Metacritic Games

Atari Anthology (Xbox)

For video game console owners, no better value exists than Atari Anthology, which features 85 games that started a revolution, including 18 arcades games such as Asteroids, Battlezone, Missile Command, and Pong; 62 Atari 2600 games including Gravitar, Millipede and Super Breakout and five bonus titles, such as Off the Wall, Blackjack, Desert Falcon, Steeplechase and Sprintmaster. Adding an innovative twist to each game are new Challenge Modes such as the psychedelic Trippy Mode, Time Warp and Double Speed, all of which push player's skills to the extreme, while a new 3D interface offers a polished portal into all the games. Atari Anthology spans an impressive array of game categories, including Arcade Originals, 2600 Arcade Games and 2600 Adventure Games, as well as numerous offerings in the Action, Sports, Mind, Casino, Racing and Space genres. [Atari]

Atari
Compilation
Players: 2
E (Everyone)
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Released November 16, 2004

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

68 / 100

Critic Reviews

95	Gaming Target If you love retro throw backs, this is one of the best collections I’ve ever played. Atari Anthology is cheap, it is loaded with bonus features, and it comes packed with some of the biggest video games of all time!
85	Game Informer I'm really pleased to see the inclusion of a good selection of original arcade ports as well. [Jan 2005, p.119]
80	GamerFeed Not every game is a winner, as some selection and control issues get in the way. Still, this is a tremendous value with hours upon hours of replay, and it's a great history lesson for those who think everything began with Nintendo.
80	AceGamez Those who remember the days of the rollerball and paddle controller and have a deep yearning to return could happily fork out ten to twenty quid for this, but anyone with less than a burning desire to revisit their youth may not feel that their reddies went in the right direction.
77	Team Xbox Those who grew up playing these games and have forgotten how bad they look will be reminded, but will still enjoy the simplicity of the gameplay, coupled with a severe hand-eye coordination workout.
76	Kombo Atari Anthology will prove two things to anyone who buys it; that Atari was truly an arcade force to be reckoned with, and that they had terrible problems developing titles for their own console.
73	Official Xbox Magazine Many things: packed, fun, annoying, and humorously ironic. [Jan 2005, p.80]
70	Cheat Code Central For $ 19.99 it certainly is worth the price as long as you remember the games are the way they were made and not enhanced versions.
70	Sydney Morning Herald But if you know the difference between a Mame emulator and a Lame encoder, this could be right up your eight-colour alley.
70	Xbox Nation Magazine The problem is - here it comes - the painfully oversensitive controls mar the nostalgia. [Feb 2005, p.92]
68	GameSpot A great way to relive some of the high points of classic gaming. However, the less-than-perfect emulation tarnishes what would otherwise have been an incredible trip down memory lane.
60	IGN Any way you cut it, 20 bucks for 85 games is a pretty damn good deal. But it's more quantity over quality in this package, as the development team just scattered all of this good stuff into an unorganized mess of a classic compilation.
60	EuroGamer Gamers under about the age of 25 will frankly be utterly amazed at how basic things were back then, while those old enough to have owned (and who knows, maybe loved) a 2600, or hung around the arcades will have a few hours of curiosity sated before moving well and truly on.
44	TotalGames.net Ninety-five per cent of these games are rubbish, but you just can't help a quick trip down memory lane.
20	Games Radar UK (Pre-2006) The way forward is to embrace the future, and let the games of old contained on this disc finally Rest In Peace. [Xbox World]