Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration

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Despite having access to hardware that would have seemed space-age even a decade ago, there’s been a resurgence of interest in playing retro gaming on modern consoles (and PC) that wouldn’t make even the lowest-powered videocards and CPUs break a sweat. Nearly every major gaming company has released a dedicated microconsole (some released two), but for convenience you just can’t beat using what you already have. And if there was ever a gaming company with a catalog that could easily play on anything (even toasters), it’s Atari.

It feels strange to recommend a game collection where the actual games aren’t the highlight, but Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection is exactly that: a celebration of all-things-Atari chronicling the meteoric rise and subsequent cratering of the world’s first videogame company. Making this happen are emulation maestros Digital Eclipse, who scored a major hit earlier this year with Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. They’ve outdone themselves here by crafting possibly the best retro game collection yet – even if the games aren’t the reason you should be excited.

via YouTube

An Interactive History: Warts and All

The real highlight of Atari 50 aren’t the games, but their history, both of game development and the company through the collection’s outstanding interactive museum where you’ll browse through facts, quotes, photo galleries, documentary clips, ads and even vintage commercials (which are hilarious). Games mentioned (if available) are instantly playable from the timeline, which itself is gamified as everything you read, watch, or play is ‘logged’ with a fun sparkle effect that tracks your progress, which in turn helps unlock a handful of games provided you follow the clues in the ‘classified’ documents scattered throughout the timeline.

The documentary clips are delightful and informative as several legendary Atari developers share their history working for the company, and how they often performed technological miracles on the hardware, with added commentary from industry vets like Tom Schafer (Monkey Island), Cliff “Cliffy B” Bleszinski (Gears of War) and author and Atari-enthusiast Ernest Cline (Ready Player One).

Bigger names featured on the docs include David Crane (Pitfall) and Garry Kitchen (Space Jockey), both of whom recently formed a new studio, Audacity Games, to create and publish new games for the Atari 2600, Eugene Jarvis (Defender), and, of course, Atari founder and industry legend Nolan Bushnell.

You’ll learn the philosophy of Tod Frye, the lone programmer of the doomed 2600 version of Pac-Man, who likens home ports of arcade games to “abridged books” that give players just enough of the original to keep them interested, and if Yars Revenge / E.T. creator Howard Scott Warshaw seems the most comfortable in front of the camera, that’s because he’s done it before in both the Angry Video Game Nerd: Movie and several documentaries, including his own, Once Upon Atari, and Microsoft’s Atari: Game Over.

Elsewhere, photo galleries of the various Atari hardware, both released and prototypes, let you see the birth and evolution of gaming as it happened – or might have. It was a time when PC meant “printed circuit” and not personal computer, and videogames were “amusement games”. From Pong to standalone arcade cabinets to generations of home consoles (2600, 5200, 7800), several iterations of home computers to last-gasp consoles like the Lynx and Jaguar, every major Atari hardware is listed somewhere, and prototypes like a portable Breakout and Holograms get their due.

Keep browsing and you’ll admire how much experimentation went into creating what we now consider ‘standard’ controls, back when specific games called for specific hardware controls like trackballs, paddles, etc. You probably won’t have these accessories, of course, but Digital Eclipse has done a great job making even the most gimmicky controls playable on standard controllers.

Not just that, but various game developers and cover artists – whose art is presented in HD, often with rotatable 3D boxes – are credited by name when available. This is especially true for the many female developers who worked at Atari. When you consider developers and artists were seldom, if ever, given credit for their work during this period this info is invaluable – and long overdue.

As the documentaries progress it becomes obvious there was trouble in paradise as the company would go from industry-leading to industry-crashing. A series of disastrous financial and marketing mistakes means all roads leading to Alamogordo, New Mexico, site of the notorious burying of unsold E.T. (among other) cartridges that would embody doom for not just Atari, but the entire gaming industry. By the end of the 1980s it became clear that if the videogame industry were to survive Atari was not the company to lead it.

Games, Games, Games

With over 100+ games to explore through you’ll have plenty to sift through, though how long you’ll be sifting will depend on your tolerance for their gameplay. But there’s dozens and dozens of titles here, and that’s not counting the “dozens” of different modes some games used to pad out available features. The Atari 2600 gets the lion’s share, of course, but specific Atari cabinets, home computers, Lynx, and the Jaguar get a handful of playable titles as well.

You’ll get several big-name hits like Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Crystal Castles, Adventure, Warlords, Yars’ Revenge, Tempest, Missile Command, Breakout, Food Fight, Combat, and so many others. You’ll get multiple versions of them, too, which is especially great when comparing original arcade versions to their console counterparts. The games are presented with loving attention to detail and include extras like a save-state, CRT filters, original arcade bezels (and instruction manuals),

There’s some interesting additions, too, like the Touch Me, a dedicated handheld with an unfortunate name (and unfortunate similarity to the color-matching Simon game), previously unreleased prototypes like the 5200’s Millipede, Howard Scott Warshaw’s unfinished prototype Saboteur, and Yoomp!, a newer game released in 2007 for Atari XL/XE computers (with at least 64KB of memory, of course). Digital Eclipse even ‘finishes’ the ambitious comic-requiring SwordQuest series with the ‘long-lost’ Swordquest: AirWorld appearing for the first time here.

via YouTube

Also included are updated versions of some games recreated in the disco-psychedelic style of Pac-Man Championship Edition. These include Quadratank (a reimagined Combat), Neo Breakout (an amalgamation of Pong and Breakout), Haunted Houses (a shockingly ambitious, fully 3D remake), Yars’ Revenge Reimagined (less a reimagining but still playable), and VCTR-SCTR, an entirely new creation that mashes several Atari classics (Asteroids, Tempest, Lunar Lander, and others) into one giant, endless tribute to the wonders of vector graphics.

As packed as the collection is with genuine hits, there’s an undeniable feeling that many games representative of the ‘Atari Age’ are missing, especially for both its most – and least – popular consoles. I’m certain we can blame licensing for this, as there’s no way companies like Nintendo, Sega, Namco and others would allow Mario, Frogger, or Pac-Man back on any Atari package, even an otherwise superb one like this.

Despite boasting the largest selection the Atari 2600 is missing several bigger cartridge classics, including Donkey Kong (and Mario Bros), Pac-Man (or the superior Ms. Pac-Man), Frogger, Dig Dug, Q*bert, Pitfall!, Star Wars, or Space Invaders. Heck, you don’t even get industry-killer E.T. You know, for yucks.

The Jaguar selection is especially depressing as even Atari’s last console – and its toilet shaped CD accessory – had its share of decent titles that were fun to play. Sadly, none of its best made the cut, a list that included Alien vs Predator, Rayman (which began on the console, actually), Raiden, Iron Soldier, Primal Rage, DOOM (or Wolfenstein 3D), and Worms. Again, licensing rights probably made these impossible to include, but it’s a shame as what did somehow makes the Jaguar seem worse than it actually was.

If I had any complaints it would have been nice to have the videos be more easily accessible, or maybe have an option to put them on continuous play (once unlocked, of course). Maybe it’s a testament to just how good and intuitive the timeline interface is that you’ll want to revisit the history again to see what you missed. Did you know Atari had an official handshake? Or that Apple’s founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would help create one of the company’s biggest hits, Breakout? You will!

Conclusion: Press Play

These days Atari is Atari in name only, bearing little resemblance to the pioneering company that once changed the world, apart from the famous Fuji logo. As historical game preservation remains, sadly, in its infancy it’s great to see something like the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration take up the mantle and show us how an museum of games can itself become a game, and something truly worth celebrating. This is easily the most interesting, and possibly best, retro gaming collection yet. More, please!