A co-founder and two ex-game designers from Activision have joined forces to form Audacity Games, a company dedicated to the Atari 2600.
The original Atari 2600 was released in 1977 and experienced a huge boost in sales during the ‘80s when Space Invaders was released. Fans of the retro console have since crafted emulators like Stella and Retron which run the games through an ordinary PC.
David Crane, one of Activision’s co-founders, has teamed up with Dan and Garry Kitchen, a pair of game designers he met while at his old company. Their goal is to create games that will run on the Atari 2600 under the banner of Audacity Games.
The official announcement of my new venture with my brother Dan Kitchen and David Crane – #AudacityGames , a premium #retrogaming publisher, focusing on physical game releases developed by some of your favorite designershttps://t.co/5doE8s78ls
— Garry Kitchen (@kitchengarry) March 7, 2021
In their first press release, Audacity Games described themselves as “focused on designing and publishing boxed game products for a variety of retro game systems”. Garry Kitchen later clarified on Twitter that each release would come with “a download of a digital version”, so those without the hardware can still enjoy the new games.
Every release comes with a download of a digital version (with the same serial number) which is Stella emulator compatible.
— Garry Kitchen (@kitchengarry) March 7, 2021
“For years our fans have been asking us to create new games. We heard you, and have decided to do just that,” said David Crane. “I have always said that I have as much fun making games as others do playing them, and the retro game systems are my favorites.”
Both Garry and Dan Kitchen previously worked on games for the Atari 2600, including Ghostbusters, Donkey Kong, Pressure Cooker, and Kung-Fu Master. David Crane was also involved with Pitfall and Dragster, so the team brings “over 40 years of game design experience” to the console.
The Audacity Games website is so far a landing page with a teaser video, but access to the mailing list has also been opened.
The post Ex-Activision veterans form Audacity Games to develop Atari 2600 titles appeared first on NME.
