The compilation talks a lot about the marketing problems (which likely didn’t help), but they also had, uh, these games to use to sell the hardware. Ultimately, it’s no wonder why later Atari systems like the Jaguar failed. (And those execs are maybe still there.) But it could have been worth a few mentions of what Atari did then, like the Atari Flashback’s role in the proliferation of plug-and-play consoles and some of the quirkier merchandise to come out of the move to licensing out the brand. The compilation likely couldn’t cover that with the same detachment of the earlier times. There’s an unshakable veneer of PR to the selected topics.Ītari 50 also skips from 1998 to 2020, avoiding covering the ups and downs of that era. We would love to have heard what it was like to market the systems and games, or the business realities of Jaguar-era Atari! But this ain’t an independent project it’s bankrolled by the company that relies upon preserving and promoting nostalgia for Atari’s games. There’s no real effort to get into the business side of things along the way. This is logical! That was who they were able to interview, and the team at Digital Eclipse likely identifies with their position most. But putting some here, as an intellectual curiosity surrounded by artifacts of the day and an explanation of their place in history? Now that works.Ītari 50‘s narrative has a clear point of view, too: that of the designers and programmers of the era. This museum approach makes sense! After all, trying to sell a Jaguar compilation as “fun games you should play” is, frankly, ill-advised. You can bypass this and head to the second, a sortable game library, if you want! But it’s clearly intended for you to peruse the exhibits first and not just run and raid the gift shop. The first: a four-part timeline, presenting videos and scanned artifacts interspersed with the related games themselves. In Atari 50, you’ll find two separate presentation schemes. With Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, Digital Eclipse shows an understanding of its aging subject matter, treating it with reverence but also building its collection around being an educational time capsule. If you're a fan of Bomberman or Mario Kart, it's worth renting, but it's a little too short, and the tracks are a little too simple to warrant a more long-term relationship.When we’ve covered compilations of older titles in the past, we’ve often found them to be less valuable as games to play in the modern era and more suited as a documentary archive to peruse. Altogether, the game's not very long, very good, or very bad - which at least wins it the dubious distinction of being the best Bomberman game on the PlayStation to date. The music in BFR alternates between sounding like a speeded-up tape and an imported electronic toy - ultimately, these sounds earn the game points for quirkiness. The graphics are a bit plain for this generation of PlayStation games, and pop-up and build are an issue, of course, but it's not a horrible-looking game. In the two-player split-screen mode, you can make a bet and race against a friend. Make enough, and you can buy extra power-ups, better Tiras and Louies, and gain entrance into the next race. If you come in first, second, or third, you'll get cash. Using a feature available in a number of Japan-only horseracing video games, you can make your mount sprint ahead for short distances until it tires. (Just about everything is here, from power bombs to triple bombs plus, there are a few new items as well). In the single-player mode, you race against four opponents, drop or throw bombs at them, and use power-ups found along the way. The bomb-chucking star of Hudson's genre-defying series and several of his friends have saddled up on Tiras (the worried-looking hippo-dinosaur hybrids) and Louies (the excitable kangaroo creatures introduced several games back), and they are competing in races for money and fame. Since Bomberman has long been known to play with fire and explosives, it was really just a matter of time before he added the track to his long list of vices. It hit Mega Man in the Japanese release Rockman: Battle & Chase and Square's cutesy-cutesy Chocobo in Chocobo Racing. The undeniable urge to race has struck many a platform- and puzzle-game hero.
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