Diving for Atari gold
Atari has announced that it has entered into an agreement to purchase retro restoration developer Nightdive Studios. The chairman of Atari reportedly already owned a 13% minority stake in Nightdive, and the deal is for Atari to buy up 100% of the shares.
Nightdive Studios has long been a well-regarded developer of ports of older PC titles. Some of these endeavors have resulted in full source ports, as was the case in the move of Power Slave to their proprietary KEX Engine. Currently, Nightdive is working on a complete refurbishment of System Shock, which is slated for release May 30.
For Atari’s part, it has largely been pushing modernized versions of its legacy library with games like Yars: Recharged, which I haven’t played, but I can’t imagine it being much worse than 2011’s Yars Revenge reimagining. The company has been pretty shaky for years, though their reproduction of Atari games on authentic cartridges shows some respect for their properties, and the recent team-up with Digital Eclipse on the Atari 50 collection has yielded one of the best retro compilations in years. Maybe they’re turning a new leaf, and Nightdive will help steer them on a good path. Who knows?
I’m trying to be optimistic. I have a lot of respect for Nightdive and not much for Atari. It’s like seeing your sibling hook up with the guy who’s best known for pooping himself in gym class. I’m trying to be optimistic. Maybe Atari’s pooping days are behind them. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I reached out to Larry Kuperman, Director of Business Development at Nightdive Studios. He commented, “A major factor in choosing to partner with Atari is that Nightdive will be able to continue our mission to bring back lost classics, but with greater resources available.”
