Okay, the contest is over! Infogrames/Atari wins the prize for largest compilation of classic games ever released on a console with their new Atari Anthology. It’s a whopping 85 games on one disc with some terrific archival/historical materials. It also only costs $19.99 or, if you prefer, less than a quarter a game. And if you can find the game you want to play with the cumbersome selection interface, they are generally emulated pretty well.
Atari Anthology almost exclusively represents the early days of gaming before the great crash of 1983/1984 (there are a handful of later Atari 2600 games), known to collectors as The Golden Age of Video Gaming. Arcade games thrived one quarter at a time while the Atari Video Computer System, a.k.a. the Atari 2600, became the first mega-successful home video game console. Back then everything was pretty fresh. Almost any activity was tried as a video game and most of the genres that still endure today were established.
Both arcade and Atari 2600 games are contained on Atari Anthology: 18 arcade and 67 Atari 2600 games. The games contained on the disc are … not going to be listed in this paragraph. There are way too many of them. I’ll include a full list of them at the end of the review.
In addition to the games, Atari Anthology contains some great historical materials. Print items such as sales flyers, instruction manuals, box art and game-exclusive comic books have been scanned and are easily viewable. Memorabilia items have been lovingly photographed. The interviews with the father of the video game industry, Nolan Bushnell (Blessed be his name!), commissioned by Hasbro Interactive for their first Atari compilation after acquiring the Atari assets are also included. Those are about five years old now but are still great.
The interface for choosing games is both innovative and frustrating. After an opening title screen, the player is taken to the galaxy screen. Within the galaxy are constellations, made up of star games, representing a different group of games. Arcade Games is pretty self-explanatory, it contains all 18 of the arcade game emulations. Other constellations, containing the Atari 2600 games, are named things like Arcade At Home, Racing, Sports, Space, Casino, Adventure, Mind and Action. One problem with this system is the player has to either know what genre the game he wants to select falls into, must consult the manual, or simply goes looking. The other problem is it is inconsistent. For example, Night Driver for the Atari 2600 is in the Racing constellation. But it was an arcade game translated for the 2600, so it should actually be in the Arcade At Home constellation with the likes of Asteroids and Missile Command. Atari Anthology’s interface is better looking to the eye, but somehow I think Activision Anthology’s retro-gaming-area alphabetical menu worked a bit better for such a large number of games.
Once a constellation is selected, the player is presented with a list of games in the constellation. Selecting an individual game takes the player to that game’s solar system. The original game is represented by the solar system’s sun and is always selectable. The orbiting planets represent other modes that the game can be played in once they are unlocked. The modes include: Time Challenge (score the most points before time runs out), Trippy (a psychedelic, persistence-of-vision mode that really has to be seen on Tempest), Time Warp (varies the speed of the game as it is played), Hot Seat (the selected game and three others that will switch in sequence at regular intervals for an ever-changing, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gaming experience) and Double Speed (that’s right, doubles the speed of the normal game). Also at the solar system screen the player may press the circle button for game options or the square button for bonus items on the game.
Emulation on the games is generally of high quality. All look arcade or 2600 perfect except the arcade vector-graphics games like Red Baron and Asteroids, which can never really look right on a raster-scan display. Sound seems to be the biggest problem issue that pops up, most often with the arcade games which usually contained proprietary sound systems in their cabinets. The PS2’s controller never even breaks a sweat controlling any of the games, though games that originally employed paddles, trackballs and spinners will never quite play correctly without them.
The absence of loved Atari 2600 games like Space Invaders, Berzerk and Phoenix are regrettable, but it is understandable since these were games licensed for the 2600 from companies that are now Atari’s competitors in the console-game market. What’s really puzzling is the absence of any Atari 5200 or 7800 games. These systems too are part of the Atari legacy up until 1984 (Yeah, I know the 7800 didn’t hit stores until 1986, but it was shown with complete games in the summer of 1984.) and both systems had some great original games on them. Why the 2600 version of Desert Falcon and not the far-superior Atari 7800 version? Perhaps in a future compilation we’ll get the full Atari legacy, including the Lynx and Jaguar.
Anyway, if you have any interest at all in classic gaming, Atari Anthology is a must-buy. Should the 85 games for less than 25 cents each not be enough to lure you, the historical materials certainly should. Remember, the Atari 2600 was the console that really started the home-video-gaming revolution, and (Boy, I know I’m going to get rapped in the mouth for this blasphemy by the purists!) though the Activision games were really better playing games for the console, Atari Anthology contains many of the first-party games that truly defined the system. Atari Anthology is also the first console software package to offer these games since they originally appeared on the 2600, so in a way it represents history itself. The arcade games also offer some of the best play experiences from the days when arcades were king. It’s a great package that should be in any serious gamer’s collection.
Arcade Games: Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone, Black Widow, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, Red Baron, Space Duel, Super Breakout, Tempest, Warlords
