I'm in my early 40s, too. Bought the Asteroids / Asteroids Deluxe game pack. It does look like a lot of care went into designing the overall package, with all the cabinet art image galleries. There are two control schemes for Asteroids / Asteroids Deluxe, a scroll wheel like in the Tempest screenshot, or a combo rotate/thrust button that I find unworkable as I end up thrusting when I only want to rotate my ship. The actual game screen is VERY small on the iPod Touch 4G. Get out the magnifying glass! Don't know how much I'll play on the iPod Touch 4G due to the small game screen. The screen size is workable on the iPad 1G. The controls take up 1/3 of the screen! Even on the iPad, Asteroids is shrunk down and the gameplay field does not run to the edge of the iPad screen. The controls could be shrunk down and made transparent. There doesn't need to be that red strip underneath the controls. Revolutionary Concepts is the master of bringing retro games to iOS. Maybe they should have brought the Atari games to iOS. Also, look at Vector Tanks Extreme for how to make Battlezone work for touch devices. Vector Tanks Extreme is a blast to play on the iPod Touch, and is one of my favorite games. I say go for it if you have an iPad. The games seem almost unplayably small on the iPod Touch 4G with the controls taking up 1/3 of the screen and the game play area shrunk down. The games look better running on MAME on my Mac due to the bigger screen size. I'm going to purchase Tempest, Space Duel, and Black Widow because I want to play those on the iPad.
Well, after playing it for a longer period, I agree that some games can use control refinement. The joystick on the 2600 games (referring to iPad version) should be moved further to the edge or even better, make it user definable! I was able to play quite a few 2600 games without a problem with the way it is now, but overall, it really needs to be addressed in an update. Lots of nice surprises in this package - one 2600 game doesn't even have a standard joystick (forgot the name) - but instead, has a big free movement star grid on the bottom? WTF is that - it's cool though? Some of the coin-op games are amazing for ios - Tempest, OMG - controls perfect with the virtual rotary control. That alone is worth the price! Very satisfied with the package, but I think an update with some fixins on the controllers will make everyone much happier.
I bought Tempest Pack too... have been longing to play this for sooooo long! And agree that the rotary dial is just a stroke of genius.... loving it completely. Will probably end up buying a couple more packs but not enough to justify buying the whole collection. Besides... Where's Pitfall, Defender, and Robotron 2084??? I also look forward to seeing Spyhunter, Sinistar, and the original wireframe Star Wars!!!!
Why does everyone insist on holding the side of their iPad while they play? You didn't play the games originally with your fingers wrapped around the side of the desk/cabinet. Put the damn thing down and you can reach whatever you want. It's retro for crying out loud; Two hands! Multiple fingers!
Well i bought this last night. Happy with it, its very polished, a fair few of the games i wont play though, a lot of the classics arent there but i presume because of licensing. I really really hope they can add more of the classics later, even Invaders etc. Great to see Adventure there which was a classic back in the day. Love the look of it and the way you flick between games and the way you reset the Atari just like the late 70's But needs more arcadey games, shooting games etc. Nice start but lets have some more playable games Had a quick go of combat, as its only 2 player (thought they might add it so you could play against the computer ?) its a bit useless though.
Game Impressions This is the single best collection of anything I've ever bought anywhere, any time, for any price. If you don't like Atari's Greatest Hits, then you're not a gamer. Try knitting, perhaps.
Dont get me wrong its great but it could be so much better. So many classics are missing. I mean video checkers or chess ? Math Grand Prix ? There is a lot of good games there but potential for so many more. Great start but i would love to hear there'll be updates and other games added.
In no way was that comment directed at you, BTW. I simply pasted my iTunes review over and it happened to fall after your post. Of course everyone will have various complaints about what is and is not in the collection and how this controls or that controls, and they are perfectly valid, but $15 dollars to relive your childhood up to 99x is a deal that I've never seen offered before. Cheers.
If you buy a few packs and later decide to get them all, will it give you the option to upgrade minus the money you've already spent? Not sure I'm really going to need ALL of them. Wish I could just buy an arcade pack I'll probably just have to buy them all anyway... I mean, come on, it's my youth were I'm talking about here
No worries i didnt think it was aimed at me but you raised some good points I bought all the game packs, the price is cheap for all of those and i want to 'support' it , if it does well then we'll get more Atari games wont we. A great nod back to the golden era and has brought back many smiles this morning when i've played some of these classics. Yeah the graphics are sooo basic but those great memories have come flooding back.
I definitely agree. What I find fascinating is that so many developers right now are trying to make their games "retro" and even though these Atari games are the progenitors, I bet people are more likely to prefer faux retro, because it's "kewl", rather than admiring the games direct from the source. A bit like Blade Runner's "More human than human", I guess. I'm talking primarily about people that didn't grow up with these games, for whom it will be a trip, but even members of that generation will fall prey to it. We've been conditioned to believe that newer is better, but oftentimes that's not the case. Excited as I am about the collection, I'm not exempt from this either. I mean, would I rather sit down and play Pong for an hour or BIT.TRIP Beat?
Just won my first game of Pong. Haven't bought any game packs yet. The menu UI looks nice though, I love that they included screenshots of each game and buying them also unlocks the related manuals/artwork. There are a few fuzzy icons around that weren't designed for retina display and I assume that was to keep the initial download under 20MB. No big deal. The only problem I had playing Pong was in guessing where the edge of the "table" was. The play area is black... and the border is black... so when the ball is due to hit it you've got to make an educated guess at exactly where the line is. Also, when the ball hits the top edge, you can see it briefly appear at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure if that happened in the original...
I would rather play Pong then Bit.Trip Beat but one of the far better versions available on the app store rather then the version included with this collection. I'm still on the fence, I have an Atari 7800 hooked up to my TV and own a pair of plug-n-play pong Atari paddles but $15 is a lot if the controls aren't up to par and it sounds like a lot of the 2600 games include a poorly laid out d-pad. Also I still have the old Centipede and Missile Command games removed from the app store and the controls in both of those are spot on.
Whoa.... never knew about Black Widow until now. A dual stick geo-spider shooter on a web? Very nice! It's actually good too.
They made me suddenly want Super Star Wars series. The let down is, I cannot purchase individual titles that I want. I like Missile Command but don't want Basic Math but there is nothing I could do about it.
They can't get any cheaper, so presumably you'd rather spend $0.99 on one game than $0.99 on four games, even if three of them aren't your favourites. I suppose ideally they'd let you pick any four you like, but they're probably trying to get a bit of exposure for the less popular titles... and there's nothing wrong with finding a new game 25 years on
This is a collection of only Atari-designed games. Pitfall! was Activision, Robotron 2084 and Sinistar was Williams (and never had a port to the 2600), and Spy Hunter was Bally/Midway, with the 2600 version done by Sega. You are correct about the original arcade version of Star Wars however; that was released in 1983 before the Atari Corp/Atari Games split, but I suspect there are licensing issues that prevented it from being in this collection.
Is anyone else having a problem downloading the game packs? I downloaded the software last night and played a game or two of pong. I purchased the $14.99 package and it keeps giving me a timeout error when I try to download it. I've tried downloading the whole thing a couple times and even tried downloading individual packs and keep getting the same error.
Someone just posted this on the review article, I felt it was worth bringing in here due to how... bizarre it is:
