The 103 classic games that did, and didn’t, make the Atari 50 anniversary cut

Earlier this year, news emerged about yet another Atari classic-gaming compilation meant to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. As we’ve seen quite a few Atari-branded collections over the years, we wondered exactly what shape Atari 50‘s selection of “over 100 games” would take ahead of its launch on Steam, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch on November 8.

Thanks to a European retailer listing that emerged over the weekend, we now have an apparently final list of the Atari 50 selection of games: 103 in all, as spread across arcade cabinets, six console families, and a selection of “reimagined,” newly coded games and ports. The verdict: It’s pretty good, yet it’s still a glaring reminder that the compilation might better be named “Atari Corp. 50.”

Missing vowels and details about Vctr Sctr (for now)

We’ll break this article up into platform-specific lists, which each include our own notes and analysis, and we’ll start with the least-surprising list. This collection’s stewards at Digital Eclipse (TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection) had already announced plans to “reimagine” six games beyond the original code supplied by Atari’s archives, and these alone could be worth the price of admission for ’70s and ’80s gaming stalwarts.

Two of these, Haunted House and Yars’ Revenge Reimagined, were announced as straightforward modern-graphic versions of their Atari 2600 counterparts, and while we trust Digital Eclipse’s track record, we have yet to see exactly how these two games have been rebuilt, or whether they lean on classic pixel designs or new 3D assets. Two additional games sound like souped-up, modern remixes of their original counterparts: Quadratank (a four-player touch-up of the 2600’s Tank) and Neo Breakout (which combines Breakout and Pong as a two-player versus game).

The last two reimagined games in the collection are the most intriguing. Vctr Sctr will combine “gameplay from a variety of vector arcade classics” into a newly remixed experience. It’s unclear whether this new game will break classics up into mini-games or smush them together into a new game experience, but either way, the original Atari arcade library was rich with vector-driven games to choose from. Additionally, Swordquest: Airworld is a new sequel to the 2600’s three-part Swordquest series.

This week’s leak does not include any previously unknown games in the above “reimagined” category. For surprises, we should move on to the compilation’s selection of arcade cabinet games:

• Akka Arrh (1982, unreleased)
• Asteroids (1979)
• Asteroids Deluxe (1980)
• Black Widow (1982)
• Breakout (1976)
• Centipede (1980)
• Cloak & Dagger (1983)
• Crystal Castles (1983)
• Fire Truck (1978)
• Food Fight (1983)
• Gravitar (1982)
• I, Robot (1983)
• Liberator (1982)
• Lunar Lander (1979)
• Major Havoc (1983)
• Maze Invaders (1981)
• Millipede (1982)
• Missile Command (1980)
• Pong (1972)
• Quantum (1982)
• Space Duel (1982)
• Sprint 8 (1977)
• Super Breakout (1978)
• Tempest (1980)
• Warlords (1980)

Since these lists are alphabetical, this selection’s biggest surprise is at the top. Akka Arrh is one of the rare few Atari arcade games to be canceled and somehow avoid a wider online release or leak in the years that followed. That changed in 2019 thanks to a controversial dumping of a rare cabinet’s ROM chips, so this game’s inclusion isn’t necessarily a world premiere for MAME enthusiasts. Still, Digital Eclipse and Atari Corp. deserve credit for shaking hands and giving fans a legitimate path toward purchasing and enjoying this unreleased game. (Atari Corp. had previously done this for the unreleased arcade game Maze Invaders, which launched on Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 3 in 2018.)

The collection’s biggest concession is made clear by the date range in the above list. Notice that no cabinets beyond the year 1983 appear. That’s no accident. Shortly after the early 1980s video game industry crash, the company’s corporate masters at Warner opted to break Atari into parts and sell them. The hardware-focused division, Atari Corp., is responsible for this year’s anniversary compilation, while Atari Games, Inc., went on to release many incredible Atari-branded arcade games before eventually being acquired by Midway—which, this many years later, is now controlled by Warner Bros. Discovery. (A chance corporate-gaming reunion, then!)

Thus, Atari Corp. and Digital Eclipse apparently have not licensed many notable “Atari” arcade classics from their current license holders at WBD. That list is quite long, but just counting the year 1984, that leaves out the megaton games Paperboy and Marble Madness, with the legendary likes of Gauntlet and 720 following a few years later. Similarly, anything with a significant Hollywood tie-in, like 1983’s Star Wars, also doesn’t make the cut.

Bounty Bob strikes back—twice!

Since Warner’s 1980s corporate fracturing left the console business and its first-party games largely intact, Atari 50‘s console libraries have less Atari-vs.-Atari squabbling, with a few notable exceptions. Let’s group together the company’s MOS 6502-derived consoles for the next lists.

Atari 800

• Bounty Bob Strikes Back!
• Caverns of Mars
• Food Fight
• Miner 2049er

Atari 2600

• 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
• Adventure
• Air-Sea Battle
• Asteroids
• Basic Math
• Breakout
• Canyon Bomber
• Centipede
• Combat
• Combat Two
• Crystal Castles
• Dark Chambers
• Demons to Diamonds
• Dodge ‘Em
• Fatal Run
• Gravitar
• Haunted House
• Millipede
• Miner 2049er
• Missile Command
• Outlaw
• Quadrun
• Race 500
• RealSports series (separate releases for Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Football, Soccer, Tennis, and Volleyball)
• Saboteur
• Secret Quest
• Solaris
• Super Breakout
• Surround
• Swordquest series (separate releases for EarthWorld, FireWorld, and WaterWorld)
• Warlords
• Yars’ Revenge

Atari 5200

• Bounty Bob Strikes Back!
• Millipede
• Missile Command
• Star Raiders
• Super Breakout

Atari 7800

• Asteroids
• Basketbrawl
• Centipede
• Dark Chambers
• Fatal Run
• Ninja Golf
• Scrapyard Dog

The closest we get to “unreleased” fare on these lists comes from a pair of games that never saw launch on their target platforms: Saboteur for the 2600 and a Millipede port for the 5200. Both of these received a retail launch in the 2018 compilation Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 3, as did many of the other games in the 2600 and 5200 lists. (If you’re a 5200 purist for any reason, the full Atari Flashback Classics collection on Switch has more games from that console.)

Where Atari 50 goes a bit further is its inclusion of games for the very early Atari 800 computer system, along with the company’s last-gasp Atari 7800 hardware. The same, sadly, doesn’t apply to any of Atari’s releases for the ST computer, which is arguably due to its largely licensed library (including apparently unavailable games from Atari Games, Inc.) and reliance on keyboard-and-mouse availability. And we’re waiting to see what the retail listing’s mention of an “enhanced” version of Star Raiders will look like; this title wasn’t mentioned in the “reimagined” selection of games, so we don’t expect a full recoding, and we’re not necessarily expecting a port of the game’s 2011 remake.

Remember when the title“Rampart” was a Reddit meme?

We round out the list with games from both the impressive-for-its-time Lynx and the not-quite-64-bit Jaguar. The former’s library on Atari 50 is scant due in part to its history as a collaboration between Atari and the combined engineering and game-design team at Epyx. Though Epyx began the development of Lynx as a portable gaming system, Atari picked up the system’s rights in a deal that was supposed to keep Epyx afloat. That didn’t pan out, which means that the rights to Epyx’s Lynx game output, which included Chip’s Challenge and California Games, were eventually acquired by the holding company Bridgestone Media Group. (Lest you forget, the creator of Chip’s Challenge eventually negotiated the retail release of its sequel with BMG, which is its own fascinating tale.)