Activision Hits Remixed

"Not the best games, but very nice presentation"

Introduction:

The Atari VCS (or 2600) was the first really popular video game console. I actually owned a pong/squash/lightgun machine before it, but the VCS was cool because it was in color, and you could buy different games for it.

Most of the early games were done by Atari themselves, but 3rd parties started making them in the early 80s. Activision was perhaps not the best of these 3rd parties, but probably the most successful. This game is basically a compilation of all the Activision games for the 2600 (minus a few arcade conversions licensed from other companies).

Gameplay:

How well do the games hold up? Well, most of them, not so well, honestly. Part of the trouble is, Activision was mostly known for colorful graphics more than gameplay. So most of the games are extremely simple, and the graphics still look pretty crude by todays standards (if still somewhat more colorful than other old games).

There are only a couple complex games - Space Shuttle, in which you pilot a space shuttle to a space station and return; and Starmaster, which is basically an action version of the old Star Trek style games, where you had a big map and would have to travel sector to sector to kill a certain amount of aliens and manage your energy.

Most of the other games really only have one screen, or gameplay type. Still, like most old games, the shooters still hold up pretty well. Chopper Command, basically a Defender clone; Megamania, basically a vertical shooter like Space Invaders (but faster paced) is okay, but at least on my PSP, there's some blurriness due to the LCD. Spider Fighter is pretty fun. It sounds like a Centipede clone, but plays almost more like a Galaga style game (minus the ship capturing).

Pitfall and Pitfall 2, probably the first two platform style games, still hold up fairly well as well. Basically you jump and run past objects, or swing on vines to go from screen to screen. Pitfall is pretty much just a repetition of the same screen over and over, but Pitfall 2 is a full fledged "world" that you explore, with a myriad of enemies and objectives.

Also something of a Platformer is Keystone Kapers. Basically you play a cop and have to catch a criminal who has just robbed a shopping mall. You have to go through the mall dodging things like balls and model airplanes and radios. I thought Keystone Kapers was overrated then, and now, it still isn't much fun, because it's basically the same thing over and over, it's just each time they add one more obstacle. One of the prettiest 2600 games though.

There's only a couple of board games, Checkers and Bridge. I don't know how to play Bridge, and I don't like Checkers to begin with, so I haven't tried them. Some of the sports games are still kind of fun. Tennis plays almost exactly like modern day Tennis games, very little has changed, except the graphics. Hockey is sort of fun. Boxing is pretty bad.

There are some other famous games. Laser Blast, which basically consists of a UFO blasting tanks in a wave of three. This is one of those games that is more about endurance than skill, since you can play forever once you know how. Stampede, where you round up cows (not much fun). Barnstorming, where you fly through barns and avoid windmills. River Raid 1 & 2 - the first really is a shooter, but the 2nd tries to be more of a flight sim, but ends up being annoying to play.

Besides just Activision games, it actually has a few Imagic games. In its day, Imagic was probably the 3rd most popular developer after Activision and Atari, and probably my favorite. They had sort of "shiny" graphics, hard to describe, but it was a pretty cool looking style. This includes some their better games, Atlantis, which is basically sort of like Missile Command; and Demon Attack, a vertical shooter sort of like Phoenix (and quite good); and one of their worst games, Moonsweeper, which seems to be Gravitar clone. (At least I think it's the worst, others seem to like it).

Sadly, no Cosmic Ark which is one of the best 2600 games made and the sequel to Atlantis. (After Atlantis gets destroyed, you see the Cosmic Ark fly off into space).

One thing though. I don't know if its me getting old and my reflexes are slower, but some of the games seem faster than I remembered. Which makes them somewhat harder.

Presentation:

This is where the product really shines. Considering it's a budget title, they could have gotten away with doing a simple port of Activision Anthology. But they completely re-did the interface to fit the PSP and its controls, and took advantage of the large memory card size to allow you to save the game-state of all the games. That is, it lets you simply stop playing a game, and return to it later right where you left off. It even uses this as the screenshot when you scroll through the games.

Speaking of scrolling, that's probably the only real complaint I have - there's 40-something games in it, and you have to scroll through them one by one. They are in alphabetical order, and it scrolls fast (no loading at all in this once the main program loads), but still can be annoying.

Graphics/Sound:

The graphics are exactly like the original games. So are the sounds, as near as I can remember. The game default to the original ratio, but you can expand it out to fill the entire screen (this reduces the access to some of the controls, so you can't really play all games like this)

There's a 12 song 80s soundtrack, including some of my favorites, "Take On Me", "Safety Dance", "It's My Life", and the short version of "Tainted Love". Could have been better, and it definitely gets repetitive, but for a budget release, it's extremely good (and how many of these compilations actually have a soundtrack to begin with?). Unfortunately, you can't skip a song while playing, you have to exit to the main menu and skip. Only takes a few seconds, but could have been done a little better, maybe.

Final Thoughts:

I really didn't like the original Activision Anthology for the PS2 much, because it was something of a hassle to use, in terms of loading speed, and honestly, a lot of these games weren't that great to begin with 25 years ago. This on the other hand, is much better. And I think the portable format simply fits playing old classics better, since most of them are simple and can be enjoyed in a few minutes.

I'm still not crazy about most of the games, but this is just about as good as a old compilation of Activision games could be (only real way to be better would be to include more Imagic games, and Activision games from other platforms from the era, not just 2600). So I'm giving it a B+, or 8/10 here.

(I'm tempted to give it a 9/10, but having Atlantis but no Cosmic Ark is just wrong. It's like Cagney without Lacey. Or Ponch without Jon)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/06