Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari

Atari 50 is great, everybody knows that. It was able to tell a good chunk of the Atari story through interviews and history lessons, all while compiling more than one-hundred games across a dozen different consoles and computers. Now, nearly two full years after first hitting the market, Atari 50 is back with a brand-new expansion pack – The Wider World of Atari. This continuation not only offers fresh interviews and archival images, but also adds another 19 games to the package, bringing the total number of games up to 134. Is that reason enough to be excited for this expansion pack? That’s what we’re about to find out when I review Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari.

The Wider World of Atari marks the first of two planned downloadable content updates for Atari 50, both of which are designed to bring more stories, history and games to the already stuffed compilation. This one dives even deeper into the origins and lore of Atari’s early days, all while introducing us to more of the people involved and focusing on the impact Atari had on young developers and the homebrew scene.

Right off the bat, you’ll find that The Wider World of Atari introduces a brand-new timeline to the compilation. Much like the other timelines, the stories are told in chronological order, starting in 1976 and going all the way up to present day. We learn about the birth of the hugely influential game Breakout, which helps to tie both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak into the story. We go deeper down the rabbit hole of vector graphics and why they are timeless. And we’re introduced to Evelyn Seto, who brought her art and designs to both the home and console sides of the company.

Some of the most exciting content comes late in the timeline, when the game starts to revolve around the games that were impacted by the game crash of 1983. As you can imagine, there were games in active development when the bubble burst, some of which are seeing the light of day for the first time in this collection. It also goes into greater detail about how some of the Atari 2600 games were pushed to the late 1980s, and even into the early 90s. This was the first time I had really considered the 2600 games that were released after the Nintendo Entertainment System helped to resuscitate the games industry in the United States. This package includes MotoRodeo, which was among the last cartridges released for the Atari 2600. That game came out in 1991, the same year the Super Nintendo arrived in the States. That’s wild.

I also really love how the timeline goes into greater detail about the homebrew scene that sprung up in the 1990s and 2000s. This package really focuses on the fan-made games and Atari’s reaction to the movement. For example, we get Adventure II by Curt Vendel, a fan of the original with no connection to Atari. This is one of those occasions where Atari could have easily swooped in and killed the project dead in its tracks, which almost happened, but fate had a different outcome in mind. Atari officially embraced it, helping to grow the homebrew community. Look, I understand that this is an Atari compilation designed to make Atari look good, but can you imagine other companies taking this approach? What do you think Nintendo would do if they learned somebody was working on a new Urban Champion game? We all know how that story ends.

Of course, the big news is that this expansion pack adds another nineteen games to Atari 50’s already massive roster. Most of these games come from either the early arcade days or the Atari 2600, with several on both. Avalanche is a game that pulls this off. It was delightfully tense as an arcade game, and retains a lot of that when shrunk down to fit on the 2600. The same is true for Sky Diver, which was an addictive little arcade game and a solid enough home console port. Off the Wall is an interesting take on the Breakout formula, while Atari Video Cube offers a unique take on the Rubik’s Cube. Another unique 2600 game is Desert Falcon, which is a bird-themed shoot ‘em up that will immediately remind you of games like Viewpoint and Zaxxon.

One of the games that really surprised me was Destroyer from 1977, a simple arcade game that has you dropping and detonating bombs underwater in order to defeat a bunch of submarines. It’s a simple premise, yet the gameplay has enough depth to keep you hooked. It also has a gorgeous arcade cabinet that translates well in this package. While not as good, Submarine Commander on the 2600 shows Atari toying with unique variations on the target shooting theme. And then there’s Steeplechase, a 1981 oddity that allows four players to race horses at the same time. That’s a cool idea, but the execution left me a little cold.

There are some real winners in this grouping, including the surprisingly addictive Red Baron. This was an aerial dogfighting game released in arcade in 1981 that uses vector graphics to create a genuinely exciting action game. I was legitimately shocked by how well this game held up, especially compared to a lot of the other arcade games in the collection. I also loved the various versions of Berzerk that were included in this package. Much like Red Baron, here is an arcade game that has managed to hold up remarkably well, and the Atari 2600 port is so much better than it has any right being. There’s also a fun version of Berzerk that added the voices back to the Atari 2600 version, which, as we learn through a video, was a lot more complicated than it seems. And if you get bored of any of those versions, you should also check out Frenzy, the equally-exciting arcade sequel that was first released back in 1982.

For as good as those games are, there were some that left me both confused and frustrated. Atari’s early arcade take on Football is a perfect example of that. With characters represented by simple Xs and Os, I spent far too long trying to figure out how to even pick a play. I’m sure that the game works better as an arcade cabinet, where the instructions are better laid out and the trackball control makes sense, but it just did not work in this compilation. Sadly, the same is true for Super Bug, an overhead racing game from 1977. I so wanted to love this early driving game, but even after getting a hang of the controls, I still found it to be frustrating and hard to control. Again, I have a hunch things would be different if I were playing the actual arcade cabinet.

While I love the variety of late-generation 2600 games and some of the rarer arcade titles, part of me is frustrated that, once again, the Lynx and Jaguar get short shrift. There have been homebrew games made for the Jaguar, so it would have fit right in with Adventure II and Berzerk: Voice Enhanced. It’s especially disappointing because the next expansion pack is dubbed “The First Console War,” giving me pretty much no hope that we’ll see more 64-bit games added to the compilation. That’s a shame, because there really are a lot of games on both systems that I would like to see in the collection. It’s especially frustrating because it’s extremely rare to see Lynx and Jaguar games emulated anywhere, so this really does feel like the only chance we’ll get on some of these titles. As far as I’m concerned, both of these systems deserve their own expansion pack.

As with any collection of games, your enjoyment is largely going to come down to how interested you are in the titles being offered. For me, the 2600 stuff is a little hit or miss, while the arcade games are mostly solid. What makes this expansion pack worthwhile are the video interviews and historical information. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of Super Bug or one of the other games, it’s still a lot of fun learning about them and seeing how they fit into the Atari story. That, along with genuinely great titles like Red Baron and Adventure II, make this an essential update to one of the greatest video game compilations of all time.