Retro Atari Classics Review

By Kristan Reed Published 17 March, 2005

Old arcade games are now officially a touchy subject.

Version tested: DS

Order yours now from Simply Games.

Retro compilations have almost become a retro concept in themselves at this point. Don't believe me? It's ten long years since I bought the exciting-sounding Williams Arcade Classics compilation (before I'd even acquired a PlayStation, it's that long ago) and began the long, drawn out process of dismantling my bespectacled rose-tinted view of how good old games were.

Am I at the end of my tether on the subject yet? Well, not quite. We were all quite appalled by the whole Classic NES Series debacle in terms of being a breathtaking example of mean spirited and misguided daylight robbery, yet reasonably happy with how Atari threw in 85 games for its recently issued Anthology Volume 1 compilation. We're still in love with the past no matter how much it reminds us how old we're getting. It can insult us all it likes by choosing to mess with our recollections and embarrass us in public like a rowdy incontinent pensioner, but it's not going to break our spirit. But we might not want to sponsor its dubious activities, however much it makes eyes at us with its face pressed up against the glass.

Touch and go

'Retro Atari Classics' Screenshot 1

Case in point: Retro Atari Classics. On the surface it's a straight-up ten-game pack of some of Atari's best-loved arcade hits of the 70s and early 80s. But dig a little deeper and it's a collection that tries to 'remix' each game as well make use of the touch pad - but with varying degrees of success. It sounded promising; it felt lightweight.

With some bona-fide seminal classics here such as Pong, Breakout, Tempest, Asteroids and Missile Command on here there's a few to get nostalgists weeping for joy as they simultaneously take a step into the future and the past at the same time. It's an interesting crossover.

Indeed, the precision controls afforded by the touch screen finally allow gamers to experience games in a way that they haven't been able to since they were first released. With many games back then requiring all sorts of odd bespoke controllers such as paddles and trackballs it was always going to be impossible to replicate these analogue controls satisfactorily - until now.

Bringing precision to the past

'Retro Atari Classics' Screenshot 2

The touch screen input on games such as Pong, Breakout, Missile Command, and to a lesser extent Centipede, Warlord and Tempest makes these precision games an absolute joy to play, giving you total control over where to position yourself. On others, though, it's just not well suited to the demands of these ancient relics, and games like Sprint, Asteroids, Gravitar and Lunar Lander feel clumsy and unplayable using the touch screen. Just as well, then, that the standard digital controls are well suited to these - in almost a mirror image of the games which work well on the touch screen.

The novelty value of gracefully gliding a stylus across the screen to guide your Pong or Breakout bat around with pace and precision, or zapping the incoming missiles in Missile Command with a tap of the screen in the exact space you want it in, is genuinely high - but are many of these games even that compelling these days? For the sake of filling in a quick five minutes here and there then some of them still have that pick-up-and-play quality that will never die, but...

Others, though, just feel like bizarre choices given Atari's bursting back catalogue. Why on earth include black and white top down racing game Sprint rather than the vastly superior Super Sprint? Both Gravitar and Lunar Lander are an acquired taste, being hard to categorise inertia/gravity-based space games of some repute at the time, but now just feel like frustrating experiments; museum pieces, not pick up and play games to show off on a new console two and a half decades later.

War. Lords. What are they good for?

'Retro Atari Classics' Screenshot 3

Warlords is another curiosity - but in a good sense - being a refreshing four player take on the whole breakout theme, except each player must defend their own 'castle' from a deadly fireball that you deflect between each other with your warlord. But as good as it still is in single-player mode even now, the huge potential enjoyment to be gleaned out of four player wireless retro action is ruined by Atari's hard-faced instance on making this a multi-card multiplayer experience.

This tight-fisted approach to life on the DS also scuppers any thoughts of multiplayer Pong or Sprint, and strikes us as a real missed opportunity. Say "no" to multi-card multiplayer modes, and "yes" to actually giving users an incentive to buy your games!

The main incentive, as far as I can see, to buying Retro Atari Classics is the chance to get some pick-up-and-play classics that you know and love for a new portable console with some cool USPs. What I fail to see is any incentive to play any of the so-called "Remix" versions of all ten games, which essentially replace the original graphics with hideous graffiti-strewn abominations that attempt to lend the package some sort of misguided street cool. They don't. It looks like my nephew got a bit overenthusiastic with Paint Shop Pro, designed some 'hilarious' characters and got paid for it. The gameplay is identical, so it's quite hard to understand what the whole point is - other than to annoy old gits like me who don't like people messing around with the original vision and make teenagers snigger at how rubbish it all looks. Honestly. It'd be like remaking Star Wars with the So Solid Crew, innit?

I can't believe it's not er, better

Now that I've made the successful transformation from winsome retro kid into ranting Victor Meldrew, there's little more to say about Retro Atari Classics other than it's your veritable cast iron "mixed bag" of timeless gems and pointless curios in which some work well on the DS, some don't and as long as you can deny all knowledge of seeing the Remix mode retro gamers won't be totally offended. They might expect to pay a little less than the asking price, though, and might reasonably expect that the next publisher to try this trick will throw a whole lot more than a mere 10 games in order to extract the folding stuff from our wallets.

Order yours now from Simply Games.

4 / 10

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Picture of Kristan.

About Kristan Reed

Kristan is a former editor of Eurogamer, dad, Stone Roses bore and Norwich City supporter who sometimes mutters optimistically about Team Silent getting back together.

Read more articles from Kristan by visiting the Kristan Reed archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Blerk #1 7 years ago

    Whoo!

    Oh, wait.... I mean... meh! :-D

  • BritShix #2 7 years ago

    10 games?! What a load of twaddle.

    Am i missing something because i completely fail to see the attraction of these old skool compilations.

    The idea always seems fun but then after 10 minutes of playing i'm completely bored. Even with my old Gameboy games. I just struggle to connect with these games nowadays. Enough allready!!!

  • Thamuhacha #3 7 years ago

    Atari REALLY need to stop doing this.

  • Lutz #4 7 years ago

    How do you fire missiles onto the top screen in Missile Command then?

  • gizmo #5 7 years ago

    Surely that would no longer be missile command. Oh, and there are no aliens in missile command ;)

  • dadrester #6 7 years ago

    How do you fire missiles onto the top screen in Missile Command then?

    you kind of 'twang' them off a catapult... oh hang on, no... that's the missile command mini game in mario 64

  • krudster #7 7 years ago

    Errm, you can't fire missiles in the top screen, it's all limited to the lower half.

  • green_nifta #8 7 years ago

    eh? So how come in the screenshot above there are your missiles exploding in the top-screen? Don't your missiles explode at the point where your cursor is when you launch them?

  • Razz #9 7 years ago

    Gh3y

  • krudster #10 7 years ago

    Yeah, you touch the screen where you want your missile to go and it explodes a second or so later.

  • Genji #11 7 years ago

    "Whoo!

    Oh, wait.... I mean... meh! :-D"

    Keep going, man! At this rate, you'll be making positive comments within the month! You can do it!

  • Blerk #12 7 years ago

    Wait 'til EG catches hold of the 'Project Zero 3' announcement later today. Then you'll see positive comments like you've never seen before!

  • Genji #13 7 years ago

    Woooo, I likee very muchee

  • krudster #14 7 years ago

    Heh, yes, very excited by PZ3, and there are bound to be some good games to review before the month's out...

  • Lutz #15 7 years ago

    Get reviewing Polarium then. :)

  • Stickman #16 7 years ago

    Stickman's theory of games;

    'Retro' gaming = Pap

  • Burton2000 #17 7 years ago

    have eurogamer done a freview on asphalt urban gt for DS yet that one awsome game im playing it rite now!!

  • Lutz #18 7 years ago

    No you weren't, you was typing on a keyboard right then.

  • Sko #19 7 years ago

    So are the screenshots in the article old mocks then?

  • OnlyMe #20 7 years ago

    One question. What's the difference between Wario Ware and retro collections?

  • Blerk #21 7 years ago

    Wario Ware's a completely new game with a few ideas from old games. Retro collections are just old games.

  • green_nifta #22 7 years ago

    QUOYE KRUDSTER: "Yeah, you touch the screen where you want your missile to go and it explodes a second or so later. "

    But, in the original they exploded at the cursor point. How do you get them to explode on the top screen by touch? Obviously you can't, so the touchscreen system just can't work properly if they're just on a timed-fuse explosion. Bah.


  • OnlyMe #23 7 years ago

    so, what's the difference? Are the new games groundbreakingly different from the old games? Why is one more fun than the other? Because it's Nintendo?

    I've not tried any of the Wario Ware games, so I'm asking because I want to know why one is more worth buying than the other.

  • Blerk #24 7 years ago

    It's very difficult to describe Wario Ware unless you've actually tried it.

    Put it this way:
    In the NES Classics 'Legend of Zelda', you play the old NES game 'Legend of Zelda'. Exactly as it was.

    In Wario Ware you play a three-second game based on 'Legend of Zelda'. For three seconds. You guide link from the middle of the screen into a doorway randomly placed at the top of the screen. Create over a hundred teenie-tiny games like this and play at break-neck speed until your brain overloads and explodes.

  • OnlyMe #25 7 years ago

    Wow... that sounds... dull.

  • Blerk #26 7 years ago

    Yes, it sounds dull. But play it and I guarantee you will be absolutely addicted for hours and hours and hours.

  • sam_spade #27 7 years ago

    It's not though, they only last for a few seconds much of which is spent saying: "What the hell do I do?"

  • Royal Fool #28 7 years ago

    Considering that the instruction text flashes at the beginning of each mini-game and the controls aren't very complex, you'd have to have the reading comprehension of a monkey and cognitive brain functions of a milk carton to not get the point of the mini-games after repeated trial and error. Part of the fun of the game is how ridiculous the challenges are and how fast the game can become. But if you're not into puzzle games or arcade stuff I can understand.

    I still think Wario Ware is the best damn GBA game you can find.

  • gibbondrives #29 7 years ago

    sam_spade: i agree with you on the 'what the hell do i do', i was asking myself that a few times playing Wario Ware Twisted. Then again, I can't read Japanese. Then again, I still unlocked everything in a day or two.

  • Xerx3s #30 7 years ago

    Tjees, FFS, if I want to play this old crap, I'll dig up one of me old atari's and start beating meself on the head with it. What's next? Lynx I & II games? Or wait, how about DC remakes?! Perhaps developers should put "Originality wanted plz" on their job application forms.

  • Sko #31 7 years ago

    Grrr. Let's all get angry about something... we... don't... have... to... buy.

  • 3william56 #32 7 years ago

    Graffiti covered backgrounds? Dear god, no.

    Dangerousdave has a point - retro compliations could have the old game for a quick nostalgia fix and the purists, and the [shudders at the term] "remix" pumped up with some modern tech, game ideas, or graphics. Making Missile Command into a puzzler is a fine idea, though has maybe been done in Fantavision on the PS2.

  • Blerk #33 7 years ago

    I'll take the 'death' option, please.