Atari is not only still around as a brand, but it’s once again making 2600 cartridges. The company’s new AtariXP program will offer games that were developed but never actually saw wide releases on the classic game console.
AtariXP is starting with Aquaventure, Saboteur, and Yars’ Return, games that were never released on the Atari 2600 (or Atari VCS, for purists), seemingly due to the video game crash of 1983. Each game will be available as a single cartridge for $49.99, or in a Collector’s Edition that includes a classic-style game box, instruction manual, poster, and hardcover art book for $149.99. In this first run, Atari will manufacture 1,983 Collector’s Edition cartridges but only 1,500 Standard Edition cartridges, oddly.
AtariXP focuses on the three pillars of “releasing previously unreleased titles from Atari’s expansive library, re-launching rare and hard-to-find Atari IP physical media, and improving a variety of classic games with graphics and mechanics polishes suitable for modern devices,” Atari says. The first two points seem self-evident, but since these are cartridges designed to work with the Atari 2600, we’re skeptical about how much the graphics and mechanics can indeed be polished.
Atari XP calls back to the Atari Program Exchange (APX), a part of Atari that sold game cartridges by mail in the early 80s. It made sense at the time, since stores like Babbage’s, Electronics Boutique, and GameStop didn’t exist in 1981. Well, EB did, but it didn’t sell games in its early days. Atari calls AtariXP a “mail order catalog” program, but the games will be available to preorder on the AtariXP website rather than through a print catalog.
Atari isn’t the first company to remanufacture cartridges for classic game systems and offer them as collector’s editions. Limited Run Games, a publisher that focuses on releasing physical versions of otherwise digital-only indie games, has produced Game Boy, NES, and Nintendo 64 cartridges of both older games like Doom 64 and Worms, and modern homebrew games designed for classic systems. Iam8bit has also offered collector’s edition cartridges of classic NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis games.
Atari as a company has gone through many transformations in the last 40 years, and the current incarnation could be described as being unrelated to the original Atari, Inc. The Atari brand was bought by Hasbro’s now-defunct game publishing arm, Hasbro Interactive, in 1998. Hasbro Interactive, and the Atari brand, were then purchased by the French publisher Infogrames, which has since rebranded as Atari. Atari’s most recent video game project was the new Atari VCS, a completely download- and streaming-based game console based on PC hardware, with support for Windows and Linux. AtariXP cartridges will not work with the new Atari VCS.
Aquaventure, Saboteur, and Yars’ Return are available for preorder from AtariXP, with delivery planned for before Christmas.
