What old Atari games do you want to see rebooted?

Anna Kournikova’s Pong

Asteroids is back. Well, sort of. Atari (or whatever company is calling itself Atari these days) is reviving the classic 1979 shooter as an open-world survival MMO for some reason. Money, probably. Also a complete and utter lack of shame. But mostly the money.

This isn’t exactly new behavior for the, uh, entity. Atari has exploited its extensive catalogue for years, most recently with reboots of Haunted House and Alone in the Dark.

It’s going to happen again, you know. Some other beloved property is going to be milked for all it’s worth and warped into an amalgamation of buzzwords and fads du jour. The smart money is on a free-to-play Centipede MOBA with roguelike elements. But what if it was something good?

I started brainstorming for an article based on that very topic, conceptualizing the classics as contemporary games. It wasn’t going too well, though. It was really only a shell of a post.

Then I saw this:

Asteroids Outpost is an open-world survival game. How else can we reboot old Atari games? http://t.co/jTWhkRhzoO pic.twitter.com/Oq5cWVFif8

— M.H. Williams (@AutomaticZen) February 12, 2015

Simpsons did it!

I cried out, shaking a closed fist at the sky. I cursed Mike Williams’ good name, growling he’d rue the day he inadvertently crossed me. Or maybe I just retweeted him. You know, one or the other.

Still, I’d like to share one of my ideas. It’s a gritty modern-day take on Pong. You control a famous tennis player and try to keep your opponent from hitting the ball into the soccer goal behind you. So it’s basically just tennis in front of a soccer goal then. Maybe this idea isn’t so great after all.

In my mind’s eye it was one of the Williams sisters pitted against Anna Kournikova, who apparently retired a long time ago. Boy, do I know a lot about tennis. Hell, let’s swap out the tennis players for Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan, set this thing on ice, and go full 1998 Winter Olympics with this.

There, I’ve set a low bar. Come up with something better. Tell us in the comments. Go read Mike’s article. He’s a swell guy. Helped me test out multiplayer for my Persona 4 Ultimax review, he did.