In 1979, the Atari 8-bit computers quietly defied expectations of what a home computer should be. The Atari 400 and 800, in example, featured some truly incredible hardware that enabled arcade-like visuals and sound from a machine that fit in your living room and hooked directly into the television. Even after decades, their design remains a tidy compromise between having enough energy to accomplish the job and being simple.
Five years ago, Atari Hotels made a big splash about gaming-themed destinations planned throughout the United States. Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, and Austin were at the top of the list, and the renderings were showcased sleek buildings bathed in a retro arcade light that would make you feel right at home if you were a kid who spent your afternoons playing Pong and Asteroids. As with so many games, delays emerged out of nowhere, owing mostly to the pandemic.
Atari just breathed new life into a legendary console from back in the 1980s that went head to head with the original Atari 2600. Behold the Intellivision Sprint, a redesign of the classic brought into the modern age. Its history is a well known one – it battled it out with the 2600, and now four and a half decades later, Atari is reviving the brand, teaming up with Plaion to launch this latest incarnation.
Back in 1980, Missile Command was the kind of game that could make you forget your quarters were running low. You hunched over an arcade cabinet, trackball spinning, launching anti-ballistic missiles to protect six cities from an endless onslaught of enemy warheads. Fast-forward to 2025, and Atari, alongside Canadian studios Mighty Yell and 13AM Games, has transformed this high-octane shooter into Missile Command Delta—a turn-based tactical game that trades reflexes for strategy and wraps it all in a mysterious narrative.
Have an Atari Lynx but never heard of Ultravore? That’s because this one-on-one fighting game, first worked on by Beyond Games in the early 1990s, was never released. Songbird Productions got the rights around 2000 and is now bringing it back, adding upgrades like health bars, different damage levels, new graphics, and sound.
The Atari Jaguar, released in November 1993, was the company’s final home console and marketed as the world’s first 64-bit gaming system. This was a bold claim to make at a time when 16-bit consoles like the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and Sega Genesis dominated the market, with 32-bit systems just starting to emerge.
