AtariNFT.io — the dumbest thing Atari has ever done.

I hate to be hyperbolic about this. But… I just can’t.

Imagine… a marketplace, backed by the “blockchain” and “non-fungible tokens”, where you could buy gacha packs that contain random gifs of old Atari 2600 cartridge boxes. Some just stand there, doing nothing. Some are colored gold. Some spin. If you are very, very lucky, and spend a lot of money on gacha packs, you might find yourself in the possession of a gif of a box that opens up to show the game being played for a couple of seconds.

Only if you are VERY lucky.

If this sounds amazing to you, then take yourself over to AtariNFT.io.

Here’s the original e-mail announcing this awesome achievement:

We couldn’t actually believe that they were asking people to buy gifs of Atari 2600 boxes. Surely… something more than that? Not just buying pictures of boxes that you could… buy and sell on a marketplace? That you could actually just make yourself for free by just taking pictures of the boxes or finding them online (except not on the blockchain then…)

If you’re still thinking that directing friends and family toward WAX.IO so they can look at your collection of Atari 2600 box gifs, here’s what the store looks like:

Standard gacha mechanics.

Let’s do some math.

You decide you want to get the “Collector’s Edition” Atari 2600 Asteroids Blockchain Edition gif.

Which is right here, btw — it’s “fungible”, but this is what you’ve decided you really want. It’s not enough that you have this gif, you want it to be on the *blockchain*, and so you start your Atari adventure.

There are seven collector’s edition NFTs (non-fungible tokens), so about a 14% chance to get this one.

There’s a 0.1% chance per pack that a pack will contain a collector’s edition NFT at all, so therefore there’s a (0.001 * 0.14 = 0.00014 = 0.014%) chance that any given pack will contain your Asteroids box (the one right there).

You want to save money, so you buy the packs at 50 for $39.99, or about $0.80 per pack.

I wrote a quick Python program to help me figure out the probability of having a 50% chance of getting the Asteroids collectible I so desperately desire (that gif up there, that’s what I want).

According to this script, it would take 4951 packs to have a 50% chance of getting your Asteroid gif (as seen above). Because you are careful with your money, you bought in bulk at $0.80 a pack, so your 50/50 chance would cost you $3,961.00.

Of course, even those people who really want Atari 2600 box gifs (as seen above) might hesitate at that price. So off to the market!

There are two of these gifs on the market. The prices are cut off, but the first is being sold for $15,000.00, and the second for $5,000,000.00. So there’s a price range going on here.

If you sunk your $15,000 into packs, you’d have about a 98% chance of getting at least one Asteroids gif.

In that time, you’d probably get all sorts of other gifs that you could sell and recoup your costs — maybe even make a profit!

Unfortunately, these being so new, there is no sales history on these, so either or both of these may be priced unrealistically.

In contrast, I looked on eBay, and you can find the actual cartridge in an actual box for about $20, and you can get that and play it and take a picture of the box and make a gif from it, as much as you like. And when someone asks to see your Atari 2600 Asteroids box, you can just hand it to them. If you need a console on which to play it, eBay has you covered for several between $15 and $100, most of which come with games if you get tired of Asteroids, somehow.

So… stupidest thing ever, or am I just missing out on something exciting? Let me know!