Denis Koble, Rich Adam, Ed Logg, Lyle Rains, Bruce Merritt, Tim Skelly, Owen R. Ruben, Ed Rotberg, Bob Smith, and Rob Zdydel are forming a game company named Innovative Leisure, and you should take notice.

If you don’t know who those guys are, they are the designers, programmers, and masterminds behind most of Atari’s famous golden age coin ops. Collectively there helped create Tank, Sprint2,  Jet Fighter, Avalanche, Starship,  Dirt Bike, Video Pinball, Atari Football, Super Breakout, Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Battlezone, Gravitar, Millipede, Gauntlet, Steel Talons, Xybots , Hard Drivin’ and many others.  As well, Tim Skelly was instrumental in creating and a few greats from Cinematronics as well  like Rip Off, Armor Attack, and  possibly the best game ever made, Star Castle.

Their plan (along with about 2 dozen other employees) is to work on 10 games simultaneously that will be released by THQ for iOS later this year.   They are focusing on game play, basically starting where Atari (the REAL Atari)  left off, making great, innovative games.  They are also working on a trackball controller for iOS.  The name Innovative Leisure comes from some of Atari’s earliest marketing materials, and by using it, these guys areg firing a shot across the bow of the game world.

This is all being made possible by Seamus Blackley, who was one of the creators of the Xbox, and his wife Van Burnham, author of the book Supercade (a book that sits in the 8bitrocket.com library right now)  They have basically done what we here at 8bitrocket.com towers have dreamed of doing : They “got the band back together”.  The band of greats who were there are the beginning and are ready to kick ass again once again.  They’ve pulled all these veterans together, and they hope to take on the world like it’s 1979 all over again.

We here at 8bitrocket.com could not be more excited about this, and come this summer, we can’t wait to play their new games.

You can read more about this here and here.