Launched final week on the Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Change, and Steam, Atari 50: The Anniversary Assortment incorporates over 100 video games, and in addition “over an hour of unique video interviews with key gamers within the video games business” (in line with its site). Forbes says the compilation “could be one of the best recreation assortment ever made.” The Verge says the compilation is “big, 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 trendy 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” characteristic 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 a fascinating, interactive journey by way of gaming historical past.
However whereas the presentation shines, the video games contained inside Atari 50 usually do not. Certain, there are a number of actually 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 collection of over 100 titles seems 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 right down to mere historic curiosities that almost all trendy gamers could be hard-pressed to tolerate for longer than a few minutes.
Then there’s Vctr Sctr, certainly one of a handful of “reimagined” video games on Atari 50 that try to re-create the texture of a traditional Atari title with trendy {hardware} and design touches…. Extra than simply the look, Vctr Sctr does an ideal job capturing and updating what vector video games of the early arcade period felt prefer to play.
Vctr Sctr apparently manages to mix up to date variations of Asteroids, Lunar Lander, , and Tempest (in more and more troublesome waves). The article notes it is simply certainly one of six “reimagined” titles in Atari 50, however calls Vctr Sctr “an ideal brain-break recreation, an excuse to disregard the surface world for a fast, distracting burst of targeted, high-energy chaos.
“In that means, it is perhaps Atari 50’s greatest demonstration of what the traditional arcade period was actually like.”
