RCL
So when's David Levy going to be suing Atari for maliciously ripping off his business model?
The architect of a retro games console has sued Atari for allegedly failing to pay his invoices, amounting to $261,720. Rob Wyatt's company, Tin Giant, was hired in July 2018 to design the Atari VCS console, but quit the contract in October 2019, telling The Register he had resigned because "Atari haven't paid invoices going …
Furthermore, and I'm one of the nostalgic here, there are WAY better ways, with all the emulators, into which passionate people have sunk a lot of time into, that replay games exactly as back then, with the real ROMs ...
Heck, the emulated sound of the floppy drive in winUAE is EXACTLY the same I remember it to be on my Amiga 500 ! Even the timings !
The incompetent startup using the Intellivision name is not far behind. Rob Wyatt of Atari didn’t say much but he appeared to have some hardware skills. Tommy Tallarico talks all the time but doesn’t seem to be able to back anything up, especially since his story changes all the time.
These projects have a few things in common:
- start with a retro name
- claim they’re not just retro
- design the case first
- take money up front for custom colors
- treat engineering as an afterthought
- delays, broken promises
Kieren, any chance of getting Atari’s side of this story? They made a big deal of Rob Wyatt being in the hospital after a bad skydiving accident in one update, then in the next they said he had been fully recovered for months.
One major difference between the Intellivision Amico and Atari VCS though. Intellivision have shown gameplay. I don't believe the Amico is a scam, just a new product, with all the problems that involves..
However, as with the Atari, while I would like to see the Amico succeed, I don't know if it will. Nintendo and Sega have done well with their "classic" consoles, and Sony less so, but those three have something in Common. They all have games from franchises that are currently relevant. Ninty have Mario, Sega have Sonic and Sony have Metal Gear Solid. The nearest I see on either the Amico or VCS is Earthworm Jim. A franchise which, while it was entertaining, hasn't been relevant since the late 90s.
I hope neither the Amico or VCS are scams, and I'd like to see both do well, but I don't think either will (as noted above, they don't have any relevant franchise games to sell, and don't have a manufacturer with deep pockets for marketing who can afford to take heavy losses for extended periods)
it wasn't until July 2018, in an effort to stop the project falling apart, that Atari hired Tin Giant to design the console
I can't help but wonder if the lure of a large salary blinded Tin Giant to reality.
July 2018 is after ElReg released the audio recordings to back up the story, and here is a dev brought in to design something that was previously shown off (in empty box form) and promised ages before.
Surely, surely, alarm bells should have been ringing from every direction?
Agreed. That's not Atari Thumb you're thinking of, that's Nintendo Thumb, especially with the stiffness that the NES controller would get after a while.
The Atari controller was pretty ergonomic for the time frame, and the stick had a rubber mount over the top of it to protect the right hand. The rubber wore out over time, and eventually it falls off during longer sessions. But, when you're in the middle of it, you keep going at it. It's trouble when you have to go find it later, though.
Also, if you did it without the rubber, you'd get an odd callous on your right hand, between your thumb and first finger.
the best retro consoles seem to be RPi-based DIY projects...
a long time ago I started playing with xmame, and with some TLC it should still build and run. So on an RPi (or inexpensive PC for that matter) you (theoretically) should be able to emulate most of the old console games as well as the arcade games from the 80's and 90's.
a few DIY shops sell the joysticks and buttons you'd need to do an arcade-style game. Or you can just get USB game controllers.
Anyway, that'd save a lot of money and make for a fun DIY project. The only thing you're missing is the ability to run those old catridge games, or new games made for the same platform.
Is there REALLY a market for this? Hard to say, but you have to admit the old-style console and arcade games are STILL fun.
90 day payment terms are sadly very common, so the first three months don't count as they're still "in date".
Then there's the pre-action letter, which is another two weeks, maybe a month.
So that's four months unpaid before you've even properly lawyered up. Two months is then pretty fast for a lawyer.
Aside from that, when you terminate for non-payment you're also committing to legal action - if you don't sue them, they'll sue you for not finishing the contract so you want to ensure they've dug themselves into a big enough hole to be a slam dunk civil case.
Enforcing the judgement is of course rather different.