Atari Flashback Classics is the most ?I've had Atari Flashback...

Atari Flashback Classics is the most ?I've had Atari Flashback...

Atari Flashback Classics is the most Ive had Atari Flashback Classics on Switch for months, intending to cover it. There have been a lot of things going on around here that arent video games, and for a few reasons this one is intimidating. Every time I get a few minutes to think about this, I open it up again and play a few more games on it to try to get an idea of what I want to say about it. This is one of the many subjects about which I havent been able to generate a cogent opinion.

I will note, however, that this collection made it possible to try a different game, or five different.

More tips just about r4 3ds .games, every time I went back to it.

Every time I open the game, I discover something Ive never played. Since these are mostly ancient 2600 games, those arent exactly life-altering addictions. I hate to act like games expire, being a retro game fan myself, but most 2600-era games hit modern sensibilities as somewhere betweeninscrutable andbriefly amusing. But there are fully 150 games on the collection, between arcade, 2600, and even 5200 games, and the whole is more than the sum of its many, many parts.

It turns out that the ideal presentation for these games isI got a system and a pile of carts at a garage sale, what even is this stuff. And thats the experience provided by Flashback Classics trying cart after cart, with little context or organization other than alphabetical order, trying to figure out what each of these things is about with a couple of friends (or kids). Basically, Atari retroactively became WarioWare.

Some Atari games are easy to pick up because theyre self-explanatory. Breakout is an instant read even if youve never played it. Bounce the thing into the things. There are four different versions of Breakout on here, by the way.

Some other Atari games take a moment to process, either because the graphics are abstract or the gameplay doesnt naturally follow from looking at them. I grew up (somehow) a Frog Bog/Frogs and Flies fan, but to the new player its totally opaque that its a fly-eating competition with a time limit of a day. Without that context, you jump from lily pad to lily pad eating flies for a while then it stops. I still dont understand how to play Save Mary, a game ostensibly about lowering materials to create a platform on which an NPC can stay above water. I see it played here, but I couldnt work it myself.

But in this presentation, the lack of context is an asset. You can blindly jump from game to game, fromwhats this? toWhat is this!??!? and derive a sort of meta-entertainment from the agglutination of variably entertaining games. My kids wouldnt like Circus Atari as a standalone game, but as part of a buffet gaming feast, who doesnt love a seesaw-based Clown Breakout?

In every game I tried, the interface made it as simple as possible to integrate into the Atari life.

2600-based games start with a transparent overlay of an Atari console, with all of its weird switches available and labeled. Games that use alternate controllers, like the Whack-a-Mole-esque Holey Moley, feature a sensible controller overlay, in that case a nine-digit grid activated by tilting on the analog stick.

The Switch has become home to a wide variety of excellent retro releases, and its existence proves that they can be excellent in different ways. Segas single-game Ages remasters add thoughtful modern features to obsessively preserved old games. Digital Eclipses SNK Classics Collection offers not just an entire historical period for one company, but includes the research and ephemera to put it in context plus niceties for the modern gamer (I really cant say enough about that collection, even in a review of a different one!)

But Atari Flashback Classics doesnt really do any of those things. More info with reference to R4 3DS.It succeeds by providing quite-good (to my eyes) emulation of an absurdly large number of games, all of which look and control as well as they possibly can, in an interface that makes it easy to sample them. Much easier, in fact, than if you were fumbling with real Atari hardware. Theres history to be traced in here, especially given multiple versions of the same game, and youre free to explore it yourself. Or youre free to gather your friends and play as much Warlords as possible.

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