The Atari Greatest Hits series is composed of compilations of Atari arcade games & Atari 2600 games ported to the Nintendo DS and Apple iOS. The Nintendo DS games were split into two volumes released in 2010 and 2011 resepctively, while the app was released as a Free-to-play model, and allowed for purchase of the extra games. The games include bonus features such as manuals, credits and interviews with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell.
Both of the Nintendo DS releases contain an art gallery of pictures from their playable arcade games, Atari 2600 manuals from their playable arcade games and credits that detail the people who helped make them. Both volumes contain two other extras. While Volume 1 has a trivia game that gives players 20 randomly selected questions about Atari and Army Battlezone, a version of Battlezone commissioned by the US Army for Atari to train the gunners of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Volume 2 has eight interviews from Nolan Bushnell, including video and audio and an Atari 400 Basic engine.[1][2]
Atari's Greatest Hits was released as an app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch in April 2011. The was free and only included Missile Command. The rest of the games could be purchased as downloadable content in packs of four, or as the entire collection.[3]
List of games
The following games are included in Atari Greatest Hits: Volume 1.[1]
Writing for IGN, Craig Harris rated Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 6 out of 10, and said that the 30 dollar price was too high. Harris noticed that the Nintendo DS's small screen can not properly display games with vector graphics, like Gravitar, Lunar Lander, and Asteroids, but he praised the title's "excellent multiplayer support" and "spot-on emulations".[4] Alex Morgen at GamingBits.com gave it 3.5 of 5 stars in a generally positive review. Harris and Morgen both said that many of the included titles would not hold gamers' attention for very long.[5]Nintendo Power rated it 5 out of 10, while Nintendo Gamer gave it 22 out of 100.[6]
iOS
Eurogamer gave the app a seven out of ten rating, finding it superior to Microsoft's similarly themed Game Room, and while finding many Atari 2600 games to be dated and that it lacked many games made under the Atari Games company.[7]
Notes
^Better known as Pele's Soccer, the game is using its original title in this release