I loved my VCS 2600. Now Atari is turning 50. So why am I not in the mood to celebrate?

Whenever someone asks me how I got started with video games, my answer is usually “with the Amiga”. That’s only true in the sense that the A1200 was the first gaming device I bought with my own money and played with in the way I still do today: intensely and almost every day. Technically, video games started earlier, with an Atari VCS 2600, which I don’t remember how it got here.

In any case, here and there I was given a game for it or traded it with friends. I vividly remember Jungle Hunt, Desert Falcon and above all Stargate, which is still brilliant today, and I’m sure that the little black box laid the foundation for my “gaming career”. The 50th birthday of the company that triggered this in me was supposed to arouse sentimental feelings. Instead, nothing moves. Because the Atari that many of us know and whose logo with the three stripes still looks timelessly cool to us no longer exists.

In fact, while Atari is still a going concern today, it’s not one that anyone remembers what it stands for. Basically, since the closure of the largest in-house studio, Eden Games (Test Drive Unlimited, Alone in the Dark), only the brand has been monetized in ever-changing forms. And even this expiry date is set far too late, because the name Atari was already a real challenge cup in the mid-eighties. From Warner it went to Namco, from Namco back to Warner, from there it was temporarily merged into Midway to end up with Hasbro sometime in the 90s. Eventually, Infogrames grabbed it and put on Atari’s lifeless skin to… I don’t know, maybe not look quite so French anymore?

That was it, the last stop where Atari was still considered a serious player in the video game business, even if it was just a name. In any case, the misery really started after the bankruptcy in 2013. Since then we have received many questionable mobile games, roller coaster tycoons with partly acceptable, but often partly creepy quality, a half-baked retro console whose (completely external) system designers apparently didn’t see any money for months, an Atari hat with built-in speakers, ( Online) casino and hotel plans and lastly a cryptocurrency because of course Atari makes a cryptocurrency. Although the latter is not entirely true: they are now apparently working on their second cryptocurrency. And not because the first one went so well.

After all: Recently, smaller developers have been commissioned to bring back some old classics. Breakout, Asteroids, Centipede, Gravitar and Missile Command came out under the “Recharged” label with nice cover designs and play surprisingly decent, almost like serious little video games, which I didn’t dare hope for after Alone in the Dark Illumination . Nevertheless, the problem remains that it is a matter of treading water under trademark law. More of a frantic search for the most successful way to milk the nostalgia of people like me than a company that has its own vision of interactive entertainment and wants to shape the medium’s future in that direction.

That’s also the reason why I don’t feel like celebrating despite such a remarkable anniversary as this. The brand’s recognition is not based on anything tangible today, but on memories of a time when people born in the late 70’s or early 80’s first felt that special magic. That feeling you get when you first press a button and there’s more happening on the screen than changing the channel. Today we take it for granted, but back then a completely new cosmos opened up for us every time, even in the simplest of games. A previously unknown world in which we could determine where the journey was going instead of just staring. It doesn’t matter that it always went to the right.

What a bloody miracle that was back then… Okay, so I ended up getting a little sentimental after all. So thank you Atari and happy 50th! Wherever – or whatever – you are.