Recently, I came into possession of Jakks Pacific’s Atari 10-in-1 TV Games unit. I had expected it to be a dose of chicken soup for the gamer’s soul, given that the games were presented along with a fairly accurate replica of the original Atari joystick. I found myself underwhelmed, however; the games I was playing were simply not as fun as I remembered them. I was saddened, as I feared that I had finally lost touch with my childhood gaming roots; how could I honestly not love the games that I had treasured as a young lad?
Then it hit me: Atari didn’t make the games that lit up my young, impressionable eyes. That particular honor belonged to the pioneers at Activision. It was the hours jumping from alligator to alligator in Pitfall!, weaving in and out of traffic in Enduro, and launching my own extraterrestrial invasion in Laser Blast that formed the foundation of my gaming life. Needless to say, I was thrilled to discover that Activision had bundled up all my childhood happiness into an affordable DVD in the form of Activision Anthology.
Activision Anthology is the latest in the recent trend of old-school gaming compilations for modern consoles. This particular package contains 48 of Activision’s titles for the Atari 2600, culled from the system’s entire lifespan. Some of the earlier games, like Kaboom!, where a player must catch waves of bombs in buckets of water, and Freeway, the video game answer to the question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, are genius in their simplicity, while the later games demonstrate what the old 2600 was ultimately capable of. Two games, Kabobber and Thwocker, were actually not released for the Atari 2600, and are only available in this compilation; in fact, Thwocker is only 80% complete.
What’s more, a number of games hold up extremely well even by today’s standards. I spent quite a bit longer than I would have expected playing River Raid, a vertical shooter set on, of all places, a river. Crackpots, a game which tasks the player with dropping pots on rapidly advancing spiders, kept me occupied for a good several hours. One must also appreciate the sheer creativity of the games, especially given the technical limitations. No matter how original today’s games may be, it would be extremely unlikely that we would ever see a unique game like Plaque Attack, where the player controls a tube of toothpaste which shoots at tooth-destroying sweets, in today’s competitive marketplace.
Now, of course, not every game in the collection is a winner. There are some games that are either uninteresting or too complicated to be fun. Some games like Baseball and Tomcat: The F14 Flight Simulator seem somewhat ahead of their time, and are simply too complex or too cumbersome to be fun without an unreasonable amount of effort on the part of the player. However, these games only comprise around 10-20% of the overall package; there are more than enough instantly enjoyable games to keep any player occupied. Full instructions, recreated in the style of the original booklets, are also included for every game, since some games are certainly less intuitive than others.
The games generally feel authentic, even when playing with the d-pad as opposed to the analog stick (which is arguably how these games rightfully should be played). Only two games really felt clunky to me. Kaboom! was originally played with a paddle as opposed to a joystick, and the designers attempted to replicate that control via the analog stick. However, they implemented the control in such a way that the buckets return to the middle of the screen when the analog stick snaps back to the neutral position, making the game more difficult to play than it originally would. Decathlon employed a joystick, but required wiggling the joystick back and forth rapidly in order to run faster, and this simply doesn’t work with the smaller analog stick or with the d-pad. The rest of the games play faithfully, though, and a few minutes’ practice is usually all one needs to pick up any given game’s control, especially since there is only ever the directional control and a single button to keep track of.
What really makes Activision Anthology a great package, however, is not just the assortment of games, but the attention to detail. One particular detail that should bring an instant smile to any old-school gamer’s face is the patch board. As an explanation for you young whipper-snappers who have no idea of what the big deal is about that, one thing that made Activision’s games unique was that players could take pictures of their high scores, and send them in to Activision to get a patch commemorating their accomplishment. Likewise, high scores in Activision Anthology will unlock virtual replicas of said patches. While the score requirements to earn these virtual patches are considerably lower than those necessary to earn the real ones, the same motivation to try just one more time is still there. Even though you can’t sew Anthology’s patches on your jacket, they are still just as much fun to collect.
There are other hidden goodies to unlock, as well. Certain games will unlock different presentation modes. For example, you can unlock modes that cover the screen with translucent clouds, paste the screen on to all six sides of a spinning cube, or replace the game’s background with a field of moving stars. These modes are fun to try a couple of times, but most of them are more distracting than they are entertaining.
The unlockable features of greater interest to most players, however, are the original commercials. It’s really interesting, from a historical point of view, not only to see how far the games, but also the commercials that advertise them, have come in the past twenty years. The early commercials are strangely entertaining, and really add the right touch of nostalgia that fits this collection perfectly.
To complete the nostalgic feel of Anthology, the game’s menu is presented as an early 80’s gaming room, complete with rabbit ears, ugly wallpaper, a boom box, and a rotating rack to hold all your newly acquired Atari games. It doesn’t sound like much, but this really adds to the atmosphere and shows the level that Activision went to in order to make Anthology more than just a mere collection of games.
One final touch that really completes the package is the background music. What becomes quickly apparent after playing Anthology’s games for a few minutes is that the Atari’s sound was extremely rudimentary, and the flat bloops and bleeps can get irritating after a while. In that case, one can turn down the sound effects and turn up the game’s soundtrack of classic 80’s music. The selection is excellently chosen, featuring songs like Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance”, Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, and Squeeze’s “Pulling Mussels (From a Shell)”. The upshot is that, not only do you get a great collection of games for your money, but you also get a pretty good 80’s mix as well (as long as you don’t mind playing it through your PS2).
Activision Anthology is a great package to pick up for any old-school gamer, or anyone else who wants a window into the origins of console games. With a ton of great games that still hold up to today’s standards, as well as all the extras and the little touches that show that Anthology was lovingly crafted as opposed to hastily slapped together, as many similar collections tend to be, it’s hard to find any reason not to recommend it. Given the low price tag ($20 as of this writing), Activision Anthology is the perfect game to pick up for a rainy day, or even a sunny one.
