Atari Acquires Rights to French Video Game Juggernaut: Here’s What to Expect

Game news “We are delighted to bring them back” Atari buys the rights to this former French video game juggernaut!

The return of the armadillo

This is news that we didn't necessarily expect to see when we got up this morning. If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s, you probably know Entertainment Infograms. Known for its armadillo-shaped logo and for its iconic games, this French company had indeed stood out thanks to its specialization in development of video game adaptations of famous licenses for example from Franco-Belgian comics like Asterix, Tintin in Tibet Or The Smurfs to recite nobody else but them. Absorbed by Hasbro Interactive in 2003, then Atari in 2009, Infogrames quietly disappeared from screens… until today.

Atari is bringing back the Infogrames publishing label.

For decades, Infogrames has built a reputation as a publisher and developer of incredible and eclectic games, and we're excited to bring them back. – Wade Rosen, CEO of Atari

You would have understood it, Infogrames will return from beyond the grave thanks to Atari. By going to their official website, we learn that Atari's goal is “to license and publish games of multiple genres that fall outside the portfolio of licenses associated with the Atari brand”. It is also written that “some historical titles published by Infogrames” could well return in the future.

News that risks making people happy… and traumatized

Whether you're nostalgic or have always dreamed of introducing your childhood games to younger people, you should surely be happy to learn that Infogrames is finally coming back from the dead. For now, it is announced that the label should manage its catalog of titles by developing new collections and sequels. We can therefore perhaps expect some compilations of iconic games from the 1980s and 1990s, or even a sequel to the terrible Tintin in Tibet. Something that some specialists do not necessarily view favorably:

If you follow the Attic Player for several years, you necessarily know that some of his most iconic videos deal with games published by Infogrames, so much so that the publisher has become almost inseparable from the content creator. It is therefore hardly surprising to see him react in this way, even if he himself took the opportunity to announce in another tweet that if Infogrames develops a game as hard as those of his childhood in the years to come, he will present his broadcast to his child as a passing of the baton. If this is the case, we wish a lot of courage to Junior du Grenier. For anyone who only knows Infogrames by this reputation, we still remind you that the publisher has not only published bad or horribly hard games (like Alone in the Dark and Driver for example) and that its return can absolutely be good news for the industry.