Below are user reviews of Atari Anniversary Edition and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Atari Anniversary Edition.
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User Reviews (1 - 11 of 11)
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Ahhh...The games of my youth.
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User
12 games for ($). You can't beat that.... I find that most games meant to be played with a trackball in the arcade can be played well with the mouse on the PC. The only problem is you do have to pick up the mouse when you reach the end of the mouse pad giving the baddies an opportunity to catch you. This minor problem can be solved by purchasing a trackball mouse. I don't find this a major problem but then again my high score on Crystal Castles is 185,058.
Blast from the Past
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User
I would have shelled out the change just for an Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe combo pack. Because when I spot these coin op gems around various throwback establishments, I'm spending a heck of a lot more than 15 bucks. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in this deal!! Thanks Guys for saving me money!!
Celebrate Atari's 30th Anniversary with the classics.
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User
The first thing I noticed when getting this collection is the gigantic silvery Atari Logo and the beautiful violet/blue box. When opening the box, I was happy that the whole collection is on just one CD instead two, like the Atari Arcade Classics package. A great instruction manual is included encompassing all the games,recapping the events in the year the game was released, and providing a brief description of the object of each game. A sticker is included with the Atari logo that looks great, but I would have liked it to be a little larger. This collection gets it right by teaming up with Digital Eclipse in emulating the game codes perfectly down to the last pixel It's too bad other companies don't take advantage of the talented team at Digital Eclipse (take the hint, Microsoft!) When you play the games, you'll be taken back to the time you played these games in the arcade. I wasn't much of a fan of them in the arcades, but this collection sure won me over. You don't even have to install the game on your hard drive; it will run off the CD. Customize the game to your liking (number of game lives, bonus lives, difficulty level, etc) and you can play in authentic mode or enhanced mode; enhanced mode makes for a more colorful game but I prefer the classic authentic mode. Desktop themes, screen savers and specialty fonts are the icing on the cake in this collection, though adding "Space Invaders" would have been nice (maybe they thought 13 was unlucky? Go figure!) This Anniversary Edition will make die-hard Atari fans happy and I hope they make more classic videogame collections. Bring it on, Atari!
Play the classics without having to play rip-offs!
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User
To many online game sites give you rip-offs of the classics. They give improved graphics and a changed story and concept line! The worst part is they say it is a "pretty good game!" But discovering this helped me alot. With twelve fun and easy-control classics, you can have so much fun! The keyboard and mouse do take away from the feel but you can always the controllers. I reccomend this to all nostalgia seekers!
The exact same games, only on a different system!
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 15 / 15
Date: September 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User
Now you can relive those carefree days when you had a pocketful of quarters! This doesn't come with 6, but 12, 12(!) classic arcade games! See what happened in the years these games came out in the instruction booklets included in this package: Mount St. Helens eruption (uh-oh), popularity of polyester suits, the death of Elvis, Governer George Wallace assassinated and paralyzed, Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" becomes a hit on the charts, MASH, Don McLean's "American Pie", A mass wedding for 2075 couples at the Unification Church's Sun Myung Moon, the opening of EPCOT in WDW, and a ton more!
One CD holds 6 popular classics: Centipede (Shoot up those bugs and spiders before they get you. Don't get yourself ambushed!), Missile Command (Hurry up and stop these missles from destroying the major cities!), Pong (You've got head-to-head tennis. Don't take your eye off the ball!), Super Breakout (Can you really wipe out all the bricks without losing more than 3 baseballs??), Asteroids (That's a cool game, but why isn't it in color?), and finally Tempest (Oh gawsh, that game is hard!). You need more? There's a second CD waiting for you which contains other classics, though more forgotten: Millipede, Crystal Castles, Warlords (Now THAT'S a duel!), Battlezone (Hope Saddam Hussein doesn't catch you playing that game! Reminds me of the war in the Gulf 10 years ago.), Gravitar (You'll need a special joystick for that game. Otherwise, it is nearly impossible to play, Asteroids Deluxe (Want more asteroid action? Take that!), and uhhhh, that's about it for the games.
Oh, and there are very unique and special features: video interviews, wallpaper, photos of old atari cartridges and artwork, and graphic enhancement (Just click on the arrow next to the game of your choice.) You can also customize the settings of the game: increase or decrease your number of lives, choose the game languages in English, French, Spanish, or German. Or else, if you feel like it, would you enable test mode?
Another feature is that you get just about EVERY sound effect in 44 KHZ MONO wave files. Neat, huh? You can even use them as standard computer and internet sound files! If you're tired of those standard computer sound files (like AOL for example), you can pick one of these video game sound effects of your choice. Cool!
Will Hasbro make anymore emulation from arcade games? Let's find out as time goes by.
ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED FOR EVERY COMPUTER, ESPECIALLY LAPTOPS!
It's Atrari! What Else Do You Need To Know?
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 11 / 11
Date: December 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User
Artari. Every gamer knows this legendary company by heart. Because Atari made the first game ever: "Pong." And with Pong came "Centipede," "Asteroids," "Tempest," and many more! Soon Colcovistion and the dreaded Nintendo would come along and boot Artari out of bussness...but their legendary games will live on forever! Now thanks to Infogames the legacy of Atari lives on! Now you can enjoy 12 Atari classics on your PC for one low price!
Now keep in mind these games aren't state-of-the-art, they're graphics are not buffed out, and the gameplay most of the time only requires the arrow keys and shift key! Yes folks, this is classic gaming at it's best! While new gamers who started out playing games like "Metal Gear Solid" will look at these games in disgust adult gamers who grew up with these game will relive their childhood memories one last time!
Arcade games the way they use to be
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 6 / 7
Date: July 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User
First off if you only like games that have high end 3d graphics and stereo surround sound I suggest you skip this package. However, if you remember these games when they first came out or if you simply want a little diversion in your day I highly recommend you check these games out. For less than 20 dollars you get twelve classic Atari games. Okay so some of them really aren't classics but even if there were only one or two games on the disc that I liked I would still consider my purchase a sound investment. Each game is re-created exactly as it was in the arcade. There's even an option for viewing the test mode of each game. This feature isn't particularly useful but if you go into the test mode for Centipede you'll discover that at one time they were going to include a grasshopper in the game. Tempest includes an add on level called Tempest Tubes which makes it like a whole new game. Other games have options that let you control the difficulty of the game and options for using a keyboard, mouse, or joystick. Each game also has an option that lets you turn on enhanced graphics. Personally I don't think they add anything to the games so I leave them turned off. The system requirements state that you need a 133 Mhz processor, 16 MB of ram, and at least a 2MB video card. I installed the game on a computer that I've had since early 1997. My computer has a 150 Mhz processor, 64 MB of ram, and 2 MB of video ram. All the games run just fine if I don't turn on the advanced features. The games that use vector graphics such as Asteroids and Tempest seem to suffer the most when I turned on the advanced graphical features. If I turn these features off then the games run just fine. The instructions on the box say you don't need any hard disk space to play the games. While that may be true it's best to install the games on to your hard drive. A minimal installation requires 66 megabytes of free space. Incidentally, one review for this disc said even if you install the games you have to insert the disk into the cd rom every time you wanted to play any of the games because the disk was copy protected. I installed the games and it never asks me to insert the cd whenever I want to play one of the games.
Very accurate (and playable!) recreations of classic games.
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 8 / 8
Date: November 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User
I've picked up a few modernized versions of classic arcade games for the PC, such as Missile Command and Centipede, and while some are decent games highly reminiscient of the arcade originals (and expanding on them in interesting ways), none of them include accurate recreations of the originals in appearance and behavior. But now...
Atari Anniversary Edition includes twelve 1970s/80s arcade classics, and does a most impressive job of recreating the precise appearances, behaviors, and sounds of the original upright arcade games, right down to the pre-game "insert coin" messaging (but without the need for a pocket full of quarters!). I'm now playing these flashback classics on home PCs -- one P3 500MHz with Windows XP Home, and one P4 2.8GHz with Windows XP Pro -- with no problems.
In some cases, the game controls are a little awkward with the standard PC interface, but... Here're some specific notes on playing the games I that I actually remember from Way Back When:
Centipede & Millipede: Very usable with keyboard and/or mouse controls. I find them quite playable by using the mouse for movement and the keyboard for shooting.
Missile Command & Super Breakout: Usable with keyboard controls, but very awkwardly so. Using the mouse for movement and the keyboard for shooting works pretty well.
Asteroids & Asteroids Deluxe: Work great right from the keyboard.
Battlezone: Quite usable from the keyboard, if a little awkward. (But I found the original game a bit awkward, so...)
(I'm not myself familiar with the original Pong, Tempest, Gavitar, Crystal Castles, or Warlords.)
Of course, you may also be able to add and use joysticks, trackballs, and whatnot -- I haven't tried these.
Actually, my favorite features of this Atari collection are (1) watching my wife's face light up at the authentic sight and sounds of Tempest, and (2) watching my eight-year-old Gameboy-aficionado son spend joyous hours blasting away with Battle Zone and Millipede games three times his age. Priceless.
Best [money] I have ever ever spent on a game
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User
This game rocks. The arcade games have been MASTERFULLY reproduced. The Atari/Hasbro Missle command is EXACTLY like it was in the arcade machine. Microsoft did such a poor job in their arcade version of Missile Command. Im glad someone got it right. And right they did get it!
A computer arcade at the touch of a button!
4
Rating: 4,
Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User
These are great classic arcade games yet I only give it 4-stars because the games wear off in fun easily. It comes back to you every once in awhile which is good because you don't want to buy something you hate! The timeless Asteroids and Pong make this a great PC collection, but I think Atari 2600 Jewel Case has to be the best series! Get it if you want a home arcade!
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