Atari Updates Classic Video Games with Centipede: Infestation and Warlords
Check out our E3 2011 category for more coverage from the show. See more photos in Shannon Cottrell's slideshows, "E3 2011: Day One" and "E3 2011: Day Two."
Shannon Cottrell Inside Atari's E3 Booth
At E3 it's easy to get swept away by the new. The three-day show, centered around games that have yet to be released, was chock full of trailers for games that look more like movies and the latest in gaming technological advancements. Over at the Atari booth, though, we consistently saw people huddled over three classic video games-- Asteroids, Missile Command and Centipede-- all presented in video game arcade cabinets. Each day, Atari gave away one of the games to the person with the highest score.
"They're kind of challenging us," says Austin Beer, a brand manager with Atari, of the players. "We work around [the games] all the time, we get pretty high scores, but some of the guys up there are pretty hardcore."
The retro giveaways were all too appropriate for Atari, the company that made its name during the video game boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Amongst Atari's new games at E3 are Centipede: Infestation and Warlords, two new takes on games that brought so many kids into arcades decades ago.
Shannon Cottrell Austin Beer of Atari shows us the new Warlords.
"I think people are nostalgic for the games that they remember, but they don't remember how much they have changed," says Beer. "What we're trying to do is bridge that gap, between games that they remember, that were so much fun that they wasted thousands of dollars of quarters on, but making it relevant to today."
A lot has changed in the video game industry and Beer says that Atari is working to link together the old and new schools of gamers.
"It's not just the gamers who played the old cabinets now," he says. "There are gamers who are growing up with these very hardcore, high-end games. We're trying to find the middle ground between the two."
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