Arcade Collection Review: Atari Anthology Part 2

In case you missed Part one of this review, which was posted back in May, I'm taking a look at the arcade games included on the Atari Anthology collection for PS2.

Liberator

Game: Liberator
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1982

Liberator is a moderately fun space shooter style arcade game which tasks players with destroying enemy bases located on planets at the centre of the screen. With their four ships in each corner, players must find and shoot at the bases, whilst also defending against enemy missiles and ships emanating from the bases themselves.

The gameplay is fairly fast paced and is fairly challenging from the start, as even with a shield option, to block incoming fire it's pretty easy to accidentally lose allied ships whilst concentrating on another part of the screen. Multitasking is the best option, despite what the advice between levels indicates (this tells you only to focus on hitting the bases) and a combination of shooting bases, missiles and ships whilst strategically using the shield often proves best for game progression.

Visually, the game's planets are the most enjoyable feature with many different colours and features playing host the game's enemy bases. At times the game screen can become a little hectic with many ships, missiles, shots and explosions happening at once, but the player's targeting reticle is usually easy enough to spot. As for sound effects, they're pretty standard for the time and don't really stand out as good or bad.

Overall Liberator is the sort of game that's worth a play for it's concept and place in arcade history, but won't make it into the very best arcade game lists due to the difficulty in progression after a while, and overall simplicity and repetition after a while. Another factor that contributes to the game's forgetability is the sheer amount of space shooters released in the era.

Rating: 70/100
Grade: C

Lunar Lander

Game: Lunar Lander
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1979

Another early game in Atari's lineup, Lunar Lander holds fun for players even in the modern day, as they're tasked with landing a ship on precarious mountain peaks with a limited amount of fuel, and control over the ship's thrusters to set its horizontal and vertical speed. On this collection, the ship's rotation is controlled by the left analog stick, and the thrusters are controlled with the right analog stick.

There are several landing zones to choose from in each level, with different difficulty multipliers. Players must choose which landing zone to go for and plan ahead if they want to make a successful landing without their ship exploding. Points are deducted for hard landings, and there's a maximum of 50 points available for a great landing, multiplied by the difficulty multiplier. There's also four different types of ship, each with different settings for rotation, gravity and thrust, for experienced players.

Graphically the game is simple, but easy to understand; the screen zooms in when players are close to landing to make things easier to see, but this is the only effect used in conjunction with the otherwise simple vector graphics. Soundwise there's only the sound of the thruster to keep players company which conveys the loneliness of space, but isn't ideal.

Overall Lunar Lander has a great concept and is still a lot of fun to play today, if only for a little while. This is one of Atari's classics and one of the best games of the time (granted there weren't too many games around). It's one of the earliest depictions of a physics engine of sorts, and probably inspired many later games in the "feel" of outer space, control wise.

Rating: 74/100
Grade: B

Major Havoc

Game: Major Havoc
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1983

Major Havoc is one of the most interesting Atari arcade games in that it borrows elements from many other Atari games in order to provide a minigame style experience. Firstly players are shown a space ship control screen with Breakout at the side, allowing them to play for a short while (or until they lose) before cutting to a Space Invaders/Galaga esque minigame where oncoming enemies must be shot at.

 Once all enemies are cleared, the game enters a Lunar Lander type segment where the ship must be guided to its docking bay, and lastly there's a maze style segment where players must place a bomb to blow up a reactor, without running out of oxygen as they explore. Once this has been completed, players escape the maze and the whole process begins again, with more difficulty.

Major Havoc is fairly unique in this aspect of mashing many different types of game together to form an adventure of sorts, and could even be considered a forerunner to some of the more varied gameplay types we see from video games in the modern day. Unfortunately it doesn't expand much on the gameplay types it offers; all of the segments bar the maze are fairly short, and have little impact on the overall game.

Graphically the game is fairly simple for the time, with mostly vector graphics and effects. The visual aspect of the game is perhaps the worst part, on par only with the sound effects and music as far more basic than the gameplay ideas on display. Nonetheless it's good for some fun and though the difficulty does increase at a rather quick pace after the first level, repeated plays will improve player's familiarity with the game and allow them to get even further.

Rating: 65/100
Grade: C

Missile Command

Game: Missile Command
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1980

Missile Command is a fairly well known classic arcade game, even if it isn't in the most well known category of titles. Players are tasked with defending their cities, at the bottom of the screen from incoming bombs, with 3 missile launch points. Players choose where their missile will explode but must calculate the time it'll take to get in place and thus do the intended damage. Each missile has a small blast radius which will explode anything inside of it.

As the levels of the game progress, more bombs rain down from the sky and other spaceships and aircraft add to the number of incoming explosive devices. Extra cities (lives, essentially) can be earned for scoring points, and bonuses are awarded for having cities left at the end of each round, as well as any spare ammo.

Graphically the game is simple but does a great job of conveying its concept. If a player's missile pad gets hit, then it will be inactive for the remainder of the round, only to be restocked once the next round begins. This means that players must focus on protecting both their cities and missile launch pads. As for sound effects the game is a little lacking, but since it's from 1980 I suppose we can let it off.

Overall the gameplay and concept of judging the timing and placement of each missile adds a real fun factor to the game, and once players have a little experience in playing, it's fairly addictive. This definitely deserves a place in arcade history as it's something that is fresh and innovative, while pushing the technological limits of gameplay.

Rating: 74/100
Grade: B

Pong

Even in today's modern world, you'd probably struggle to find someone who wasn't aware of the arcade game, Pong. It's one of the earliest arcade video games and the first sports arcade game, and though very simple in its design, it inspired a myriad of Pong home consoles which flooded the market and caused the video game crash of 1977. 

The game itself plays incredibly simply; players move their paddles up or down to deflect the ball, and once the ball is missed by either player, a point is scored. Although there were many variations in game type on later versions and home consoles, the original Pong cabinet only offered the regular variation of play.

While I'm not a fan of rating video games on their impact on the industry or indeed their nostalgic value, Pong was an incredibly important part of gaming history, and impressive for the technical limitations of 1972. Although playing alone isn't too much fun, Pong with a friend can still be an enjoyable activity today, if only for its simplicity and ease of play. Overall it was a great arcade game and forerunner to many later machines.

Rating: 65/100
Grade: C

Red Baron

Game: Red Baron

Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari

Release Date: 1980

Red Baron simulates airbourne dogfights in World War I, with planes and landbased enemies to shoot at, all in a vector graphic style. The game plays similarly to an airborne version of Battlezone, except that the movement is much faster and smoother overall. There's only one way to attack; shooting the plane's gun at each type of enemy that appears, but for all its simplicity the game works well. 

Interestingly Red Baron features adaptable difficulty, which attempts to average out game length based on the last 32 plays. This means that players who are new to the game may well get more of a chance than with other machines of the era. Similarly, players who are very good at the game might find the difficulty ramped up from the start. There are pros and cons to using this sort of a system with an arcade machine, but it's interesting technology nonetheless.

Graphically the game isn't much to look at, but the sound effects are pretty good, and thanks to the overall smoothness of turning and firing, it feels as if Red Baron could easily be the workings inside a far more visually impressive game. Thanks to this, there's a certain Tron like feel of being inside the inner workings of a game to playing, despite the fact that this is literally all there is to it.

Rating: 70/100
Grade: C

Super Breakout

Game: Super Breakout
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1978

It's a little hard to review this particular arcade game from a PS2 collection, or anything without an analog rotary control. Pong wasn't too difficult to operate without analog control as the original machine had, but Super Breakout, at least on the Atari Anthology collection seems to have a vendetta against players. It served balls at the least convenient location to where I was, allowed the ball to pass through my paddle a few times and generally made it hell to even play. This said, I'll attempt to give my thoughts on the game as a whole anyway, even if it doesn't get an overall review score, since it may be unfair on the actual arcade game.

Breakout feels to me almost an expansion of the Pong concept, a single player version even. While it can be fun for a while, I've never played a version that's grabbed my attention or made even hitting the ball easy. I'm sure that given a rotary arcade controller, this would change, but Breakout seems like one of those games that hasn't aged particularly well at all. It's almost harder to get someone excited about the concept of slowly breaking a wall to pieces brick by brick than watching paint dry on one. Anyway there's plenty of Breakout games on the 2600 side of this collection so you can expect some proper reviews there.

Tempest

Game: Tempest
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1980

Tempest is another example of Atari's arcade brilliance; bright colours, a simple and scalable concept, both in terms of levels and difficulty, and the classic arcade feel of a vague space concept. Players can move around the outside of various different shapes, attacking enemies which are making their way up towards players. There are different types of enemies, which can cause players to lose a life in a few different ways, and learning how to avoid contact with many of them is the key to success in the game.

When the player is on a part of the level's shape, that whole section lights up, to better illustrate where the player's shots will affect. The onscreen action can get pretty crazy at times, with many enemies and shots on the screen at once, but this also adds a fast paced action feel to the game. The many different shapes featured in the game's levels make it instantly recognisible, and it's a great used of the vector style.

Tempest is definitely worth a go, if you're looking for classic arcade games to play; it's most similar to Black Widow in terms of Atari's output, but there's vast differences which mean that both have their individual merits. While this is most certainly a game of the era (there's not a lot you could do to improve it thesedays), it's a fun relic of the arcade days.

Rating: 74/100
Grade: B

Warlords

Game: Warlords
Console: Arcade
Developer: Atari
Release Date: 1980

This final game on the arcade side of this Atari collection is Warlords, a sort of 4 player version of Pong, with each player defending themselves via a breakable wall, in each corner. The winner is the last one standing, as being hit by the ball spells defeat. There are some strategic elements at play in this game; players can choose to target a certain opponent or gap in enemy defenses, and with multiple human players it's obviously possible to team up against the AI.

Overall this is one of the best expansions of an Atari game that exists as often there's not much development from one version to the next. While games tend to be short, it's almost endlessly replayable, especially with friends and despite the fairly basic graphics and awful awful high score/game over music, I'd say it was one of the better Atari arcade games of the mid era.

Rating: 63/100
Grade: C

In the next part of this collection review, I'll be taking a look at some of the Atari 2600 games included on the disc!