Atari partners with Anstream Arcade for retro gaming

Atari has announced a partnership with retro gaming platform Antstream Arcade. This partnership brings an enhanced and exclusive “Atari Edition” of Antstream’s game streaming service to the upcoming Atari VCM home gaming and entertainment system.  The exclusive Atari VCS edition of Antstream Arcade unlocks an instantly-accessible collection of classic video game titles. In addition to an existing…

Asteroids the movie – what HD was made for

Asteroids is coming to a big screen near you. That’s no lie. The classic Atari title, originally released 30 years ago, is being made into a movie.

I’m expecting it to be quite intense viewing – plenty of complicated dialogue, elaborate plot twists and some Oscar-worthy performances from its cast.

Or maybe it will stay faithful to the original game and will simply be two-hours of a triangle-based spaceship blowing up some square-ish looking asteroids with little or no plot at all. Maybe they could even shoot it in black and white for added authenticity.

Universal has apparently signed up Matthew Lopez to write the script for the film which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

It sounds like a winner. No honestly. Although it will have a hard job dislodging Super Mario Bros as the best ever movie adaptation of a game. Bob Hoskins as Mario – genius.

(via THR & @clashcityrocker)

Get yourself in the mood for the movie with a quick blast on the original game:

Asteroids made by Neave Games

Atari abandons filesharing lawsuits

atari-logo.jpg

Following the news the other week that some pensioners had been accused of downloading pirated games, Atari has abandoned its ‘sue-your-own-customers’ strategy, developed in conjunction with trigger-happy lawyers Davenport-Lyons.

Although the company maintains that it will “always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy”, this is a positive step from a company realising that the only thing it’s actually getting out of the campaign of intimidation is bad press.

Will other companies follow? Codemasters is the biggest games publisher still associated with the troubled law firm. With any luck, it will wake up too, and realise that bringing legal action against its customers is far more trouble that it’s worth. There are many other options for making money with games.

I’m off to go buy some Atari games.

Atari (via TorrentFreak)

Related posts: Pensioners ‘caught’ pirating games | Atari and Codemasters join video game piracy legal fight – £300 fines on the way to 25,000 game-sharers