Came here to say this, but you beat me to it. Although I can add the variation eight is also Sea Bomber, it may only be the two-player version of game seven, but it still counts.
@@pojrThis is what is really aggravating. Copyrights were ment to expire after a few years; those who create art were not meant to be able to just sit on it endlessly, but were supposed to be encouraged to keep creating. It's also possible to keep making money on something made long ago while also making it open. What we have is an intensely broken system as a whole. It is very visible in streaming services as a good example, where a 40+ year old show will disappear half way through watching it or travel to another region and suddenly are blocked.
@@pojr Never say never. On one hand, I could easily see Microsoft lending Atari the rights to those early Activision games for this digital museum. [Perhaps also Halo 2600 for an unlockable bonus.] But on the other hand, how do we know that Microsoft isn't commissioning someone to make an Activision 50 in order to give all the non-licensed pre-Call of Duty games a home? But that'd be a few years off, so a DLC now is plausible.
They did discuss using the ST games, but the emulator was not as easy to get working afaik. they devoted the time they had to making everything else as perfect as possible
To be fair the ST Atari *is* the same Atari that owned the rights to the 2600/5200/7800 and created everything from then on. It’s Atari Games that’s the ‘other’ Atari.
I remember seeing and playing Red Baron at the KFC in Fairbanks, Alaska during the very early 80s. I'm glad that they also included it and i hope in the near future they get the Battlezone rights back.
Red Baron was completely awesome and fun. I still clearly picture myself playing it in a small mall arcade in Port Orchard, WA back in '81 (I think). I likely plunked a whole roll of quarters in that machine the first time I came across it. Fun times!
5:56 I am embarrassed to say I always assumed the 2600 Off the Wall was just a port of the (equally obscure) Atari arcade game of the same name. However, the 2600 game came out in 1989, while the arcade game - which looks completely different - actually came out in 1991. Well, now I know.
@@eightcoins4401There are a number of lesser known 2600 games from this “Fun in back!” era, basically coinciding with the release of the 7800. There were 2600 ports of the arcade games Xenophobe, Ikari Warriors, Road Runner, and Klax for example.
@@eightcoins4401 yes. In 1987 "Foot Craz" came with a footpad controller, ahead of Nintendo's '88 Power Pad. Atari 2600 was still competing against Nintendo NES, into the late 80s.
Imo Atari games are super underrated. I am constantly impressed by the technical limitations they had to overcome on such a limited system, especially when porting games from the arcade!
@@pojr I started reading "Racing the Beam", regret getting it, it's an incredibly dry, boring description of Atari 2600. A lot of the games were based on how CRTs projected line by line over the screen, on the Television Interface Adaptor (TIA also "Stella") I starting reading thinking "technical limitations" would be about coding on the 6502 with only kilobytes of memory, but it has as much to do with the physics of how CRT screens worked as much as anything else. Thus, the title. It redefines "technical limitations" to be entirely different technologies involved than in modern devices.
Warlords was a 4 player Atari 2600 game. I remember playing it with friends (for hours!) back in the early 1980s. Lots of fun, popcorn, and soda. I miss those years!
relative to other 2600 games, yes. I was going down the Atari rabbit hole and found someone argue that it was Atari's really poor version of Pac-Man that eventually led to their crash in '83. "Racing the Beam" turned out to be very academic, very dry reading. Who knew?
@@squirlmy I didn't think that Pac-Man was that bad, I played it quite a bit and didn't think much of it. My cousins would come over and they loved it. We all knew the 2600 wasn't an arcade machine, nor expected it to be.
@@joezar33 They can greatly improved with emulaters. Why spend money when you can just use retroarch and have a superior experience with many options? Sony doesn't offer every psp game upscaled at 60 fps and there are a lot of games that they never bothered to translate, i'm not paying for an inferior experience. I don't know if you mean the original looked bad, but with all the filters on retroarch you can make it look however you want.
7800 and Lynx stuff came through thanks to the Blaze Evercade deals. Now you have to wait for the other side of the deals to finish up, just because the cart production is done, it doesn't mean they didn't put any exclusivity agreement in place over a number of years before Atari can get back to using them themselves. Really doesn't seem like Atari paid to bring a lot of those new re-releases of their own games back to life with the Evercade.
@@Pax_Mayn3 there are particular early games on emulators that do not have "superior experience", because the originals relied on CRT tech of televisions in the 80s. Some of the "superior" games you probably are referencing are total re-writes that have very little to do with the original games. If you play actual original hardware you may notice really huge differences. If you want "authentic nostalgia" rather than a fancy re-write that simulates gameplay, it's worthwhile to spend the money. Games like Asteroids on an emulator will not bring back the magic of playing in 1978. If you want to pat yourself on the back for saving money, by all means... But you aren't playing the same games, and the experience is noticeably different.
I like Atari 50 a lot and it’s made me appreciate Atari a lot more now, I do wish Atari would release their other arcade games like Road Blasters, Rampart and Hard Drivin.
Some investors swooped in and bought the Atari name and probably have zero real (not feigned) allegiance to retro computing. Now they are milking it. Yes, you should have a problem with these guys and what they charge.
GOD I really hope they add the Star Wars arcade game somehow… as well as the one where you fight an atat even if they call it something else and take out all the Star Wars stuff
The Atari 50 collection you’re really paying for the interactive documentary and the other features with that, in reality just emulation on good hardware will always be the most efficient way to play these kind of games but for the premium price this is the best way to do it by adding cool features like that
I feel like the one thing I most would have liked to see added onto Atari 50 is some of the Atari Games arcade stuff (or even Tengen releases) from after the arcade vs. hardware company split happened. Get a glimpse of how things went for the "other half" of Atari, after all it was the arcade division that was responsible for originating so many of Atari's beloved games, and Atari's other beloved arcade games from the rest of the '80s being missing feels like an oversight. But then I guess Warner Bros. owns all of that now, so who knows what would be involved with getting them to play ball? Lego Dimensions was the closest they've come to doing retro arcade releases again since PS3/360 era. And that WB Discovery is involved in 2024 😬
There is wind resistance in 2600 Sky Diver - the flag at the bottom centre shows the wind direction. It's a really enjoyable 2 player game. Destroyer is on the 2600 - it's on the Canyon Bomber cartridge - it has submarine attack games that play exactly the same way as Destroyer.😀 Wondering what the console war DLC will be - could be 7800 (vs NES vs SMS) or Jaguar (vs SNES vs Gen/MD) or Lynx (vs GG vs GB). Would like more 7800 games personally - Asteroids/Dx, Centipede, Joust etc are all excellent ports.
The console war stuff will be 2600 versus Intellivison. Atari bought the rights to Intellivision and M Network, so most, if not all, of the games will probably be M Network 2600 games.
This is a good collection. I have it on Switch. My favorite game changes. Some I can't imagine I will ever play. Vctr Sctr is incredibly hard so I haven't unlocked Gravitar 2600 yet. But I paid for the DLC bundle on switch. Besides these versions I also have some Atari Recharged games like Berserk Recharged, Asteroids Recharged, Centipede Recharged, Breakout Recharged, the new Akka Arrh and Tempest 4000 individually. Modern Atari is alright. A restrained psychedelia.
@@pojrYeah, I got the game first day it came out, and I only unlocked them YESTERDAY. lol Best to cheat here and watch a video of how to unlock them. The only real difficult one is "Quadratank." I'm sure how anyone figured it out.
This is something I would definitely pay for, being that the 2600 was my first Game System. Also, on Berzerk and Frenzy, it cost $1000 for one word to be recorded, so when you hear something such as "CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT!", that $5000 spent.
The First Console War dlc will only include 19 games for a total of 38 games across both dlcs. After Atari announced 39 games, they had to remove Frisky Tom, presumably due to licensing issues.
remember, it is 15k a pop to bring any version back. That adds up. Desert Falcon 7800 isn't included because Blaze probably paid for that one to come back on the Evercade, the problem with that convoluted licensing deal they made with Blaze.
@@jamesbuc6116 that doesn't mean the license doesn't come with a lengthy exclusivity agreement attached, if they did in fact pay for it. They clearly are a reason for the absence of many titles...since you only find them on that platform.
@@Parlimant_Strifey eh. I still don't think that's the thing since a ton of the games from those two packs are also on Atari 50. I think it's just a classic case of just something that wasn't planned for inclusion. There's a lot of other games still not included like Dominoes (arc), Pool Shark (arcade), pong sports (2600). I think about 60 or so games for example that were on the Atari flashback collections are missing here.
Berzerk is THE game. Period. It's cool to have four versions of the same same, so the experience looks more complete and historically accurate. I hope that will include also Imagic games in a way or another. Maybe Im just dreaming, I know, but most of the people out there have interest only for Activision while Imagic games (later acquired by Activision after the crash of 1983) shared the same level of quality most of the times.
The Atari 2600 version of Berzerk has a strange bug: If you accumulate too many lives, the game will go into "reset" mode, like if you hit the Select switch :/
I feel that Atari should approach Microsoft and ask if they would be willing to sell their old library of Activision and Imagic titles (Yes, Activision owns the Imagic library).
The reason for Off The Wall using a stick was due to it being released during the Atari 2600 Junior era. Atari stopped making paddle & paddle games after the crash. There were so few titles to begin with as well as Jack Trammel being a penny pincher they just focused on the games that use a Joysticks only. So besides paddle games other games that used "odd controllers" like Star Raider never got red label releases. Besides many stores like KB Toys & Toys R US still had back stock of old 2600 products including paddles so they got to slowly get rid of them during that time.
I didn't have a Atari 2600 junior till 1985 when I was 3. I wasn't aware of the video game crash of 1983. By time time I could remember stuff, stores stopped selling any Atari 2600 games at retail
It's a pity because it's tailor made for paddle play especially once the ball speeds up . This collection NEEDS a paddle controller really really badly for Breakout, Avalanche, Circus etc.
@@marccaselle8108 In my hometown KB-Toys they still sold old stock Intelivision games until mid 88 they sold out of their old stock 2600 stuff by early 1989, but did carry some red box titles until Christmas of that year then clearance them as low as fifty cents to flush them out for good. The store chain that had they most 2600 stuff in my area was "Venture" (they had half a isle) until 1990 when they too started to clearance them as well. Venture had old stock paddle games until 1988. The store with the second largest inventory was Service Merchandise they though only had the Red Box games, but they sold every title. They were gone by 1991 (started to clearance them in mid 1990). In 89 we got Toys R US, but since they were new they did not have 2600 titles, but nearby cities that had a location had them. Only our Montgomery Ward & Toys R Us had the 7800 (Toys R Us had limited stock) Sears was mail order only for 2600 & 7800.
@@marccaselle8108 were you in time for NES? 3 in '85 means you missed out on NES when it was new, too. Also the '83 crash was US only. Europe and Japan didn't suffer at all. Personally, in '84 I decided it was time to move on from video games to cars and girls. I'm still not sure that was the best decision... ;P
@@squirlmy my parents did buy me a NES but not until late 1986. Everyone on my block had one, so I got to borrow games from every kid on the block, along with renting games too.
I think as far as free or fee is concerned, it'll depend on what's being added. There's not much point in charging for just a few random games, but a whole new timeline with more videos yields justification for the price. [Either that or you're paying for the Sears license.] I expect that an update that just adds the better version of Desert Falcon and a few random stragglers will probably be free, whereas bigger and more focused updates will be ones that go for a fee.
Postscript: As for DLC I'd expect to see someday: Obviously Activision given the historical importance, unless an Activision 50 is in the works. Spielberg & Warshaw for Indianna Jones and E.T., perhaps featuring an alternate version with the bugs fixed. And Star Wars, maybe with Ballblazer as a bonus just for the sake of it.
If something like this does happen, I hope Atari produces it rather than Activision itself, because Atari is one of very few publishers for the 2019 VCS, and most of their stuff is available there. That's where I play Atari games, and my concern with Activision is that they wouldn't do anything for that console.
Well they are owned by Microsoft now, so maybe they will see the light of day. This is honestly like the only generation of consoles where Activision never released an anthology.
they did on the PS1 and PS2. After that they went all dude bro with Call of Duty and Spider-Man, it was never on Bobby Kotlick's to do list ever again.
I never really understood why Berzerk for the VCS didn't allow robots to shoot diagonally or why a player's diagonal shots fired at about 30° from horizontal instead of 45°. Diagonal shots also use the horizontal shot graphics which is just a bit weird. Vertical shots move much slower than horizontal ones but the diagonal ones actually move faster. Perhaps the game was rushed but it seems to be something that could have been improved with a fairly small amount of work. Another less obvious restriction is that robots could not pass each other vertically. This is because the VCS's hardware is designed to support only two "player sprites" per screen but, with some fancy programming, interrupts can be used to share one sprite among several items as long as they are not on same vertical line. Later on, more advanced techniques allowed multiple sprites to appear on screen without flickering except when they were on the same vertical scan line. This removed the "no vertical passing" restriction that affected Berzerk while still providing a mostly unflickering game.
When you consider that the smallest pixels on the Atari 2600 are about 1.7 times as wide as they are tall, it makes a lot more sense. They either didn't have space in the cartridge, or didn't have time, to account for that. I'm sure it's not the only game. Floating point math and trig was not a high priority. Two robots could certainly have been made to pass each other vertically without flickering, as long as the man wasn't on the same line. That would have required more complex logic. Once again, it was probably deemed not worth the time to put in.
@@sa3270 Once Warner Communications bought out Nolan Bushnell and proceeded to push him out of the company, the priority became fast releases, not game quality. Combat has perfectly diagonal shots and it was programmed on a 2kb cartridge. Generally speaking, developers tried not to make the player's sprite flicker and traded off the flickering to enemy sprites where it couldn't be avoided. Greedy Warner eventually shot themselves in the foot with their increasingly idiotic demands on programmers. With the notorious ET cartridge Howard Warshaw was given just five weeks to develop ET from concept to completed product. After ET, Warner seems to have realised that they needed to give their programmers decent development times. Later games improved in quality but the damage by that stage was already done.
There was a December update? Shows how much I played it when I first bought it. I recall that Atari 50 was missing a ton of A-list arcade titles like Marble Madness and Battle Zone. That said, I’d pay to play arcade versions of Berzerk and Frenzy again.
Marble Madness was done by Atari Games, so this Atari never owned it. Warner Brothers owns all the Atari Games arcade games. Battlezone is a different story. When Atari went through bankruptcy in 2013/2014, they sold Battlezone to Rebellion Developments, of Sniper Elite fame.
Them trying to profit off these games still is kind of wild to me. You can just emulate them, there are so many free games these days that are 10000 times better, if i'm gonna pay for something it's gonna be something like a cracked psp to play these on. Why bother when thing like retroarch exist? These collections offer scanlines? With retroarch there are endless combinations of filters you can use. I guess it's for people that don't understand emulation, sucks to be them. I'd choose retroarch over the actual consoles at this point. Psp/n64 at 60fps with upscaling and crt filters, can't beat it.
Wait, did I buy the same the same games with the 7.99 and the 13.99 dlc? Lol. I'll watch you wonderfully in dept and insightful video now? I am happy to pay under 15 bucks for DLC. To support the cause. But I want Activision games!!!!! Have they even tried to make ammends and a deal? I'd pay 20 bucks for a God number of Activision dlc. Come on Atari! It will make a lot of money.
ngl You know and I know and most people know the New Atari they'll Charge for them ofc BUT at 1st Maybe give it free for the Holidays and if not maybe a short window like a week or 2 then after that Sorry You now have to pay for old ass 8bit games that not many people would care about in the Modern era minus the Retro Collectors, and ofc the people of that era.
Great video! Good point: where's the Atari 7800 version of Desert Falcon? Atari is a bunch of laughable cheapskates. Anyway, there's a limit to how much money I'll let Atari make on their games. The company is nickel-and-diming the fans, and I'm done. I bought the Atari Flashback Classics Collection for Nintendo Switch, then I bought the Atari 50 Collection for Nintendo Switch, and they soured me with the fact that certain great games were on one cartridge and not on the other - see Atari Football (Arcade) and RealSports Baseball (Atari 5200). Why did I have to buy two cartridges? Now they tell me that they're adding the exclusive games from the Flashback cartridge to the Atari 50 Collection, making the earlier cartridge obsolete, and they're even releasing a complete cartridge containing all the games. I've already bought two cartridges, which I regret, and I think I've paid Atari enough money, but now I hear them tell me that I'm supposed to pay more money to add a few more games digitally. I don't think so. And where is Gauntlet, a legendary 1985 Atari game? They are holding on to that game for dear life, so they can one day ask us to pay forty dollars for a "Gauntlet Collection" containing all four games. Gauntlet should be on the Atari 50 collection - it's their best freakin' game. The sad thing is that if they had just put all their great games onto one complete cartridge, that collection would have sold like hot cakes and would have made them a lot more money than they're making now by penny-pinching. Companies like Atari are the best argument in favor of adding these old games to your Raspberry Pi or Mini Console of choice. Compare this incompetence to the Beatles, who released an album called "1", a collection of all 27 of their number-one singles. The album sold over 31 million copies, because it was the real deal.
I bought the dlc when your post came up. I'm actually just watching your video now see what they include. I also bought something for more than 7.99? I believe it was 11 or 17 dollars. I'm stoked to Berzerk and I agree, they sound make money. I reallynreally.wish they would make a deal with Activision and we can get pitfall and all the other equally if not even most bester atari games! Wtf? It's beef 45 or so years. I want to play Pitfall. I don't have my Atari or Commodore 64 anymore! But I'm glad to see Bezerk added. I never owned or played it, but I know it's an iconic game since the Chasijg Ghost documentary. Who is the gamer in Prison in that documentary? You can tell he is in prison when he appears in the documentary. I think he was a chomo. Sad that he was.like that. Man so many of those guys have since had controversy. The Star Wars guy who runs the website has the best sound bite when he speaks so seriously about how, in Star Wars or some other game? If you make he wrong move,.you will die. Something like that? His artwork collection is pretty creepy also but I like him as much as I know at least. He's super dedicated to those tapes people send him!!!!!
Atari is the cockroach of gaming, you may think it is dead, Nintendo did, at least I did, but it did not die! It is still roaming out there doing it's stuff.
My ~10 yo nephews don't understand my attachment to some of these simplistic games, and while I was disappointed by their reaction, watching this video made me understand better. Some of these are such a ridiculous waste of time! I didn't play many of them, because, they were dumb, boring games!! The Sears games were awful. I don't get your fondness of them.
Not going to spend a dime on Atari. They're notoriously bad. And they only want your money. This collection should be no more than $5. Its greed. They're the reason for the videogame crash of 80. i'll get a NES classics collection or SNES classics collection.
Thank you Pojr for catering to all of us 3 fans of Atari who haven't died of old age!
You want a 2600 version of Destroyer? You have it already. Load up Canyon Bomber game variation 7. It's called Sea Bomber.
Came here to say this, but you beat me to it. Although I can add the variation eight is also Sea Bomber, it may only be the two-player version of game seven, but it still counts.
The Atari collection did not include any Atari 2600 Activision games.
Atari did a great job adding Berzerk. They deserve money.
I do wonder if Atari ever will try to get the license to include Activision games in a DLC.
@@pojrgreat question. Great video, btw. You have earned every subscriber you have.
@@pojrThis is what is really aggravating. Copyrights were ment to expire after a few years; those who create art were not meant to be able to just sit on it endlessly, but were supposed to be encouraged to keep creating.
It's also possible to keep making money on something made long ago while also making it open. What we have is an intensely broken system as a whole. It is very visible in streaming services as a good example, where a 40+ year old show will disappear half way through watching it or travel to another region and suddenly are blocked.
@@pojr Never say never. On one hand, I could easily see Microsoft lending Atari the rights to those early Activision games for this digital museum. [Perhaps also Halo 2600 for an unlockable bonus.] But on the other hand, how do we know that Microsoft isn't commissioning someone to make an Activision 50 in order to give all the non-licensed pre-Call of Duty games a home? But that'd be a few years off, so a DLC now is plausible.
@@szr8 it’s not a few years. It’s the life of the author plus 70 years.
Works for hire is 95 years from fist publication.
I'm just hoping for some more Jaguar stuff TBH, Maybe something for the Atari ST (even though it was a different Atari)
Hello, you.
You misused a comma.
They did discuss using the ST games, but the emulator was not as easy to get working afaik. they devoted the time they had to making everything else as perfect as possible
To be fair the ST Atari *is* the same Atari that owned the rights to the 2600/5200/7800 and created everything from then on. It’s Atari Games that’s the ‘other’ Atari.
I remember seeing and playing Red Baron at the KFC in Fairbanks, Alaska during the very early 80s. I'm glad that they also included it and i hope in the near future they get the Battlezone rights back.
Red Baron was completely awesome and fun. I still clearly picture myself playing it in a small mall arcade in Port Orchard, WA back in '81 (I think). I likely plunked a whole roll of quarters in that machine the first time I came across it. Fun times!
Fortunately, i have this collection on the Atari VCS and we are getting the DLC for free! 😊
At first, I thought you meant the original VCS and not the modern one.
@@CptJistuce i know 😉
5:56 I am embarrassed to say I always assumed the 2600 Off the Wall was just a port of the (equally obscure) Atari arcade game of the same name. However, the 2600 game came out in 1989, while the arcade game - which looks completely different - actually came out in 1991. Well, now I know.
There were 2600 games still coming out in 1989?
The description blurb for the game even mentions that it came out two years before the Atari Games arcade game.
@@eightcoins4401There are a number of lesser known 2600 games from this “Fun in back!” era, basically coinciding with the release of the 7800. There were 2600 ports of the arcade games Xenophobe, Ikari Warriors, Road Runner, and Klax for example.
@@eightcoins4401 yes. In 1987 "Foot Craz" came with a footpad controller, ahead of Nintendo's '88 Power Pad. Atari 2600 was still competing against Nintendo NES, into the late 80s.
Imo Atari games are super underrated. I am constantly impressed by the technical limitations they had to overcome on such a limited system, especially when porting games from the arcade!
Yeah it's insane some of the things they pulled off with their later games, like Secret Quest, Radar Lock and Solaris.
Agreed, even more amazing this the ongoing homebrew community releasing ports and games they never thought possible
@@pojr I started reading "Racing the Beam", regret getting it, it's an incredibly dry, boring description of Atari 2600. A lot of the games were based on how CRTs projected line by line over the screen, on the Television Interface Adaptor (TIA also "Stella") I starting reading thinking "technical limitations" would be about coding on the 6502 with only kilobytes of memory, but it has as much to do with the physics of how CRT screens worked as much as anything else. Thus, the title. It redefines "technical limitations" to be entirely different technologies involved than in modern devices.
The arcade version of Missile Command is super difficult. Takes a lot of practice to master the track ball controls.
Yup. It's also hard for me to get used to the three different missile bases that I can fire off missiles. I like that the 2600 version only has one.
972,000 in 1982. 🎉
Get a logitech track ball for it
More of a fan of the arcade version of Missile Command
The Atari Recharged version of Missile Command is the way to go.
Touch screen controls are even better then the original Trackball.
Warlords was a 4 player Atari 2600 game. I remember playing it with friends (for hours!) back in the early 1980s. Lots of fun, popcorn, and soda. I miss those years!
Man, I want Defender!
The 2600 version of Berzerk was very well done. I remember playing it quite a bit when I was young.
relative to other 2600 games, yes. I was going down the Atari rabbit hole and found someone argue that it was Atari's really poor version of Pac-Man that eventually led to their crash in '83. "Racing the Beam" turned out to be very academic, very dry reading. Who knew?
@@squirlmy I didn't think that Pac-Man was that bad, I played it quite a bit and didn't think much of it. My cousins would come over and they loved it. We all knew the 2600 wasn't an arcade machine, nor expected it to be.
I was madly addicted to that game as a kid.
If Atari could release a pack with Jaguar titles - I will buy it !!!
Honestly, I was hoping for more 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar stuff, maybe some Atari 8-bit and ST. Thanks for the review, you just saved me some money.
Yeah, 7800 , Lynx , Jaguar would be better . 2600 & 5200 are fugly duckling graphics, lol
@@joezar33 They can greatly improved with emulaters. Why spend money when you can just use retroarch and have a superior experience with many options? Sony doesn't offer every psp game upscaled at 60 fps and there are a lot of games that they never bothered to translate, i'm not paying for an inferior experience. I don't know if you mean the original looked bad, but with all the filters on retroarch you can make it look however you want.
7800 and Lynx stuff came through thanks to the Blaze Evercade deals. Now you have to wait for the other side of the deals to finish up, just because the cart production is done, it doesn't mean they didn't put any exclusivity agreement in place over a number of years before Atari can get back to using them themselves. Really doesn't seem like Atari paid to bring a lot of those new re-releases of their own games back to life with the Evercade.
@@Pax_Mayn3 there are particular early games on emulators that do not have "superior experience", because the originals relied on CRT tech of televisions in the 80s. Some of the "superior" games you probably are referencing are total re-writes that have very little to do with the original games. If you play actual original hardware you may notice really huge differences. If you want "authentic nostalgia" rather than a fancy re-write that simulates gameplay, it's worthwhile to spend the money. Games like Asteroids on an emulator will not bring back the magic of playing in 1978. If you want to pat yourself on the back for saving money, by all means... But you aren't playing the same games, and the experience is noticeably different.
I hope you're saving Stellar Track for a solo vid. The original Star Trek game it was based on is an important part of video game history.
Oh I love Berserk!! I'm so happy to see it get such a feature rich rerelease. Collections that include all of a game's history are always my favorite.
I like having this collection on my VCS
Great video !!! You are an awesome reviewer !!
I like Atari 50 a lot and it’s made me appreciate Atari a lot more now, I do wish Atari would release their other arcade games like Road Blasters, Rampart and Hard Drivin.
Some investors swooped in and bought the Atari name and probably have zero real (not feigned) allegiance to retro computing. Now they are milking it. Yes, you should have a problem with these guys and what they charge.
Neat to see this game collection is still getting updated, great overview Pojr!
Thank you!
You misused a comma.
GOD I really hope they add the Star Wars arcade game somehow… as well as the one where you fight an atat even if they call it something else and take out all the Star Wars stuff
30K🎉
Congrats
Thank you!!
The Atari 50 collection you’re really paying for the interactive documentary and the other features with that, in reality just emulation on good hardware will always be the most efficient way to play these kind of games but for the premium price this is the best way to do it by adding cool features like that
I will buy the bundle I wish we could get more Jaguar games though
I feel like the one thing I most would have liked to see added onto Atari 50 is some of the Atari Games arcade stuff (or even Tengen releases) from after the arcade vs. hardware company split happened. Get a glimpse of how things went for the "other half" of Atari, after all it was the arcade division that was responsible for originating so many of Atari's beloved games, and Atari's other beloved arcade games from the rest of the '80s being missing feels like an oversight.
But then I guess Warner Bros. owns all of that now, so who knows what would be involved with getting them to play ball? Lego Dimensions was the closest they've come to doing retro arcade releases again since PS3/360 era. And that WB Discovery is involved in 2024 😬
I think when u look at the prices of games these days imo I think they’re worth every penny👌
You forget that a lot of whiny gamers are entitled nowadays and just want everything free, now, and perfect.
I too was disappointed with the lack of 7800 Desert Falcon, but it looks like it's being added via the 2nd DLC.
There is wind resistance in 2600 Sky Diver - the flag at the bottom centre shows the wind direction. It's a really enjoyable 2 player game. Destroyer is on the 2600 - it's on the Canyon Bomber cartridge - it has submarine attack games that play exactly the same way as Destroyer.😀 Wondering what the console war DLC will be - could be 7800 (vs NES vs SMS) or Jaguar (vs SNES vs Gen/MD) or Lynx (vs GG vs GB). Would like more 7800 games personally - Asteroids/Dx, Centipede, Joust etc are all excellent ports.
The console war stuff will be 2600 versus Intellivison. Atari bought the rights to Intellivision and M Network, so most, if not all, of the games will probably be M Network 2600 games.
This is a good collection. I have it on Switch. My favorite game changes. Some I can't imagine I will ever play. Vctr Sctr is incredibly hard so I haven't unlocked Gravitar 2600 yet. But I paid for the DLC bundle on switch. Besides these versions I also have some Atari Recharged games like Berserk Recharged, Asteroids Recharged, Centipede Recharged, Breakout Recharged, the new Akka Arrh and Tempest 4000 individually. Modern Atari is alright. A restrained psychedelia.
Honest confession, I haven't unlocked any of the unlockable games yet lol.
@@pojrYeah, I got the game first day it came out, and I only unlocked them YESTERDAY. lol
Best to cheat here and watch a video of how to unlock them.
The only real difficult one is "Quadratank." I'm sure how anyone figured it out.
Why wait? Emulate. Much better experience to.
@@Pax_Mayn3 I'm not sure what you mean since Atari is using emulation in this collection.
Also the collection contains more than just old games.
You're so close! Love all the content you put out...keep up the amazing work!
Thank you so much!
This is something I would definitely pay for, being that the 2600 was my first Game System.
Also, on Berzerk and Frenzy, it cost $1000 for one word to be recorded, so when you hear something such as "CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT!", that $5000 spent.
The next batch of DLC games for November have already been announced. It will feature M Network (Mattel) games and some prototypes.
In Destroyer you're dropping depth charges onto submarines, not torpedoes.
Atari recently acquired Intellivison, I think the final (?) DLC will include games from their competitor at the time.
oooh Red Baron
Wish they had licensed content like from Activision. It seems like those games were really representative of the era.
The First Console War dlc will only include 19 games for a total of 38 games across both dlcs. After Atari announced 39 games, they had to remove Frisky Tom, presumably due to licensing issues.
Congrats on 30.000!
I would love to see a few more Lynx and Jaguar games added, maybe even a few Jaguar CD games.
I think I'm going to download this right now. Nostalgia bombs
I dont have much to say but your videos make me happy c: Thank you!
remember, it is 15k a pop to bring any version back. That adds up. Desert Falcon 7800 isn't included because Blaze probably paid for that one to come back on the Evercade, the problem with that convoluted licensing deal they made with Blaze.
I doubt that has anything to do with the Atari 50 set given that particular cart is discontinued now.
@@jamesbuc6116 that doesn't mean the license doesn't come with a lengthy exclusivity agreement attached, if they did in fact pay for it. They clearly are a reason for the absence of many titles...since you only find them on that platform.
@@Parlimant_Strifey eh. I still don't think that's the thing since a ton of the games from those two packs are also on Atari 50. I think it's just a classic case of just something that wasn't planned for inclusion. There's a lot of other games still not included like Dominoes (arc), Pool Shark (arcade), pong sports (2600). I think about 60 or so games for example that were on the Atari flashback collections are missing here.
Berzerk is THE game. Period.
It's cool to have four versions of the same same, so the experience looks more complete and historically accurate.
I hope that will include also Imagic games in a way or another. Maybe Im just dreaming, I know, but most of the people out there have interest only for Activision while Imagic games (later acquired by Activision after the crash of 1983) shared the same level of quality most of the times.
The Atari 2600 version of Berzerk has a strange bug: If you accumulate too many lives, the game will go into "reset" mode, like if you hit the Select switch :/
You are right, frankly, there are many duplicate games and the same thing
Where:
River Raid
Pac-Man
Pitfall!
Dig Dug
Dragonfire
I feel that Atari should approach Microsoft and ask if they would be willing to sell their old library of Activision and Imagic titles (Yes, Activision owns the Imagic library).
axari in name only, axari died a long time ago
Gonna wait for the new physical Steelbook edition to have the DLC in the cart😁
the new physical game does look really cool.
It's $13.99 for both DLC on Steam. But you can only purchase them together or the current DLC You cannot pre-purchase the other one.
True, this was the case for the Switch as well. I ended up purchasing both.
@@pojr I still find it weird that the other DLC was free but that this one isn't. I wonder if we'll ever get an answer? Probably not.
What's everybody's fave Atari game? I like Centipede!
Edit: You are in fact at 30K! Grats! 🎉
The reason for Off The Wall using a stick was due to it being released during the Atari 2600 Junior era. Atari stopped making paddle & paddle games after the crash. There were so few titles to begin with as well as Jack Trammel being a penny pincher they just focused on the games that use a Joysticks only. So besides paddle games other games that used "odd controllers" like Star Raider never got red label releases. Besides many stores like KB Toys & Toys R US still had back stock of old 2600 products including paddles so they got to slowly get rid of them during that time.
I didn't have a Atari 2600 junior till 1985 when I was 3. I wasn't aware of the video game crash of 1983. By time time I could remember stuff, stores stopped selling any Atari 2600 games at retail
It's a pity because it's tailor made for paddle play especially once the ball speeds up . This collection NEEDS a paddle controller really really badly for Breakout, Avalanche, Circus etc.
@@marccaselle8108 In my hometown KB-Toys they still sold old stock Intelivision games until mid 88 they sold out of their old stock 2600 stuff by early 1989, but did carry some red box titles until Christmas of that year then clearance them as low as fifty cents to flush them out for good. The store chain that had they most 2600 stuff in my area was "Venture" (they had half a isle) until 1990 when they too started to clearance them as well. Venture had old stock paddle games until 1988. The store with the second largest inventory was Service Merchandise they though only had the Red Box games, but they sold every title. They were gone by 1991 (started to clearance them in mid 1990). In 89 we got Toys R US, but since they were new they did not have 2600 titles, but nearby cities that had a location had them. Only our Montgomery Ward & Toys R Us had the 7800 (Toys R Us had limited stock) Sears was mail order only for 2600 & 7800.
@@marccaselle8108 were you in time for NES? 3 in '85 means you missed out on NES when it was new, too. Also the '83 crash was US only. Europe and Japan didn't suffer at all. Personally, in '84 I decided it was time to move on from video games to cars and girls. I'm still not sure that was the best decision... ;P
@@squirlmy my parents did buy me a NES but not until late 1986. Everyone on my block had one, so I got to borrow games from every kid on the block, along with renting games too.
Grats on 30k!
I think as far as free or fee is concerned, it'll depend on what's being added. There's not much point in charging for just a few random games, but a whole new timeline with more videos yields justification for the price. [Either that or you're paying for the Sears license.] I expect that an update that just adds the better version of Desert Falcon and a few random stragglers will probably be free, whereas bigger and more focused updates will be ones that go for a fee.
Postscript: As for DLC I'd expect to see someday: Obviously Activision given the historical importance, unless an Activision 50 is in the works. Spielberg & Warshaw for Indianna Jones and E.T., perhaps featuring an alternate version with the bugs fixed. And Star Wars, maybe with Ballblazer as a bonus just for the sake of it.
@@N-MCMXCIX Disney would control Indy as they own the IP rights to Indy as a character.
I need this one. i got the other collection from at games.
The AtGames switch collection does have more games, but Atari 50 is a good experience with the reimagined games and timeline mode. Plus there's DLC.
8:08 it's because the wind,look at those flags below the screen.
When will Activision release a compilation of their games
If something like this does happen, I hope Atari produces it rather than Activision itself, because Atari is one of very few publishers for the 2019 VCS, and most of their stuff is available there. That's where I play Atari games, and my concern with Activision is that they wouldn't do anything for that console.
Well they are owned by Microsoft now, so maybe they will see the light of day.
This is honestly like the only generation of consoles where Activision never released an anthology.
they did on the PS1 and PS2. After that they went all dude bro with Call of Duty and Spider-Man, it was never on Bobby Kotlick's to do list ever again.
Atari did a great job on the 50th Anniversary collection I have it on Steam.
I never really understood why Berzerk for the VCS didn't allow robots to shoot diagonally or why a player's diagonal shots fired at about 30° from horizontal instead of 45°. Diagonal shots also use the horizontal shot graphics which is just a bit weird. Vertical shots move much slower than horizontal ones but the diagonal ones actually move faster. Perhaps the game was rushed but it seems to be something that could have been improved with a fairly small amount of work.
Another less obvious restriction is that robots could not pass each other vertically. This is because the VCS's hardware is designed to support only two "player sprites" per screen but, with some fancy programming, interrupts can be used to share one sprite among several items as long as they are not on same vertical line.
Later on, more advanced techniques allowed multiple sprites to appear on screen without flickering except when they were on the same vertical scan line. This removed the "no vertical passing" restriction that affected Berzerk while still providing a mostly unflickering game.
When you consider that the smallest pixels on the Atari 2600 are about 1.7 times as wide as they are tall, it makes a lot more sense. They either didn't have space in the cartridge, or didn't have time, to account for that. I'm sure it's not the only game. Floating point math and trig was not a high priority.
Two robots could certainly have been made to pass each other vertically without flickering, as long as the man wasn't on the same line. That would have required more complex logic. Once again, it was probably deemed not worth the time to put in.
@@sa3270 Once Warner Communications bought out Nolan Bushnell and proceeded to push him out of the company, the priority became fast releases, not game quality. Combat has perfectly diagonal shots and it was programmed on a 2kb cartridge.
Generally speaking, developers tried not to make the player's sprite flicker and traded off the flickering to enemy sprites where it couldn't be avoided.
Greedy Warner eventually shot themselves in the foot with their increasingly idiotic demands on programmers. With the notorious ET cartridge Howard Warshaw was given just five weeks to develop ET from concept to completed product.
After ET, Warner seems to have realised that they needed to give their programmers decent development times. Later games improved in quality but the damage by that stage was already done.
You'll prolly be at 30k by the end of the day! Here's a pre congratulations.
Thank you!
I haven't found the DLC in the Store. Where should I be looking?
Is it possible to use some kind of paddle controller. Possibly on the PC?
If I was in a better money Situation and a Atari VCS (2021,it's within the scope of my video game fandom ) I would buy Atari 50
What do I need to buy to have Star Raiders?
Why do you prefer the console version of Missile Command?
I prefer having one missile base over 3. It's easier for me to keep track of and less confusing.
@@pojrThe Atari 8-Bit version would probably be one that you like.
Hpw do you hook up an atari joystick to the PS4 console?
Red Baron was a new title added as well...
The ESRB rating is Teen?? For Atari!? What games would deserve a Teen rating!?
Yep, you're at 30K!
Thanks
I might get it, when it goes on sale
They need to add Kool Aid Man.
I like the 2600 versions of arcade games, because they are usually easier.
There was a December update? Shows how much I played it when I first bought it. I recall that Atari 50 was missing a ton of A-list arcade titles like Marble Madness and Battle Zone.
That said, I’d pay to play arcade versions of Berzerk and Frenzy again.
Marble Madness was done by Atari Games, so this Atari never owned it. Warner Brothers owns all the Atari Games arcade games.
Battlezone is a different story. When Atari went through bankruptcy in 2013/2014, they sold Battlezone to Rebellion Developments, of Sniper Elite fame.
I now hate playing games that required a paddle on the original consoles, but they make no paddle controllers for any of the XBox line. Sucks.
The lone down vote is from Evil Otto.
Doesn't Destroyer drop depth charges (not torpedoes)?
DLC for what was given... should have been FREE
Are there paddle controllers for Switch?
ur there brutha.
Atari consoles were never part of my life at the time. They look incredibly primitive mow, kind of leave me cold
not for Y or Z gen LOL!
@@mchenrynick I'm 50..........
Them trying to profit off these games still is kind of wild to me. You can just emulate them, there are so many free games these days that are 10000 times better, if i'm gonna pay for something it's gonna be something like a cracked psp to play these on. Why bother when thing like retroarch exist? These collections offer scanlines? With retroarch there are endless combinations of filters you can use. I guess it's for people that don't understand emulation, sucks to be them. I'd choose retroarch over the actual consoles at this point. Psp/n64 at 60fps with upscaling and crt filters, can't beat it.
There is way more content here than just the games.
The paddle games are extremely difficult to play on Atari 50 since modern controllers...don't have paddles.
Wait, did I buy the same the same games with the 7.99 and the 13.99 dlc? Lol. I'll watch you wonderfully in dept and insightful video now? I am happy to pay under 15 bucks for DLC. To support the cause. But I want Activision games!!!!! Have they even tried to make ammends and a deal? I'd pay 20 bucks for a God number of Activision dlc. Come on Atari! It will make a lot of money.
ngl You know and I know and most people know the New Atari they'll Charge for them ofc BUT at 1st Maybe give it free for the Holidays and if not maybe a short window like a week or 2 then after that Sorry You now have to pay for old ass 8bit games that not many people would care about in the Modern era minus the Retro Collectors, and ofc the people of that era.
June Path
Great video! Good point: where's the Atari 7800 version of Desert Falcon? Atari is a bunch of laughable cheapskates.
Anyway, there's a limit to how much money I'll let Atari make on their games. The company is nickel-and-diming the fans, and I'm done. I bought the Atari Flashback Classics Collection for Nintendo Switch, then I bought the Atari 50 Collection for Nintendo Switch, and they soured me with the fact that certain great games were on one cartridge and not on the other - see Atari Football (Arcade) and RealSports Baseball (Atari 5200). Why did I have to buy two cartridges?
Now they tell me that they're adding the exclusive games from the Flashback cartridge to the Atari 50 Collection, making the earlier cartridge obsolete, and they're even releasing a complete cartridge containing all the games. I've already bought two cartridges, which I regret, and I think I've paid Atari enough money, but now I hear them tell me that I'm supposed to pay more money to add a few more games digitally. I don't think so.
And where is Gauntlet, a legendary 1985 Atari game? They are holding on to that game for dear life, so they can one day ask us to pay forty dollars for a "Gauntlet Collection" containing all four games. Gauntlet should be on the Atari 50 collection - it's their best freakin' game.
The sad thing is that if they had just put all their great games onto one complete cartridge, that collection would have sold like hot cakes and would have made them a lot more money than they're making now by penny-pinching. Companies like Atari are the best argument in favor of adding these old games to your Raspberry Pi or Mini Console of choice.
Compare this incompetence to the Beatles, who released an album called "1", a collection of all 27 of their number-one singles. The album sold over 31 million copies, because it was the real deal.
Dejon Tunnel
Why is desert falcon a 2600 game, it was a great 7800 release
It's good for what it is, but significantly worse than the 7800 one.
@@pojr I wonder if it was an emulation issue
@@pojr agreed, i played the game originally on my 7800 and going from that to the 2600 is quite a step down
I bought it in 1990 for my 1981 Atari VCS and loved it
@@steveg5122 I believe it's on the evercade so it may be contractual.
I bought the dlc when your post came up. I'm actually just watching your video now see what they include. I also bought something for more than 7.99? I believe it was 11 or 17 dollars. I'm stoked to Berzerk and I agree, they sound make money. I reallynreally.wish they would make a deal with Activision and we can get pitfall and all the other equally if not even most bester atari games! Wtf? It's beef 45 or so years. I want to play Pitfall. I don't have my Atari or Commodore 64 anymore! But I'm glad to see Bezerk added. I never owned or played it, but I know it's an iconic game since the Chasijg Ghost documentary. Who is the gamer in Prison in that documentary? You can tell he is in prison when he appears in the documentary. I think he was a chomo. Sad that he was.like that. Man so many of those guys have since had controversy. The Star Wars guy who runs the website has the best sound bite when he speaks so seriously about how, in Star Wars or some other game? If you make he wrong move,.you will die. Something like that? His artwork collection is pretty creepy also but I like him as much as I know at least. He's super dedicated to those tapes people send him!!!!!
Yep, customers get hit with the paywall.
Indeed. Still a good DLC though.
And a limited licence paywall to boot when they want to re-release it for more cash.
Give them a break, nobody honestly(realistically) expected them to keep giving content for free. I thought it was priced quite fair for this dlc.
Atari is the cockroach of gaming, you may think it is dead, Nintendo did, at least I did, but it did not die! It is still roaming out there doing it's stuff.
Weimann Crossing
I like retro games, but the Atari 2600 is a little _too_ retro for my taste.
My ~10 yo nephews don't understand my attachment to some of these simplistic games, and while I was disappointed by their reaction, watching this video made me understand better. Some of these are such a ridiculous waste of time! I didn't play many of them, because, they were dumb, boring games!! The Sears games were awful. I don't get your fondness of them.
why not givin us the ataru arcade games like gauntlet, klax etc
Midway bought those from Atari way back when.
Not going to spend a dime on Atari. They're notoriously bad. And they only want your money. This collection should be no more than $5. Its greed. They're the reason for the videogame crash of 80. i'll get a NES classics collection or SNES classics collection.
YOU MUST PAY TO PLAY!!!!!!!!!
In this case, indeed lol.
That’s what she said.
It was never worth it to begin with. Look st those games. How in rhis day snd age would you get joy out of them?
I think I’m gonna pass on it. It’s kind of cool but I think I’m fine with just the free dlc
Understandable. If you're not into Berzerk or any of the other new games, there's very little incentive to get it.
Ggg