Game #1313: Atari 50 - The Anniversary Celebration

  Who are you calling old?

 I'm not gonna lie, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration wasn't on my list until I learned that Fight for Life was featured in the game. Fight for Life was trash, but that's beside the point, as Atari 50 is something akin to a little piece of history, which compiles over a 100 games, although many are different ports of the same game such as Centipede, throughout the history of Atari, from their Arcade roots to the Jaguar.

 There are wayyyyy too many games for me to cover one by one, so I'll speak in broad terms.... Namely, many of these games are very old, and I mean VERY old, before I was even born... so many of them haven't aged very well. Half of the Atari 2600 game library was nigh unplayable to me, so if you don't have nostalgia attached to the games... you might not get much enjoyment out of it. The cart also features about 5 'new' remakes, such as Breakout and Haunted House 3D, as well as a new fourth part of the Hero Quest saga, and a honestly fun game that's made up of sections inspired by 3 different Atari games.

 The game collection feels very complete, games include flyers and manuals, when available, and it even features unreleased prototype games. The Arcade games could've used options such as Dip switches, but at least we get save states. There are so many games that there are various ways to arrange them, such as by console, by title or by release date.

 Looking outside the games themselves, the game also has an adorably comprehensive timeline, featuring all sorts of trivia bits about the history of Atari, including numerous high quality video mini-interviews of the people involved. This and the presentation itself shows that this was a labor of love.

 Yeah... the Atari games weren't for me, I don't think there's a single game in this collection that I could honestly say I could've enjoyed for more than an hour. But, y'know, if you grew during Atari's heyday, if you're interested in retro games... it's honestly worth a look. Even though I didn't enjoy most of the games, I actually enjoyed taking a peek into the history of videogames themselves.

 8.0