Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Review (Switch)

Release Date: November 11th 2022
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Atari
Platform: Switch (reviewed) PC, Xbox, PS 4/5, Atari VCS Price: $39.99

Half a century ago Syzygy Engineering, the inventors of Computer Space, the first commercially available video game cabinet, rebranded itself as Atari Inc and the modern video game industry was off and running.  The company itself has a long, fascinating and quite tortured history lasting all the way to the present day, but alas that is beyond the scope of this article. Over its various incarnations, Atari defined the arcade and home video game markets, helped shape the home computer market into its present form while constantly introducing new hardware in an attempt to compete in an increasingly contested marketplace. 

This brings us to our subject: Digital Eclipse’s Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, a collection of more than 100 games from across two decades and seven different hardware platforms, some of which you have heard of and some of which flopped harder than a fat guy in a YouTube fail video.  But wait, there’s more because the collection includes Easter eggs, unlockable content and “reimagined” versions of classic games. There is even a history of the brand and interviews with people involved.  If you grew up with Atari or like retro games, this might just be a must-have title.

Somebody get this freakin duck away from me !

Because this is a sizable anthology we are going to concentrate on the collection as a whole rather than individual games, so we will be concentrating on the quality of games included, the quality of the emulation and how controllable they are on the Nintendo Switch. Now before we dive in it’s important to note this is a curated collection of games produced by the various incarnations of Atari over a roughly 20-year time span, these are emulated to run as they would have on their native platform.  There are even a couple of duplicate versions from different systems. Delivering this on a modern system is no small feat as the collection starts with 1970s arcade cabinets and works its way through the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar consoles as well as the Atari 800 home computer. What is means in that the collection includes only Atari titles, so if you don’t see your favorite, it's likely because it belongs to someone else. For example, Pitfall, Pac-Man and Frogger belong to Activision, Namco and Sega respectively.  Likewise, not every Atari title is included, so if for some unsolved mysteries reason you have a hankering to play ET the worst video game in the history of video games you are out of luck. Having said that, it's actually surprising that so many genre defining titles came out of Atari.  Pong, Breakout, Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command and Adventure, the first game (of which I am aware) that contained an easter egg which I remember being astonished by when I found it at about age ten.

Having said all that, the actual review is surprisingly brief. Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration faithfully recreates the original experience. Everything runs well, and I even encountered a few, shall we say inconsistencies, that I remember from the originals.  Sound is likewise authentic, but the various electronic chirps and blurts do catch one by surprise when rendered by modern audio equipment.  Where we run into trouble is with the controls, and in fairness this is to be expected.  The titles we are dealing with were controlled by all manner of controllers, from a trackball to paddles and several flavors of joysticks and button combinations.  Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration dose better than most, but at the level of the individual game, this is a bit lacking. There is a “tip” system where a brief summary of what does what can be brought up, but in several games including the above referenced Adventure this is incomplete and leads to some trial and error in terms of starting a game or changing the level, this seems confined to commands that were formerly performed by the controls on the consoles themselves but as I only played titles on the 2600 and 5200, I could not test this exhaustively. 

Bottom line this is a competently executed collection, the choice of included games is very well done, the games are faithfully emulated and despite the minor control issues noted the whole thing works well.  I will confess I am mystified why it was felt necessary to “reimagine” any games, as the whole reason for the collection to exist is to present the original games in their original format.  But these reimagined games are generally bearable, being just flashy versions of the originals which are also included so, I count that as no foul.

The Good:

• Faithful emulation of classic games

• Games from obscure systems included

• Numerous decent games in one place

The Bad:

• Minor control issues

• A bit spendy for a trip down memory lane