Atari Buys Retro Online Community

Atari announced this week that it will acquire the Atari Age online community as part of its recent retro push.

“The deal unites Atari with a vibrant community of retro fans, historians, and homebrew developers,” Atari notes in its announcement. “Founder Albert Yarusso joins Atari and will continue to manage AtariAge, as well as assume a new role as the company’s internal historian.”

Atari Age—named after an early 1980s Atari publication for gamers—isn’t a particularly notable website, but it’s been a key destination for classic Atari gaming fans since its inception in 2001.

“The site contains a massive database of Atari video games, including digitized copies of manuals, key art, packaging, screenshots, reviews, and more,” Atari notes. “It also houses a large online forum frequented by retro game enthusiasts as well as homebrew developers, who create games for a variety of Atari consoles and computers, and other legacy game platforms. Atar iAge features an integrated online storefront that sells retro games and accessories.”

The Atari Age purchase follows a 2022 acquisition of MobyGames, which catalogs over 335,000 classic games across over 300 platforms. Going forward, Atari says that it will support Mr. Yarusso and Atari Age but will leave the day-to-day management of the site to him.

Both purchases come amid yet another new strategy at Atari, which has embraced its retro roots in recent years after running into issues trying to make and sell a modern Ataribox (later, new VCS) video game console in the late 2010s. Though still available, Atari has seen far more success with its truly retro efforts, like the Atari XP series of [original] VCS cartridges that packages classic games as if they were new. The firm purchased over 100 classic Accolade, Infogrames, and Microprose games back in April, and announced the Atari 2600+, a new version of Atari’s original VCS console from 1997, just last month.