Fifty years ago, Atari created the gaming industry on its own (at the cost of stealing some ideas), and today it’s celebrating with a big birthday party – now the first gift has arrived.
Happy birthday?
If there is a company whose history deserves one, why not one, more! – demanding retrospective, it must be all Atari. Although the luster of the company has not only faded, but has also rotted into the ground, it should not be forgotten that it was the second video game studio in the world; moreover, it is the first success among them, which defined the first decade of the game world by creating Pong, Breakout, Asteroids and Missile Combat (and many other arcade machines), showing dozens of radical innovations even in this first period without any exaggeration. Sure, today’s Atari has nothing to do with the former gaming giant, aside from the name and the gaming rights that come with it, but in addition to blockchain-cryptocurrency activities, the new Atari takes care of at least to keep traditions at a certain level. Or, and it’s a matter of subjective point of view, to monetize the remaining nostalgic feelings of former fans who are already turning gray.
In addition to previous collections and the Recharged remake series, the old new company is celebrating Atari’s 50th birthday this year with two special features. One of them will be the November Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection, the most interesting feature of which to me is that, unlike many previous collections, it doesn’t focus exclusively on the Atari 2600 era, it also includes arcade games and even Jaguar and Lynx games. However, this article is not about this collection, but a strange collection of micro games that the publisher has thrown away as a kind of starter.
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Conceptually, Atari Mania is almost fantastic: the setting is provided by an infinitely simple adventure game whose hero is the Cleaner, who must keep in order the vault that keeps the treasures of Atari game history in order every day. The games kept here are worth a treasure, so our task is extremely important – however, the day the game is presented, the dark pixels begin to consume the place and against them, in the absence of a real hero, we must take care of the gauntlet. In practice, this means that in walkable rooms, we must first collect the covers of three old Atari 2600 games, and then feed them to the antipixels that spin like a black mass. After our hero has been absorbed by the evil dimension, the real part of the action can come: if we manage to overcome the series of micro-games and the main enemy at the end of the race – that is another minigame – then we have completed the level and we can continue to explore the new armory rooms, inevitably marching towards the next pixel infestation.
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In the very first battle, for example, we will have five lives to complete the ten challenges, which are small games, usually no more than 10-30 seconds, inspired by Millipede, Swordquest and Video Olympics, which were released as a collection of Pong games. The first challenges are simple: in 10 seconds shoot a centipede maneuvering through the mushrooms in the usual way, or in just 20 seconds score a point in the classic Pong. However, the rest of the challenges come from mixing these games together, which is clearly the best idea in Atari Mania.
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