Mini Review: Atari 50: The Wider World Of Atari (Switch) - More Of The Brilliant Same

One of the best parts of this timeline as kinda mentioned here is the fact that the free update games from last year all got timeline entries. Really makes it feel more legitimate instead of just tacked on to the collection.

One could hope for more Lynx/Jaguar games but it looks like the next pack will be focusing on the Intellivision.

Marble Madness in next dlc?

@Juga_Juga I wouldn’t bet on it, unfortunately. Marble Madness is on the wrong end of WB’s divestment of Atari’s console & PC divisions, so it got put on the WB-to-Namco-to-Midway carousel, eventually ending back up with WB. That said, your taste in arcade games is clearly excellent and I sincerely hope we get a new Midway Arcade collection soon (have we seriously not gotten one since 2015?).

Was my first console at the age of four. Lots of fond memories of River Raid, Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Berzerk, etc. Too bad the collection doesn't include iMagic games. They were some of the best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagic

Unless you have real nostalgia for these games, my recommendation would be to buy something like UFO 50 on Steam instead. Hopefully UFO 50 will be coming to Switch soon, too. Brilliant idea by a bunch of mad lads.

Back in elementary school, my sis and I spent many weekday afternoons sat on the rug in my grandparents' den, playing games like Combat, Asteroids, KABOOM, Imagic's Star Voyager, and Pac-Man on my uncle's Atari VCS. At friends' houses I got to play memorable titles like River Raid, Empire Strikes Back, and E.T., and shortly after we got our own Colecovision at home! My fate was sealed then as a lifelong video game fanatic.

2600 Skydiver was a particular fave for my sis and me, so I'm looking forward to revisiting that along with Berzerk and Frenzy when I pick up the Atari 50 Expanded Edition at my local shop later this month. I bought and loved the base Atari 50 steelbook nearly 2 years ago, and do have mixed feelings about re-buying basically the same game with some extra content. But Atari and Digital Eclipse have done some excellent work on this compilation and I want to pursue the most complete/up-to-date physical version available for my collection. I'd do it all over again 2 years from now if they release a further expanded cart with the same level of content quality!

@Magician
I really miss those old Imagic games for the Atari! I played a lot of Star Voyager as a youngster, and I think my Uncle had Demon Attack and Cosmic Arc, too.

If only those were somehow added to this Atari 50 compilation, too! Some of my favorites from back then like the Imagic games, Pitfall, River Raid, Jedi Arena, and Kaboom were 3rd-party games that would push this compilation into legendary status.

I'll never stop wanting proper peripherals to play these games, though. Trackball for Missile Command and Centipede, paddles for Breakout and Tempest, etc. Hori, please, get on that!

I'd love to see Digital Eclipse secure the licenses to add third-party games from the likes of Activision and Imagic to the lineup, maybe even multiple ports of Namco classics like Ms. Pac-Man. There are a lot of solid titles in the Atari catalog, but it can't be overstated how important those companies and their games were to Atari's success during the early 1980s. And having Arcade, 2600, 5200, and 7800 versions of various games would demonstrate the progress home consoles made toward "Arcade-perfect" ports during those years (amazing how far away that goal seemed for a full decade).

I don't know how much further Digital Eclipse plans to explore this history, but there's still a ton of potential left.

Will definitely get this when the definitive edition releases. Hope we get more DLC in the future, and as other people have said more Lynx and Jaguar games.

berzerk arcade is the only game i am interested in the dlc..

@CC13
Marble Madness
Joust
Defender
Robotron 2084
Paperboy
Gauntlet 1&2
Xybots
Planet of the robot monsters
Hydro Thunder
San Francisco Rush
Rampage
Tapper
Toobin
Vindicatiors part II
Wizard of war
And many more
All Owned by Warner Bros and sorely missing from current gen consoles! I sometimes wish Hamster would get hold of them somehow!

There's a fair bit here I'd like to see improved upon.

The #1 issue is the broken audio in the Atari 5200 version of Berzerk. Absolutely awful sounding.

The second issue is the timeline progress immediately goes to 100% completion when you open it for the first time. Quite a minor bug, but it's handy if you're spreading out going through the interviews and such over several sessions to be able to actually tell what you have or haven't viewed before.

While not a bug or anything like that, I think Super Bug needs work. Atari 50 launched with two overhead arcade racers that used a free-spinning wheel and Super Bug marks the 3rd such arcade game here. Alas, while Sprint 8 used the clever steering setup that Code Mystics first showed the world with Atari Vault/Atari Flashback Classics, Fire Truck and Super Bug don't. With how inferior the steering setup is compared to Sprint 8, I'm at a loss why it's not at least an option to switch.

And Super Bug's yellow car overlay is to the best of my knowledge incorrect. It's a yellow circle in the several cabinets that I've been able to play on, it's a circle on the Code Mystics collections, and it's even a circle in one of the pictures of the cabinet on the original advertisement flyer in the timeline gallery for the DLC. Yet here it's presented like it's a children's drawing of the sun. Is that original to some Super Bug cabinets?

Lastly for a very small complaint, why is the d-pad locked out by default for Berzerk (arcade and 5200) and Frenzy? While it's easily rectified in the controller mapping screen for each game, I don't recall Atari 50 ever forcing me to pick one over the other before for anything else. I highly recommend anyone that reads this to switch these three over to the d-pad.

And now for the good stuff. Arcade Berzerk and Frenzy appear to be presented in good shape here after several credits with each. And I'm pleased that Red Baron retains the high score now and the default stick sensitivity feels great. On the older Digital Eclipse collections and on the Code Mystics collections, the high score would erase itself after several seconds when you reopened Red Baron. It was a minor bug, but it was annoying for a game that's all about getting high scores. And there's no need to desensitize the analog stick on Atari 50 (while fixable in the options, the default setting was absolutely unplayable on Atari Vault/Atari Flashback Classics).

I forgot to add, why not let us hook up a USB mouse?

Atari 50 already supports it on PC (and possibly the VCS?). Yet even though the PS4, PS5, XB1, Series X/S, and Switch all allow the use or a USB mouse in games, the feature is locked out.

It would go a long way towards making games like Missile Command fun and enjoyable, Digital Eclipse.

And hopefully Wade is reaching out to Activision or Microsoft about the 2600 titles! There are some REAL gems there gameplay that has stood the test of time today!
River Raid
Stampede
Pitfall I&II
Megamania
Keystone Kapers
Kaboom!
Enduro
Barnstorming
Starmaster
Crackpots
I still play some of these today!! I got my 20 year old son hooked on Kaboom lol 😆

@Atariboy a mouse option should be a feature 100% I agree! How can they not think of that?? 🤷‍♂️

@joey302 Did you ever play Seaquest? That is my favorite Activision 2600 game.

Intellivision was a better system than Atari!!

Old Atari games just don't really do it for me, having a lot of games post-5200 was what made this collection originally interesting to me.

@Atariboy ​Looks like Super Bug's "sun shaped" yellow overlay actually is correct.

It's also not a yellow circle on the Atari Flashback Classics/Vault collection from Code Mystics even though I swore that it was. Same pattern as Digital Eclipse used.

The pattern around it on the older Code Mystics products is a bit more subtle than with the representation of the overlay on Atari 50. And since you mainly see the yellow when crashing (the dark asphalt mostly conceals it until it's lit up when you crash), clearly Atari meant the sun shaped overlay to be a representation of your car exploding.

I'd add that when you do see it well when you hit the sides or a parked vehicle, the "explosion" is over with quickly. Thus the details of the overlay is easy to miss as you're rushing to get back into 1st gear to get going again. Or at least that's my excuse.

Thus both Digital Eclipse and Code Mystics got it right here despite my faulty memories (and eyesight, apparently).

​

@LinktotheFuture holy cow I left that off my list lol absolutely one of my all time favorites Seaquest!

@JayJ Same here. The only reason I cared about the base release was the inclusion of Jaguar and Lynx games. I might get this DLC at some point if it's like 80% off its normal price, but it's a huge pass for me at $13.99.

@Atariboy good idea, is there a good example of a switch game supporting mouse?

@romanista I think the Quake and classic Doom games do.

Can't wait to finally get this.

@InJeffable DLC 1 is only eight bucks.

That "$13.99" you're looking at is the SEASON PASS.

@IceClimbersMain "the free update games from last year all got timeline entries"

I'm not seeing Warbirds Lynx in there.

@FrowardCoast440 I appreciate the clarification. $8 is certainly better, but it still feels like too much from where I'm sitting.

@FrowardCoast440 IIRC Warbirds was originally included on the cart but was removed in a day 0 patch because they lacked a proper licensing, so that led to a lot of people not updating their carts as it was a "physical only" game because of that. Then they later got the rights and added it back in.

I think it's included in the base game timeline but I may be wrong.