If there's one thing retro gamers love, it's a good compilation of classic games. As it so happens, Atari and Digital Eclipse have recently released exactly such a game with Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection for consoles and PC. This one collects a staggering array of titles from Atari consoles and arcades past, plus offers some new games to boot. It's a wild mix of games that, thankfully, includes more than a handful of local co-op games.
The Atari 50 collection includes a whopping 100-plus games for these platforms:
- Arcade
- Atari 800
- Atari 2600
- Atari 5200
- Atari 7800
- Atari Handheld
- Atari Jaguar
- Atari Lynx
- Atari Reimagined (new games)
Additional features include:
- Expert Insight Through Storytelling: The collection is outfitted with a handful of various never-before-seen interviews with past-and-present Atari leadership as well as other prolific names in the games industry; complemented, of course, by the video game developers who helped raise Atari to become an industry icon.
- Playable History: The massive selection of over 100 games spans seven different platforms: Arcade, 2600, 5200, 7800, Atari 8-bit computers, and, for the first time ever on modern consoles, Atari Lynx and Jaguar! Play the classics like Tempest 2000, Asteroids, and Yars' Revenge, or dive into some deeper cuts.
- Reimagined and Revisited: The team at Digital Eclipse created six new games for the collection that reimagines some of the most beloved Atari classics or put a twist on classic game themes, including Haunted House, Neo Breakout, Yars’ Revenge, Vctr Sctr, and the infamously never-finished Airworld.
Atari 2600 collections are commonplace, but Atari 50 offers so much more than that. Atari Jaguar and Lynx games have never been collected or re-released anywhere else, especially not consoles, so this will be many gamers' first chance to legally experience those titles. Sure, the collection is missing a ton of interesting Lynx and Jaguar games, but maybe it will get a sequel someday that brings back even more lost classics.
As for co-op games, the cooperative games that we've identified in Atari 50 include:
- Fire Truck (arcade)
- Space Duel (arcade)
- Dark Chambers (arcade)
- Asteroids (Atari 7800)
- Basketbrawl (Atari 7800)
- Dark Chambers (Atari 7800)
- Tempest 2000 (Atari Jaguar)
- Haunted Houses (Atari reimagined)
- Quadratank (Atari reimagined)
That's a cool little mix of co-op games (in addition to a huge ocean of single-player and competitive titles that we're not listing here). When I get to try the collection out for myself, I'll be sure to look for more.
Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection sells for $39.99 on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam.