mrpayroll

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Centipede's comeback: Atari to hit gamers with blasts from past
Tuesday September 07, 2004

By ANTHONY BREZNICAN
AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) Atari wants to take you back in time, and to get there, you can ride a ``Centipede'' or an ``Asteroid,'' or bounce back and forth between the pixilated paddles of ``Pong.''

The video game company told The Associated Press on Tuesday it plans to reissue scores of its classic titles from yesteryear on a single disc that can be played on the game consoles Xbox and PlayStation 2.

``Atari Anthology'' will feature 85 games and is scheduled to go on sale in November at a cost of about $20.

But it's only one of the nostalgia projects Atari will push into the market then. The second is Atari Flashback, a slightly miniaturized version of the old Atari 7800 from the mid-'80s. It will have 20 games built into it, including ``Breakout,'' ``Solaris,'' ``Crystal Castles'' and ``Battlezone.''

Flashback will sell for $45 and include a pair of old-school joysticks.

Atari isn't expecting its decades-old games to compete on a technical level, like ``Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,'' ``Halo'' and ``Madden NFL 2005'' that feature colorful realistic graphics, fast-moving 3-D action and the freedom to roam at will.

Instead, the company is aiming at the nostalgia market.

``It's a time machine. You go back to your childhood and you play,'' Atari chief executive Bruno Bonnell said.

And for gamers who weren't even born when the first PlayStation appeared?

``The kids will think this is quick, this is fast to understand, and we don't need a manual to understand it,'' he added. ``We're going after two generations.''

Even ``Pong,'' perhaps the most primitive of the games with its simple white square bouncing across the screen, may still have some appeal.

``The more primitive the better. It shows that video games are not just about high-end graphics or sophisticated representation. It's about the game-play, the challenge to the player,'' Bonnell said.

The ``Atari Anthology'' disc will offer new twists on the games, too: ``trippy mode,'' which renders the graphics in psychedelic colors, and ``time warp'' and ``double speed,'' which can alter the pace of on-screen action.

Besides its array of classic Atari 2600 and 7800 titles, the Atari Flashback console will include one previously unreleased game: ``Saboteur.''

Reissuing classic games in the modern consoles has become common over the years. ``Sonic the Hedgehog'' and its sequels from the early 1990s turned up on Nintendo's GameCube, and the old martial-arts challenge ``Street Fighter'' series returned on PlayStation 2.

But those titles still look like science-fiction dreaming compared to the jumping dots and boxes of the old Atari games.

Still, there is a market for even those old games, and the Internet proves it: Countless sites offer free downloads of the programs for playing on PCs leading to rampant bootlegging.

But Bonnell downplayed the impact bootlegging could have on sales for ``Atari Anthology'' and the Atari Flashback console.

``You're right to say that a lot of them are bootlegged, and the code is not the right code, and the color is not the right color. But here we're offering them ... and you don't go through collecting the games on the Internet and being scared of the viruses that are going to pollute your computer at some point.''

Despite their simple appearance, the games can be very difficult, he added especially for people who are two decades out of practice.

``They are not easy to master,'' Bonnell said. ``Some people believe that because they are old games they will finish them very soon. But I think people will be sweating to finish.''


Chris

Gizmo

Hmm... How many games did the Activision Anthology (ps2, GBA) have, 60?

DVDKrayzie

o hell yea, crystal castles was the sh!t

Matt

Sounds cool. I'm a sucka for these classic compilations. Here's the list of games on it--found on Atari's website:

Classic arcade hits:

Asteroids®
Asteroids® Deluxe™
Battlezone™
Black Widow™
Centipede®
Crystal Castles®
Gravitar®
Liberator™
Lunar Lander™
Major Havoc™
Millipede®
Missile Command®
Pong®
Red Baron™
Super Breakout®
Space Duel™
Tempest®
Warlords®


Atari 2600™ titles:

3D Tic-Tac-Toe
A Game of Concentration
Adventure™
Air•Sea Battle™
Asteroids®
Basic Programming
Battlezone™
Blackjack™
Bowling
Breakout®
Canyon Bomber™
Casino™
Centipede®
Circus Atari™
Codebreaker™
Combat™
Crystal Castles®
Demons to Diamonds®
Desert Falcon™
Dodge ’Em™
Double Dunk™
Flag Capture™
Football
Fun With Numbers™
Golf
Gravitar®
Haunted House™
Home Run™
Human Cannonball™
Math Gran Prix™
Maze Craze™
Millipede®
Miniature Golf
Missile Command®
Night Driver™
Off the Wall™
Outlaw™
Quadrun™
Radar Lock™
Realsports® Baseball
Realsports® Football
Realsports® Tennis
Realsports® Volleyball
Sky Diver™
Slot Machine™
Slot Racers™
Space War™
Sprintmaster™
Star Raiders™
Star Ship™
Steeplechase™
Stellar Track™
Street Racer™
Submarine Commander™
Super Baseball™
Super Breakout®
Super Football
Surround™
Swordquest™: Earthworld™
Swordquest™: Fireworld™
Swordquest™: Waterworld™
Video Checkers™
Video Chess™
Video Olympics™
Video Pinball™
Warlords®
Yars’ Revenge®

Trigger

SWEET!

msdmoney

I still have a lot of those games and my old atari 7800. But how can you pass up 85 games for $20? Although I will probably wait for it hit ~$10.

Debaser

Fantabulous!

xmiyux

Ahhh! These games gave me nightmares they were so ridiculously hard to figure out what in the world you were doing. I read the comic that came with Earthworld, tried to play it all the time and it made no sense at all.... *shudder* They probably rank as some of my most aggravating games of all time.

Yars Revenge on the other hand ruled like none other.

Trigger

I'm excited for Warlords... the Swordquest games were awful - was there actually a way to figure it all out? I read the comics looking for clues and couldn't ever get through it. I found lots of quest items, but never could finish the blasted things. Stupid waterfalls.

xmiyux

The waterfalls! That's it - that is the reoccurring nightmare - the horrible "lion"shaped Leo on the right side of the screen that theoretically you are supposed to get to and the countless waterfalls that instantly kill you between you and him. That was the easiest game (in that it was obvious what you were to do) that i still could never do. Honestly i think the game was a sort of post-modernist dada social experiment.

Groucho

I think that Basic Programming makes the whole disc worth getting.

dom56

Looking good.

Little disappointed that the arcade hits did'nt included Star Wars. I loved that game.

tonyc3742

Those were waterfalls?
Those games might go into the 'games that were the biggest waste of time' file.

And there were meant to be four games, with a story that went through all four; but part 4, IIRC, was never released, so it'll always be an incomplete story...
That Earthworld comic was pretty cheesy....but fun in a 'what the hell?' way. And I have actually gone back and reread the Atari Force comics.

One negative thing I read on the Atari website: the 7800 Flashback will contain 5 7800 games and 15 or 20 2600 games....I don't see the point in that.

Wow--bunch of Swordquest info at this site:
http://yosemite-sam.net/Solutions/Swordquest/Earth.htm
scans from the manual, the entire comic Earthworld comic, the contest entry form, and The Winner [of part one].

TOPDAWG

Great I shall own this all company's need to do this stuff. I want a disc with all the old TMNT games from Konmi. I'd also like a disc with all the old 2-D fighting games from Capcom.

Company's need to bring out discs with all their old games no idea why more don't do it. Course I know why N$ does not do it they just port it to GBA and make you pay $40 for it.

Hell it was cheaper for me to buy a used SNES and get the Mario All Stars then get one of the games for GBA. I also got to play them on my big TV woohoo.

GoVegan

I actually had that cartridge when I was a kid. You obviously couldn't save anything you did and it was more like basic Basic. Telling people that your family had around 200 Atari 2600 games is far less cool when you have to admit that one of them was that "game."

I'd get this collection, but the only console I have is a Gamecube, so I guess that won't be happening.

If I get the high score in one of the Retro game challenges, I'm going to choose one of the Swordquest games out of spite.

El-Kabong

The Activision anthology has raised the bar quite a bit - the 80's music, the unlockable patches and TV commercials, the front end interface - all add to the game's charm. I only hope that the Atari version maintains these high standards.

That said - my 20 bucks is right there, baby! Hell, for Red Baron alone, it's worth the price of admission!

Fanboy

Wish they would release a unit with a cartridge slot. A member in another forum ventured the idea that they could release cartridge "packs" with 5-10 games on them for the unit, thereby tapping into both the retro market as well as the collector market.

DB

And I wish they would release a paddle. How people have been playing breakout all these years without a proper paddle is beyond me. Why the heck has no one come out with a simple paddle?! There was also a game whose name I forget, there was a guy at the top that would scoot back and forth, left and right, switching directions randomly, dropping bombs, and you would have to catch them from below. Awesomely fun game, also needs a paddle!

- David

mr.snowmizer

I can't believe they've dragged the embarrassment of the Swordquests out of their closet for all the world to remember. (Anybody who played one has spent years to repress that memory.)

The only reason more than one came out was because Atari ran a big contest with a pretty substantial monetary prize, and they would have run into all sorts of legal problems if the sequels hadn't been released.

Based on their presence, it's a good thing they don't have the rights to include the 2600's E.T. and Pac-man, since the powers that be don't seem to have enough common sense to voluntarily leave them behind.

Roto

You can always get this one with 13 games

Roto

Why are they rereleasing the 7800 crappy joysticks that everyone hated?

Dan Average

I noticed that too. The only conceivable reason I can think of is that they've already released a unit modeled on the 2600 joysticks so they may have been trying to avoid confusion.

Gizmo

Kaboom! is the name. I beleive it is on the Activision anthology for both PS2 and GBA.

efftimmy

The contest was the only reason I bought the first game in the series. Horrible game (more of a mindf**k than a game). I learned my lesson and that was the last in the series I wasted my money and time on. I love the old atari classics, but you can easily forget how much crap came out for the 2600.

Joe Molotov

Speaking of contests, anyone remember that 2600 game "Name This Game" where you got to suggest a title for the game and if your title was selected, you won $25,000? Then they went out of business before a winner was ever selected, leaving the game to be forever known as "Name This Game". Too bad they didn't add that to the collection.

I wonder if the former members of that company ever wake up at night and go "Holy cats, no wonder we went out of business, that was the stupidest idea ever!"