And the Phoenix rises from the ashes... Laughing Boy ] LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Franco-American video gme ] publisher Infogrames, in an effort to increase its ] profile with consumers by reaching back into gaming ] history, said Wednesday it is changing its name to Atari. ] ] To mark the new Atari and the new ticker symbol ATAR, ] Chief Executive Bruno Bonnell is set to open the Nasdaq ] on Wednesday. ] ] Infogrames/Atari shares have been on a run of late, ] rising more than 130% on the Nasdaq since April 18, when ] the company said it had completed work on Enter the ] Matrix, the hotly anticipated video game companion to the ] forthcoming Warner Bros. film The Matrix Reloaded. ] ] The Atari name is the most storied in video gaming, ] dating back to the early 1970s, when Nolan Bushnell and a ] team of engineers at Atari created "Pong," the arcade ] video game that was so popular machines sometimes jammed ] up because they were overflowing with quarters. ] ] Over the years, Atari went through many incarnations, and ] at one point operated as a subsidiary of what was then ] called Warner Communications and is now known as AOL Time ] Warner. ] ] It ceased to be a stand-alone company in 1996, when it ] was acquired by JTS, and in early 1998 JTS sold the Atari ] rights and assets to toymaker Hasbro. ] ] Infogrames, founded in France in 1983, acquired the ] rights to the Atari brand in early 2001 when it bought ] Hasbro Interactive. In October 2001 the company ] relaunched the brand and began using it as a games ] publishing label... |