Atari

Atari If you asked me to make a list of the most stressful video games of all time, Lunar Lander would be pretty high up there. The Atari classic is a masterclass in minimalist tension, asking players to land spaceships on rocky planets very gingerly. Those who experienced that game when it launched could probably regale you with war stories about their space-faring escapades, but Atari is about to give players a new panic attack. Lunar Lander Beyond is a new reimagining of the classic Atari game from developer…

Digital Eclipse, the studio behind the superb Atari 50 collection, is back with another video game retrospective this week, as Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story comes to PlayStation, Xbox, PC and Nintendo Switch on March 13. Described as an interactive documentary, the Jeff Minter Story features 42 of the legendary developer's most iconic games from eight different platforms. Much like the excellent Atari 50 collection from 2023, the games will be accompanied by interviews, artwork, advertising and various stories from…

Atari You know that it’s a busy year for gaming when a project by an industry legend launches with hardly any fanfare. That’s exactly what happened in February 2023 with Akka Arrh. Created by Jeff Minter and his eccentric studio Llamasoft, the neon-tinted shooter is a remake of a 1982 Atari game that never saw the light of day after being deemed too difficult. Minter got the greenlight to revive the project, bringing it to life as a retro arcade shooter built in his unmistakable style. While the project was exciting…

Atari Pong is so simple that it feels like there’s no possible way to deconstruct it. The Atari classic is already the most fundamental multiplayer game possible , stripping competition down to a game of digital catch. And yet, developer Graphite Lab has turned the entire idea of Pong on its head with its latest game: qomp2. The oddball title is a sequel to 2021 hidden gem qomp. In that title, players took control of a runaway Pong ball as it tried to escape its mundane life. A one-button control scheme simply had…

I don’t think it’s really possible to quantify the “worst game of all time” or even compare kusoge that well. There are so many ways that a game can be deficient, and it’s hard to say what the worst way is. A game could be disappointing. It could be technically deficient for its era or mechanically lacking compared to others in its genre. For my money, the worst kind of kusoge is the boring kind. A broken game is at least fun to analyze, but an uninteresting game is just exhausting. As excruciating as it is, I would…

IBM commercial from 1984.Screenshot: IBMBefore the year 2000, Super Bowl commercials from tech companies offered millions of viewers their first glimpses of the future. Gizmodo watched dozens of videos from the 1980s and ‘90s to find the most iconic Super Bowl commercials from the early tech industry.Fax machines, internet connections, and Nokia phones may sound outdated now, but they used to be the cutting edge. These ads are far different from the tech commercials you’ll see in this year’s Super Bowl. We had to pull…

If next day delivery and TV streaming wasn't enough reason to sign up to Prime, Amazon is giving customers another batch of free video games to download. Throughout the month of February, Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to download free copies of modern day Atari remakes, including Breakout Recharged, Missile Command Recharged and Gravitar: Recharged. That's on top of the superb Tempest 4000, which is a psychedelic tunnel shooter designed by legendary game developer Jeff Minter.Other free games for February 2024…

Atari has both announced and released the 1997 classic-ish, Balls of Steel onto Steam today. The port was handled by Big Boat Interactive. So, I have bad news. The Duke Nukem table appears to have been removed. I’ll get to that. However, in its place, there is the spin-off table (Devil’s Island) and two brand new tables based on Missile Command and Centipede. Not a bad deal. Balls of Steel was developed by Wildfire Studios (with help from Apogee/3D Realms/The Pinball Wizard) and published by GT Interactive in 1997. If we…

Dust off your Atari 7800, because Plaion and Atari have announced that three of the console’s titles are getting a new cartridge run on May 24, 2024. The games in question are 1990’s Fatal Run, 1986’s Food Fight, and 1990’s Ninja Golf. All of these are favorites on the platform, but Fatal Run and Ninja Golf were both featured as part of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Food Fight, on the other hand, was only present in its arcade and Atari 800 formats. If you don’t have an Atari 7800, there’s good news. The Atari…

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