Atari Mania

Call it a mid-life crisis or a reawakening, but there’s something going on over at Atari. Between the Recharged franchise and the upcoming anniversary compilation, it’s obvious that Atari is not going to let their 50th anniversary go to waste. Atari Mania is the companies newest (and weirdest) form of celebration yet, mashing up some of the most iconic Atari 2600 games and filtering them through a mini-game compilation that resembles Nintendo’s popular WarioWare franchise. It’s the game that finally answered the question: What if Atari mashed-up Missile Command and Pong into a single game? The result is a fun, weird and surprisingly challenging nostalgia trip that sends us through the early years of this iconic company. This is my review of Atari Mania.

As the Caretaker of the Atari Vault, it’s your job to keep things running smoothly. This is, after all, where Atari keeps all of their most valuable games, systems, accessories, collectibles and, as it turns out, even the characters. On most nights your job would be limited to sweeping up the trash and making sure nobody breaks in. But when a bunch of dead pixels show up, it’s the Caretaker’s job to solve a bunch of simple puzzles and compete in a tournament full of weird mini-game mash-ups. If he fails, all of the Atari characters could get sucked into the dead pixel void and be erased from the world for good. Oh, the horror.

As it turns out, these dead pixel monsters are hungry and are starving for games. You’ll throw a few classic Atari titles into the void and then play a series of short and simple mini-games based on those titles. For example, you’ll need to play a round of Pong, Yar’s Revenge, Adventure, Haunted House, Millipede and many more classic Atari 2600 titles. However, once they’ve eased you into the game with simple tasks based on recognizable games, that’s when Atari Mania bumps it up a level and starts getting weird with the concept.

You see this when the different games start to blend together. For example, one stage will blend Pong with Yar’s Revenge, while another will be Millipede mixed with the racing game Dodge ‘Em. You also see stages the mash-up Crystal Castles and Dark Chambers, Circus and Breakout, and Demons to Diamonds and Gunslinger. And even when the mini-game isn’t some wacky mash-up, it tends to have you doing a relatively simple task that makes you interact with the game in a slightly different way.

Once you’ve made your way through a dozen or more of these bite-sized mini-games, you’ll fight one of the bosses, which takes elements from many of Atari’s most popular games and ties it into a traditional boss fight. For example, one of the harder battles as you controlling the Breakout paddle and trying to hit red balloons, which will in turn drop bombs on the dead pixel monster. There’s also a cool boss fight that is a mix of Asteroids and Gravitar. It’s tricky and challenging in all the right ways.

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Once we beat the boss, we’ll earn a new tool that will make the Caretaker’s life a lot easier. I’m talking about a magnet, a hammer, bug spray, a candle and a lot more. You’ll use these to open up new parts of the vault, where you’ll solve puzzles and pick up high-res box art for all of the games found in Atari Mania. There are also a number of bonus games you can play that are scattered around the vault, such as challenging the mice for instruction manuals and taking on the arcade cabinet to relive each stage’s crazy mini-games.

All said, there are more than 150 of these mini-games, so it’s going to take you quite a while to see (and beat) them all. What I like about these recreations is how they’ve been visually enhanced, but still look old and retro. Instead of going with an over-the-top polygonal design, they kept it classic with pixel characters. They also chose to ignore the divisive style found in Recharged. While I don’t love all of the design choices, I think they made the right decision by going with an art style that is more traditional.

One thing that really surprised me about the game is how difficult it can be. Even the first few dead pixel monsters will take a few tries to take down. A lot of the challenge comes from simply trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do in each stage and then memorize the solution. For what it’s worth, each mini-game comes with a brief description of what you need to do and button guide. That’s helpful, but you’ll definitely need to replay some of these stages multiple times before you figure out the best way to beat them. And as the game gets tougher and the stages grow longer, you’ll also run into the problem where you have fewer lives to spare. Couple this with some frustrating cheap deaths in some of the mini-games and you have a game that looks easy, but will occasionally kick your ass.

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I’m fine with the challenge, but wish there was a little more attention spent on the Atari Vault. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to be able to see the high-res cover and read through the instruction manual, but where is the write-up putting these games into context? Why are they important? What games did they go on to inspire? Give us something more than the cover art. In fact, I’ll go one step further and say that it’s disappointing that you can’t play the original versions of these games. Even if it’s just an emulation of the Atari 2600 original, it feels like a missed opportunity letting us play snippits of the games and not the real deal.

And then there are the technical problems. It’s barely worth mentioning the inconsistent frame rate, because the real problem with Atari Mania is that it occasionally get stuck on this loading screen. You’ll just sit there waiting for something to happen, but there’s nothing on the other side. It’s a loading screen to nothing. I had to exit out of the game and restart at least three dozen times, which was really annoying. I don’t care if the game is good about auto-saving, this loading screen problem needs to be fixed.

When it’s working properly, Atari Mania is a wild and crazy mash-up of some of the company’s earliest console games. By mixing games as disparate as Pong, Asteroids, Yar’s Revenge, Carnival, Crystal Castle, Gravitar, Haunted House and Solaris, you get a bunch of inventive levels that will delight and entertain. Toss in a funny story with a couple genuine twists and you have a pretty cool nostalgia trip that does a great job of honoring Atari’s history. I want to see more games like Atari Mania.