Atari has done a lot of good work positioning itself as a go to brand for retro gaming, both with its recent game collection Atari 50: the Anniversary Celebration and acquisitions of Nightdive Studios and Digital Eclipse, the latter of whom produced Atari 50 along with The Making of Karateka and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. It seems Atari has another developer in mind for spotlighting in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master series. In a recent interview with Nintendo Life, Atari CEO Jeff Rosen spoke about his dream collaborations for retrospective games going forward with mentions of titles like Panzer Dragoon, Ogre Battle, and Final Fantasy the top of his list is Nintendo. Specifically, he mentioned former Nintendo President Satoru Iwata as an ideal subject for a game collection:
Nintendo is the number one though, right? That would be incredible. It would be a tough one to crack, but if anything and everything was open, breaking down Mario or Zelda would be great. Satoru Iwata developed a bunch of games in his time, and with Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series, we don’t just look at game series and developers, but also sole creators like Jeff Minter. I think it would be really cool to do a retrospective on Iwata, looking at his life and career. Who knows, right?
Rosen did note that this idea would be a challenging one to actually make happen as Nintendo seems pretty content to handle their own retro game distribution with things like Nintendo Switch Online, and may not want to license its titles to a third party. However, the idea of a tribute to Iwata’s works in the same format as Atari 50 would be something special.
Click here to read the full interview.
