>the Atari name has mostly stood for doom and gloom since the video game crash of 1983.

now come on, the ST series was pretty popular in Europe and had a pretty big market share of home computers in the late eighties. Admittedly, their marketing devision were permanently on holiday during the release of the Lynx, Jag and Falcon - all decent machines that sank without trace.

Have you played Atari today ?

I've owned (and played) a lot of Atari kit over then years. It's sad to see that the brand is fading.

And for what it is worth, the soundtrack to Marble Madness, level 1 (the second level) is the ringtone on my phone.

The Atari ST "keyclick" was voted the single most annoying sound of the 1980s. I blame it for Atari's demise.

are cr4p. Long like Amiga !!!

Fallout has been freed from what remains of Interplay, but is there anything left at Atari worth salvaging?

Not that it really matters but this Atari is what is left of Atari Corp.

Atari Games (who owned Marble Madness) ended up with Midway Games. And so Midway own the rights to Marble Madness ;-)

"The Atari ST "keyclick" was voted the single most annoying sound of the 1980s."

Really? I thought the most annoying sound of the 1980s was made by Amiga owners, who used to come out with inane shit like "STs are cr4p".

Thankfully those days are gone now, and we no longer act like such complete tools...

Infinium Labs should buy the name and rebrand the Phantom. That way Atari devotees can get a nice warm feeling every six months when Infinium put out a new press release promising incredible things, but their lack of ability to bring the console to market both safeguards the Atari name indefinitely and also prevents the inevitable disappointment when people living in 1989 discover it doesn't have GEM as a window manager. Win-win.

The Infogrames balloon who changed the company direction on a daily basis.

Spend 3 years making a "simulation" and Bruno complains it's not "arcadey" enough, so spend another 3 years re-writing, at which point he re-appears and says "This would have been really good as a propper simulation". I shit you not!

How to double developement times and confuse your staff in one easy lesson.

It's sad, but no surprise Atari is going down the shitter, it stopped being a quality brand the day Infogrames got their hands on it.

a cheap built in midi interface. If the A500 had included one, there would of been no success at all for Atari.

"Really? I thought the most annoying sound of the 1980s was made by Amiga owners, who used to come out with inane shit like "STs are cr4p"."

Apart from the midi interface, they were inferiour in every way.

Sad to see Atari go though, big chunk of computing history.

sound chip as a spectrum 128k.. says it all really, all they had over the amiga as mentioned was a midi interferace, and really how many people actually used that for playing games??!! just admit the amiga WAS the far superior machine.

still a shame to see such an important player in computer world is going...

My Dad had the Atari ST and then the Amiga. They seemed to be identical in spec but there was deffinately a noticable difference when I used them. The graphics were both on a par, the midi on the ST was used by people wanting to hook up there electronic keyboard and suchlike to it. But the biggest difference I found was the sound. The Amiga had far superior sound, and that came from the sound chip which was a top piece of kit from something else if I recall right, either way overall I rated the Amiga a better piece of kit as it delivered decent graphics AND sound.

@Anonymous Coward:

"Thankfully those days are gone now, and we no longer act like such complete tools..."

You obviosuly don't know any Mac or Linux fans.

@Andy:

"it all really, all they had over the amiga as mentioned was a midi interferace, and really how many people actually used that for playing games??!!"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze

$ten-years-dead_platform is FAR superior to $other_ten-yeards-dead_platform, you $insult_that_only_someone_who_lived_in_his_parents_basement_since_1996_could_come_up_with!

I work at Atari for 8 years in the 80s-90s until they went under then. It was sad to see it happen then and even more sad now. I wish they could have pulled through somehow. I'd probably still be there today if they had really kept going.

Both were amazing for the day, certainly far better than the equivalent macintosh. Very sad that Atari have bit the dust, but we can all hope that Apple only take a few more years to go the same way

even more amazing that a tongue-in-cheek comment can kick off the rivalry again after 20 years!

Anon: get a SOH...have a read of the register.. it's 'joke alerts' will have you spotting them in no time. In practice you might be able to detect them without an alert....

The only personal computer that there has ever been is the Commodore C-64. I am writing this on one as we speak, and I run all modern software on it, such as Blitz-64, Centipede, and Race. I have seen these new Atari machines and the Amiga - and I just cannot see the world of 16 bit catching on. It simply provides no useful extra capability. As for those green screen XTs - what a joke.

I also have a Paris Hilton simulator on mine.

How do you manage to slow the C64 sim down to real time ?