Launched final week on the Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Swap, and Steam, Atari 50: The Anniversary Assortment accommodates over 100 video games, and in addition “over an hour of unique video interviews with key gamers within the video games trade” (in keeping with its web page). Forbes says the compilation “could be one of the best recreation assortment ever made.” The Verge says the compilation is “enormous, detailed, and does an incredible job of explaining why these video games are so essential.”
However Ars Technica complains it is “full of historic filler.”
And but, “one new recreation contained within the bundle will not let me go…” their reviewer provides. “I am speaking about Vctr Sctr, a retro-style arcade shooter that melds the addictive gameplay of classics like Asteroids and Tempest with fashionable gameplay ideas.”
As a bundle, Atari 50: The Anniversary Assortment units a brand new high-water mark for retro online game compilations. The gathering’s “timeline” function deftly weaves archival supplies like design paperwork and manuals, explanatory context and modern quotes from the sport’s launch, and new video interviews with recreation creators into an attractive, interactive journey by gaming historical past.
However whereas the presentation shines, the video games contained inside Atari 50 usually do not. Positive, there are just a few really replayable classics on provide right here, particularly within the video games from Atari’s wonderful arcade period. That stated, the majority of Atari 50’s number of over 100 titles looks like filler that simply does not maintain up from a contemporary recreation design perspective. Dozens of “traditional” Atari video games — from 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe on the Atari 2600 to Missile Command 3D on the Jaguar — boil all the way down to mere historic curiosities that the majority fashionable gamers could be hard-pressed to tolerate for longer than a few minutes.
Then there’s Vctr Sctr, one in every of a handful of “reimagined” video games on Atari 50 that try and re-create the texture of a traditional Atari title with fashionable {hardware} and design touches…. Extra than simply the look, Vctr Sctr does a terrific job capturing and updating what vector video games of the early arcade period felt wish to play. Vctr Sctr apparently manages to mix up to date variations of Asteroids, Lunar Lander, , and Tempest (in more and more tough waves). The article notes it is simply one in every of six “reimagined” titles in Atari 50, however calls Vctr Sctr “an ideal brain-break recreation, an excuse to disregard the skin world for a fast, distracting burst of targeted, high-energy chaos.
“In that manner, it is likely to be Atari 50’s finest demonstration of what the traditional arcade period was actually like.”
