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"Probably the best retro-compilation out there..."


Atari Anthology is a bit different from most retro packs, in that it mixes both arcade games and home video game system games, specifically the Atari 2600 or VCS. The Atari 2600 was my 2nd video gaming system. My first was a pong machine, which had a couple other games built into it. But I really wanted an Atari, and threw temper-tantrums until my grandmother gave me the money to buy a 2600. So the 2600 is dear to my memories, if not my heart.

Fast forward 25 years or so. Things have changed a lot. Graphics have gotten a lot better, gameplay has gotten a bit deeper. Prices are actually about the same ($200-ish for a console, $50-ish for a game).

Arcade Games:

There are 18 Arcade games. All of them can be played with the cabinet view on or off, and many have the option to be played with background art on or off. Off will be the choice in most cases, unless you have a really big TV. Controls can be tweaked for most games (and you can always use either the analog sticks or d-pad), and you can often pick the number of lives and difficulty level.

Some of these are my all time favorites. Red Baron. Battlezone. Space Duel (really). Lunar Lander.

Red Baron is a very early 3D Flight Simulator with 3D wireframe graphics. It's fairly easy, but still pretty fun.

Battlezone is awfully hard. I keep dying. There's an option here to "Enhance" colors, which greatly improves things.

Lunar Lander - I used to play this game a lot. Still pretty fun, but I'm not entirely sure how to play it on the higher settings. There's no instruction manual or blow up of the sides of the case, so I can't read what the higher difficulty settings are. Basically you try to land an Eagle style lander on the moon.

Warlords - I was a big fan of the 2600 version, but the arcade game is very hard and very short. I could almost never get past the first stage in the arcade, and I still can't.

Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe are fun, if not terribly deep. Just shoot asteroids until you hit hit by one (or a flying saucer). Space Duel is a somewhat deeper Asteroids, there's a variety of things to shoot and some variation on your ship choice.

Tempest is well, Tempest. Good game. There's also the choice of "Tempest Tubes", which is apparently an additional set of maps to play on.

Centipede/Millipede - Basically a standard shooter. I really hate this game(s), but for some reason, still used to play it in the arcade. But man, I still hate them.

Some of the games I had never played before. Some are pretty bad (like Black Widow, which seems to be an Robotron clone with spiders), but one, Liberator, is like a reverse Missile Command. It sort of plays like Missile Command, except you are attacking planets. Lots of fun, and surprisingly good graphics.

Gravitar I remember playing at an arcade on a trip to someplace, but frankly, I have no idea how to play it. Very odd game.

Frankly, the Arcade Games alone are probably worth the money.

2600 Games

I actually still have an Atari 2600 hooked up to a TV and I occasionally play it. The trouble is, and part of the reason I bought this, is that I don't have all that many cartridges. While they themselves are cheap in theory, in practice, they are expensive to buy, as on ebay, they generally sell for about a $1 each, plus $3-4 shipping (or more).

There are a whopping 67 Atari 2600 games. Many classic carts are missing, because they are based on other people's properties (ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark) or arcade conversions from other companies (Space Invaders and Phoenix were probably the best). (That is probably why we will never see a commercial Colecovision anthology, as most of its games were licensed arcade ports).

One of the odd things about Atari games is that they often had huge amounts of variations on the cart. They would always put a little chart on the back of the manual so you would know what number is what game/variation. That could have been problematic, since while this has the manuals, they are on the disc. But while flipping through the game number, it gives you a text description of what the game is or how it varies. Very very slick and very nice.

The games are grouped into general categories: Arcade at home (conversions of Atari arcade games), Action, Adventure, Mind Games, Racing, Space Games, Sports. Some games have aged okay, many have aged poorly.

Probably the Arcade at home games have done the best. Warlords is still a lot of fun. So is Asteroids. Video Pinball is also a lot of fun, although it's very easy. I can basically play it until I turn the power off.

The action category has also done fairly well against time. I liked Air-Sea Battle a lot as a kid, it's still pretty fun. It's basically a shooting game. Dodge'em was another favorite of mine, but it's somewhat hard to play without an atari joystick - the xbox controller just doesn't feel right.

The Adventure category consists of Adventure, Haunted House, and the 3 Swordquest games. Frankly, the 3 Swordquest games were bad then, and they are just as awful now. Adventure is still pretty neat. Haunted House is okay, but not great. I remember getting my mom to drive all over town for it when I was a kid, then being very disappointed with it when I actually played it. (I'm 33 and she still kids me about this from time to time). But it's not that bad a game, just didn't live up to the hype.

The mind games sort of hold up well. Not graphically, but checkers is still checkers. And chess is still chess. I can't beat any computer at chess, so the 2600 is a good opponent for me.

The same sort of applies to the 3 casino games. I mean, blackjack is blackjack, poker is poker, slot machines are slot machines. Unfortunately, the Casino cartridge doesn't seem to work correctly - it won't let you select a game, you can only play Blackjack, not the poker games in it. So you basically have 2 Blackjack games and 1 slot machine game.

The sports games probably fared the worse. It actually doesn't have some of the early 2600 sports games, but "Super" versions, which apparently came out in the late 80s, when I was no longer into the 2600. These could actually almost pass for really really ugly NES games, amazingly enough.

The space games hold up fairly well. It feature Stellar Track, one of my all time favorites. It's essentially a 2600 version of "Star Trek", which was the first computer game I played. Basically you have a star ship and have to hunt down so many enemy ships in so many moves. More a strategy game than anything else. Interestingly enough, it was only published originally by Telegames (which is still in business), not Atari, though Atari developed it.

Also Starship and Star Raiders which have a similar theme, but are action based. Space War was one of the first carts I got as a kid, and I used to have lots of fun just tooling around in the spaceship. Still kinda fun.

The rest...

Sometimes these retropacks are poorly done, with overly cumbersome or slow loading interfaces (Midway Classics Volume One, for instance). But not with this - loading time is almost non-existent. Right away, you're presented with a fairly slick looking "galaxy" of stars, each of which is an Atari game, which is also quite intuitive.

There's a decent amount of bonus material. Pretty much the manuals and boxes for every cartridge. Most of the arcade machines get photos and additional material, like flyers. Also some video interviews of Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari. There's at least one hidden game - a one player version of the tank game from Combat is in the bonus section after the manual for combat.

Probably the only real trouble with this collection are the controls for the paddle games, and the inability to add additional coins to the arcade games (a fairly common problem, actually).

While you do get a variety of methods for the paddles, they are just hard to do on a Xbox controller. And I think they missed the most obvious method, of somehow using the triggers (which are analog) to emulate it. At any rate, this makes most paddle based games very hard to play. Breakout and Superbreakout, Circus Atari, etc. Warlords does okay, which is the main thing for me.

Some of the arcade games would allow you to continue to pump in quarters and continue to play. Lunar Lander most notably, but some of the others. For the life of me, I cannot figure out if this is possible. I don't think so.

It also apparently doesn't keep high scores if you don't have Xbox Live (and 95% of Xbox owners don't). That's a big downer, too.

Still, whatever problems there are are drowned in sheer quantity of what you get, so it's worth a 10 out of 10. If you even remotely liked old Atari games, this is a must buy. If you don't, well, then you probably shouldn't even have wasted your time reading this review.

There are a few games missing, like Midnight Magic and Kangaroo and the original Basketball and the arcade version of Video Pinball (and Kangaroo). Hopefully enough games were left out to warrant a sequel. Hopefully they'll license a few games from other companies, too. And maybe the 5200/7800 versions of games as well.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/04