In some more Atari news, the video game pioneer is celebrating its 50th anniversary this upcoming Monday, June 27th. Since starting out as small Silicon Valley company, Atari has become one of the largest names known to gaming, and the company wanted to unveil a new logo to reflect that. Thus we find Atari’s new “Borregas” logo, named after Borregas Avenue, the company’s original Sunnyvale address from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.
In an homage to the original headquarter’s logo, the new logo features Atari’s signature Fuji above a “50” in two shades of their retro green (though other color options have been released). Fun fact: the Atari’s Fuji symbol (named after Mt. Fuji itself) has always represented Pong, the two opposing lines, or players, separated by the Pong court’s single-line center. This new Borregas logo will be featured alongside a similar 50th anniversary logo similarly named “Sunnyvale.” Together, the two will be the primary images for a majority of the press releases, game announcements, merchandising opportunities, and other corporate releases for the next year.
Hopefully, one of the next projects to be announced under this new banner will be the long-overdue sequel to the Atari 2600’s famous Yars’ Revenge. We now have confirmation from Howard Scott Warshaw, creator of the original Yars’ Revenge, that he has spoken to Atari regarding a direct sequel. While there are apparently “other Yars’ Revenge products coming out from Atari” in the near future, Warshaw has been allowed to pursue an idea he’s held for “decades,” and is finally able to move forward with it via Atari’s resources.
As the game is most likely in early development at this stage, next to nothing is known regarding the game or its offerings. However, Warshaw believes that “it’ll be on a number of platforms” and will be “a game that could be developed on the 2600 because it was designed on the 2600.” As strange a choice as that might sound in this more technologically-advanced age, Warshaw holds that, despite all these decades of progress, he has “never seen this gameplay done anywhere else.” An ambitious undertaking to be sure, but as Atari has been reaching a market of nostalgia for decades, so to will the awaited Yars’ Revenge sequel. In a day of legacy sequels, the game will no doubt find an audience among those who enjoyed the original and, hopefully, some newer fans as well.