To Keep Old Games Alive, Atari Acquires PS1/2 Emulator Development Team
Recently, Atari announced the acquisition of ImplicitConversion, a studio focused on emulating 32-bit era games (especially first-generation Sony PlayStation games). This acquisition will permanently solidify their existing collaboration under the Atari umbrella, but this isn't Atari and ImplicitConversion's first partnership.
According to Bill Litzhauer of Implicit Conversion, the studio had previously collaborated with Atari through Digital Eclipse to develop "Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection," "Rayman," and future projects to be announced later this year. He described the relationship as "finding long-lost cousins."
Furthermore, they stated that this new partnership will bring more retro games to modern consoles. While they may expand their business to create more games for Atari, the current focus remains on developing the Pancake emulator for PS1, the Waffle emulator for PS2, and eventually turning their attention to a PS3 emulator.
“We see Atari as a very good fit – they share our passion, which opens up a lot of new opportunities for us. Our deep collaboration with Digital Eclipse on recent projects also gave us a glimpse into Atari’s commitment to game preservation and quality, which is very important to us,” Litzhauer said.
For Atari, they are excited to leverage Implicit’s proprietary Syrup engine and combine it with other tools to bring greater capabilities not only to Atari’s own IPs, but also to games from partners.
“Combining our vast owned IP portfolio with strong relationships with mainstream IP holders presents a huge opportunity for us,” Atari CEO Wade Rosen said in a statement to GamesBeat. “We look forward to collaborating with more classic IP holders to fully leverage these exciting technologies.”