Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/28/eight-atari-branded-hotels-com.html
…
6 Likes
14 Likes
Hotel building or PC case mod? You decide.
27 Likes
8 Likes
““Atari” is a name, a few French lawyers, and a licensing agreement taped to a photocopier. In that respect, this deal is a spectacular success.”
While in other respects, it is a sad reminder of what once was, a poignant note on what could have been, and an utterly depressing billboard of what Atari now is.
P.S. - These hotels really need a monorail or Tron light cycle streaming in and out. For aesthetics.
31 Likes
Where do I sign up to short-sell?
11 Likes
Seems on par with the (long defunct) Wizard’s of the Coast gaming center in Seattle. IF these actually get built it will be a fun couple of years before the inevitable shutdown.
7 Likes
I just learned that the company RCA is in a similar situation. They once were an enormous company developing new technologies, but now it’s just a name that gets sold so someone can slap it on their washing machine so it doesn’t look generic. Another one like that is Victrola. That name has been dead for a very long time, once obviously famous for making acoustic record players. Recently comeone bought the name to slap on some cheap crosley type turntables. But they have nothing to do with the old company. It’s a little sad when a name that meant quality gets reduced to the marketing equivelent of a cardboard halloween mask.
16 Likes
oh crap, they’ve finally nailed my personal demographic.
6 Likes
15 year old me: “We need to stay at the Atari hotel! For… reasons!”
52 year old me: “Isn’t Atari already dead? Jesus, who thought this was a good idea? Why the hell would anyone stay at an Atari hotel over, say, one with comfier beds and nice hot tubs or something? I am in the wrong line of business, clearly.”
18 Likes
“It’s almost like people enjoy playing home games in their homes, instead of these high-priced facilities where we actively bilk them for more dollars!”
“Impossible. Our paid consultants told us that this just wasn’t so!”
6 Likes
Bell and Howell is another one, oddly. A motion picture camera manufacturer most people barely remember. Now mostly a licensed brand slapped on as seen on TV products and strange things sold through ads in the AARP magazine and what have.
It’s unlikely that anyone without an interest in vintage camera equipment associates the brand with anything but knock offs of The Clapper you find at flea markets. It mystifies me that it’s considered enough of a brand at this point to bother licensing.
5 Likes
It would make sense to create an Atari 800 with an HDMI port that can run Atari 8 bit computer software and games. But an Atari hotel makes zero sense.
3 Likes
What no Sega Hotels, feeling cheated…
5 Likes
I’ve been ranting (well, maybe not really “ranting,” how about “griping”) about this for decades. RCA was borged into what is today an icon of late-stage capitalism (GE), who promptly shelled it out and whored out the name. Of course, now GE itself is getting shelled out.
4 Likes
Probably not the safest place to stay.
26 Likes
I wanted to like Atari hotels, but the sprite limit leads to ridiculous compromises. The TV and the phone constantly flicker because the room is redrawing each one every other cycle, and any items you have in the bedroom vanish when you enter the bathroom because the plumbing system uses the same addresses as your inventory.
29 Likes
I like how you assume that just because it has the Atari logo the quality of the hotel will be shoddy. That’s very on-brand for Atari.
I’d expect basically the same beds that all hotels use these days, probably hot tubs in some rooms, etc… Basically just a boring old hotel but with a small video arcade in one of the conference rooms and maybe slightly less boring styling.
1 Like
Gee, I missed that story. I keep hoping someone will step in and sort out the mess of their back catalog. A lot of old stuff has come back one way or another – you can finally get Superhero League of Hoboken on GOG! – but it would be neat to see Commander Keen 6 reunited with the rest of the series. (I mean, it would mean more to me than a hotel that I’ll probably never visit before it gets inevitably shuttered.)
2 Likes
