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Atari announced today that it is calling on fans for help with finding the developer of a legendary unreleased prototype called Aquaventure. No programmer has thus far ever (officially) come forward to claim this Atari 2600 game, which turned up at a flea market in the ’90s.
Atari XP, a division within the company that publishes physical copies of rare and unreleased games, is opening the quest to gamers. It asks fans to direct any leads it may have to the company via Facebook message. It doesn’t give them much to go on, but determined gamers are a formidable force.
According to a blog post written by AtariProtos’ Matt Reichert, “Until the mid 1980s, most games were only credited to the company that published them. In a fast growing market, studios wanted to make it more difficult for competitors to poach talented programmers by keeping their identities hidden. This practice is why we don’t know exactly who conceived and programmed Aquaventure, along with many other titles from the early ’80s.”
So how exactly did a prototype of Aquaventure appear in a flea market? That’s what Atari is hoping fans will help find out. Atari XP is offering a proper physical copy of Aquaventure to pre-order on the Atari XP site, which will ship sometime early this year.
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