Atari pulls nostalgia power move and buys homebrew community forum

Planning a bit of retro fun over the weekend? The news that Atari is to acquire retro gaming forum AtariAge might dampen your enthusiasm or raise your spirits, depending on your point of view. While the gaming community might be all agog for Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3, a substantial number still remember the "good old days …

[Ideasource]

Grab your data and run.

Time for the users to start scraping the forums in preparation to migrate all useful information to a new platform.

Homebrew exists to beneficially supplement the artificial shortcomings and barriers of commercial shortcomings and business-purposed limitations.

Often to the technical embarrassment of the commercial actors.

Ie

"you've been telling us for years it's impossible/unfeasible.

now some guy in his basement through it together in their spare time? Did you lie to us or are you just incompetent"

Being owned by the manufacturer is a clear conflict of interest.

[cookieMonster]

Re: Grab your data and run.

Yep, they’re fucked

[ThomH]

I guess the Intellivision money finally ran out.

Comment added to memorialise the very cosy relationship that Tommy Tallerico seemed to enjoy with AtariAge when it came to moderating out everything but the most effusive praise for his Intellivision Amico con. Something very fishy was afoot there.

[Gene Cash]

Not your grampaw's Atari

Don't forget the real Atari went bankrupt in the mid-'80s and the name has passed through more than half a dozen companies.

But then, I guess that's irrelevant... the current IBM and HP certainly bear no resemblance to their original selves, either.

[An_Old_Dog]

PWNED

When people start writing (as happened in TFA's referenced URL) or talking like, "XXXX has begun taking its YYYY-related IP seriously ...", it's a sign that they've stepped into one of Simon Bar-Sinister's* Phoney Booths and been converted into a corporate mouthpiece.

*Simon Bar-Sinister was one of the primary villains in the 1960s American cartoon, "Underdog".

[James O'Shea]

Re: PWNED

Only if a meek little shoe-shine pup starts speaking in rhymes.

There's no need to fear; Underdog is here.

[david1024]

Plan for worst, hope for best

There is a lot more over there at Atari age than Atari 2600. The home computers, programs mods, and all sorts of things for commodores (all of them), RadioShack color computers (again, all of them), the TI home computers, and all sorts of other, lesser known, machines.

It is also pretty much a one stop for support (deep hardware and user-level) for all these platforms too... Not uncommon to get help from one of the folks that designed your machine, or be able to read archived posts from them too. Just incredibly unique and special.

There is a lot going on over there that may draw the wrong attention now that a commercial entity possesses it. But, this old stuff can't stay in the same hands forever. He re-homed it as he saw fit. And I think the community will support that as there really is nowhere else to go.

[CowHorseFrog]

I dont understand why corporations always turn around and censor communities like this, who exactly do they think they are fooling ? Cant they count that they are pissing off more people than the number of people they fool with their bullshit ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't censored anything...yet...cool your horses there amigo. You're getting angry ahead of time. Which is efficient I grant you, but unnecessary.

[Dan 55]

This seems about as necessary as the Amiga Global Alliance. And probably half the board isn't even Atari stuff and Atari won't like half of what's left so it bodes well for the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

The power of BRAND....

This isn't Atari. It's a company that licenses the brand from the conglomerate that bought out the bits and pieces of Atari.

...and people complain about iSheeple? At least Apple is the actual same company...