Comment by MenhirMike | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MenhirMike | Hacker News Reader

Happy for Albert to get a job, but I expect this to be the end of the site in the not so far future, given that Atari seems to be more about squeezing every last drop out of their old portfolio. The homebrew community can be forever grateful to the site though (well, to Curt Vendel and Glenn Bruner) for getting ahold of the original Jaguar Encryption keys so that homebrew CD games just work on unmodified consoles, so that's a pretty amazing legacy to leave.

What is the current Atari company actually doing? They seemed to have scrapped their crypto casino, their VCS seems to be a complete failure that made even less money than the Ouya, so that leaves the $1000 limited edition cartridge set, merchandise, and compilations of old stuff for current systems (Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is really good!)? Nothing wrong with being a nostalgia company, but I really wonder if they have anything new going forward, or if they are just going to maintain the brand to re-release old games?

I don't mind Atari being a nostalgia company. Actually, when I think about it, at this point their business only makes sense if they embrace being a nostalgia company.

The old company is long gone. Even if it was around, the people/skillset are no longer relevant to game development. There's no engineering/developer continuity, tech continuity, etc.

So it makes no sense for Atari to attempt to compete with other AAA game studios on state of the art games. Compete on what merits? At best they're just a publisher of other dev houses games.

In essence Atari is nothing but a name, and a gaming legacy attached to that name. And what a legacy for a killer retrogaming Nostalgia brand. It seems they're focusing core business around this concept.

I suppose the idea is that they become a publisher of games specifically tailored to retrogamers, heavily leveraging the classic Atari games lineup. A lot of heavy hitters in there. Atari 50 nailed that perfectly, showing that they've figured out how to package gaming nostalgia in product form. They can reboot/reimagine classic games franchises, introduce to modern audiences, etc. Throw in some retro inspired hardware, limited edition cartridges, and other swag on the physical items side of the business.

It seems a more sound strategy than what they've been doing with the brand up till now. Retrogamers may be a limited market, but it's a real market that's currently not being serviced by large companies in any consistent way. They might be able to create a new market segment in the casual gaming space as well. Mr. Run and Jump shows that this idea of arcade/twitch gameplay with casual gaming might have some legs. It certainly feels like Atari.

I'll admit I'm guilty of throwing them money just to get the Fuji logo on some items. I bought the VCS, speakerhat, etc. I love my new 2600 joystick with USB port. So I, for one, welcome our new Atari overlords.

Yeah, the AAA thing definitely didn't work out for them (or for whatever company was called Atari when they were AAA publishing).

I could definitely see them being a great Indie publisher, and I just saw that they bought Nightdive Studios earlier this year (at least I assume that's the same Atari) - so they seems to be setting themselves up for that kind of "Triple-I/Double-A" stuff. Heck, I hope they still own the Star Raiders IPs and make another remake of it, hopefully a better one than the last.

And they bought Stern IPs. They could do a new Berzerk game as a frantic twin-stick shooter - get inspiration from Robotron 2084 which too inspiration from Berzerk.

Okay, seems like Atari actually has potential ahead of them, that's cool!

> Okay, seems like Atari actually has potential ahead of them, that's cool!

Agreed. The most potential they've shown since Jaguar.

Here's to hoping Atari doesn't grab defeat from the jaws of victory again.

It's weird that you've said so much and yet you're apparently not aware of the upcoming 2600+.

https://atari.com/products/atari-2600-plus

That's because I completely forgot about it immediately after seeing it's just a Linux Emulation Box with a cartridge slot, so more like a Hyperkin RetroN instead of a Mister/Analogue FPGA-based product.

I do wonder how compatible it will be with expansion chips (like the DPC in Pitfall 2). I assume they have an internal list of recognized games, but I wonder what happens if someone wires up their own homebrew game with one of those chips and plugs it in?

But you're right, I should have mentioned it because it's a good idea to do and a legit product, I just had it purged from memory because I wasn't interested in it.

Unfortunately, it's not compatible with DPC or DPC+, CDFJ+, etc. The emulator works by "dumping" the ROM binary from the inserted cartridge. This is fine for simple cartridges but for more advanced bank switching technologies it's difficult to do correctly and for processor-cartridges it's impossible.

As you suggest, one way around that is to fingerprint the cartridge and then to load a binary into the emulator from internal memory (if they're using Stella then the emulator is capable of emulating the processors on those chips) but I don't believe that is an option provided by the 2600+. And if it was, it's a very limiting option for the end user because new homebrew games wouldn't work.

Are processor cartridges at all common, even among homebrew games? Just curious.

I think we need to be reasonable about how much magic we really expect them to put into this thing, since running Atari and Activision cartridges, like the 2600 (and 7800!) of old, is what most people would expect the machine to do. On the other hand... if they make the machine easily hackable, that might be pretty great, and earn this version of Atari a little respect.

Yeah. Many of the most popular games released in recent years have contained an ARM chip. As it happens Atari Age have removed many of those games from distribution (in readiness for this takeover by Atari) because they weren't properly licenced. A good exception to this rule is LodeRunner which has been licenced and uses an onboard ARM.

If the market for this product is people who only want to play the older ROMs on a HDTV then I'm sure the 2600+ is a fine product.

I am not sure what the real market is then, though. If it's for people that want to re-live their memories, then a system with built-in games (of which plenty exist) makes much more sense, or one with a digital store (so, the VCS, or digital collections like Atari 50). Whereas people that still held on to their cartridges and want to play them seem to be more the crowd that kept up with newer and homebrew games as well?

Maybe I'm projecting from myself, but if I'm that kind of enthusiast that held on and wants to play their actual cartridges, I'd expect compatibility with any cartridges I might still buy in the future.

(Then again, both the RetroN and Polymega seem to do well enough, so what do I know, apart from not liking the idea of these systems as half-baked in-between solutions.)

I agree with you. I don't begrudge the 2600+ but it's not one for me.

It seems to me that compatibility with any cartridge would require a recreation of the actual VCS hardware. That sounds expensive to me and is probably why Atari haven't gone down this route. But as you say, that leads to a half-baked solution.

The other option is an emulator that can communicate with the cartridge in real time - but that doesn't exist and I doubt Atari have gone to the trouble of making one (we're all assuming they're using Stella at this point, but I don't think that's been confirmed).

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