context is why this collection thrives

whether you grew up with atari games, you find their primitive nature to be charming, or you kinda fucking hate them and claim they're boring as sin - atari 50 has something for you

this isn't a hollow game collection - it's an interactive museum. many of the titles on here are backed by interesting concept art, corporate documents, and even developer interviews. it's so fascinating to see the rise and fall of atari chronicled so honestly from the people that saw it eat shit firsthand. the whole presentation really enriches a lot of the games on here. arcade inlays and side panels are replicated, shitass controls are optimized for controllers, and some classics are even remade faithfully from the ground up

my only gripe is that this strain on the historical angle means some more fun and exciting picks were left out. this especially is noticeable on the jaguar selection. there's not a single cd-based pick on here, and a lot of more interesting titles (attack of the mutant penguins for instance) are omitted in favor of absolute fucking trash like atari karts and club drive. not the end of the world since emulators exist, but an oversight nonetheless

A virtual museum into the genesis of video games

I'd like to preface this review by apologizing for the recent review spam as I go through most of the games in the collection.

I can safely say I was never into video games of a pure retro nature mostly. I lacked the patience and my brain has rotted to the point that I found it hard to really go back sometimes. I knew about Pong and Asteroids and my only real experience with Atari's legacy was a parody of it via watching Code Monkeys as a kid and just know seeing how much it really influenced that show. Most of my arcade experiences themselves derived from Namco mostly due to the fact that The PlayStation 1 titles worked as virtual museums as well as its own space which I also recommend you check out if you enjoy this type of collection. That said, this is a pretty great collection that goes in depth of what exactly Atari did for the video game space and as a company itself.

I really don't want to delve too much into the story of Atari due to the fact that the collection does a better job of it than I ever will but I will say that it manages to go into depth a bit with the people that were actually there at the time. Video interviews, statements, reading the flyers from then and even secret memos and corporate documents from then really give you the context of what went into making the games. Going into Adventure's influence, explaining how hard it was to make games for the 2600 due to the fact that they had to constrict themselves to a specific limit compared to creating arcade titles and even crazy stories like how much weed the developers smoked. There's a lot more here to unpack but I really do believe the collection does it justice better than a few sentences I could muster really do.

The games themselves are cool as every library is covered barring a few important ones sadly. The Jaguar collection itself seems to be lacking as well (for better or worse) but I feel like you got a lot of the important classics for the most part. Tempest ended up being a personal favorite of mine for the visual style and fast paced gameplay and this also its Jaguar counterpart, Tempest 2000. Classics like Pong, Asteroids, Star Raiders and Adventure are here with some wacky concept games like Ninja Golf really surprising me. Also a cool addition is that each game comes with its manual and appropriate media to get the most out of the games too making this much more than just a regular collection of emulated games.

Digital Eclipse did a great job with this collection. Being given a bit more insight into the inner workings of how the concept of household video games as a whole is something I didn't expect to come out of knowing. Really wish a lot of arcade or early game collections were like this where you have first hand accounts and documents explaining the intricacies of making a specific game or how something specific came to be. If you have a huge appreciation for the medium, this is definitely worth taking a look at and only hoping more things like these comes around.

Atari 50 is a fantastic compilation of Atari games throughout the years, from the arcade, to the 2600, to the Jaguar, and everything inbetween. As you go through the timelines you get to try out tons of classic games, sprinkled with high-resolution scans of manuals, print ads, and interviews from key Atari and other game industry personnel.

As far as game compilations go this is certainly one of the best ones out there, even if quite a lot of the games don't hold up well (if they ever were in the first place). It would have been nice to have some more famous titles as particularly licensed ones (such as E.T.) are absent, but with the quantity and even new creations it's hard to really complain. Especially when none of the games in the collection are half as bad as the penultimate interview, being several minutes with the creator of Ready Player One.

The 8-bit era of Atari was before my time. I started the next generation with the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo as a young toddler. I still respect and have enjoyed iterations and ports of Atari 8-bit games over the years. What hasn't been done well is anything outside of bundles of seemingly random collections. They're nearly countless at this point and have spanned to nearly every console imaginable. Atari anniversary collections, various Atari-themed packs, and various retro packages with fancy UIs or presentations. However, no single retro package has been as cohesive or beautifully created as Atari 50. Even Sega's recent Genesis Collection with its retro 90's bedroom and bookshelf display can't beat this.

The entire game is presented like an interactive history lesson. You go through four timelines. Atari's origin story and their arcade routes. You get to see photos, printouts, commercials, and interviews with various Atari developers and industry veterans such as Tim Schafer (Psychonauts) and Cliff Bleszinski (Gears of War). These are presented in chronological order. A game is presented when its release comes up in the timeline. Some games have cover art, photos, and even comics underneath them to view. As you advance in the timeline you get a feeling like you're playing an interactive museum tour. There are no fancy 3D menus or anything, but the clean and simple UI works well. There are a few surprises peppered in like unreleased prototypes and Digital Eclipse's own recreations of iconic games like Yar's Revenge and Haunted House.

As you advance to the home console and PC timeline things get more interesting. You will eventually get to Atari 5200 and 7800 games which are a bit more advanced. You will also get to play a few PC games for the Atari home computers. Then you will finish up in the 90s with the Atari Lynx and Jaguar. Sadly, there aren't many games in this timeline, and the biggest issue with this entire game is the lack of third-party titles. You only get to play Atari-published and own games. That's very limiting, and while I understand this is Atari's own history there are many games that helped make their systems great outside of internal developers. The few Jaguar games range from Cybermorph to Tempest 2000 and Missle Command 3D. They aren't great, but interesting to dive into. That's another thing about this whole collection. Very few games are fun to play longer than five minutes. Some are pretty clunky and bad. This isn't a "greatest of" collection which I really appreciate. You will most likely go back to the more fun games like Missle Command, Centipede, Millepede, Tempest, or their latest versions in this game. You get special bezels, backgrounds, overlays, and control options for every game as well. You can also select various modes and some games support save states which is cool. You also get a digital view of every manual for the game including the arcade operator's manuals. They didn't leave anything out.

By the time I spent around 5 hours in the game, I got to the end of the timelines. You can go back and play any game in the library view and pick your favorites. These games run really well and look great, but many gamers who didn't grow up in the 80s will probably find this nothing more than a history lesson. Even more, will find pretty much every game boring or uninteresting. However, that's not a knock to the games, but just a warning to younger audiences. Anyone younger than 30-35 will most likely not find this game interesting or fun. If you have a curiosity about Atari's history or games then this is the best place to get that. If you have an itch for trying out 8-bit games or want to go back without emulating anything then this will give you nearly 100 games. I also appreciate how few ports and copies of the same game are in here. Each game was hand-picked and placed with relevancy.

Overall, Atari 50 is one of the best retro packages you can ever play. Telling an entire developer's history with games placed in their correct time slots and even including unreleased games and reimaginings of some is just fantastic. The videos are entertaining and interesting and you will learn a lot. There are so many details added from commercials, print ads, posters, manuals, customizable controls, save states, and more. It's a complete and cohesive package for Atari lovers out there. Just be warned that there are no third-party games and less of the 90s stuff.

Easily one of the best presentation of the compilation packages that I've played. It was like an interactive museum complete with video interviews, original commercials and promotional materials and coverage of the games from that time period. The games themselves are not surprising. They are what I would expect. Honestly, this isn't my era but I can appreciate what is being delivered here. The new remakes iron out some of the issues but still, these are basic games by anyone's definition but probably worth checking out even if you don't think it's for you. This is my kind of edutainment.

god i hate atari and their 12 year old looking ceo trying to salvage the company despite it's lack of ANYTHING MEANINGFUL IN THE 21ST CENTURY, pumping NFTs and dumping copypastas of 'DAE pong?' wherever it goes. This is the most toothless presentation of Atari's shit ass legacy but at least we got to find out that the programmers smoked weeeeeddd duuuudddee.

Digital Eclipse, my sweet child, none of this is aimed at you, you could never do wrong, though I do question wtf the new ReImAgInEd games are doing here and why The Stacks has been self-inserted? I thought we all agreed Ready Player One was a trash book?

Overall, I definitely appreciate this game conceptually, being a large collection with full manuals, along with ads and developer commentary. I understand that not every game can have equal interesting development stories, but still, the commentary stuff definitely feels front heavy. There are specific interviews about 2600 games but I think in terms of Jaguar and Lynx there's only general console interviews, that's unfortunate.

In terms of the actual games themselves, honestly they aren't that great. For the arcade/2600/5200/8-bit games, most of them feel decent for being pre-NES but also massively outdated compared to the NES which is in itself very simplistic. After that, the games tend to just be actually inferior to their contemporaries for the most part. A lot of the best games on Atari consoles were the 3rd parties and homebrews, this collection does have a few 3rd parties and a single homebrew (Yoomp!) I believe, but Miner 2049 is no Pitfall. I'd like to see more of those, but I guess copyright's to be blamed there. Copyright's also probably to blame for Alien vs. Predator not being here. Battlezone also feels like a weird absence? A couple of games got referenced but not included too, like Kee Games getting a section but none of their games, Quadrapong, hell if they've got Basic Math why not include Juggle's House. Among the new games, Neo Breakout and VCTR SCTR are fun. Getting into real fantasy request territory it'd have been cool if they made recreations of Atari's pinball tables, but again that's more of a "wouldn't it be cool" thing so I won't hold it against them.

Even with how mediocre the general quality is, I do ultimately think rereleasing mediocre games is important. I think there's value to most games and (nearly) all games deserve rereleases. Plus it's interesting going through history like this. Really what I'd love would be for a company that made games I'm generally fond of to get this treatment. Something like Midway/Bally would be a good comparison to Atari I guess. Overall this reminds me of a substantive collection game from the PS2 era.

Games from the collection I particularly enjoy:
I, Robot
Millipede
Missile Command
Missile Command 3D
Neo Breakout
Tempest
Tempest 2000
Turbo Sub
VCTR SCTR
Yoomp!











If I were to be petty I'd knock at least a whole star off of it for talking about Ready Player One.

Digital Eclipse levels up their production bigtime here with a new format that presents the games alongside all of the supplementary material in a comprehensive timeline. This is essentially how I wished they'd done these things from the start, because while I didn't overly mind having to go into separate archive menus to peruse all the interesting stuff they pack these collections with, I did find myself jumping back and forth between those and playing the games in chronological order, effectively constructing the timeline for myself (this was especially necessary with the recent TMNT collection). This linear presentation of all of the material together (with the option to just go to another menu and play all the games whenever, of course) is an important evolution for their projects, I think.

The games and the story of Atari themselves as depicted here is engaging enough to carry this as its own thing, although the fun does peter off significantly when you get into the latter-day stuff because, um, the Jaguar is dogshit. However, for someone like me with absolutely no experience with the Atari of old and the desire for a curated entry point, this really fit the bill. I feel like I learned a lot!

There's no way to avoid lots of stuff being left out and the realities of securing some of the more notable titles, but I think this is probably the absolute best this collection could be while keeping in mind what must be a lot of limitations. As always, very excited to see where Digital Eclipse goes next - they continue to move in exciting directions.

It’s pretty interesting to find out a bit about Atari’s history as someone who didn’t grow up during their era. Unfortunately I was letdown by how few interviews there were with the developers and founders of the company. It makes up about 90 minutes of viewing. There are also short paragraphs giving a little detail into select games and systems. Past the 2600, the quality and frequency of information drops significantly.

There’s something about this collection that felt like a puff piece. The interviews with the current ceo felt gross (especially the one with the founder Nolan Bushnell). It feels like they glossed over a lot of the negative aspects of Atari’s management. It’s really a giant collection of games with a barebones overview of how it was actually run. I will say it’s pretty cool that they made some new games based on past hits.

This is honestly one of the greatest game compilations I've ever seen. Where other publishers lazily throw a handful of roms in an emulator package then call it a day this one acts more as an interactive museum about Atari and gaming as a whole during the 70s and early to mid 80s onwards. It is filled to the brim with fascinating historical documents, interviews, and overall insight into an era of gaming most people ignore in favor of the NES onward. Even if you're not into this period of video games I highly recommend picking this up for this historical context it provides.
Also it's got Tempest 2000.

This is the kind of game that brings me to tears. Not because I have nostalgia for the Atari days of video games, but because yet again Digital Eclipse has packaged such a beautifully designed museum of documentaries, memorabilia and documents along with a shit ton of games across multiple systems that while I wasn't that child in those days, I can feel their passion and love for the system and brand thru this. Digital Eclipse in the last few years has carved out a bright future of preserving video game history and practically becoming this mediums Criterion Collection. Their SNK Collection made me a massive SNK fan to this day, by demonstration why they mattered and what their legacy did for the industry. All of that artistry is here with "Atari 50th" and if you pine for those days, then don't walk but run to play this, right this second. I've spend the whole weekend diving deep into these games and all the educational material of that era of games and this won't subside for quite a while. While I haven't quite become a rabid fanatic of the brand like the SNK Collection made me, I still highly respect and admire all Atari did for video games and will return to this time and time again to feel that history throughout and to see the roots of the Arcade era of gaming. An era that I wish so deeply I could have lived thru.

In recent years, I've become a big fan of videogame documentaries and books. Not the making-of things that publishers have created to promote a new release, and paint everything in a glowing light, but the retrospective deep dives that give us a better understanding of how and why games turned out the way they are. My top recommendations would be Darren Wall's Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, From Bedrooms to Billions: The PlayStation Revolution, Playing with Power: The Nintendo Story and Power On: The Story of Xbox. They all have flaws, and none of them are definitive, but they all do a great job of shining light on the creative decisions and constraints that lead to the consoles that shaped the industry. One of the biggest outliers in this has been Atari, who were the company that turned some exciting computer experiments into a business. Instead of a book, film or TV series, they've opted to do what's in their nature and sell us a videogame.

There are aspects of Atari 50 that are really terrific. The menus take you through a linear history of Atari, chronicling releases and events through archival footage, newly recorded interviews, scanned documents, incredible artwork - and importantly - playable games. The start of this timeline gives a really strong impression, with 1973 footage of Nolan Bushnell walking through a warehouse of newly-produced Pong cabinets, and insight into just what these people were working with as they introduced the general public to videogames. Each game is framed with archival material, developer interviews and advertisements that give us a far better impression of their intentions and how they were met than just giving us a ROM and leaving a 2022 audience to make their own impressions, ignorant of what each game really is.

This naturally becomes less of a factor as the seventies shift to the eighties, when licensed titles that Atari don't have the rights to rerelease, and third-parties become more important to the Atari 2600's history than the first party line-up. I'm no Atari enthusiast, but I could see the massive gaps in the story. E.T. and Pac-Man coverage essentially amounts to a photo of the landfill, and Activision appear to have no interest in having anything to do with this release. Regardless, it's still a great place to learn about the console. I've gained new respect for what developers were able to produce on a system where programmers had to write code around where the CRT gun was drawing as it produced each new frame, sixty times a second. People weren't making Secret Quest because they were too stupid to make Grand Theft Auto V. It took incredible skill, patience and imagination to produce this stuff.

This declining insight carries us through the rest of the eighties, and into the nineties, and the Jaguar titles seem like a novelty for PR rather than something that was considered part of the remit. We're rarely given any insight into how these titles were made, what they were intended to accomplish, or the competition they were up against. There's no Atari ST games here, which from a European perspective, seems like a massive oversight. This is mainly an American product for nostalgic boomers, and serves limited purpose for videogame fans interested in the industry's history.

Then there's how it fares as a compilation. The framing device really works well to give players appreciation for the games on offer. Atari aren't a Nintendo or a Namco or a Sega, though. They aren't sitting on a treasure trove of undeniable all-time classics. They're an important part of videogame history, and it's great to get to play a lot of these games, but there's not many that you're likely to come back to afterwards. What's most disappointing is how they've opted to emulate paddle controls. Much of Atari's earliest games relied on an analogue dial to control paddles, and I insist that if you give players an appropriate alternative, Pong, Breakout and Warlords can still be a great time for modern audiences. That's not really the case with how Atari 50 presents them, with jumpy, unreliable control. Analogue controllers do a far better job of emulating trackballs, though, and I've come away from Atari 50 as a new Missile Command fan. The blunt brutality of its subject and presentation still connects, and the increasing desperation from players as they attempt to hang onto their remaining missiles and silos, pre-empting how the strikes will land, is really great. It's a political Space Invaders, and far better for it.

Irrespective of how little the documentary side of the package seems to care about them, the later games are still interesting. I now feel like I've got a personal connection to how shite the Jaguar truly was. How completely out of their depth Atari were in launching Club Drive and Fight for Life against Ridge Racer and Virtua Fighter 2. Tempest 2000 is still pretty cool, but it's a shame they didn't go a little further in working with Jeff Minter and include 3000 or TxK. I know there were better Jaguar games, but you're not going to find Aliens vs Predator or Cannon Fodder in a 2022 Atari release.

Then there's the "Reimagined" tribute titles that have been included. They're very curious, sitting on the timeline alongside their primary inspirations. They feel like those out-of-touch arcade revivals we got in the 90s and 2000s, like the PS2 Defender or PS1 Centipede, and they're likely the result of commercially unviable projects for that new VCS that you already forgot was a thing. I know Atari love Haunted House, and see it as a direct progenitor of Resident Evil, but I fucking don't. A newly-produced release of the final SwordQuest game, "Airworld" is here, but I'm unconvinced that if it had come out in 1984, it would have included a Flappy Bird minigame. "VCTR-SCTR" is a kind-of-cool tribute to Vector-based arcade games, shifting between homages to Asteroids, Lunar Lander and Tempest, almost WarioWare style, but it feels out of place alongside a visually enhanced version of Yar's Revenge that boasts it's still built on 2600 code. In fact, why are these here at all, and not Atari's cloying post-Jaguar attempts? These count as historical, but PS1 Pong and 2008 Alone in the Dark don't?

So, it's a mixed bag. Maybe this team could have put out a really great series of videos covering Atari's history, but licencing issues become a bigger problem when releasing it as a game. I don't think it sells itself to new players on the strength of its library, though those who grew up playing Atari games in the 70s and 80s might be pleased with what's on offer. I think its strongest parts are solid enough to pave over its shortcomings and missed potential though. As I said in the opening paragraph, none of these releases are definitive or without flaws, and if you can find a reasonable price on Atari 50, it can stand as one of the more interesting entries in that line-up.

Not really a "game" or even really a "game compilation". To my knowledge, this is probably the first true multimedia gaming museum product.

The history of Atari is presented in 5 separate timelines separated into things like arcade, pc, early console.

The artifacts presented here are head and shoulders above any gaming collection I've ever played. Every game has high-res box art and a scan of the original manual.

Newly produced videos with the original designers of the games are presented as necessary context to help enjoy your minutes (that's as long as I spent with any of the games) in game.

Digital Eclipse has even created "re-imaginings of some of the classic games. VCTR SCTR is a genuinely awesome mix of several old Atari shooting games. Haunted Houses is real bad... a fitting tribute to the original.

The collection contains relics of the time such as TV and magazine advertisements, design documentations, and stock footage.

I'm only marginally interested in Atari but the respect given here to game history and honestly to the audience who would consume this product is amazing. I can only hope that this is successful enough to generate more similarly curated museum products, as I would snap buy a curation like this for nearly any company/genre.

This has to be the best retro compilation I've ever played. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about Atari, but this game proved me wrong. I couldn't have been more happy either. Digital Eclipse managed to dip up some truly fascinating tidbits of Atari history. 30 (!) pages of design documents for major havoc? Sign me up!

Rarely do we see compilations made with this much passion and true care. Most of them we get nowadays are nothing more than rom collections with basic menus and paltry options.

The games themselves in this collection range from masterworks to fascinating artifacts of a bygone era. Most of them (I would say the majority at least) are still incredibly fun to play. Sure I may not play cybermorph or Sprint 8 as much as I will say Tempest 2000, but having the chance to finally play those games for myself was still a treat. In fact this is the first time any Atari Jaguar games have been rereleased officially.

The presentation is damn near flawless. The arcade games are probably the standout in this regard. Presented in their original ratios with the cabinets faithfully reproduced. The same goes for the console games, only here the borders are television sets, computer monitors and more. You can also pause the game at any time to read the manual or arcade flyer (depending on the game of course).

Overall, Digital Eclipse has somehow outdone themselves yet again. All I can hope for now is for more game companies to give these talented folks free reign over their back catalogs.

This review will go more so over the documentary and educational aspect of Atari, rather than the games themselves as I have already reviewed EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE.


Atari 50 in terms of a educational side shows us the wonders of Atari becoming a powerhouse and planting the seeds of gaming for all of us to experience today. It show us the good and bad decision taken by a company how had high expectations, and while starting off humble and innovative, slowly descended into greed and ego.

The game company originally made games that were fun and innovative, any ridiculous idea they had in mind they would take it and make said games with it, a lot of them becoming iconic, and some.... not so much.

I think the biggest points in Atari's history are:

Arcade+2600 Era:

Atari wanted to use the vector technology to make places like pubs and pinball stores more interesting by having video games.
Atari wanted to innovate by bringing games to consumers, and they made one of the first video game consoles to consumers who just needed to buy the console and games separately.

Atari 5200/Video Game Crash of 1983:

After the major successes of Atari's 2600 and the amount of money that was being earned, Atari had accidently unleashed a beast where EVERY company that wasn't in gaming was attempting to make game consoles of their own. Biggest issue during this time was that companies started to switch from QUALITY OVER QUANTITY to QUANTITY OVER QUALITY.
This reason is what lead to the Video Game Crash of 1983 where people stopped buying games due to the fact the quality of most games were crap, with the face of the Crash being E.T. The extraterrestrial.

Atari also made an oof with the 5200 because of bad decisions by higher ups that wanted to remove the ability of Backwards Compatibility (IRONIC that this is still an issue to this day, seriously screw you SONY and NINTENDO), and they just didn't know what they needed to do in order to make an upgrade.


7200/Lynx/800:
Atari started to get some steam again after they made the 7200 which was by far a superior console to the 2600, and even had the ability to play 2600 (for 5200 you needed an adapter) the 7200 had a varity of new games and fun remake ports of old games however since the damage was done because of the VGC 1983, Atari never really recovered.

Atari did attempt to compete with Nintendo in terms of it's Handheld market by releasing a GameBoy competitor the Atari lynx with a variety of games, but never reached the level of the Gameboy, and sat in 3rd place behind the Game Gear.

Atari tried to get into the computer market by making the Atari 400/800 Computers in order to compete with other computer sellers, mainly apple. A lot of commercials showed how the Atari 800 was a better computer, even though really it just played games that happen to use an interface like that of computers, but still was worth using for the most part.


Jaguar:

Here's when Atari essentially stopped being innovative and resorted to just making a console for it's last legs, essentially the Atari Jaguar was a console attempting to compete with that of the Genesis and SNES and while did have 1 or 2 compelling games, for the most part the console felt like a lesser of the 2. The console attempted to plant it self as the first 64-bit system, at a time where Sega and Nintendo were barely scrapping into the 32bit era, and infact failed in that era with the 32X add on for Sega, and Virtual Boy for Nintendo. The whole "64-bit" thing was apart of a "DO THE MATH" slogan where a bunch of parts were essentially slapped into the thing to make it somehow add up to 64, event though it was clearly 32 bit.
The Atari Jaguar just seemed to want to copy that of famous IPS from Nintendo, in terms of having it's own Mario Kart clone called "ATARI KART" featuring the Bear from Crystal Castles as the mascot. Another example was with Cybermorph which feels sort of like a star fox clone with more of an open area to explore freely except the controls are bad, and theres a creepy green bald lady head that asks
"where did you learn to fly?"
The Atari Jaguar was a flop and had Atari have the rest of it's history as a publisher and developer of certain games but they were done.

Through the years they've been sold off and bought by other companies, and while they do continue to make some games, their no where near at the level they once were.

Atari VCS and beyond: Atari in 2021 released the Atari VCS which was essentially a console that played classic Atari games in a more modern updated console that looked like their original classic woodgrain Atari 2600. It had the ability to be able to use emulators and had it's own controller which clearly was a ripoff of an xbox controller but considering that 3rd party/1st party controllers that were bluetooth were able to be connected it's fine for the most part.
Though as of 2023, Atari has stopped production of the VCS due to not a lot of people caring to buy it and have suspended console manufactures from making more as their revenues have taken a 91% dip.

Still if you're someone who's interested in owning an Atari memorabilia I recommend buying a 7200, a 2600, a VCS (2021), or just buying this collection.


The historical aspect of this game features lots of documents, posters, ideas, pictures, and videos of Atari history, which some for the most part in terms of the video can be a bit biased. Some of the stories can be a bit negative to Atari's overall appearance in terms of their history but for the most part is very inspirational for up and coming game developers for both men and women in the field as many iconic ones were made by Atari.


I think the biggest oof was adding Cliff Bleszinski as a speaker in this game, as his whole video game history and be regarded on the behalf of his massive ego. He made Gears of War 1-3, and then decided to make a garbage game called Lawbreakers, and tried to trash on the players who game him the success in the first place.



This collection has great historical information and has a total of 103 games to play through. Some great, some good, some bad, some horrendous, and some straight up boring. They also feature reimagined games of iconic games. They also feature the fully finished reimagined version of Swordquest: Airworld.

The collection is both a fun memorabilia piece of art that everyone who wants to experience gaming history should own. Because of the amount of games (that fluctuates in terms of the their overall quality and whether or not they're fun) and the interesting behind the scenes history of Atari I'm giving it a 5 stars.

An enjoyable, if concise, look at some of the Atari games from the olden days. It's nice that it's presented in a curated museum style, rather than "here's a bunch of games to cycle through and probably play once".

The combination of going through videos and interviews with some of the people involved with the company and producing the games etc, along with lots of art work, ads and various other bits of info, as well as getting to the games themselves, really helped keep my interest.

There's a lot of titles and going through the history (and it having a completion percentage) encouraged me to try every single one. Even though most of the games here aren't great, it was interesting to look back at the stuff the blew my mind as a kid. I bet if I played Cybermorph in 1993, it would've been a transcendent experience. Trevor McFur, not so much.

It pretty much ignores anything from after the Jaguar, which is a shame. Even if it was just some images of the games released when the Atari name was just publishing games from the late 90s onwards. But no, just a self congratulatory video about influencing Ready Player One, and it ending with a wee interview with Nolan Bushnell.

Kind of ends with a whimper, but I unlocked a race car game after getting all the way through the history. And there's a couple of other bits to unlock if you meet a certain stipulation in some of the games. Not sure I'm that arsed though. Anyway, more like an interactive documentary.

Regardless of how you feel about Atari, it's really hard to deny that this is an extremely well made compilation.

This compilation provides a lot more than even the most prominent companies (looking at you, Nintendo and Super Mario 3D All-Stars) manage to provide in their compilations. Not only do you have the standard Atari 2600 and Arcade games of course, but there's also a lot from Atari's lesser known systems such as the Lynx, 800 computers and Jaguar being represented and preserved here. Sure, the games themselves can be pretty hit-or-miss, but it's still nice seeing many of these more obscure titles getting preserved and made accessible on modern systems (besides, being hit or miss is honestly par for the course for Atari lmao).

But that isn't even to mention that, alongside all the games here, it also comes with a lot of documentation of the company's history - including interviews with developers, advertisements, cover art, in-house memos, and so on - which truly pays tribute to Atari's history especially as the company that basically laid the foundations for gaming as an industry now. There's also some recreated versions of Atari's classic games which... is honestly more of a novelty than anything but still a neat addition nonetheless.

This ultimately serves as a really good celebration of Atari as a company between the preservation of many of their titles, from their more well known 2600 and arcade games to their lesser known games, as well as the documentation of their history.

If you have even a passing interest in Atari and their history, this is definitely a must-buy imo.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration does a great job at demonstrating the importance and impact of the earliest video games, including context for the video game crash in the 80's, interesting perspectives of developers of the company, and like five or six different versions of Missile Command.

I've gained a tremendous respect for the Atari 2600 as a system, and while a bit jank by today's standards, there are some actually excellent games on there. Adventure is cool. Haunted House is cool. The 2600 version of Missile Command is a stellar port.

I've also gained a hilarious level of understanding into how bad the Lynx and Jaguar systems were at the time, especially when compared with the SNES and Genesis. Technically very cool systems, but their original games weren't very good or fun. Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar barely counts in my eyes because it's a remake of the original arcade game, but I can't stress enough how genuinely fun that game is, even in the current year.

I wouldn't pay $150 in the 90's just for Tempest 2000.

Tremendous respect to Atari for showcasing some of the worst video games I've ever played. This is a genuine compliment. I'm being as real as I can be. Nintendo would never.

Anyway, thanks for inventing video games for us, Atari. Very cool. :)

An absolutely stand-out project.

This is part documentary, part fan-tribute, part game collection. The level of effort put into it should be a benchmark for any similar projects in the future; the amount of high-quality scans of original materials, the level of effort put into including 3D recreations of many relevant props, the quality of the interviews, and overall presentation are all great. The fact they went so far as to create original re-imaginings and sequels to several games in the collection is really cool too.

I'd be lying if I said I'd rate most of the games highly, the 2600 collection in particular was fairly dire, but there's also still some fun to be had with the likes of Basketbrawl, Fatal Run, Tempest, and the many versions of Asteroids, Breakout, and Missile Command included.

Genuinely a really wonderful way to celebrate the history of Atari while also acknowledging the mistakes that lead to its eventual decline as a major player in the games industry. Would love to see this project taken as a template and used for other companies in the future, particularly Midway.