Atari Finally Sets Up Shop in the iPhone App Store

By  |  Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 5:30 pm

You may now count Atari among the classic video game systems to find a home in the iOS App Store.

Atari Greatest Hits should be available for the iPhone and iPad sometime this evening for U.S. users. The app includes Pong for free, and includes 99 games from the Atari 2600 and arcade system for purchase. Games are sold in bundles of three or four for $1 each, or $15 for the entire collection. A handful of games include local multiplayer over Bluetooth.

Some of the classics include Yars’ Revenge, Super Breakout, Centipede and Missile Command. I’m saddened but not surprised that Activision’s Atari games, such as Pitfall and River Raid, aren’t on the list. No Pac-Man or E.T., either, but that’s probably for the best.

This isn’t Atari’s first endeavor in the iPhone App Store. The publisher has previously launched modern-looking versions of Centipede, Missile Command and Super Breakout, but the games in Greatest Hits are the actual old-school versions. It’s also Atari’s first store within a store, joining Commodore 64 and VH1 Classic Presents: Intellivision in the iPhone’s roster of classic video game emulators.

I wouldn’t expect to see an Android version. As we learned from the Kongregate debacle, in which Google temporarily removed a Flash game portal from the Android Market, stores within stores are one way to run afoul of Market policy. But that shouldn’t be a problem for Android users, who are free to purchase a third-party Atari emulator and play the console’s entire catalog without paying a dime to Atari. Makes sense to me.

 
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5 Comments For This Post

  1. The_Heraclitus Says:
    April 7th, 2011 at 9:48 am

    Can't you get an emulator for the iOS?

  2. dholyer Says:
    April 9th, 2011 at 10:12 am

    Does anyone remember the Atari/Apple wars in 1983/4. Apple had their MAC and Atari had their Atari ST. Both were GUI like based systems, Apple was B&W on a small screen built in, and Atari you bought your own color monitor. Apple had it's own disk format and Atari could read/write IBM PC disks, but both used the 3.5" semi ridged floppy disk. Atari had a MIDI music prots, Apple did not. Both computers you had to add hardware to get them to do Ethernet. Atari still had a external Serial bus to talk to hardware, this was left over from the 8 bit Atari 800/400 6502cpu computers. They both used a 68000 16/32bit cpu.

    I was a Atari fan, since the 1977 game machine, which I had and a Atari 800 computer, and a Compute Magazine and Byte Mag reader.

    Atari fell down when they invested in the Japanese market in a almost anti Nintendo mode.

    Apple's biggest boost came from copying the GEM OS and Atari bought a share of it, And the GUI interface was given for free to the computing world by it's Xerox creators.

    Atari may be a child ghost of it's 70's parent company, but it is still alive, but no longer king of the hill that it's video games gave it.

    All companies need to grow of fail, it is just where you choice to invest that makes you a winner. And if you pick incorrectly you may lose. Atari learned this first hand. The name is still there, now they just need to show that Capitalizm will always work and if you play your cards right you can win.

  3. find a cosigner Says:
    January 2nd, 2012 at 8:35 pm

    This is great news. It will be more easier that way. Thanks for the information.

  4. Affiliate Marketing Says:
    January 10th, 2012 at 6:22 am

    Great! I think I will try to visit the app store and see the Atari there.

  5. Essay Writing Says:
    January 16th, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    I am an attari enthsiast. This is really a good news for me. Thanks