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The game company originally made games that were fun and innovative, any ridiculous idea they had in mind they would take it and make said games with it, a lot of them becoming iconic, and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.

Reviewed on Jan 24, 2023


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