As your dad will probably tell you it was all about the gameplay back then, son.Įven some of the less-celebrated arcade originals provide a decent amount of curiosity value, especially Black Widow, and the bizarre Major Havoc. Admittedly the likes of Pong, Asteroids, and Super Breakout are laughably simplistic whichever way you look at it, but still have a gameplay purity that stands the test of time once you get over the almost complete absence of graphical frills. Of that list, it's surprising how well some of these stand up today, especially the awesome Dave Theurer favourite Tempest, not to mention Missile Command and the gem-chasing Crystal Castles. More accurately, this is the Atari Anthology: The Early Years.Ĭoncentrating on the Arcade Originals for a moment, this collection of 18 hits could almost be justifiably released as a separate entity, featuring some true classics of the early days, notably Tempest, Pong, Super Breakout, BattleZone, Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Asteroids (and Deluxe), Lunar Lander, Gravitar, Crystal Castles and some curiosities that even I hadn't come across, including Black Widow, Red Baron, Space Duel, Liberator, Major Havoc and Warlords. That time, ladies and gentlemen, is now.īut although the title suggests an all-encompassing Anthology of Atari retro goodness, this is more of a first bite the kind of early arcade hits (up to about 1982) and the 2600 machine, at the expense of any titles from 5200, 7800 or, indeed, its early stabs at home computing. Indeed, ever since Infogrames picked up Hasbro Interactive (which itself had held the Atari rights for a while and was content making awful remakes of old Atari properties) we were wondering when the since-renamed Atari was going to cash in its chips and get around to milking some of its back catalogue for the retro nostalgists among us. Pac-Man cost me back in 1983 has to be a good thing, right? InfogramesNotAtari The fact that you can buy almost all the significant games of this era in one whopping package, comprisgames and 18 Atari arcade originals for less than the price that Ms. My flirtation with Atari's wooden box of joy was relatively brief once I'd worked out that better machines like the awesome (for the time) CBS Colecovision were doing almost arcade-perfect versions of Donkey Kong, but I'm always grateful to Atari for bringing gaming to the mainstream, however technologically retarded the results were in reality. And then get home and stare with wide-eyed disbelief at how little the graphics resemble the arcade and feel somewhat cheated. But when you're eight and don't know any better, you'd see those gloriously attractive sleeve designs and melt. Pac-Man on a home system was just too much to resist, even at their horrendous rip-off price tags. Being something of an arcade addict even in my pre-teen years, the prospect of playing Space Invaders, Dig Dug and Ms. Although it's hardly worth boasting about now, the Atari 2600 was the second console this reviewer ever owned, remarkable not for the quality of the games but for the fact that those games cost almost as much as full priced games are priced at now, a quarter of a century down the line.
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