Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration

Who hasn't heard about Atari?

Atari was the first company that became synonymous with computer games in the early days before Nintendo pushed it off the throne (only to be knocked off by Sony in later years, but that's a different story).

This game is a celebration of the early years of Atari, and an overview of its later years.  It is like a book, a book about one of the most iconic computer game companies of all time. It is not a classic, old-style book, but an interactive book, detailing the cornerstones of the brand name "Atari".

From its foundation in the early 70s, releasing the first ever arcade machines (Pong anyone?), to its later years with far more advanced arcade machines and various consoles and home computers. The brand name has gone through difficult times, first after the gaming industry crash around 1985, which lead to the splitting of Atari in a company making arcade machines and a company making consoles and computers. Later the arcade industry became smaller every year, with consoles being able to offer the same quality of gameplay for use at home. Atari also lost in the home computer war and their machines were, like nearly everyone else in the market, destroyed by the so-called IBM compatibles running MS-DOS and then Windows. After Atari also failed with their last console, the Falcon, the brand name was resold a few times and finally acquired by Infogrames to rebrand their company into Atari.

During the last few years this new "Atari" has brought back some of their age-old classics in "Recharged" editions, which are actually quite nice little action games, especially for players who experienced the originals a long time ago. Atari also developed a game called Atarimania, which is a funny nostalgic trip using a large bunch of their old IPs and adding them in dozens of minigames into the new game - nothing stellar but a refreshing action adventure with challenging action sequences and bringing a smile on the face of seasoned players when the meet the heroes (or villains) from the old games. The Atari museum brings back such smiles, too, because it contains about 90 (!) full games from the old Atari catalogue. These are quite well emulated versions from the arcade machines, home computers and consoles. You can play now games made for the Atari VCS, the Atari 5200 and 7800, for the Atari 800, Lynx and for the Jaguar... only their most iconic computer, the Atari ST is completely missing.

Of course only a small selection of all the old games once available for the systems are included, but it gives you a nice overview of how games looked and played like in the 80s. Young players might be shocked because of the low visual quality and high difficulty, but this is how games were when I was a kid. As an additional bonus, there are also six brand new re-imaginations of old games included. They are not emulated versions of the originals and look and play a bit more like current games, but keep in mind they are still based on the gameplay of old classics. Actually they are similar to the reimagined games released under the "Recharged" series.

If you are intwerested in the history of computer games, interested in the name "Atari" - give this a try. You will get an interactive history book of the iconic "Atari" brand from 1972 to today, with about 90 emulated classics for various systems to let you actually play those games you read about. Kind of a museum with playable exhibits.