Infogrames is Atari?

[Tempest]

Ok so Infogrames is now calling themselves Atari, is this a good thing? I've never looked at an Infograme product, are they any good? I'd hate to see Atari's name associated with something crappy just so they can have name recoginition.

 

Tempest

[+Cafeman]

Infogrames bought Hasbro which owned Atari.

 

Infogrames -- I actually like the company. They are like an Activision now, they buy up smaller dev teams & companies, like, errr, Hasbro and Atari!

[Tempest]

So are they going to tatoo a little fuji symbol on the armadillo or what?

 

Tempest

[Joel D. Park]

Infrogrames used to make some pretty good older PC games, and I believe they even made some stuff for Amiga and Commodore 64, I might be wrong.

 

I don't remember anything particularly bad from them though, so that's a plus.

[+Cafeman]

I thought that the Armadillo was a Melbourne House symbol (Infogrames Melbourne House) -- is it the official Inforames symbol as well?

 

Melbourne House is an Australian dev team that made the fantastic Test Drive: Le Mans on Dreamcast, released last fall. THe main man there used to frequent the Dreamcast TEchnical Pages, he answered all our questions about the game's incredible engine which allows 20 detailed cars onscreen, no slowdown, with great weather and lighting and smoke FX and a fast sense of speed. This last paragraph FYI.

[khryssun]

quote

I believe they even made some stuff for Amiga and Commodore 64, I might be wrong.

 

You are right joel

 

They made some good games for the C64 and an amazing one : Mandragore

 

But I haven't found a disk image on the web (:

It should be included in the incoming gamebase 64.... but it seems I'am a little bit out of the topic

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Infogrames is known to me in the PC market as working together with Mindscape on some of the Alone in the Dark games. So if you have heard of them...then you have seen Infogrames in action.

 

I bet they diss the Armadillo and just go with a newer and updated Fuji with Atari under it. After all what is the point in taking the name if your not going to use a familiar logo to go with it?

[Scott Stilphen]

The new logo should be a pic of the gal from E3 holding an Atari water bottle....

[Scooterb23]

I don't know about this, Infogrames has been putting out a goodly amount of garbage in the PC market recently (if memory serves...) lots of derivative budget titles that are sloppy and rushed out. I would hope that if the Atari name is coming back, that a slight amount of quality control will seep in as well. They have done a few nice games, don't get me wrong (Driver, Unreal, Oddworld), but games like Deer Hunter 4, Carnivore: Ice Age, and High Impact Paintball send chills...

[Albert]

I don't know if I've ever personally purchased an Infogrames-labeled product, and I buy a *lot* of PC games (as well as games for consoles, but not quite as much). That says to me that they don't have a lot of high-profile games, which doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, but that the games they do produce don't generate the enthusiasm that games from other publishers do.

 

On the PC I play mainly RPGs (my favorite genre), first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, adventure games (rare to be had these days), and puzzle games. And I don't own a single game from them in any of these categories.

 

If they do change their name, that will be a most interesting move on their part. The Atari name has a lot of stigma here in the US, but less so over in Europe (as far as I can discern from here in the States.) While it might get people close to classic gaming excited (for better or worse), I really wonder what the average joe will think when he/she sees games published by "Atari" on the shelves.

 

The old Atari also had a bad reputation with retailers, due to the poorly executed Atari 7800, Lynx and Jaguar launches (*especially* the Jaguar). And their later computer launches weren't so hot either. I remember having a hell of a time trying to find stores that carried the Atari ST, and those few that did very rarely had decent quantities of computers in stock.

 

Anyway, I was hoping that if Atari was resurrected, it would be through Nolan Bushnell, not an existing company like Infogrames just changing their name to Atari. If they do it, it's a pretty brave move on their part, and more power to 'em. But I doubt we'll see a new Atari-branded game console anytime soon.

 

..Al

[Mountain King]

Infograme's biggest hit, I think wasthe Alone in the Dark Series whick kinda was a supernatural detective mystery puzzle game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. It was actually a very good game. It was ahead of its time when it came out and had a rich story line. Unfortunatly the interface was a bit difficult. You had to be in the exact place doing the exact thing on some puzzles. But I'd like to see what they do. Hopfully they can get out of the Alone in the Dark rut they seem to be in. BTW another Alone in the Dark game is coming out very soon for PC and Playstation I believe.

[Joel D. Park]

You never know.. go to www.infogrames.com and check out their site. They are responsible for a ton of games. It looks like they are more of a publisher than an actual game developer...

 

They might end up buying a decent console company some where, like Atari when they bought the Lynx from Epyx. (Don't quote me on that, but I think I've heard that.)

[Jeffy Arensmeyer]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Scott Stilphen:

The new logo should be a pic of the gal from E3 holding an Atari water bottle....

---

 

Got'cha covered on that one.

 

 

We hope to have all of our E3 photos (over 400 total) posted on our site within a week.

 

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[khryssun]

that's the kind of things that let me think I'm spendind too much time with my computers lol

[Vic George]

The only Infogrames products I have bought were The Smurfs and The Smurfs' Nightmare for the Gameboy, which were pretty good games. And, through emulation, I have also tried out the Super NES Smurfs game, which was so good I became irritated at the fact that Nintendo Power had advertised this as a "coming soon" Super NES game in the U.S. and it never was released here! (Frankly, the Super NES Smurfs game would make a great Gameboy Advance translation!)

[popeal]

Speaking of Smurfs, weren't they (Infogrames) resposible for the PlayStation game too? If it was, I gotta say that it was a horrible game - don't get me wrong, the graphics were great, but the controls were very sloppy and I just wanted to throw the controller through the TV!

 

Al www.blowoutmagazine.com

[Mindfield]

Cafeman: Infogrames didn't buy Hasbro, they just bought Atari's assets from Hasbro -- for about 14x what Hasbro paid for it in the first place. I believe Hasbro just decided to divest themselves of the PC interactive market.

 

As for Infogrames' ownership of Atari -- well, I can't say whether or not it's good for the Atari name, but it *can't* be worse than Hasbro's unfortunate ownership, which amounted to little more than pimping the Atari name around to sell a few cheap games. Infogrames produced some very fine titles on the 8 and 16-bit platforms, as well as on the PC. I enjoyed most of their releases, quite honestly, so that, at least, bodes well for them chucking the armadillo-on-acid and donning the Fuji. Only time will tell how well they treat it. I do know that they're planning to have a token release of some classic Atari games for the PC -- some anniversary release which appears to have absolutely nothing different about it than Hasbro's previous release of the same package. *shrug* Just shopping the name around I guess, keeping the Fuji well known 'til they have something original to show for it.

[dollopx]

Aahhh...

 

I was under the impression that Hasbro had rolled Atari into it's "interactive" division, and had come quite confused of late with the reference to infogrames. Thanks for clearing all this up.

 

*smacks self in forehead*