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"fans of the classic brand and its wooden styling got themselves in lather."

This strikes me as a hilarious statement from my point of view. Here in Canada (and the USA). Atari was vanquished in the late 80's by the video game crash and Nintendo outperforming them at every turn. They ended their run with the massive failure of the Atari Lynx (which seemed like a good system but had terrible distribution and no games) and the commercial failure of the Atari Jaguar (which was so expensive that I had absolutely no chance of ever seeing one as a child). The Atari ST was a total non-entity (as was the Amiga in all it's forms) as the PC market was split almost entirely between DOS machines and Macs.

Now, I understand that you guys in the UK had a different experience in the UK. But if Infogrames "Atari" thinks they're going to sell many of these in the North American market, they're dead wrong. Nintendo can do that because they have positive mind-share, over here Atari has been a dead brand since the late 80's.