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[Impotaku]

I love how there's 5 mysterious confidential files in the games roster it seems they are games that you can unlock by doing certain things i managed to find one by looking at everything in the museum. So much care has been put into this loving the old commercials & paperwork plus the interviews.

 

[coffinbirth]

Which version of Tempest is this? I hope it's the Nuon version since it' the best and the only one that can't be emulated.

Tempest 2000, the Jaguar game. Tempest 3000 is the Nuon game, and is widely considered the worst Tempest game. It's blurry, missing effects, can't save scores and has bad controls. Not to be confused with Tempest X3, the PS1 version. I bought a Nuon just for T3K, and it was a big mistake, lol. But if you absolutely must play T3k, emulation is VERY close to having T3K get in game as multithreading is currently being worked on. You can get in the menus, but it crashes when it loads a level.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Lynx II was the best of the handhelds from that era and one of my favorite systems of all time. S.T.U.N. Runner must be included in this collection.

How many batteries did that thing take? I know my game gear which took about 6 AA lasted like 3 hours. Was rough as batteries weren't cheap then. My gameboy used to last days on 4AA.

I think the Turbo Duo was the most innovative and cool. It played the same 16bit hu cards as the tg16 and also had a tv tunner (although i think gamegear had that too). Don't know how many batteries that had as I wasn't fortunate enough to own one, only the home console.

What was it's best games? Any rpgs?

 

[ReBurn]

Yeah the green lady in Cybermorph is still annoying, not helped by the fact I’m absolutely shit at the game. Have a real soft spot for the Jag tho and Atari Karts is better than what I thought it would be.

Also, that Jaguar fighting game blows. One of the cool things about this collection is that they don't hide their blunders.

But yeah, I played Atari Karts for like an hour yesterday. It's fun.

 

[ReBurn]

How many batteries did that thing take? I know my game gear which took about 6 AA lasted like 3 hours. Was rough as batteries weren't cheap then. My gameboy used to last days on 4AA.

I think the Turbo Duo was the most innovative and cool. It played the same 16bit hu cards as the tg16 and also had a tv tunner (although i think gamegear had that too). Don't know how many batteries that had as I wasn't fortunate enough to own one, only the home console.

What was it's best games? Any rpgs?

Version 2 took 6 AA batteries and lasted up to 6 hours. The good thing about Lynx was that the 2600 power adapter would power it and I had like 5 of them laying around. I laid in bed and played Klax for hours.

I am very disappointed that this collection didn't include Klax. Klax was kinda made for the section on the 90's because "It is the 90's and there is time for..."

 

[Havoc2049]

Version 2 took 6 AA batteries and lasted up to 6 hours. The good thing about Lynx was that the 2600 power adapter would power it and I had like 5 of them laying around. I laid in bed and played Klax for hours.

I am very disappointed that this collection didn't include Klax. Klax was kinda made for the section on the 90's because "It is the 90's and there is time for..."

I've had a Lynx II since 1991 and plugged-in is the way I play my Lynx as well. I've only put one set of AA's through my Lynx since I've owned it. I got the deluxe package that came with the AC power adapter and California Games. I also have the car cigarette lighter adapter and the C cell battery pack that lasts like 40 hours. The Lynx games in Atari 50 package aren't the best. It would have been nice if they could have made a deal for the Epyx games and the Atari Games arcade conversions, as those were some the best games on the Lynx.

 

[Deerock71]

As a child in those days, I caved and ordered a physical Switch version.

So do I.

 

[SF Kosmo]

I've had a Lynx II since 1991 and plugged-in is the way I play my Lynx as well. I've only put one set of AA's through my Lynx since I've owned it. I got the deluxe package that came with the AC power adapter and California Games. I also have the car cigarette lighter adapter and the C cell battery pack that lasts like 40 hours. The Lynx games in Atari 50 package aren't the best. It would have been nice if they could have made a deal for the Epyx games and the Atari Games arcade conversions, as those were some the best games on the Lynx.

Epyx was bought by Atari before the Lynx launched so I don't think the rights were held separately. I am not really sure how they picked the particular Lynx games that they did.

 

[AJUMP23]

As a child in those days, I caved and ordered a physical Switch version.

So do I.

Steel book?

 

[Deerock71]

Steel book?

I don't know. Guess I'll find out when it gets here.

 

[Havoc2049]

Epyx was bought by Atari before the Lynx launched so I don't think the rights were held separately. I am not really sure how they picked the particular Lynx games that they did.

I wish Atari owned the Epyx library of games. Atari only bought the Lynx hardware from Epyx. Bridgestone Media (a holding company) owns Epyx.

From Wikipedia:
Epyx had shrunk from 145 employees in 1988 to fewer than 20 by the end of 1989. After emerging from bankruptcy the company resumed game development but only for the Lynx, with Atari acting as publisher.[6] In 1993, with eight employees left, they decided just to sell off the rest of the company. Bridgestone Media Group eventually acquired the rights the rest of Epyx's assets.

 

[MrA]

I wish Atari owned the Epyx library of games. Atari only bought the Lynx hardware from Epyx. Bridgestone Media (a holding company) owns Epyx.

From Wikipedia:
Epyx had shrunk from 145 employees in 1988 to fewer than 20 by the end of 1989. After emerging from bankruptcy the company resumed game development but only for the Lynx, with Atari acting as publisher.[6] In 1993, with eight employees left, they decided just to sell off the rest of the company. Bridgestone Media Group eventually acquired the rights the rest of Epyx's assets.

No chips challenge and its baller soundtrack is disappointing

 

[Agent X]

Picked this up today on switch, not really fair to class this just as another retro game compilation it's way more than that i'd class it as an interactive museum where you can also try the games out. The amount of work they have put in sets the bar on what retro collections should try to do.

You're absolutely right on this. This package totally excels as a historical documentary. The amount of content is staggering. Even longtime Atari fanatics like myself will learn new and interesting things about the company and the personalities involved.

Bonus point that they made sure to try and give a decent replication of the originals the actually non shit scanlines and bezel borders are a great touch as is the vector glow while no tv can really replicate the intense glow of a real vector monitor it's a nice attempt.

I'm not sure I completely agree here, though. Some of the borders and graphical filters are cool, but unfortunately others seem half-baked. There are a few effects that are highly annoying, and they barely give you any options compared to most other modern emulators (including some of Digital Eclipse's own efforts on previous generation systems).

For the raster games, you can either have the graphics unfiltered, or apply a scanline effect. That's it. Oh, but the problem here is that the scanline effect is married to this "TV curvature" effect that attempts to simulate the physical shape of an old-fashioned TV screen. There's some darker shading along the edges, and some "brightening" in (approximately) the middle 30% of the screen. On some games this is barely noticeable, but on other games it is highly pronounced and looks awful. I would love to have the option to have only the scanlines, without the simulated TV curvature. I really hope they patch this in at some point.

The vector games also have it rough. While they do have a great simulated vector glow, this is counteracted by the addition of "vibrating" vectors that have this pseudo-interlaced look. It's a clever effect...for about five seconds. After that, you'll wish you could turn off the jitter and just play with crisp, clean vector lines (like...oh, every Atari arcade compilation going all the way back to the original PlayStation), but sadly you can't turn this off. Again, I hope that they can add this option in a future patch.

There are so many other options missing from the emulators, too. The arcade games have a dearth of options to tweak difficulty and the like (e.g. selecting starting number of lives, score plateaus for bonus lives, etc.). Digital Eclipse was able to implement these options on their Atari packs on PlayStation over 25 years ago, but I suppose this has become a lost art over the ages.

 

[Alexios]

It's kinda hard to browse and find games you want if you don't already know them by heart.

The resolution options are disappointing and it won't save windowed on launch.

Still a really cool package.

Force Enable Steam Input if you have problems with your DS4Windows/additional controllers plugged in your PC by the default.

 

[ReBurn]

Epyx was bought by Atari before the Lynx launched so I don't think the rights were held separately. I am not really sure how they picked the particular Lynx games that they did.

Epyx was't acquired by Atari so Atari didn't own the Lynx games. Probably wouldn't have been any better for Epyx if they had been acquired by Atari.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

As a child in those days, I caved and ordered a physical Switch version.

So do I.

Same here

 

[Deerock71]

I love how there's 5 mysterious confidential files in the games roster it seems they are games that you can unlock by doing certain things i managed to find one by looking at everything in the museum. So much care has been put into this loving the old commercials & paperwork plus the interviews.

This game has reviewed surprisingly well, and things like this I'm sure are going to bring a smile to my face.

EFIT: Saddened to read this does not include Pitfall, Pac-Man, and ET.

 

[Evil Calvin]

Epyx was bought by Atari before the Lynx launched so I don't think the rights were held separately. I am not really sure how they picked the particular Lynx games that they did.

Kind of hard to find Epyx games in collections. I picked up the Colecovision Flashback and couple years ago and that has Gateway to Apshai... which was nice!
Picked up Rogue on the Steam Deck a couple weeks ago

 

[SF Kosmo]

I wish Atari owned the Epyx library of games. Atari only bought the Lynx hardware from Epyx. Bridgestone Media (a holding company) owns Epyx.

From Wikipedia:
Epyx had shrunk from 145 employees in 1988 to fewer than 20 by the end of 1989. After emerging from bankruptcy the company resumed game development but only for the Lynx, with Atari acting as publisher.[6] In 1993, with eight employees left, they decided just to sell off the rest of the company. Bridgestone Media Group eventually acquired the rights the rest of Epyx's assets.

They bought the operation in any event, as Atari's internally developed games were made by the same staff. I am pretty sure Atari published those games as well.

 

[Havoc2049]

There's quite a bit missing, the game runs pretty bad in some tracks and lack of numpad removes some core gameplay features and the ability to change cameras, Some objects don't even render.

All the Jaguar and 5200 games that use the keypad have keypad support with a radial dial, accessed with the right thumb stick, so all the various camera angles can be accessed in Club Drive.

I loved Club Drive back in the day and played it to death. I've been doing a deep dive in the Atari 50 version. The only thing I couldn't do was access the secret world, Planet Todd, and the secret debug/drop camera mode. To access Planet Todd for example, you have to press the 2 & 4 buttons on the number pad on the World Select screen at the same time on the Jaguar pad. That corresponds to up on the right thumb stick and pressing the A button at the same time on a modern controller. I do that, but Planet Todd doesn't come up. My guess is that pressing up on the right thumb stick doesn't register as a button press, even though it corresponds to the #4 keypad button in the emulator. Maybe I'll see if I can map that radial dial function to a face button to see if I can get it to work.

 

[Agent X]

A few posts earlier (post #113), I mentioned some complaints about the graphical filtering that they utilized in Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Here's what I said about the raster games:

For the raster games, you can either have the graphics unfiltered, or apply a scanline effect. That's it. Oh, but the problem here is that the scanline effect is married to this "TV curvature" effect that attempts to simulate the physical shape of an old-fashioned TV screen. There's some darker shading along the edges, and some "brightening" in (approximately) the middle 30% of the screen. On some games this is barely noticeable, but on other games it is highly pronounced and looks awful. I would love to have the option to have only the scanlines, without the simulated TV curvature. I really hope they patch this in at some point.

For comparison purposes, here are some screens that I captured from the Atari 2600 version of Missile Command contained in this package, as well as some other compilations.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration (PlayStation 4):

Notice that the edges are darker relative to the middle portion of the screen. I understand what the developers at Digital Eclipse were trying to achieve here. While it's not an outright bad implementation, it can be jarring at times. It's a pity that the player doesn't have the option to turn off this effect and have a clean, uniform image while still retaining the scanlines.

The next three screens are all from compilations developed by Code Mystics, so you'll notice some similarities to each other.

Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 2 (PlayStation 4):

Atari Flashback Classics (PlayStation Vita):

Atari Vault (PC):

While the scanline effect on the Atari Flashback Classics and Atari Vault (from now on will refer to as FBC/Vault) was acceptable a few years ago, the Atari 50 scanline effect is a great improvement.

The colors also differ between Atari 50 and the FBC/Vault implementations. I think Atari 50 is trying to simulate what the games looked like on a typical TV from the 70s/80s, while FBC/Vault is sending out more "pure" RGB colors that might exceed the color gamut of most old TVs. Both of these are acceptable for different reasons. Your preferences might vary based on the game you're playing, or your mood at the time. It would be great if Atari 50 could allow the user to choose the palette to use.

Atari and Digital Eclipse should consider producing a patch to enable an advanced user to tweak individual attributes of the graphical rendering to suit his personal preference. Scanlines, color palette, and TV curvature should all be independently adjustable.

On that note, there are lots of game options that are unavailable to the user. There are even games for which some portions of the game controls are missing, meaning that the player cannot perform all of the in-game actions. Maybe that's passable for a casual player who wouldn't notice this on a relatively unfamiliar game, but some hardcore Atari fans will surely find this disappointing.

I know it sounds like I'm being overly critical of Atari 50 here, but that's because I want the developers to go back and fix these issues. The package excels in so many ways pertaining to the historical aspects, and the attention to detail they gave there. It's evident a lot of love went into the project, judging by the comprehensive amount of content and the polished presentation. I just want to see the gameplay aspects elevated to an equally high standard.

 

[Havoc2049]

I haven't really played many of the 2600 games. I've been mainly playing Jaguar, 5200, 7800, 800 and the new games. Everything I've played has been solid so far. Control is never going to be 100% spot on.

Don't sleep on Star Raiders! Star Raiders was always one of those games that aged well and never gets old. The remastered Star Raiders is excellent with the new title screen and music that plays at the begining. All the slowdown that was in the original Star Raiders when there were multiple enemies on screen is gone as well. After years of playing Star Raiders on a keyboard, it takes a little practice to get the controls down, but is doable.

Agent X, what games have features missing?

 

[Alexios]

Relevant maybe, since this only has a few Jag games.

 

[Agent X]

Agent X, what games have features missing?

One game that immediately comes to mind is Malibu Bikini Volleyball for Lynx. Here's the description screen from Atari 50:

The description mentions the ability to switch the musical soundtrack mid-game. That was a very cool feature...except you can't do this within Atari 50, because they forgot to implement the Option 2 button.

It's not as though they ran out of buttons, either. There are plenty of unused buttons on the controller. All they need to do is assign the Option 2 function to one of those buttons.

While this is not essential to play the game, it was a noteworthy feature. Its absence in Atari 50 is particularly ironic, considering that they specifically highlighted that feature in the description.

Another side effect of the missing Option 2 button is that after the game ends, you cannot restart the game from within the Lynx emulator. You have to exit out to the Atari 50 menu, and then reenter the game to play again.

 

[nush]

The description mentions the ability to switch the musical soundtrack mid-game. That was a very cool feature...except you can't do this within Atari 50, because they forgot to implement the Option 2 button.

Patched.

They have just released an update for this title,

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Gets First Update, Here Are The Full Patch Notes

DIP switches galore!

www.nintendolife.com

Dip switch settings for the arcade games. Best update is for Tempest 200, analog control added, 60fps and an overclock mode. Great stuff and I hope they continue to improve this great collection.

 

[AJUMP23]

Great news.
my 8 year old loves pong.

 

[Deerock71]

Great news.
my 8 year old loves pong.