Should Atari be on VC?

[Firebrand]

Should the Atari 2600 be added the Wii Virtual Console?

[Dark]

Should it? Yes. Will it? Probably not. Atari was bought and scattered, so getting the legal rights to the ROMs produced by Atari is going to be hard for Nintendo. While Activision's games could come to the VC, it would be nearly impossible to get the OK for any of Atari's games that make up a large portion of the games for the 2600.

[Jogurt the Yogurt]

Only if the games were cheap. 200-300 points. 400 tops.

[Pit 42]

Atari games are certainly not worth 400 points. I really hope Nintendo wouldn't price them that high.

I probably wouldn't buy them anyway. The main characters are usually squares and the quest is to find the yellow...triangle.

[darthmix]

Yeah, honestly, there aren't any 2600 games I'm really dying to play. I'd much rather they devoted their energies to bringing out top-tier titles for the systems VC already supports.

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

It doesn't really matter to me if they wanted to add it, as long as they did it right. But of course, some problems always come up right away. Probably the best or most notable games on Atari were Pac Man, Space Invaders and a few games we couldn't get due to copyrights. And we already have Pac Man and a few games we saw on the Atari days in various forms through ‘better’ consoles on the VC already.

That being said, the draw of having the Atari name connected to the VC, 'completing' the full list of the 'big' classic consoles (a Sega console, a Nintendo console, Neo-Geo console, Turbo-Graphix and Atari) and drawing in some of the older crowd who might look at the list of VC games which would now have the Atari name as well as just titles they'd be interested in like 'Tetris' (soon to be on Wii Ware). It might help Virtual Console more than hinder it.

The major problems I would see with it is the price (you'd have to make them probably either 300 points or 500 points each....either way its not really going to be good) and the VC is already hurting on how many games are coming out a week. We're already getting clogged by more consoles being added with less games being put up each week. Atari games being thrown in the mix each week would probably make some people rebel.

Still, if they could fix EVERYTHING and then add Atari, I'd be fine with it. Of course, we could also see peace in the middle east and chocolate bunnies could burst out of my pants.

[sco0504]

i would pay 100 points, maybe 50 for some of the games that haven't got much depth

[pdRydia]

If the Atari 2600 came out on the VC, I might buy a title for the sheer lulz of it. It was my first console, after all. I might even like to see N take it up--for the software preservation if nothing else.

I don't really see it happening, though. Besides the whole thing where Atari has sold off most of its properties, all helter-skelter, hoping to stave off bankruptcy...the 2600 games are awful. Like, really really bad. Pacman? Burger Time? I don't think there's enough potential gain for Nintendo, Atari, or Wii owners to justify the effort.

[Jogurt the Yogurt]

I think you guys are mostly right in that the profitability would be quite low. Their only potential move would be to bundle games together at the 500WP price point. Maybe in 4-packs. I do think they would find a slice of the retro market if they were priced correctly.

[pdRydia]

Originally Posted by Jogurt the Yogurt

I think you guys are mostly right in that the profitability would be quite low. Their only potential move would be to bundle games together at the 500WP price point. Maybe in 4-packs. I do think they would find a slice of the retro market if they were priced correctly.

Yeah, I was thinking about the potential marketability of bundles, too.

How big are Atari 2600 games, at any rate?