Look back to five decades worth of Atari history with this meticulously curated museum. Read our Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration Review here.
Atari 50 Review: What is Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration?
Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration is a collection of interviews and video snippets depicting the 50-year history of Atari arcade machines and consoles. Atari 50 also features over 90 games that either played a big role in Atari's development, or was one of the popular games in the past. With over ninety games available, there should at least one that would capture your attention, as games from Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Atari Jaguar, and Atari Lynx are included. On top of this, developers Digital Eclipse also created five games that either re-imagine classic originals or entirely finish projects that were left incomplete so modern players can finally experience them:
- Airworld – The team at Digital Eclipse created the fourth chapter of the never finished Swordquest series: Airworld.
- Haunted House – A modern 3D isometric adventure based on the classic original.
- Vctr Sctr – A new game that celebrates the vector era of gaming that combines gameplay from a variety of vector arcade classics into a single challenge.
- Neo Breakout – A new game that combines Breakout and Pong into an amazing and addictive two-player competition.
- Yars' Revenge Reimagined – Modern graphics for the best-selling first-party Atari 2600 game of all time.
Gameplay
The game plays like a museum – you have a lot of informational placards, videos, 60 minutes worth of interviews, old commercials, and photographs – that document the long and storied history of Atari's consoles. Of course, it all starts with Pong. While Pong isn't the first Arcade game out there, it still jump-started a whole new industry we now know as the video game industry. It goes all the way to the Atari Jaguar, which was the world's first 64-bit console and the last console produced by Atari, spanning almost five decades of history. As a sidenote, the Atari Jaguar has since become an open-source platform, and it now has more fans than it did in its heyday, with many developers producing homebrew games for the system, adding more games to Jaguar's library of only 50 by the time it was discontinued.
Gameplay differs from one game to another in Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration – there are ninety games after all – but we've had good experience playing through the games. Not all of the games presented still stands today, but it was still fun going through the games and learning the history behind them. As a museum, Atari 50 does a good job of curating these games and presenting the in new light, especially with the interviews that were made with the original developers that help give us a better picture of the history behind these games and consoles, and to an extent, the gaming culture during their respective eras. Some of the games were meant to be played multiplayer, and we've successfully been able to play with two players using the joy-cons.
As for experiencing the individual games, you'll also have to remind yourself when these games were produced. You can't expect a hand-holdy tutorial to explain to you the mechanics of the arcade games, for example. Thankfully, each game comes with it a digital version of its flyer or game manual that could explain how to play the game, although sometimes these are still not enough to give players a great picture of how to play the games.
With ninety games available, Atari 50 delivers in terms of volume, although we could only count about a score of those that are games you'd potentially come back to every now and then. I mean, I'm not going to boot the game up to play Pong before bed, and neither should you buy Atari 50 for that purpose. There are also a couple of duplicates in Atari 50, as the ninety count has different versions of the same game count multiple times, too. There are also plenty of games here that has questionable reliability for the topic at hand and makes you wonder why it was included in the game at all. (Looking at you, Ninja Golf.) Not even the newer games included in the game would be reason enough for anyone to buy this title for the games themselves.
Story
Atari 50 tells the story of five decades of Atari, which starts from the very beginning. Although Atari right now isn't considered to be one of the major forces in gaming anymore, the brand still has left an indelible mark in gaming history, and this game aims to keep that story alive. Using a museum-style presentation, the story is told through write-ups that accompany images, videos, commercials, and games. In fact, the games in this title are there more for the benefit of the museum, rather than being there to be enjoyed. They're there to give you a sample of how gaming was like in the past, but it's not really asking you to have fun with them.
Of course, the story told here is how much contribution Atari has made to the gaming industry. Thankfully, Atari has been honest enough here that it allowed itself to take accountability for its failures. However, we also wouldn't be surprised if there are any embellishments here and there, if there are any hyperbole used to make Atari seem bigger and much more important than they are. For example, there is a claim here that Atari made the very first Gaming PC. While we're not history buff enough to know, we won't be surprised if this was just another one of Atari's exaggerations. Our point is, enjoy the show, but take what you read and watch with a grain of salt.
Graphics
The presentation of the title is very satisfying and easy on the eye. The graphics for each of the games were either remastered or uplifted to make them work better for modern screens, which works great for all of the games. The graphics of the games themselves would understandably be a mixed bag, but Digital Eclipse did well in making this title look as good as it could get.
Music and Sound Design
Atari 50 utilizes a very pensive sound design for its museum which just feels appropriate for what it's trying to do. As for the sound design of each game, we feel that the title was successful in accurately and faithfully recreating the original sounds of the games on the modern hardware that it's now running on. Everything also works with clarity, thankfully, even for the older archival footages and commercials, which is amazing given how many of these found online have far worse audio condition than what has been presented in Atari 50. The only problem we have is that the game's music is so calming that it lulls us to sleep while playing the title for our Atari 50 review, but rest assured that we stayed awake enough to make a proper assessment of the game.
Accessibility
Each game can be modified to switch between three screen modes: Original, Wide, and Full. TV Filter can be turned on and off, and borders can also be turned on and off. Controls can also be mapped for every game, and for the videos, captions can be turned on and off.
Verdict: Is Atari 50 Good? Is Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration Worth Your Time and Money?
While making our Atari 50 review, we realized that Atari 50 should be treated as a museum, not as a game. You should be purchasing this game and expect this to be a trip down memory lane. Don't purchase this because you think getting 90 games for the price of $39.99 is a steal, but purchase this game because you're interested in the museum. For 90 games for $39.99, the price seems okay. But for a museum with the price of admission of $39.99, we feel like it wasn't that good of a trip. Put two and two together, then you get kind of a nice package, but we still think that Atari 50 is only for a very specific market in the video gaming fandom.
Score: 5/10
Editor’s Note: ClutchPoints received a Switch review copy to allow us to cover this game. This copy did not, in any way, affect this Atari 50 Review’s final score and verdict.
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