izigame.me

Let me preface this by saying there are great games here, but there are a lot of small issues that kill the experience for me. Atari 50th collection has a great collection of games, artwork, and interviews that really tell the story of Atari. The presentation is absolutely top notch in the menus, and everything feels like a celebration. Unfortunately, the new games have some problems, and the Arcade emulation has a mix of problems, from somehow emulating the games too well, and not well enough simultaneously.
First off, the new games. There's Haunted Houses, Neo Breakout, Quadratank, Swordquest AirWorld, Vctr-Sctr, and Yars 'Revenge Enhanced.
Haunted Houses is an interesting remake of Haunted House for the 2600, but there is only so much you can do with that concept, and it did not really interest me. Granted this is my personal opinion, and if you like Haunted House, you might like this.
Neo Breakout is fun, but the camera rotates on Yaw for a lot of the game which messed up my perspective, leading me to miss a lot of balls that I would have otherwise hit.
Quadratank does not work out of the box on PC, because it was designed to be played with controllers with 2 analog sticks to emulate proper tank controls. Unfortunately, tanks controls don't work super well in a top down perspective, so the game feels clumsy, and you'll need enough connections for 4 external gamepads if you want to play this game with 4 people on PC.
I haven't yet played AirWorld, but it is really cool to see the series complete on this collection.
Vctr-Sctr is really cool: it's a re imagining of Asteroids, Lunar Lander, Battlezone (Not mentioned in name as Atari sold the rights to Rebellion), and Tempest. Essentially, you play through a round of Asteroids (with either a single ship or tether ship similar to space duel) with Twin Stick Shooter Controls, and this then transitions into Lunar Lander. After you land the ship, you play an runner level stylized with battlezone enemies. Finally, you get place in a round of Tempest. This game has flaws: for example, all numerical information except fuel has been stripped from Lunar Lander, and the camera in Tempest rotates with the player's movement (This was actually planned for Tempest, but was cut because it made players nauseous, and I can now confirm that was a good call). Despite these issues, I was constantly going back to it and having a blast.
Finally, there's Yars' Revenge Enhanced. The game looks beautiful, but the sound design falls flat. The original Yars' Revenge had a lack of music, and really impactful sound effects that put a sense of dread on the player. The Enhanced version gets rid of all that by placing a single EDM track over everything that resets anytime you advance a stage or lose a life. In addition, the original sound effects are used, but they are drowned out by the music, and this specific game doesn't have an option to lower it (Each of the enhanced games has their own menus, each with their own set or lack of settings). In addition, the sound effects lack the impact they had when the graphics have been changed so drastically. The gameplay is still great, but the aesthetics ruin it. Fortunately Yars' Revenge 2600 is on this collection, and that can be played instead.
Now for the arcade games. the gameplay in these games is preserved perfectly, but the visuals and sounds are not. For example, in Centipede and Millipede, the sound of the player's shots are pitched up noticeably, where as some of the other sound effects, such as the spider's noises, sound correct. Other games have sound issues, but it is most noticeable in those games. For the graphics, the Arcade games with pixel graphics look great: they have a convincing CRT filter that can be toggled, and there are other options such as screen fill and toggling the border around the game. The same can not be said for the vector games. On Vector monitors, a light gun draws lines between points to display graphics. Due to the gun being subject to the laws of physics, there is a little wiggle on the lines from frame to frame, but this was offset by how bright the lines were. In past Atari collections, the emulators drew lines in a perfect environment, making them look sharp. For this collection, the wiggle on the lines was reintroduced, but since LCD displays don't get as bright as vector monitors, the vector games look like their displays are on their last legs, and this can not be turned off. The glow can be adjusted, but it does not make the wiggle any less noticeable. Maybe this issue is resolved on OLED monitors, but I do not have an OLED monitor to test that.
Next, the controls seem weird for PC. Atari arcade collections have had consistent controls across PC, but this collection changes a lot of them, and has a strong preference for using the Left and Right Control and Shift keys. Fortunately these are all changeable, but it's still weird regardless. What's more weird is that to start a game in the history section of the collection, you have to press backslash, which just feels odd: this key could've been space as it is not used in the history section. Finally, there's the issue with Quadratank not working on PC with keyboard and mouse at all.
Finally, there's the game on offer. There's a lot of good stuff here, including Jaguar, Lynx, and 7800 games that have never been rereleased, such as Tempest 2000 and Ninja Golf. If you want to get the collection for these games, you'll have a good time. However, it feels like a lot is missing. This game has less than 100 games, and for an Atari collection, $40 seems steep, especially since Atari Vault was $20 and had 100, and it received even more after the DLC was launched for those games. On that note, why was Atari Vault removed from the Steam store? Both collections have games that are exclusive to their respective collections.
So to summarize: there's a lot of good stuff here, but its waters are muddied by a multitude of problems. Unfortunately, I was overall disappointed by this collection, but I will be opening it from time to time to play its highlights, and I will be opening my other collections to play some of the games that had better representations, notably the vector games.