When first hearing that Atari US was filing for Bankruptcy protection my first thought was, Atari is still around?  Atari has essentially been a non-entity in the video gaming world for years and bankruptcy seemed inevitable.  Atari created the earliest video games; Pong being the first.  When that game was introduced, it literally gave birth to the electronic gaming industry. People could not get enough of what was actually a very simple game, though nothing preceded it.  The reason for the filing is to break away from the unprofitable, parent company.  France’s Infogrames Entertainment bought a share of the company in 2000 and bought it outright in 2008. According to a written statement released by Atari, it said its goal now is to “secure independent capital for future growth, primarily in the areas of digital and mobile games.”  The company said it’s going to sell off certain assets including the logo and company’s game catalogue, ensuring the Atari name will live on.  Atari was electronic gaming’s main player when it was developing such games as Asteroids and Centipede.  But it quickly lost revenue share to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, as those three companies became the dominant players in the gaming market.  Since then, the company has been bought and sold several times, never being able to re-establish itself as a major player. The company announced it had secured $5 million dollars in debtor-in-possession financing from Tenor Capital and will “conduct its normal business operations” during the bankruptcy proceedings.  Atari was founded in 1972.