Atari seems to have gone hoard mode when it comes to video games IP, as they have announced they have recently acquired over 100 IPs, mainly from games and companies from the 1980s and 1990s.
Quite recently, Atari revealed they would be acquiring NightDive Studios. That news seems to integrate completely with this, as NightDive may be assigned to some of these newly acquired properties.
In the official press release, Atari named these properties in particular:
- Bubsy the Cat
- Hardball
- Demolition Racer
- 1942: Pacific Air War
- F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0
- Fleet Defender: The F-14 Tomcat Simulation
- Accolade
- GTI
Atari CEO Wade Rosen also stated that these games they had picked up were from publishers Accolade, Infogrames, and Microprose, though they didn’t say they picked up those three trademarks in particular.
We had already covered this before, but as a refresher, this Atari is not the original Atari from 1972. The company that currently calls itself Atari was originally a French game company called InfoGrames, founded in 1983.
In other words, this Atari is really acting like newer companies like City Connection and Piko Interactive. These companies specialize in rereleases of older video games from the 1980s and 1990s, but you likely won’t be seeing them making new games from those properties.
Some of you reading this aren’t old enough to remember these games, so we’ll briefly run them down below
Bubsy the Cat is a mascot platformer franchise that got its start in 1993 on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. While often the subject of parody for its poorly received Bubsy 3D, the franchise experienced an unlikely revival a few years back. The most recent game in the series, Bubsy: Paws on Fire!, released in 2019.
Hardball! is a baseball simulator published by Accolade in 1985. It release on multiple 8-bit computers like the Apple ][ and Amiga, and would eventually make its way to the Sega Genesis.
Demolition Racer is a combat racing game from Pitbull Syndicate. It originally released on PlayStation in 1999 and received a Dreamcast port in 2000.
1942: Pacific Air War, F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 and Fleet Defender: The F-14 Tomcat Simulation are all flight simulation games that were originally published by Microprose. These games were acquired by Tommo and are available on Steam now, under the Retroism label.
And as you may have noticed, I had pointed out that some of these games recently received new releases. What seems to have happened is Atari bought out these video game properties from the other companies that have been doing these rereleases.
So it’s highly likely the retro games we have seen from companies like Retroism/Tommo and Piko Interactive are the same games Atari just acquired.
While this Atari is really Infogrames, they now seem determined to become the name for classic video games that aren’t from Nintendo.
