Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration launches this year
The package contains over 90 games from Atari's history, as well as a copious amount of extras and behind-the-scenes information.
When examining the early history of video games, few names are as influential and noteworthy as Atari. With its highly popular Atari 2600 home console and early arcade games like Pong, Centipede, and Lunar Lander, the company quickly rose to the top of a burgeoning industry. 50 years later, however, numerous strange business decisions and sharply declining hardware sales have stripped Atari of its top-dog status.
Still, the company’s legacy, not to mention its games, deserves to be remembered. That’s why Atari is releasing Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration later this year. It compiles over 90 games from the company’s history, with plenty of supplementary material for the ultimate Atari fan.
See a trailer for the collection below, courtesy of Atari on YouTube:
Inside Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration
This anniversary collection contains over 90 games from Atari past. This includes games from Atari’s arcade library and home console lines. Consoles represented include the 2600, 5200, 7800, Atari 8-bit computers, Lynx, and Jaguar. The company has never re-released many of these games before.
Unfortunately, we don’t yet have confirmation on the full games list. Given Atari’s history, there’s a lot of games to choose from.
In addition to these classic titles, six new games will also be available on the collection. The official Steam page description has the details on each one:
- Swordquest: AirWorld: After nearly 40 years of waiting, the team at Digital Eclipse has created the fourth and final entry in the legendary Swordquest series, inspired by the design concepts of original Swordquest creator Tod Frye. Who will be the first to solve its mysteries—and finally complete the quest?
- Haunted Houses: The original “survival horror” game for the Atari 2600 gets a modern 3D voxel-based sequel, featuring more houses, more spooky situations, and more urns.
- VCTR-SCTR: This mashup celebration of the vector era of gaming combines the gameplay from Asteroids, Tempest, and other vector-based arcade classics into a single, continuous challenge.
- Neo Breakout: An amazing and addictive two-player competition that combines the best features of Breakout and Pong, with a modern graphic style.
- Quadratank: The first new entry in the classic Tank series since 1978 combines features from the original games with four-player fun in team or free-for-all modes.
- Yars’ Revenge Reimagined: Howard Scott Warshaw’s masterpiece for the Atari 2600 gets a whole new look—and you can swap between original and modern graphics at any time! Designed by Digital Eclipse studio head Mike Mika, who created the Game Boy Color version of Yars’ Revenge in 1999.
What else does the collection offer?
Obviously, the multitude of games on offer is the highlight. There will also be a ton of optional goodies for Atari history buffs to explore. The collection features over 60 minutes of new video interviews with former Atari developers and staff. Each game also features high-resolution artwork scans and behind-the-scenes information on the company’s history.
Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection is developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Atari. It will be available this winter on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam for $39.99 USD.
Will you be picking up Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration when it drops later this year? What games do you hope Atari adds to the collection? Let us know!
Via Gematsu.
