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85 Games That Started a Revolution!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 82 / 85
Date: August 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

[From: Atari (dot) com (slash) us]

85 Games That Started a Revolution!

It's the largest collection of classic Atari games ever! Take a step back in time to the early days of video arcades with an unmatched compilation of unforgettable and authentic Atari titles. All of the games are faithfully reproduced with the great sights, sounds and fast action that made them so popular. Whether you played these games in their original arcade cabinets or on an Atari 2600 console, you're sure to find a favorite.

Classic arcade hits:
* Asteroids
* Asteroids Deluxe
* Battlezone
* Atari Black Widow
* Centipede
* Crystal Castles
* Gravitar
* Liberator
* Lunar Lander
* Major Havoc
* Millipede
* Missile Command
* Pong
* Atari Red Baron
* Super Breakout
* Atari Space Duel
* Tempest
* Warlords

Atari 2600 titles:
* Atari 3D Tic-Tac-Toe
* Atari Adventure
* Atari Air*Sea Battle
* Asteroids
* Atari Video Cube
* Backgammon
* Battlezone
* Blackjack
* Bowling
* Breakout
* Canyon Bomber
* Casino
* Centipede
* Circus Atari
* Combat
* Crystal Castles
* Demons to Diamonds
* Desert Falcon
* Dodge 'Em
* Double Dunk
* Flag Capture
* Football
* Fun With Numbers
* Golf
* Gravitar
* Hangman
* Haunted House
* Home Run
* Human Cannonball
* Atari Math Gran Prix
* Atari Maze Craze
* Millipede
* Miniature Golf
* Missile Command
* Atari Night Driver
* Off the Wall
* Atari Outlaw
* Quadrun
* Radar Lock
* Realsports Baseball
* Realsports Football
* Realsports Tennis
* Realsports Volleyball
* Sky Diver
* Slot Machine
* Atari Slot Racers
* Atari Space War
* Sprintmaster
* Star Raiders
* Atari Star Ship
* Steeplechase
* Stellar Track
* Atari Street Racer
* Atari Submarine Commander
* Atari Super Baseball
* Super Breakout
* Atari Super Football
* Atari Surround
* Swordquest: Earthworld
* Swordquest: Fireworld
* Swordquest: Waterworld
* Video Checkers
* Video Chess
* Video Olympics
* Video Pinball
* Yars' Revenge

Features:
* 18 Classic Arcade Games - The most memorable games ever to hit the arcades including Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Liberator, Crystal Castles, Missile Command, Tempest and many more that haven't been seen in years!
* 62 Atari 2600 Favorites - The most addictive games ever designed including Gravitar, Millipede, Super Breakout, Video Pinball and Warlords
* Five Bonus Games - Available for the first time since the 1980s - Off the Wall, Blackjack, Steeplechase, Desert Falcon and Sprintmaster
* Challenge Modes - New challenges including timed hot-seat competitions, the psychedelic Trippy Mode, Double Speed games, Time Warp games and Time Challenges that test players' abilities to the extreme
* Incredible 3D Interface

(c) 2004 Atari Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Definitely Good For Nostalgia & Why There's a Blue Screen

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 44 / 46
Date: June 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off, one of the reviewers writes: "On Tempest as well as Asteroids, there's a huge blue inanimate bordor around the screen. Thus, it makes my 36 inch TV screen look like a 27 inch." There's a very simple, very good explanation for that. The games Tempest & Asteroids were arcade games, and back in the 1970s/80s, they turned the TV screen on its side... so you ended up with a shape like this:
| |
| |
| |

In order to fit that odd vertical rectangle into your TV at home, without distortion, they have to fill in the left & right side with a blue border. That's not a flaw. That's the way it's intended to be (same as using bars on a widescreen movie).

.

And now for the games. I suspect this collection will only appeal to the ~50 million people who actually owned an Atari circa 1980, not the younger generation. A lot of these games are short, lasting only about 30 minutes, although they do offer infinite replayability. Also, the graphics are nothing to write home about (mostly large squares). Many of these games like Night Driver have been replaced with better, modern versions like Gran Turismo.

On the other hand, there are some true classics here that even young people might enjoy - Missile Command or Asteroids - shoot, score, and try to live as long as possible. These games appeal to our natural tendency to compete, either with someone else or against ourselves, and score as high as possible. (Similar to Dance Dance Revolution in today's world.)

I bought it. I liked it. As with the original Atari console, this collection is a good way to take a break from the real world, kill 30 minutes, and have fun doing it!

The Scoop On Atari Anthology

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: March 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game definitely brought back memories. With all of the old Atari 2600 games like Combat, Yar's Revenge, Asteroids, Centipede, Dodge 'Em, etc., you'll find something that you will enjoy. The plus to the game I found is actually the original and sometimes annoying sounds. Now I use surround sound so I get the annoying bleeps and buzzes in full 5.1 MONAURAL sound. There is no stereo. Hey, but when we were kids, we played Atari with its vast array of 256 colors on the round screen TV with only one speaker and we were happy. The picture is standard. Exactly the way it looked in 1983 is the way it looks in 2005. After reading some of the articles I could not find anything wrong with the picture or sound that took away from the game. Chalk it up to user error.

The only thing I would fault the gameplay for is the games that require a paddle. If you love to play Pong, Breakout, Super Breakout, Demons To Diamonds, or any other game like those, your PS2 controller does it no justice. The PS2 controller either over or undercompensates your movements so the games are actually twice as hard. However, compared to the number of games you get and the fact that they all work well, I think it's an acceptable tradeoff. I enjoyed this game, and you will too! Your kids, however, will just laugh at you and call you old.

Best compilation ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: December 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After releasing many compilation versions, Atari finally got it right. And its scary how much this game has, Atari 2600 games AND arcade games.

Finally, you can play Major Havoc, arcade version, on the PS2. I read that this was one of the most requested games not yet out, so thanks to Atari for listening.

And for the 2600 games, Yar's Revenge, Combat and Surround? PERFECT. Combat is any 2600's favorite, Yar's Revenge is the reason many people will buy this, no matter what else it had. but Surround? That is the underground classic, playing it today and you can tell it will just never age. Maybe the most fun two-player game on the entire disc.

There are only two other compilations you will ever need: Namco Museum, and Midway Arcade Treasures. But Atari Anthology is the best of them.

Tons of classics, and no worries about cartridges jamming!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Nostalgia gaming continues, with Atari Anthology dropping 85 games, mostly from the classic 2600 system on one disc. Had hoped to see Superman on here, but there's enough classics to make up for those that were left out. Keeping in mind that most of these games came out when video graphics were in their infancy, it's still a kick to play games like Adventure and Bowling, and hearing sound effects from 20+ years ago.

Good thing about playing on a modern system is not having to re-load cartridges a bunch of times until they work, though the vertical "racing stripes" and/or weird sounds caused by partially inserted or defective games in the 2600 were always good for a laugh. Main complaint would be that playing paddle-controller games just isn't the same with joysticks or d-pad controllers. Recently released Atari classic console unit looks cool, but has less than half as many games, so go with more games for a lower price.

A good collection, but lots of problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off, I want to note that this collection doesn't include Pac-Man, Pole Position, Space Invaders, etc., despite what some reviews might suggest. None of those games were developed by Atari (Pac-Man and Pole Position are Namco games, while Space Invaders is a Taito game). It is unclear whether Atari could have released the licensed home versions of these games (Space Invaders was very good, Pac-Man was one of the nails in the coffin for the company), but in any case, the games present have been included in a "review" (in the loosest sense of the term - really, it's just a cut-and-paste job from an Atari website) near the top of the page, so I won't repeat that.

With 85 games present, it is impossible to give in this limited space an accurate review of everything found here. I'll limit myself to some of the gems present (there are a few), and some of the bombs (of which there are many).

First off, Atari has included 18 original arcade games in this collection, which is a pretty nice number. There are some classics present (Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede, and Crystal Castles are my favorites), some interesting titles (Tempest was one of my favorites as a kid, while Major Havoc makes about as much sense now as it did then), and some duds (Red Baron and Black Widow just don't make the grade). Most of the games show off the "vector" technology that seemed poised to dominate the market in the early 80's - but fell off the face of the earth quite soon. While these games are fun, there are serious control issues with many of the games. Centipede was originally designed with a trak-ball controller, as was Crystal Castles; the joystick doesn't quite get the feel right (particularly with Crystal Castle). The games also come equipped with special modes, such as (the aptly titled) trippy mode, where motion is blurred, a double fast mode (self-explanatory), a time mode (which alternates randomly between slow and fast), a time trial (in which the player must reach some milestone in the allotted time) and a hot seat (which is pretty difficult to describe, but basically switches games randomly). With the exception of the Double Fast mode, I found these annoying.

After this, there are 67 Atari games present. Here are many, MANY duds. Atari made a lot of bad games. I'll focus instead on some of the strongest titles. In my opinion, Atari Adventure was the best game released for the system. Despite horrendous graphics, the game was fast-paced and difficult. Haunted House is a great title as well, and Atari's version of "Centipede" is more fun than the arcade game, in my opinion (again, despite horrible graphics). Unfortunately, some games which should be good aren't, mostly due to severe control issues. Demons to Diamonds was a decent shooter game for the paddle controller. Unfortunately, the joystick is horrible for controlling your "spaceship". A more egregious example would be Circus Atari, which is almost unplayable with a joystick. There are about 10 other games on here that are decent, in my opinion, and the rest are junk.

SO, all in all, that makes about 20 or so games that I like to play, out of 85. For 15 bucks, that seems like a good deal to me. Is it overrated nostalgia, as one reviewer commented? Probably, but at this price, who's complaining? I mean, it's essentially lunch for one day. Seems reasonable to me...

Happy gaming!

Guaranteed to make you feel both old & like a kid again

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

With 67 Atari home games and 18 versions of games the way they appeared in console systems, this is a great compilation that just keeps opening and unfolding; and with each turn you find something you might not have thought about in 20 years -- if, that is, you grew up in the heyday of video arcades and Atari 2600's.

I'd completely forgotten about "Space Duel" and "Red Baron," which is kind of like "Battlezone" only with World War I bi-planes. And "Space Duel," which is kind of like "Asteroids," only with a force-field instead of hyperspace, is incredibly fun. Why neither of those games took off in popularity is beyond me.

I'd also forgotten how hard "Pong" actually is. Maybe it's because I'm not using a paddle-wheel but in a day and age when I can mow down 20 gangbangers and fly a lear jet in "San Andreas," I found it nearly impossible to just connect my paddle with a tiny, slow-moving dot.

The day I got this game, I played a lot of the 2600 games with someone who was too young to have played them in the early days of home-gaming. She couldn't imagine that games like "Night Driver" and "Street Racer" were ever considered fun and entertaining (and, to be honest, playing them again for the first time in decades I had some difficulty conceiving that myself). But for every game that hasn't aged well, there are others that remain as fresh as they were the day you first slid a token into them.

Best version of arcade Battle Zone

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: December 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a wonderful compilation of arcade and 2600 clasic titles.
All the arcade games are well planed for the Play Station 2.
Two of my favorit features are. The option to remove console
art. Unlike past versions that left you to look at a small
play aria within a black void this time you get your screen
filled with an enlarged easy to see game play aria!
Secondley the controler lay outs are easy on the hand and
fully customizable right down to joystick sensitivity.
Speaking of joysticks. Arcade Battle zone uses both of them.
This was my favorit arcade game. Since the original this is
to my knoledge the first to use two joysticks.NO MORE BUTTON PUSHING except to fire. Thier are two colour scheems Clasic green and enhanced blue mountains and sight green inbetween.
The 2600 games are fun. I allways enjoyed them and now I can
again. For some reason they left out space invaders.
Combine this product with the Activision Anthology and you
realy have the 2600 back again. I realy missed those games.
I hope more of these titles come back. If you like the 80s
arcade games check out the wiliams clasics volumes one and two.
I finde them to be a lot of fun. I like to add up the virtual Quarters I spend in an evening.

Brings Me Back To Simpler Gaming Times...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: February 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Five stars for Atari finally bringing out classic games, four for layout of the menus.

The menus may be a bit confusing (The arcade ones are grouped together, but the Atari 2600 games are grouped separately), but shines overall.

While the graphics are a bit dated for today's standards (especially on the PS2), but it brings me back to the times when video games were simpler, had one or a few objectives to complete and didn't require massive polygonal graphics. While some magazines that pertain to gaming say this game (mostly the games that are Atari 2600 versions) should be

85 games that began a revolution!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Amazing ! Wonderful! You got to buy this game. 18 classic arcade games like Centipede, Asteriods, and more.And 67 Atari 2600 games with classic games like Millipede ( this game is also from the arcade version also like Centipede,Astroids,their also in the home version too!) this game is awsome! If you have a PS2 or XBOX than buy this game!

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