Atarisoft

Atarisoft was a brand name of the former American computer game manufacturer Atari , under which video games were marketed for the competing systems from Coleco , Mattel , Apple , Texas Instruments , Commodore , IBM , Sinclair and Acorn .

General

Atari marketed around 20 games under the Atarisoft brand between 1983 and 1984, which had previously been very successful as arcade machines or video games and to which Atari held the rights. The ports of these games were not developed by Atari itself, but programmed by independent developer companies and only sold under the brand name Atarisoft . This also meant that the same games were implemented for different platforms in different quality, which was not only due to the technical capabilities of the target systems.

For each target system supported by Atarisoft a certain color was used, e.g. B. purple for the VC 20 or green for the C 64 . The packaging of the games were mainly cardboard boxes printed with this color, on which the game title, the target system and the Atarisoft logo were written in simple letters . Only in the upper right corner was a small section of the artwork that Atari typically used on its slot machines or boxes for games on its own systems.

The Atarisoft name as a brand for distributing games for competing systems was abandoned in 1984 when Atari was sold by Warner Communications to Jack Tramiel , the former founder of Commodore. Only in Great Britain and France were some titles published under this brand in 1985, but these were for Atari's 8-bit computers themselves.

Games

The following games were sold for Atari's competing systems under the Atarisoft brand :

literature

Christian Wirsig: The large lexicon of computer games , Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89602-525-2 .