For Atari, preservation isn’t just about saving old games
Even though I was a child of the ’90s who grew up with a Sega Genesis, my favorite console was my mother’s hand-me-down Atari 2600. It was the one console I kept hooked up to the TV in my bedroom, while my PlayStation was in the living room. Playing a game like Pitfall! was a special experience. It was almost a ritual, as I’d sit on the floor directly in front of my CRT TV, slot in a massive cartridge, and hold the joystick controller like I was giving an acceptance speech for an Oscar.
That experience isn’t easily replicated decades later. I can head to any emulation site and play Pitfall!, but it isn’t the same. It lacks the physicality of holding an old joystick or the mystique of carefully studying the key art of the cartridge before I slot it in. It’s easy to port a game; it’s much harder to preserve what it felt like to play it when it first came out.
For Atari, that challenge is paramount. The iconic game maker is in the midst of a transformation led by CEO Wade Rosen. With that pivot, Atari is returning to its roots by putting an emphasis on its history. Classics like Asteroids and Breakout are receiving modern makeovers, lost games are making a comeback, and Atari is even producing new cartridges that actually work on a 2600 console.
The strategy isn’t a Hail Mary nostalgia play. In speaking with current Atari leadership, the company is trying to tackle a complicated preservation question that few game companies seem to be concerned about: How do you preserve the legacy of video games?
When players talk about game preservation, the conversation question largely revolves around porting games to other systems. It’s been a hot topic in recent years for a variety of reasons, from Nintendo shuttering its old eShops
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