Atari launches its Sunnyvale experience in The Sandbox metaverse

Atari has launched Sunnyvale, a major new experience in The Sandbox’s metaverse. The virtual space is an ode to the golden age of video games and the birthplace of Atari.

The Sandbox, owned by Animoca Brands, recently unveiled its latest Alpha Season 3 featuring 90 new Metaverse experiences. Atari is one of the largest owners of land or virtual real estate in The Sandbox. And now it shows that it’s willing to devote resources to the development of this country, Atari X director Tyler Drewitz said in an interview with GamesBeat.

New York-based company Atari turned 50 this year and remains one of the best-known consumer brands and game publishers. The Atari Sunnyvale experience is based on nine classic Atari games and includes a full game based on Crystal Castles.

“We think people will appreciate the experience, and it was worth making the time for it,” said Drewitz. “We’ll find out what they like. It’s a cool entry point into Web3.”

Within Atari Sunnyvale, players can explore and interact with Atari-based non-player characters (NPCs).

Players can also participate in a variety of quests and games like hide and seek, where rewards are awarded to the winners. The Crystal Castles experience is a game in which players race through a maze-like castle, collecting gems and fighting enemies. Crystal Castles is just the first of many games to come.

The sandbox is an immersive virtual world where players can create virtual worlds and games, and participate in experiences created by others. The Voxel gaming platform allows developers to create, play, share, collect and trade – all in a decentralized environment where they have secure ownership and copyright of their creations as all in-game items have a unique and have immutable blockchain identifier. Atari Sunnyvale launches as part of Sandbox Alpha Season 3.

“We’re incredibly excited to share Atari Sunnyvale with the sandbox community, and we know it will attract more Atari fans to the growing platform,” said Drewitz. “I’m particularly excited for people to experience the deep, wondrous environments based on our games, created by our development partner Metatworld Entertainment.”

Atari sold some of its land in The Sandbox, but remains one of the largest landowners in The Sandbox and will continue to work with partners to develop more experiences to engage the player community in the years to come.

“The vision that the team at The Sandbox has and the creativity and energy they bring to the project make them an ideal partner for Atari,” said Wade Rosen, CEO of Atari, in a statement. “We will continue to experiment and find new ways to bring programming to the open world and look forward to bringing more experiences to players.”

Atari X is an initiative that consolidates Atari’s blockchain interests into a unified operation fully controlled by Atari. It was founded four years ago under former CEO Fred Chesnais, who left the company about 14 months ago. Drewitz joined in March (after 2.5 years of consulting) and is breaking new ground.

Through a combination of Web3 development partnerships, the Atari X Initiative is building a robust blockchain ecosystem that will bridge gaming, utility and community and will ensure that blockchain remains an important part of Atari’s business and long-term strategy.

“The reason we created this, which is one of the first things I created when I came on board, is because Atari was so early on in the journey that we were licensing deals and partnerships starting with this im Year 2019,” said Drewitz. “We have licensed Zed Run with Atari skins, and Atari was a pioneer in blockchain. But what we didn’t have was a community or anything else.”

He added: “As you probably know, it’s very divisive between gaming and blockchain gaming and there isn’t that much of a middle ground with a crossover for fans. So we created these partnerships, but we didn’t really have a place to interact with the cool projects and the cool technologies that were being used. We just gave them the Atari name and went on.”

But now the company is going into these Web3 projects and creating a more engaging experience. The Atari Sunnyvale experience is a large room where you can walk around as a blocky Lego-like figure.

“If Web2 is direct to the consumer, Web3 is direct to the community,” said Drewitz. “We can create this ecosystem of Atari X. We have Twitter, a Discord, and in the past week since we started our own project, we’ve reached over 50,000 on Twitter out of 3,000 a week ago. So it’s all starting now and moving pretty fast.”

Drewitz said more blockchain projects are coming to expand the ecosystem for Atari X.

“Early blockchain gaming lacked quality gaming,” he said. “I’m very interested in people making great games, especially now that Unreal 5 is coming to the blockchain space. Atari Sunnyvale has our favorite IPs like Pong, Centipede, Asteroids, Missile Command, Black Widow and Crystal Castles.”

In the Missile Command area, you can see a large missile appear overhead. And you can take the elevator down to the Missile Command Center. Atari will be giving away some Season Passes for The Sandbox Alpha Season 3. The team wants to expand the land in The Sandbox and do more cool things at a reasonable pace. They believe that over time, the Metaverse will draw more users into a decentralized creator community. You create minigames and more.

“We’re going to get the community involved and have building and wealth contests where winners can place their creations on our land,” Drewitz said. “The Crystal Castles experience feels like playing on the Atari 2600.”