Atari Anthology

"They were groundbreaking 25 years ago, but can they hold water now?"

Nostalgic packages have sprung up on the XBox in swarms recently, offering gaming veterans to return to their upbringing in front of the TV all those years ago, as well as inviting younger XBox owners to go back in time and look at exactly what the foundations of gaming was. Yes, Atari. *The* Daddy. This compilation and anthology bundles together a wide range of their games; sport, action, adventure and more from the Atari 2600.

There is a wide selection of games to play as I've already said, but Atari has added more features to tempt gamers to part with their money in the way of bonus features. Novelty things such as the original instruction booklets for the games are able to be read via the game's menu, as well as the chance to see some advertisements which boost about the latest game development. Sadly, since the instructions are just scans of the original, you can't read them as read them, as you may find yourself squinting away instead of relishing in nostalgic glee.

Looking at both this and Halo 2 in my gaming rack, they do strike a contrast. Can you really expect gamers brought up in the Halo-era to sit and play such basic games as Lunar Lander, Asteroids or Missile Command? There are two kinds of people in this world, Retro fans and Next-Gen fans. A Retro fan can like the Next-Gen, and a Next-Gen fan like the Retro-era, but nobody likes them equally, so I don't think Atari's made any ground by bring this title out. I'm not saying that these games are terrible in comparison to Halo 2 or anything, since you can have hours of power-mad joy-pad smashing fun. Thanks to the use of XBox Live, gamers are free to boost about their newly-achieved high score, but however, merging Scoreboards and Atari games together re-kindled the memories of some of the old-skool gamers of yesteryear who want to be #1 on that Arcade machine. You might be proud of your 1000 points, but Mr Joe 80s is sitting there smirking with his 145355256 points which lessens the fun factor.

It's a great idea, adding old classics and bringing them together for the current consoles, but do we need to fork out cash for them? Ir may be a budget title, but the majority of these games can be found on free flash gaming sites which improved controls and colour. In all fairness, I'd stick with getting the Midway Arcade Treasure releases, as they have more bang for their buck.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/27/05