Originally published at: Atari's VCTR-SCTR looks amazing | Boing Boing
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The Atari name has taken a beating over the last few hundred years, but this collection is astounding. First of all it’s actually put together by Digital Eclipse, who have been responsible many other retro collections from other publishers/series and who have always knocked it out of the park. This collection is not just games - it is new things (like the VCTR-SCTR mashup game and a conclusion to an unfinished series), lots of historical notes (by people in the games preservation field like Chris Kohler & Frank Cifaldi) , lots of interviews with people that were there, and it is all presented masterfully. It’s a remarkable package.
ETA: The Jaguar came out in '93, three years after the TT030
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Thank you.
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That looks awesome! With the nod to Battlezone also in that game, it’s the best vector graphics tribute I’ve seen.
A fitting tribute to the many quarters I have lost to those machines in my youth. Comic books and arcade games were the main expenditure for my paperboy earning…
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Your paperboy earnings going to Paperboy
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Fuck me. I’d forgotten what it was like when games were hard and that was the point. My fat old gen x-er reflexes wouldn’t last 30 seconds there
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I’ve put about 20 hours into the collection so far, which includes time spent watching the video interviews, playing VCTR-SCTR and others, Food Fight, Tempest 2000, etc. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, including nice trivia (I particularly liked the “coupon for a free turkey” factoid).
I do have a couple of knocks against it, unfortunately. I don’t find the “Reimagined” games (of which VCTR-SCTR is one) to be particularly fun. There are ideas here and there that are great. Conceptually, I think the idea of turning the vector games into mini-games is good. Conceptually, Quadratank’s 4-player matches sounds like a great time. Neo Breakout’s “color chain” concept is kind of neat. Yet, somehow things never quite gel into “just one more round” gameplay addictiveness.
The other knock against it is not really anything they could control. The outstanding presentation and love put into the collection really leaves you wanting more, but that then serves to emphasize how much is NOT in the collection. Battlezone is not there (because it got sold off piece-meal and is now owned by Rebellion I think?). Arcade games made by Atari Games (post I, Robot; a separate corporate entity broken off from Atari in 1984) like Paperboy, Marble Madness, 720°, Gauntlet, Super Sprint, my beautiful wonderful Cyberball, Klax, etc, etc. are not represented nor even mentioned in passing.
The collection is all about Atari, Inc. (owned by Infogrames), which does not include Atari Games (renamed as Midway Games West, now owned once again by Time Warner), and so the collection also serves to remind us of how Atari has been sold off for parts over the years and can never quite be what it once was.
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