Publisher Atari and developer Digital Eclipse announced Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, “an interactive game experience” that will include modern games, videos, and unpublished interviews. The collection will launch in November for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
Atari CEO Wade Rosen commented on the announcement, saying:
“We cannot think of a better way to celebrate our golden anniversary than to share the decades of fun, innovation, and talent with our fans worldwide through this truly remarkable collection. To say it’s an honor to bring this collection to life is an understatement. I speak for everyone at Atari when I say we are elated to share this new Atari experience with the world as our 50th-anniversary celebration.”
The game’s details via Atari can be seen below:
Far more than just a collection of games, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is a true interactive history of the iconic publisher and a celebration of the small team in Silicon Valley who combined their creativity, curiosity, and passion, resulting in what would be Atari. Through an interactive linear timeline, players access a trove of over 90 video games organized by era, as well as various files and assets, including early development sketches, hardware schematics, internal memos, images, videos, and other “artifacts,” much of which have never been accessible by the public. Behind every game are the stories of Atari, what was happening at the company, what went into the creation of the games, and the hardware they ran on—told by the people who were there.
Unlike any other video game collection in existence, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration emulates eight different Atari hardware platforms in one package—a true feat by the development team at Digital Eclipse. The collection includes titles drawn from five decades — a library of published works that represent the evolution of game development and the Atari games that influenced what would become the video game industry as we know it today.
Key Features of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Include:
Artifacts: A rich collection of discoverable photos, sketches, early marketing materials, and even classic console schematics are accessed by uncovering relevant points on the interactive Atari timeline, all of which put Atari’s library of games in historical context.
Video Games by Era: Explore the Atari timeline and unlock games across decades as you learn the background of each, including their inception and the talented individuals behind the projects on six platforms: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Atari Jaguar, and Atari Lynx.
Bonus Games: Unlocked through completing challenges and uncovering certain Artifacts, bonus games include dozens of newly finished “never-completed” games from the 1980s, experimental new versions of classic titles, and mash-ups that marry beloved early-era titles into a single, fluid experience.
Expert Insight Through Storytelling: The collection is outfitted with a handful of various never-before-seen interviews with Atari leadership, past and present, as well as other prolific names in the games industry; complemented, of course, by the video game developers who helped raise Atari to become an industry icon.
Reimagined and Revisited: The team at Digital Eclipse created five new games for the collection that reimagine some of the most beloved Atari classics or play on classic game themes, including Haunted House, Neo Breakout, Yars’ Revenge, Vctr Sctr, and the infamously never-finished Airworld.
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