One of the oldest companies in the gaming world filed for bankruptcy today.  After bursting on the scene over 40 years ago Atari Inc has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy today.

With this move pretty much everything ever produced by the company is going to go up for sale within the next 90-120 days.  This includes the famous Atari logo and a huge backlog of old school games.  From the press release Atari stated more information regarding the assets that will be for sale:

These assets include not only one of the most widely recognized brand logos, which is familiar to 90% of Americans, according to a recent survey, but also legendary game titles including Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Battlezone and Tempest. Other recognized brands include Test Drive, Backyard Sports and Humongous

I don’t know about you all, but I’m very curious to see who ends up buying the rights to these older games.  With the emphasis on nostalgia in mobile gaming you might see the rights to these games gobbled up by a company hoping to make a new iOS or Android app with all of these Atari games.  Alternativly, one of the big gaming companies like Sony, Nintendo, EA, or Microsoft might purchase the rights.  Regardless, its going to be very interesting to see who buys up the Atari intellectual property.  I think we can all agree this is the end of a very iconic company from many of our childhoods.