Atari Continues Its Recharged Series On Switch With Quantum

Quantum is a fun play in the Atari 50 Anniversary collection. The trackball control worked well enough with the analog stick.

@ibookboyuk VCTR-SCTR is soooooooo good!

Atari was exciting 40 years ago only by virtue of being novel.

But I don't think that anything they have ever produced was genuinely a classic.

Their catalogue is antiquated at best and industry-crashingly bad at worst.

I get that some Baby Boomers and Gen Xers may find some value in this, and I've grown up with similarly primitive games (being an older millenial), but I'm not terribly interested in ever revisiting them. The memories are no less fond, but the experience simply doesn't hold up anymore.

Mind you, I was tempted to grab Atari 50 for the historical curiosity that it is (and I'd likely enjoy at least a handful of the included games), but the large mandatory download made it an easy pass.

@Sisilly_G "But I don't think that anything they have ever produced was genuinely a classic."

Opinions are great. All of yours are wrong.

@Cashews : Then it's a good thing that opinions, by definition, cannot be objectively right or wrong.

Your misintepretation of what an "opinion" is, on the other hand...

@Sisilly_G what large mandatory download?

@andyg1412 : There was apparently advertised content missing without the update (there was a day one update of 2.3GB), at least according to a review that I had read. The game is now out of print in Australia, so I have been unable to track down the review due to the product page being taken down, but I recall the review cementing my decision to ultimately give the physical release a pass due to how clumsily it was handled.

It's still reportedly playable without the update (and the update reportedly REMOVES one of the games, Warbirds, which was included in the Version 1.0 build that is on the cartridge), but any physical release that requires a download to access content that is advertised on the tin (so to speak) is as good as mandatory.

Judging from the size of the update, I suspect that it may pertain to the documentary materials that are included in the release, as opposed to it affecting the playability of any of the included games (Warbirds excluded).

Atari was.. first.. (kind of.. the first home console was actually made by Magnavox iirc). The first video arcade game WAS Pong by Atari.

That was their biggest contribution to gaming really (that and the Atari 2600 - and no that wasn't even the first console where you could change out games - that was something called the Fairchild F - or something ).

They did make some reasonably innovative games; Pong (of course); Night Driver (1976) is impressive from a gameplay point of view (and also kind of graphically); Breakout; Asteroids was really, really popular at the same time as Space Invaders and Galaxian; they had Lunar Lander, Missile Command, Centipede and later they had Gauntlet and Paper Boy (but those 2 weren't "old" Atari - but developed and released after the split up/reconstruction).

One thing they probably lacked though, was their games being truly simple fun. Contrary to especially games from japanese companies like Taito, Namco, Konami, Sega etc., Atari games were often of a more serious/simulatorish nature.

The japanese games were more often of a cartoonish/silly nature and therefore (almost by definition) more fun (at least imo - I'm sure there were people that enjoyed Atari's vector based games etc.).

I wish they just give us an Atari Recharged Collection for physical preservation.

@Stamina_Wheel I really like the Recharged Black Widow

Just "caved in" and bought the Atari 50 anniversary collection, for full price as I realized there was a good a time to be had with it (100+ games across 7 formats, developer interviews, nice interface etc.).

And there's IS a bit of a blind spot in my "education as gamer" , I admit.

And that really is Atari games - my first ever console was a Philips G 7000 back in 1982 (known as the Magnavox Odyssey 2 in the US) and a direct competitor to the Atari 2600/VCS - as I've been more or less everywhere else when it comes consoles and arcade games.

Looking forward to play some Centipede/Milipede etc. (only bummer is that Night Driver is not included).

Everyone in this thread needs to buy Akka Arrh if they haven't already. At full price. Of games that got very little attention it is easily one of the best of this year.

@shgamer We had the Odyssey 2, also! Tons of fun! Somewhat overlooked in retro gaming circles.

Atari 50 is such a great collection. Part history. Part games archive. So many playable games. The games that used spinners are probably the ones that don’t translate the best to modern controls (but they do have options to adjust analog stick sensitivity).

I am a wee bit of a fan of the recharged series.

@DwaynesGames I had this Pac-Man clone that was really fun. You could build your on levels and I thought it was more fun than Pac-Man itself (played a bit different too).

There was a Space Invaders clone too that played a bit different from the original too plus an Asteroid clone that was quite good too.

(fun fact: did you know almost the entire library of the Odyssey 2/G 7000 was made by one man only - and his wife I think - Philips itself didn't have much faith in the platform, but they let this guy have his way - because he was cost effective probably).

@shgamer Indeed! K.C Munchkin! And K.C.’s Krazy Chase!

https://kotaku.com/bizarre-game-mash-up-a-k-c-s-krazy-chase-retrospectiv-5705553

@DwaynesGames Yeah, I had one of those. It was really great fun!

@ibookboyuk I bought the Yar’s Revenge Recharged game, but I haven’t tried it yet. Played the original a lot.

@Serpenterror : LRG had already issued two physical releases of the Recharged games late last year, though it depends on whether one is willing to pay US$35 (plus shipping/tax) for collections containing a grand total of two games each.