Atari goes HTML5 and we can help you do the same!

Not only can you now play HTML5 Atari games you can build your own! We’ve got code and workshops to help!

Okay I am going to admit to my age for a moment. I remember bugging my dad to buy me Pong. Pong was released in 1972 and Atari released and inspired many generations of gamers and game developers. There was a time you needed an Atari 2600 to play these games, but today with help from Grant Skinner (a Canuck who has infiltrated the upper echelons of the Microsoft development world) we are launching Atari Arcade! Pong, Asteroids, Centipede all done with HTML5 on Internet Explorer 10 (multi-player too so bring it on! my twitter handle is hockeygeekgirl, word of warning I used to rock at Centipede!)

Now here’s the really cool part! Not only can you procrastinate by playing video games there is an Atari software development kit as well ! Yup, I can’t wait to start playing with this! Just go the Developer behind the scenes section of the site and you will find all sorts of great JavaScript libraries and tutorials for building HTML5 games you can even leverage touch! ( Did I mention you can build Windows 8 games with HTML5 as well, just sayin’)

Of course, it’s one thing to tell yourself, yeah that would be cool I’ll do it sometime. The best way to find time for it is to give yourself a little jumpstart, something to get you rolling. Well we’ve got that too! We’ll be doing CreateJS Workshops across Canada so you can learn how to build Atari games! Sign up here! There’s more details about the CreateJS workshops and the cool stuff Atari and Grant have teamed up to accomplish here and meanwhile to whet your appetite here’s a little behind the scenes video of how this all came to happen with some neat insights into Atari.