A bar has been set. I’m not sure I can review another Bandai Namco Entertainment of America Museum game without it matching the art, the honesty, and the design that went into making Atari 50. As someone who teaches video game history for a living as a professor, I can without a doubt say that this treats Atari’s history right and truthful while offering up wonderful video game memories you can play. From birth to multiple deaths, this may very well be the best of the best when it comes to taking a trip down Atari’s video game memory road.
Insert coin to play.
The style
Before we even get to the games, let’s talk about this release’s style. This is a perfect 10 when it comes to functionality, design, and just overall style. Taking a page from Atari 70’s style guide, the color schemes and chronological movements of this game’s menu system put you in the mood to take a trip through video game history.
Once you get started, you soon realize the scope of Atari’s grasp. It’s not enough to know that Atari was the cream of the crop back in the 70s and early 80s, but to see the sheer girth of its grasp between PONG, its many arcade hits, and the lifespan of the Atari 2600 all displayed in a wonderful X/Y self-driven axis is cool. The navigation from point to point and the ability to expand the historical knowledge on certain objects, some with interviews attached to them, some with commercials, is just brilliant HCI. If you wanted to know about how Atari worked with Ray Kassar, boom! You got the story in its bad years. If you wanted to know about the Cosmos, a hologram handheld system that Kassar didn’t approve for shipping, boom! You get the brochure that was proposed and interviews with its creator Al Alcorn. The self-guided tour is slick, and it allows you to continue between decades and platforms by simply hitting continue at the end of the decade timeline. The ease-of-use navigation mixed with the multi-tiered delivery of information makes for a good time with revisiting or discovering the history of Atari. It’s probably one of the slickest video game history presentations that I have witnessed in my over 20+ years covering this industry.
And this is just the start of the experience. I didn’t expect much from this release but Digital Eclipse set the mood and tone with how this release looks and feels, and the rest just kept rolling. Speaking of which, let’s keep it rolling.
The decades weren’t kind, but they were well-represented
While I would love to report that all the games have survived the test of time, I must confess that my 80s childhood arcade and Atari 2600 belong in their respective decade. Now, having said this, the games are still gems. They’re great reminders of how we got to where we are today and the ingenuity of early game programmers who were putting together their best dreams on limited-capability hardware. This release reminded me how much my imagination filled in the blanks when playing these titles for the first time back in the day. They were gold back then because they were all we had and nothing else to prove that they could be better.
Nostalgia aside, the games included in the first decade of the release are still gold. The fact that you could play two-player PONG on the PS5 in all its glory, even if the arcade cabinet graphics around the screen are virtual, is astounding. Seeing other diamonds in the rough, like Centipede, Major Havoc, and Crystal Castles will harken back to the days when the sights and sounds of arcades could fill the air with excitement for an otherwise boring Friday night. All of the arcade classics come through with pride, perfection, and conceptual information to give them more worth.
The falloff of this collection begins with the Atari 2600, which shows time after time that it could produce some great games (Adventure, Breakout, Combat) and follow it up with terrible stinkers (baseball, basketball, weird games like SwordQuest). The 2600 was more exciting because it could be hooked up to a family’s television and change the device’s function. It was far less about the games that came out on the system, which were technologically limited at times and wildly confusing on occasion (looking at you, Haunted House). Much like the early Nintendo Entertainment System days, there was more miss than hit with what came out on the 2600. Much like life, you have to take the good with the bad and this collection certainly delivers both. Before we move on to another Atari platform, I have to say that the absence of Activision titles in this release is disappointing. While I get that they’re not Atari titles, having River Raid or Kaboom! on this collection would have done wonders for the 2600 days. I do love the fact that informational hats are tipped to Activision for starting the first third-party software company, but I would have loved a few of their titles to show up here. If you’re going to mention them (proper), then you should let us play them (super proper). It would have done wonders for the Atari 2600’s lack of great software in Atari 50. It’s still neat to see what that system produced, though.
I do also enjoy how this collection approaches the mid-80s collapse of the industry. I like that they include the death of the Atari 5200, and its many flaws, as well as the Atari computing systems, which I knew next to nothing about. That weird lull between Atari dying and Atari living again in the mid-80s is interesting, especially when Jack Tramiel gets involved with the revival. If you’re not familiar with that name, Jack Tramiel ran a small company called Commodore. It was successful in the early 80s with getting home computers into the household. It can be credited with opening the possibilities of home computers as a realistic option for non-computer households. Anyway, when Warner Communications sold off its Atari division after the collapse of the industry, Tramiel snagged it and produced two computers that mimicked Commodore’s affordable home computing dream. I have always been told that gaming on the Atari computer platform was nice, but not sustainable because of other reasons. Seeing some games included in this era of Atari helps to paint the picture and is a great inclusion to the history of the company, if only by its name.
The real gem of this collection is how the 90s are treated. The Atari Lynx and Atari Jaguar might be blighted in the history of Atari, especially when both were released, but they’re collector items for the biggest video game enthusiasts out there. Starting with the former, the Lynx was a marvel that pushed the limits of handheld gaming and went head-to-head with the Nintendo Gameboy. The Lynx did more than the Gameboy with full-color capabilities, great visuals, and sounds, and offered up a more entertaining experience. The bad part about the Lynx? The number of batteries it consumed and how long they lasted. It took six batteries to run the sucker, and those batteries were drained in 4-5 hours. That is an insane amount of consumption, and the battery cost just wasn’t worth it. The lack of well-known software hurt it as well. History lesson aside, its inclusion in the collection is honorable. It pushed the boundaries of handheld tech, as well as also serving as a warning about what was important to consumers.
Equally as cool, and such a nice addition to Atari 50 is the Atari Jaguar section. I think this might be the biggest reason why people snag this collection, as it’s impossible to find anything on the Jaguar outside of owning one and purchasing actual games. While some of the important titles are missing from this collection, such as Aliens v Predator, it’s nice to have Tempest 2000 and a Hard Drivin’ clone with the Jaguar. It’s also cool to see additional information about the Jaguar, including an explanation of how it functioned as a “64-bit” system. Spoiler alert, it went the way of the Turbografx-16 with mathematics. This section was a good surprise and a great exclamation point on Atari’s days in the spotlight.
Overall, this collection features such a wonderful hodgepodge of information and gaming experiences. It’s one of the most impressive collection releases I have come across to date. It teaches you about Atari, lets you play various decades, and then sends you on your merry way. I wish more classic collections added this context and content to their releases. As it stands, Atari 50 may not have all the shine with every game it brings, but there is enough shimmer of information and experience to entertain for years to come.
Let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Atari 50 from developer Digital Eclipse provides a proper path down memory lane with video interviews, old commercials, and a cornucopia of information to dig into about Atari’s history, the good and the bad. The inclusion of early Atari games, arcade experiences, the Atari computing systems, Lynx, and Jaguar are just icing on a well-baked, delicious cake.
9.0/10
