Atari Files For Bankruptcy

Atari announced earlier this week that they were filing for bankruptcy. For 40-somethings like me, this news hits especially hard. Like most kids of my generation, I grew up with an Atari 2600 in the house. My first 2600 was hooked up to a small black-and-white TV set that my grandparents gave us. I don’t know how much time I spent after classes and on weekends schooling my cousins at Combat and Air-Sea Battle, but believe me it was a lot. Even thinking about it now sends a thrill down my spine, even though I live in an age of retina screens, Xbox 360’s, and 70 inch flat screen  TVs. Man, those were good times, and it strikes me as unbelievable that a company as innovative and universally loved as Atari should bite the dust like one of its very own 8-bit asteroids being blown to smithereens by a rotating triangle that we all believed was a high-tech space ship.

Atari Files for Bankruptcy – Silver Lining?

It’s a raw deal, but before I get too depressed and start whining around there is some good news squirreled away in the official company statement, and if I really think about it, things ain’t that bad. Basically, Atari will live on in some fashion. By going Chapter 11 Atari will be able to walk away from its troubled French parent company and get ahold of much needed cash to develop more games. These games will most likely be for digital and mobile platforms, but I suppose I can live with that. Not the same as cramming a plastic cartridge into a 2600, but I suppose we all have to grow up.

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