Area 51 Rescued Atari Games

By 1994, Atari Games was on the brink of bankruptcy after years without a profitable title and the loss of many talented developers to Electronic Arts. The company placed a last-ditch light-gun project with outside developer Mesa Logic, which turned it into the 1995 arcade shooter Area 51. Critics were lukewarm, but players made the game a major hit, and it sold more than 20,000 arcade cabinets. Area 51 launched a comeback that restored Atari Games as a major arcade force within little more than a year.

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