About a month ago, Atari released the game Atari Mania to coincide with their 50th anniversary. Developed by iLLOGIKA, the game wisely ignores Atari’s history in recent years and instead focuses on the very beginning, when the legendary developer was the ultimate pioneer and leader in console gaming.
Now, this certainly isn’t the first time Atari has celebrated their legacy by repackaging their older games. But unlike Atari Hits 2006, Atari Powerpack, Atari Arcade 1, Atari’s Greatest Hits, Atari: Anniversary Edition, Atari Flashback Classics, or any other series of 798 games released over the years, Atari Mania isn’t just content to polish the game and relist it Printed on shiny new discs. Instead, iconic games like Pong, Asteroids, and Centipede are diced and glued together in new, surprising configurations, resulting in Frankenstein-like mini-games.
The resulting game is a vast and diverse collection of minigames, no doubt heavily inspired by the WarioWare series, right down to the music that gradually increases in tempo as the games themselves get faster, while you’re working your way through a typical 10-15 minigames playlist for . These games don’t have the wacky humor of WarioWare: Get It Together! Sometimes it’s hard to discern exactly what you’re supposed to do, which means you lose the minigame almost beforehand. But overall, the quality doesn’t lag behind its main source of inspiration, although it varies too much.
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Another game that’s hard to ignore when talking about Atari mania is NES Remix, because neither game is afraid to mix completely incompatible games and genres. How about winning a race at Pong, playing as a cowboy from Stampede, or using a plane from Canyon Bomber to navigate the mazes of Adventyre? The combinations are nearly limitless, and in many ways, it’s even better than the NES Remix, thanks to the fact that simple Atari games are better suited for short bursts than The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros.
The irreverent take on Atari classics is also reflected in the game’s surprisingly interesting story. You play as a janitor tasked with cleaning out dirty and abandoned Atari buildings. When a mysterious black primitive emerges one day and devours classic Atari games and characters, Janitor must prove he’s as adept at manipulating the joystick as his trusty broom. It’s certainly not a masterpiece of storytelling, but the dialogue is full of charming puns, and seeing iLLOGIKA give the usually abstract Atari characters eccentric personalities is fan service at its finest.
Your adventure with the janitor is more than just an interactive feature table or hub. Instead, it’s laid out as a small adventure game, with surprisingly fun puzzles and a “Metrovania-style” progression where you keep unlocking new tools that let you reach new floors and rooms. As you explore, you’ll stumble across collectibles in the form of box art and classic Atari game manuals. Unfortunately, you can’t play them in their “pure form”, which is a bit disappointing since the entire catalog of around 50 titles probably won’t take up more than a few megabytes of your hard drive.
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At least the game has received graphical improvements while retaining the charm of its primitives, and the adventure portion of the game includes plenty of charming sprites. The developers even recreated the curved shape of classic CRT monitors, which really underscores their deep love for the source material. In terms of sound design, the music is good, nothing special, and the minigames themselves could benefit from more pronounced sound effects. The many musical themed loops probably won’t bother you too much since the game is short. It took me no more than 3-4 hours to reach the credits. Considering the £19.49 / €20.99 price tag, this is a bit disappointing.
But honestly, 3-4 hours is probably a lot more than most people spend on a traditional Atari collection filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of outdated games. While Atari Mania has its weaknesses, it ultimately manages to resurrect classic games without the usual embalming.