; the 30th anniversaries of Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and Mario Kart; and the 25th anniversaries of Pokémon and Resident Evil; as well as many more besides. All of these passed by with little or no mention, when under normal circumstances you've would've been sick of hearing about them by the end of the year. There is only one entity in the games industry that has been around long enough to celebrate a 50th anniversary and that is Atari. The iconic American publisher and developer was founded in June 1972 and was pivotal in establishing and nurturing the video games industry as we know it today. From the foundational Pong to iconic arcade games such as Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, and Battlezone, Atari was the early pioneer of coin-op gaming. It was just as instrumental in bringing games to the living room, not just with Pong but via the Atari 2600/VCS console, which hosted both arcade conversions and original games like Adventure, along with third party titles by, or licensed from, the likes of Activision, Namco, Sega, Bally Midway, Williams, and Nintendo. Atari not only helped create the modern video games industry but also almost destroyed it, with the video game crash of 1983, but all that and more is covered in this excellent compilation/historical document. Although a company called Atari does still exist today it's not the same one that lived and thrived in the 70s and 80s. It is essentially what remains of French publisher Infogrames, as the original Atari struggled in the 16-bit era and its ambitions were finally laid to rest with the rise of PlayStation in the mid-90s. That's one point this){kind=link}
The oldest video game publisher in the world is celebrating its 50th birthday, with a new retro compilation and historical archive.
There have been a number of important anniversaries in the last couple of years, that the pandemic has managed to completely ruin. There was the 40th anniversary of Donkey Kong (and by association Mario); the 30th anniversaries of Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and Mario Kart; and the 25th anniversaries of Pokemon and Resident Evil; as well as many more besides. All of these passed by with little or no mention, when under normal circumstances you’ve would’ve been sick of hearing about them by the end of the year.
There is only one entity in the games industry that has been around long enough to celebrate a 50th anniversary and that is Atari. The iconic American publisher and developer was founded in June 1972 and was pivotal in establishing and nurturing the video games industry as we know it today. From the foundational Pong to iconic arcade games such as Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, and Battlezone, Atari was the early pioneer of coin-op gaming.
It was just as instrumental in bringing games to the living room, not just with Pong but via the Atari 2600/VCS console, which hosted both arcade conversions and original games like Adventure, along with third party titles by, or licensed from, the likes of Activision, Namco, Sega, Bally Midway, Williams, and Nintendo. Atari not only helped create the modern video games industry but also almost destroyed it, with the video game crash of 1983, but all that and more is covered in this excellent compilation/historical document.
Although a company called Atari does still exist today it’s not the same one that lived and thrived in the 70s and 80s. It is essentially what remains of French publisher Infogrames, as the original Atari struggled in the 16-bit era and its ambitions were finally laid to rest with the rise of PlayStation in the mid-90s. That’s one point this ‘celebration’ isn’t keen to emphasise, but it doesn’t hide the fact either, in what is one of the most impressive retro collections we’ve ever seen.