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PLEASE, WHAT IS AtARIBOX?

28/6/2017

31 Comments

 
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The CEO of Atari, Fred "Chesnais Hawkes Joke" Chesnais - yes, that is his real name - has confirmed that the company is "back in the hardware business."

No. None of us saw that coming.

"F. Chesnais ches what?"

"Wot?"


Atari teased/trolled the world last week with a short video which revealed nothing more than a cheeky glimpse at a wood-panelled, classic Atari-looking device, referred to as "Ataribox". 

What can this be? Nobody knows, as evidenced by multiple websites leading with the headline "Here's Everything We Know About The Ataribox!" - before pulling the rug out from beneath their curious readers with this revelation: "We know nothing - we just really need dem sweeeeeet clicks."

Surely, though, Atari wouldn't be stupid enough to launch a brand new console in this era of the PS4, Xbox One X and Switch? We must therefore conclude that Ataribox will be some sort of retro VCS device. Which is all well and good, but Atari already did a whole range of those: the Atari Flushbog (Flashback).

The fact is this... Atari 2600 games - if that is what they're doing... again - are terrible. All of them. It's not the fault of their creators, but a consequence of the era, the technology, and the fact that games were still finding their way. The Atari 2600, like a yam left out in the sun, has not aged so well.

Here are eight or nine supposedly classic Atari games, and a couple of crap ones, which prove this valuable and important point.
PITFALL
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This is what passed for a Tomb Raider or Uncharted-style game back in the day. Yes, it was considered good at the time, but why would you want to play it now, unless you really hated yourself, or you were trying to look cool by showing off to your friends by making fun of it, like I am?

It also makes no sense. Playing as Pitfall Harry, you make your way through a jungle, avoiding holes and jumping over logs which are being propelled by some unknown force.

​What's that you say? They're being propelled by gravity? No they are not! They are travelling horizontally. Also, in some of the holes Harry climbs into there are brick walls. Who built those? The Viet Cong?

Pitfall? More like Pitiful!!!!!

"Why are you called Pitfall Harry, Harry?"

"Well, you see, it's because I'm always jumping over pits."

"And that's your defining character trait is it?"

"Yes it is. What's yours?"

"I'm an ENFP personality type. Look it up."

​"I don't have time. I've got me some pits to jump over!"
ADVENTURE
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The great-grandaddy of RPGs and that, Adventure also holds the distinction of being the first game to have a hidden Easter egg.

Adventure's quest to find a magical chalice, or something, was confounded by a trio of hungry dragons, and a bat that flew around randomly distributing important items around the map. I say "bat", but it might as well have been a programming glitch. 

Yes, I get that Adventure changed things for the better... but so did the Titanic. I mean, just look at it. Who would choose this over the Witcher III or Skyrim or something? 

Oh, and that Easter egg? Nothing more exciting than the programmer's name - a form of passive protest against Atari's insistence that its staff work anonymously. That didn't turn out so well when a bunch of them left to form Activision. You know: to make even more terrible games.

These days, Adventure is about as much fun as being lost in a cardboard box factory, when you're already late for your nan's funeral.
SPACE INVADERS
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Admittedly, Space Invaders is a classic, and the Atari 2600 version of it wasn't all bad, but would you really rather play this over any almost any game released in the 40 or so years since it came out? Only if you're somebody who thinks progress is overrated, and you won't go on planes because they're too futuristic, and you live in your garden in a sort of upturned steampunk coracle, and you're an idiot.
YARS REVENGE
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Atari's best-selling original game for the 2600, Yars' Revenge was a sort of cross between Breakout and Space Invaders. Just as with those games, in Yars Revenge there was virtually no progression. You merely did the same thing over and over and over and over until you got bored and switched it off. Don't just take my word for it: the June 1983 issue of Electronic Games called it a "video sleeping pill".

What was there was pretty playable for the time, but you know what else was pretty good for its time? Eating raw woolly rhinoceros meat prior to the invention of fire.  ​
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
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Remember the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? Remember all those iconic visuals - the Well of Souls, the bit with that plane where the fat German gets chopped up by the blades, the bit at the end with the thing? Yeah... well... forget all that.

What you got in the Raiders of the Lost Ark Atari 2600 game was the travesty depicted above. Frankly, who can know what's meant to be going on there? It looks like somebody dropped the last of their packet of Liquorice Allsorts on a grubby tea towel.
SNEAK N' PEEK
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Yeah... okay... a hide n' seek simulator. That's a good idea (sarcasm).

In Sneak N' Peek, players take it in turn to hide in the rooms of a house while the other player hides their eyes and counts to ten... and then has to find them. This is what people in the early 80s believed was acceptable to produce as a video game. Actual hide n' seek isn't difficult to do - and it wasn't like Sneak N' Peek had you hiding in a variety of interesting fantasy settings; merely a series of nondescript rooms.

Interestingly, I used to go round the house of a boy called Michael Conabeer, primarily because he had both an Atari 2600 and every episode of It'll Be Alright On The Night on video. It's telling that we tended to play hide n' seek for real, rather than sit on his Atari 2600. Although one time something went a bit wrong with our game, and Michael Conabeer had to urinate in a coal scuttle.
RIVER RAID
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River Raid won awards and plaudits at the time. It also holds the distinction of being the first game banned in West Germany, for its violent warmongering.

When you look at it today, it beggars belief that they ever though it was going to corrupt anybody. Indeed, judging from that screenshot, if anything got corrupted it was River Raid itself!!!!! Oh... no... those are the actual graphics.

Also, there's a good joke to be had here about offering your friends some of your "riverade", and them thinking you're going to let them have a go on the game River Raid, but then you just offer them a glass of filthy river water, and force them to drink it out of "politeness"!!! Admittedly, I've not thought through the logistics of that joke, but, well, it probably doesn't matter. It's just hypothetical.
COMBAT
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The game which came with the Atari 2600 for the first five years of its life, Combat is what they chose as a showcase for the system. But look at it. No, really: LOOK AT IT.

And if you think it looks bad - just try playing it. It'd be slow and clunky and imprecise even if it wasn't for the Atari 2600 joysticks, which have all the give and latency of a metal rebar wedged in a bucket of cement.

Combat? More like wombat!!!! Yeah, that one doesn't work.
ASTEROIDS
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Remember the crisp, clean, lines of Asteroids in the arcades? It looked like nothing else - and consequently still holds up today. And here's the Atari 2600 version - like some sort of "outsider art" piece, painted by a chimpanzee. Are those asteroids, or the freeze-dried marshmallow bits out of a cereal box?
MARIO BROS.
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There's no better example of why nobody needs to play Atari 2600 games in 2017 than this: a Mario game on an Atari console. 

Frankly, the most appropriate move for Atari at this point would be to reveal that Ataribox is a new type of coffin. And then climb into it, and be buried.
FROM THE ARCHIVES:
10 REASONS THE SUPER NES WAS BEST CONSOLE
10 WEIRD ATARI 2600 GAMES THAT MIGHT'VE BEEN EVEN WORSE  THAN E.T.
​
WHICH GAMES CONSOLE HAD THE BEST LOGO?
31 Comments
John Veness
28/6/2017 10:31:26 am

I agree with you that it's probably a retro recreation console, because if it was anything modern surely info about it would have leaked by now from developers. But I hope it isn't a 2600/VCS box. A ST recreation might be nice.

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Paul
28/6/2017 10:44:03 am

Atari already did a mini VCS console. They also did a "game I a joystick" thing too. I have one of those, and it's a nice thing to have, but it's enough for me. While I'd like one of those SNES recreations, I don't feel the same pull to a similar offering from Atari.

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cincoboy
28/6/2017 10:36:58 am

It's either a retro box containing hundreds of terrible old games that no one actually wants to play (and which anyone could play right now using emulators) or they are actually being dumb enough to try to compete with Sony, MS and Nintendo. Either way it's a waste of time and dead before it arrives.

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taizou
28/6/2017 10:47:13 am

The Flashback line is still going (new ones were just announced) so I doubt it'll just be a 2600 "thing".

My guess is it'll be an Android based machine, probably locked to a useless "Atari store" with a fraction of the games available on the real Play Store. Might gain some traction as an emulation box if it's cheap and hackable though.

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Reversible Sedgewick
28/6/2017 10:47:28 am

I think given Atari's output over the last decade it's fairly safe to assume that it's just a box of t-shirts, right? Maybe with a keyring at a push?

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Orless
28/6/2017 10:48:26 am

I'm holding out that it might actually be a decent Atari System 1/2 emulator. Being able to play decent, *multiplayer* versions of stuff like Super Sprint, APB, Xybots, Marble Madness, Paperboy, Toobin', Rampart, Gauntlet & 720? Yes please!

Little box a la NES/SNES Mini, two controllers in the pack, additional controllers for £20 each, online lobby system for things like Gauntlet & Super Sprint. Would buy.

Chances of this happening though, or if it does of it being any good?

Sweet F Atari

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Alex link
28/6/2017 10:52:56 am

If they did a mini ST, bundled it with Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back, Oids, Elite and a few other games, USB mouse & keyboard (not included), it'd sell.

I wouldn't buy one, I've got Retropie on a Pi 3 with some snazzy C64 vinyl stickers but I'm sure some (many) would. Or they'd all complain it wasn't an Amiga 1000 retrobox.

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DEAN
28/6/2017 10:56:41 am

It's interesting, though, right?

Sure, it's highly unlikely to be a successor to the Jaguar (Jagwahr for our US chums) and, very likely indeed to be a NES Mini coat-tail ride but, and bear in mind how load of kids (my son included) wanted one of those miniature arcade cabinets full of utter shit games last Christmas, then maybe this.... perhaps if it was keyring sized, could be a bit of fun when you're stuffed full of turkey and regretting every extra potato.

Yar's Revenge should be made into a movie. Not a prestige piece, you know like Battleship, but a lot of fun. Think about old movies like The Last Star Fighter and then give it a Napoleon Dynamite edge and, you something - nerd fucking utopia.

And all those games you listed have a charm to them - like NES games viewed through a squint or PS4 games games as witnessed by a very simple creature.... like a daisy that somebody's discarded a calculator next to.

But, resolutely, yes - that doesn't add up to shit.

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Chinnyhill
28/6/2017 11:05:59 am

Keystone Kapers is quite good. It's much more like a proper coin pushing arcade game in look and feel

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Wrist Flapper
28/6/2017 11:25:51 am

We're all assuming 2600. It could be Jaguar and Lynx. The recent interest in retro miniconsoles spawned by Ninty may be enough for some of the more obscure to crawl out from under rocks and see if we remember them.

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Jol
28/6/2017 11:31:12 am

It's kind of amazing that Atari still exists in some form, given that they seem to have nearly died several times.

The big assumption does seem to be that this will be another retro release, but that does seem rather redundant given that how available all of these old games are. At this very moment Atari's Twitter feed is touting sales of collections of old junk that works out at about 6p per game. Maybe they'll bundle games from a bunch of their other, lesser played systems like the Jaguar CD and the, er, XEGS. Then we can all play those huge exclusives we missed out on, like that Highlander game I just read about on Wikipedia.

The Android idea might closer to the truth. A cut price tablet with HD remasters (hahahahaha etc) of Crystal Castles and ET. Or maybe it'll be a Atari's answer to the Steambox. A bunch of PC components cobbled together with a limited OS that'll link to their version of Steam / Origin / GOG / whatever.

I'm guessing nobody at Atari stopped to ask what the point of it is, regardless of what the Ataribox turns out to be. Unless it is literally just a box with the Atari logo stamped on it and they've decided to team up with Ikea and offer nerd culture storage solutions.

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Jareth Smith
28/6/2017 11:55:38 am

I'd be more than happy to pick up an Atari retro box. Younger generations would probably have a heart attack when they see the graphics, seeing as these are the most important thing about gaming for many modern gamers, but as a historic lesson in imagination, the Atari is awesome.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
28/6/2017 12:49:19 pm

This again... You are absolutely kidding yourself if you don't think that graphics were a major selling point throughout every single generation of video games, or that this era of gaming wasn't full of the kind of me-too cynicism from publishers churning out low-quality garbage that eventually led to a massive industry crash.

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Jareth Smith
28/6/2017 02:22:31 pm

That's a straw man argument, I didn't indicate anything of the sort. What I am stating is the vast majority of modern devs are churning out generic filler into the mainstream market. This needs lampooning, not sitting idly by accepting as "normal" behaviour. It's cynical, it's lazy, and it needs to be criticised by intelligent, passionate fans.

Case in point, not forking out £500 for the Xbox One X, a souped up X Box One for no reason other than a slight spec improvement. I'll save that money for 200+ innovative indie gems, thanks.

Spiney O'Sullivan
28/6/2017 02:50:12 pm

You can't honestly talk about strawmen when your posts here and on yesterday's articles are outright condescending towards this strawman of the "modern gamer who doesn't know what gameplay is and just buys things for graphics".

Just support the indie gems and let whoever's buying CoD buy that. How is other people having fun with "generic" games a problem? Indie games don't stop existing because mass-market games get sequels. Indie movies don't stop being made just because Disney/Fox/Sony/WB churn out 200 superhero movies a year. Booker prize winners don't stop being written just because people like Dan Brown. I really don't see what is complicated about this.

I'm not saying it's not worth thinking about trends driven by business models and what that does to AAA gaming (which was always cynical). However, games are not a pure art form (unless they're genuinely not being made for money). But then, nor is film. Nor were books as the rise of the paperback resulted in vast quantities of pulp. Hell, nor even was painting in the renaissance since it was largely done as commissions for very wealthy individuals. Art forms hitting the mainstream always involve trade-offs, and that's worth thinking about, but there's no need to take a derisive tone and hark back to some imaginary era where corporate interests apparently didn't factor heavily into mainstream gaming.

Jol
28/6/2017 03:15:15 pm

Oh Em Gee you guys, not this again.

In all seriousness, Spiney makes some good points. Every genre of entertainment has it's cynical money making elements. The entire thing is basically about trading money for fun, and when the industry sees a certain type of fun is really good at making money they'll churn out more of it.

So yeah people should just go play some fun games and not worry about what other people think are fun games.

Biscuits
28/6/2017 04:15:38 pm

But Jareth, why shouldn't xbone fans pay for a bells-and-whistles version of their console when you are happy to pay premium cost for decades old console re-releases with no upgrades or improvements? Brand loyalty can be more of an issue than blindly following marketing imo, if only for the sense of self-righteousness it encourages

Jareth Smith
29/6/2017 10:54:36 am

Biscuits - £70 for one of the greatest games consoles of all time, including a selection of 21 of the best games of all time, isn't much of an issue, in my opinion.

£500 for a console offering nothing new except marginally improved graphics is more debatable. This isn't a question of brand loyalty (please don't be so vacuous in your train of thought to jump to such a tediously reductionistic assumption) - it's about what provides the most quality. Fun. Bang for your buck. Whatever you want.

Jareth Smith
29/6/2017 11:00:14 am

Spiney O'Sullivan - It's blatantly obvious a huge section of the gaming community is driven by graphics. All you need to do is wander onto most forums and it's PS4/PC/Xbox fanboys raging about which console has the best graphics. There has been a definite shift in ideals and it's detrimental to mainstream games. This is my problem, and this is the pertinent issue I am highlighting.

You raise some good points there, but this doesn't change the fact a lot of modern AAA games have horrific voice acting, stories, handholding elements, cutscenes, and much more - the idea that this should simply be accepted is vacuous. And, yes, it's the same for other industries, but we're talking about video games here. Burying your head in the sand and not challenging generic filler is moronic.

My interest is exceptional quality titles and promoting this. Being derisive of mediocre filler should be encouraged, otherwise we'll all descend towards being philistines.

Jareth Smith
29/6/2017 11:02:14 am

Jol - Agreed there, but critical assessment is now such an integral element of the industry so it is inescapable. When so many AAA titles are becoming mindless filler, though, it's time to stand up to the mediocrity. This is why I support the indie scene of mainstream, as the former is the one which has the best games, promotes innovation, and doesn't pander to tedious notion "graphics = best gaming experience".

ChorltonWheelie
29/6/2017 08:00:44 pm

Bagpuss gave a big yawn and settled down to sleep
And, of course, when Bagpuss goes to sleep,
All his friends go to sleep too.

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William Piper
28/6/2017 12:34:01 pm

I once played hide and seek round a friends house after school. He was hidden for so long his Mum had started cooking the tea while I was still seeking. I'd looked all over, so had semi-given up and was chatting to her as she prepared the food. When she opened up her large chest freezer, my mate was lying inside, covered in frost. We both burst out laughing at his excellent hiding place, and current appearance. She didn't, and gave him a hiding. Looking back, she was quite right.

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colincidence link
28/6/2017 03:34:47 pm

This is why they call it Hiding Seek

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Folksons
28/6/2017 04:15:28 pm

Hahaha christ, she must've lost a couple of years of her life!

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chuckles
28/6/2017 04:18:17 pm

"...and you live in your garden in a sort of upturned steampunk coracle..."

I LOL'd, then I laughed out loud!

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lemonapple
28/6/2017 05:23:23 pm

Much better console than the Super nintendo, the king of video games and video game crashes is back

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Kendall9000
28/6/2017 06:23:30 pm

For me it's not a system with enough nostalgia value to bother with a retro console.

Having said that, it's impressive what some developers managed to get out of the Atari 2600 hardware. I remember playing Robot Tank on a friend's Atari 2600 and I thought it compared pretty well with the Battlezone clones on more advanced 8-bits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtjDx7khUuI

I can't remember how well it actually played, but the blocks of pixels you're shooting actually look vaguely tank like. That's enough to make it stand out from most Atari 2600 games.

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S Hawke
28/6/2017 07:00:25 pm

I'd love to see Atari's 8 bit and 16 bit computers get some retro attention. I get the feeling the Atari box will be new hardware though.

I think there's a gap in the market for a console that's unashamedly a toy and has a reasonable price, so maybe Atari might be successful in this endeavour.

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Lummox60N
28/6/2017 08:42:02 pm

If it's a retro-Jaguar thing with "Aliens vs. Predator" on, I'm in.
They could throw in "Doom", too, that'd be nice.
And "Tempest 2000", man, I loved the trippy bits between the levels.
Yeah, a Classic Mini Jaguar, that'd be ace.
Man, even "Iron Soldier".

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Robert Lindsay
28/6/2017 11:41:08 pm

"Maaaario where are you?!"

"Here I am, brother. I've been hiding in this coal scuttle. Someone appears to have urinated on me."

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Mariofriend
29/6/2017 11:00:31 am

The movie took too many liberties

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