Arcade game legend Atari looks for extra lives after bankruptcy
THE VIDEO game firm behind classics such as Pong and Asteroids has filed for bankruptcy in the US.
Atari, one of the firms credited with kickstarting the industry in the 1970s, is being separated from its French parent company, in a bid to isolate the business from the French firm’s debts and give it a chance to succeed on its own.
Atari’s Paris-listed owner was formerly known as Infogrames but changed its own name to Atari after it bought the US firm for $11m (£6.9m) in 2008. The parent firm’s business has declined in recent years, and Atari US is seen as having a chance to revive itself as a developer of smartphone games based on its 1970s classics.
The company, founded in 1972, had a string of arcade successes before making its own home consoles. Its hardware lost popularity in the late 1980s and Atari began to develop games for other systems, scoring hits with the likes of Roller Coaster Tycoon.
It then fell into financial difficulty before it was bought out.