Atari 50 years: experience half a century of gaming history
Atari is 50 years old this week and they are celebrating with a more than 90 games large historical game collection!
We already reported it earlier this week, Atari is 50 years young. Time for a special party. Atari launches Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration† Not just any bundle of games to long for the dawn of the video game industry. No, the bar was set a lot higher. Atari teamed up with the retro game experts at Digital Eclipse for a special release of half a century of Atari.
The anniversary collection has become a kind of virtual interactive game museum that contains five decades of Atari gaming history. The bundle is more than 90 games in size from consoles such as the 2600, Jaguar and Lynx. In addition to the classic games, there are also 6 new “inspired by the classics” games in the bundle. Just like archive photos, images and even interviews.
The games are available for the first time on modern consoles. The game collection will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Atari VCS and PC. That’s where the guys from Digital Eclipse come into play. Atari CEO Wade Rosen tells gameinformer magazine that for remastering or reinventing the classic games, you can’t go wrong with Digital Eclipse.
Digital Eclipse boss Mike Mika knows everything when it comes to Atari history and gaming history in general (…) they offer a really innovative way to experience the games and the history around them. For something as big as this anniversary, it was the only studio we thought could live up to all expectations.”
When the choice in games is huge, the challenge is to find your way around the huge range of the bundle. They have also thought of that by building in sorting options. You have the option to start playing a game right away or choose to learn more about the game’s history.
The six new games are a tribute or further development of classics from the Atari past. There is a fourth chapter for it sword quest made and a 3D version of Haunted House† Another example is Neo Breakouta kind of combination of breakout and pong† It’s fun too Yars’ Revenge Reimagined† The best-selling first-party Atari 2600 game has been given modern graphics and during gameplay you can switch between the original and modern graphics at the touch of a button.
Not all more than 90 games are of course top notch, but it is a nice overview from bygone times. Most importantly, you can play them all on your modern console or PC. In America a price of 40 dollars is mentioned and Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration coming out this year.
