PLATFORM: ATARI VCS, PC, PS4/5, SWITCH, XBOX ONE/SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Atari’s 50th anniversary celebrations have been going on throughout the year, with a handful of releases like Yars: Recharged and Atari Mania reminding players about some of the gaming giant’s finest moments. Fittingly for such an undeniably important and influential company (if Pong hadn’t caught people’s attention way back in 1972, who knows how different things might have turned out), the birthday party culminates with Atari 50, an interactive journey through Atari history that doubles as a compilation of 100 classic (and, in all honesty, not-quite-so-classic) titles.
The “museum” element takes the form of an interactive timeline divided into five sections which chart the various stages of the company’s history. Navigating across the clean and simple to use interface, you’ll find a wealth of Atari-related information along with hundreds (if not thousands) of historical artefacts – interviews with key Atari staff members, archive TV footage, flyers and posters, business cards, photographs, all kinds of things. Images can all be zoomed into, and the videos – around an hour’s worth in total – are fully subtitled and have full rewind and fast-forward controls.
The most important Atari releases are discussed at the appropriate moments, and they’re also playable straight from the timeline. If you’re not too fussed about the history stuff and want to dive straight into the games, a quick button press from the main menu will take you to the big list, neatly organised in alphabetical order by platform. And what a list it is – far too many to mention (there’s a full list here), but you’ll find titles from the 2600, 5200, 7600 and more. Most of the really old-school titles have been seen in recent years as part of the three Atari Flashback Classics compilations, but Atari 50 also includes Lynx and Jaguar games for the first time, giving players a chance to get their hands on Tempest 2000, Jaguar launch titles Cybermorph and Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy and… erm… Malibu Bikini Volleyball, among others. There’s also a handful of “reimagined” titles, courtesy of Atari 50 developer, Digital Eclipse. Most notably of these, Haunted House has been given a 3D remake but still somehow feels very much like an old Atari game, and Swordquest: AirWorld – the unfinished and unreleased fourth part of a series with plenty of its own myths and legends – has finally been realised, based on design concepts from the original creator of the series.
Some of the games might admittedly be a bit hit and miss (any media that passed for cutting edge entertainment in the early 70s is likely to feel pretty antiquated in 2022), but Atari 50 is a real treasure trove of informative, interesting and enjoyable artefacts that has plenty of offer those with an interest in retro titles and / or gaming history.
