Atari VCS faked gameplay footage as well as showing a port the creator knew nothing about

Over the course of this year, Atari has been trying to get a new home console off the ground in the form of the Atari VCS. The crowdfunding campaign advertised a few things, and even showed off gameplay. Unfortunately, it looks like at least some of the footage shown was faked.

The crowdfunded Atari VCS console showed footage of Tempest 4000 running on their machine during the campaign, but it turns out that the creator of the game has no knowledge of a port, or even how the game is running on a Linux based machine.

Llamasoft is well known for their work on Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar. The studio has been active for a while, with their most recent release being Polybius for PSVR and Oculus Rift. They are currently developing Tempest 4000 for PC and console, with Atari as publisher.

In the Atari VCS trailer on Indiegogo, it shows Tempest 4000 running ‘natively' on the Atari VCS system, but this is impossible as there is no Linux version of the game. As this Reddit investigation shows, the creator of Tempest 4000 has even confirmed he didn't even know about the Atari VCS, and was also dark on his game being ported to it.

Despite Atari first confirming Tempest 4000 was running natively on the console stating: “Still excited about seeing Tempest 4000 on the Atari VCS? How about some actual gameplay? We’ve snagged more behind the scenes test video! It's Tempest 4000, played with a modern controller on an Atari VCS test platform!”

Atari has since officially responded to the developer of Tempest 4000 stating the footage used was, in fact, running on a PC, but they fully expect games like Tempest 4000 and others like it to be available on the platform.

In addition to Tempest 4000, Atari also faked footage of Yar’s Revenge, with a poorly edited shot that can be seen here.

KitGuru says: The writing was on the wall for the Atari Box, and I think investing money in anything Atari does going forward was always going to fall foul of something like this. What do you make of Atari lying about the VCS?

 

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