 2600's legacy

 

[Don'tCare]

The hardware is surprisingly not terrible. It's weaker versions of what is in current gen consoles. If it had more storage, and they somehow managed to get the price below that of a X Box Series S, and got support from the big software publishers, then this could have become a legitimate member of the 9th generation.
Sadly, they did not do any of this and the whole thing is just a waste of money that will be forgotten about in a few weeks.

I'm using it right now. I wanted a Ryzen miniPC for using Linux exclusively instead of upgrading a Mac Mini for 3X the price. My Steam library is now being used effectively (protip - many 'native' linux-steam titles still run better in Proton in their windows incarnations - like 2-3X better across the board) and I'm admining minecraft servers where my previous potato miniPC was bogging at 15fps. I know it's not top-spec, but I like Ubuntu and am looking forward to daily-driving other distros (waiting for elemenetaryOS 6). And since I was an early backer I got what is going retail at 400 (with both controllers) for less than 300. At some point I'll prob get another (onyx stripped down for cracking the case) and ad an M2 internal and double the performance with faster RAM, but right now I'm pretty happy with it attached to a 3tb usb3 drive (enough I still have to put in retropie/retroarch or some emu front end for all the other game systems - I'm having too much fun with my bloated steam library which lay dormant and doing minecraft stuff & streaming videos). I'm also trying all manner of wine imps of VST software for connecting to some home-studio synth gear (I'd rather put my hobby-money into music-gear than OP PCs). It's nice for 299. Works great. Best ever? No - but I likes it.

 

[Picklechu]

I saw that this thing finally released to the general public like a week ago (to literally zero fanfare). Looking into it, they apparently also demoed it in hotels near E3, but not at E3 itself, which just makes it seem even more sad.

It's basically a mediocre mini-PC that comes with some preloaded Atari games - which one can already get on basically any device - in an admittedly pretty casing designed to appeal to the nostalgia of people in their 30s and 40s while "Atari" attempts to use it and its remaining IPS (as well as their shitcoin, and, to a lesser extent, their hotel licensing deals) to hoard enough cash to get their digital casino grift up and running.

I certainly wouldn't buy it or recommend it to anyone, since you can get a PC the same size or smaller with the same specs or better for way less, but I can understand the appeal to some people.

If companies could be lolcows, "Atari" would deserve a thread.

 

[Clint Torez]

We can finally kick off the second video game market crash with the Atari VCS and it's launch title, ET 2.

 

[Pickle Dick]

The Atari VCS Console Actually Came Out And Surprise, It’s Bad

It should not surprise you that the Atari VCS is as bad as it initially sounded, once people understood what it was actually meant to be.

www.forbes.com

The Atari VCS Console Actually Came Out And Surprise, It’s Bad

archived 30 Jun 2021 03:38:31 UTC

archive.is

A sort of run down of an IGN article



So... anyone guess what the sales for this thing might be?

 

[Madre Muerte]

So... anyone guess what the sales for this thing might be?

2600 people are going to consider buying it, 0 will actually complete the transaction. It's too expensive for a novelty product.

 

[Coolio55]

Infogrames rocks my world!

 

[thx1138]

It's kinda funny; the gripes about it being shitty as a computer echo the complaints from back in the 80s when Spectravideo and Atari themselves tried to turn the VCS into a home computer. Atari released BASIC for the 2600, you had to have two of the keypad controllers that you got in Star Raiders to program it. Spectravideo released a "full" keyboard that was somehow even more awful than the worst home computer keyboards at the time, in that it was membrane. So it was worse than the Magnavox Odyssey's, the Commodore Pet 2001 (a horrid cash register keypad style keyboard), the Mattel Aquarius (rubber chicklet keys) and the goddamn Spectrum out of the UK. That took some engineering prowess.

Bravo, fake Atari.

 

[Info Player Start]

There hasn't been a open space for a new console on the market for over 10 years. How they though they could ride the Atari name now is beyond me.

 

[Toolbox]

There hasn't been a open space for a new console on the market for over 10 years. How they though they could ride the Atari name now is beyond me.

And they're way past the boomer 80s nostalgia train. We're at least quite a bit into 2000s nostalgia now. Could not have picked a worse time.

 

[Info Player Start]

And they're way past the boomer 80s nostalgia train. We're at least quite a bit into 2000s nostalgia now. Could not have picked a worse time.

too expensive for the novelty also

 

[Don'tCare]

I saw that this thing finally released to the general public like a week ago (to literally zero fanfare). Looking into it, they apparently also demoed it in hotels near E3, but not at E3 itself, which just makes it seem even more sad.

It's basically a mediocre mini-PC that comes with some preloaded Atari games - which one can already get on basically any device - in an admittedly pretty casing designed to appeal to the nostalgia of people in their 30s and 40s while "Atari" attempts to use it and its remaining IPS (as well as their shitcoin, and, to a lesser extent, their hotel licensing deals) to hoard enough cash to get their digital casino grift up and running.

I certainly wouldn't buy it or recommend it to anyone, since you can get a PC the same size or smaller with the same specs or better for way less, but I can understand the appeal to some people.

If companies could be lolcows, "Atari" would deserve a thread.

And then Steam Deck appeared - admittedly with better specs but if you use the VCS as a PC (as I do) - it's pretty much the same thing (at the same price amusingly enough) but people are going ga-ga over the SD. Disclaimer : I pre-ordered a Steam Deck as well (cheapest price - the M2 drive is socketed so it's technically up-gradable). It's going to be running essentially the same set-up as the VCS : ubuntu-fork until the modders make a boot-loader for other OSes (in a manner that doesn't suck) which makes it a great UMPC option. I've always been a fan of those back to the OQO two decades ago (it wasn't ready for prime time, but it was a great concept). I look forward to using the Steam Deck as a DAW / VST host as well (as opposed to a traditional laptop) - and save 600-900 off the cost of other options which can be earmarked for music gear instead of CPU(s).

*reference link(s) to the short-lived OQO : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO

**footnote 2 : the Steam Deck architecture is being licensed to OEMs for free. It's not impossible to imagine Atari 'could' release their own model (with more of their IP including their titles on Steam unlocked for free). Not likely - but it's an option.

 

[anti-authoritarian]

anyone who wants to play atari games already has the consoles or uses emulators

It's not about just playing classic atari games. it's about having both console and pc experience. FYI atari vcs is a hybrid system between pc and console

 

[King Vidiot]

Big news dropped yesterday.

Atari Acquires Intellivision Brand (archive)

Purchase of Intellivision Trademarks and Games Unites Competing Brands from the '70s and '80s

Atari® — one of the world's most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers — announced today it has purchased the Intellivision brand and certain games from Intellivision Entertainment LLC. Intellivision Entertainment LLC will rebrand and continue its business of developing and distributing the Amico brand game console with a license from Atari to continue to distribute new versions of the Intellivision games on the Amico console.

Atari will seek to expand digital and physical distribution of legacy Intellivision games, potentially create new games, and explore brand and licensing opportunities as part of a long-term plan to create value from the Intellivision properties.

“Uniting Atari and Intellivision after 45 years ends the longest running console war in history,” said Mike Mika, Studio Head at Digital Eclipse, an Atari-owned game studio.

The first Intellivision home video game console was released by Mattel Electronics in 1979 and the console platform sold an estimated 5 million units through 1990. Atari and Intellivision arguably fought the first console war of consequence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mattel went as far as enlisting the actor George Plimpton to appear in a series of ads comparing the two systems, as well as an eight-minute long video shown at the Gamescom trade show.

“This was a very rare opportunity to unite former competitors and bring together fans of Atari, Intellivision and the golden age of gaming,” said Wade Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari.

The purchase includes the rights to more than 200 titles from the Intellivision portfolio and the Intellivision trademarks.

“Atari has been a valuable partner and we have every confidence they will be a responsible steward of the storied Intellivision brand,” said Phil Adam, CEO of Intellivision Entertainment. “We look forward to our expanded collaboration and the prospect of bringing a broad array of new titles to the Amico family gaming platform.”

To mark the occasion new Intellivision t-shirts are available starting today on Atari.com, with more Intellivision apparel and collectibles to come. A press kit including the Atari and Intellivision logos, and new Intellivision t-shirts can be found here.

With the Coleco Chameleon dead and Intellivision bought out I think this makes Atari the winner of the gimmick retro console war by default.

Atari has a 30% off sale going on now for the Memorial Day weekend, so the VCS all in bundle has a base price of $210. If this is like some of their previous sales, the WELCOME15 coupon code should give an extra 15% off the price (or join the mailing list for the 15% first time buyer discount). A low end PC with 2 controllers that can stream media, and run old games & emulators seems like a good deal under $200. The original $400 base price for this bundle never made sense to me.

They also have a 30% discount on their Speakerhats right now. Have you heard about the Speakerhat?

Putting Bluetooth speakers and a microphone in a hat seems like a silly gimmick, but a lot of the people who reviewed the hat seem to like it. I guess it could be more comfortable for speakerphone calls than other options.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Atari has a 30% off sale going on now for the Memorial Day weekend, so the VCS all in bundle has a base price of $210. If this is like some of their previous sales, the WELCOME15 coupon code should give an extra 15% off the price (or join the mailing list for the 15% first time buyer discount). A low end PC with 2 controllers that can stream media, and run old games & emulators seems like a good deal under $200. The original $400 base price for this bundle never made sense to me.

Maybe I'd buy in at $100, but I have already bought better devices that I could use for low-end PC/gaming/emulation. It's nice that it can do Skyrim at 720p and some GameCube/PS2, not sure about other systems. The Ryzen Embedded 1606G should have VCN 1.0 for H.264/H.265/VP9 decode, which is good enough for a media player.