Atari Flashback Classics Vol 1 (PS4)

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VideoGameCritic
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Atari Flashback Classics Vol 1 (PS4)

Postby VideoGameCritic » December 13th, 2016, 8:28 pm

I finally got around to playing this the other night, and it's pretty decent for a budget title. The arcade games like Centipede and Warlords are dead on! They even save their high score tables. The Atari 2600 selection had a lot of strange odd and ends. Instead of big names you got unreleased prototypes like Tempest and Stunt Cycle. Still, I like how the variations are described via text, and the manuals are in the game too.

One thing that concerned me was the bugs. While it was neat to play Combat in high resolution, I noticed that several times my missile passed right through the other tank! I've never seen that on a real 2600. Also, in the Pong arcade game your paddle didn't reach the very top or bottom of the screen, so the ball would often pass out of your reach!

I'm still going through this (got Vol 2 to review also) but this looks like an interesting but flawed collection.

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Atariboy
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Re: Atari Flashback Classics Vol 1 (PS4)

Postby Atariboy » December 13th, 2016, 10:09 pm

If you review Volume 2 with Sprint and Race/Indy 500, be sure to check out the steering options. There's an absolute setting that steers your car based on which direction you've pointed the analog stick in, which works very well compared to how it's conventionally handled with an analog stick (So up steers your car upwards and so on, instead of left/right inputs manipulating the absent steering wheel).

And since it's potentially helpful, I had to turn down the sensitivity a lot in Red Baron (which I think is also in the other volume) in order to get it handling well. So if you have issues with over sensitivity too, be sure to try that before you write off this classic.

VideoGameCritic wrote:Also, in the Pong arcade game your paddle didn't reach the very top or bottom of the screen, so the ball would often pass out of your reach!


While Pong isn't an emulation here since there's no microprocessor running software code in an actual Pong arcade machine to emulate, that's accurate to how a Pong arcade cabinet was and is an aspect that Digital Eclipse and now Code Mystics always have represented in their products when Pong is included.

They didn't take liberties and tried to be accurate with their recreation of it, so it is not a bug. You can even see this behavior in YouTube videos of the original arcade machine in action.

VideoGameCritic wrote:I finally got around to playing this the other night


Out of curiosity, any reason why you've reviewed so many compilations including multiple Atari products, but never reviewed Atari Anthology for the Playstation 2 and Xbox?

This recent pair of releases that you've now playing, much like the pair of DS collections you reviewed a few years earlier from the same developer behind this pair of PS4/XB1 releases, is basically just a rerelease of Atari Anthology from over a decade ago.

The Xbox version even had high definition support and was one of just a handful of original Xbox games that could go past 480p, which only adds to its appeal. Not to mention that it still had Battlezone back then which is sadly absent these days due to being sold off, is all on one disc instead of split across two, and is emulated beautifully on the Xbox 360 via backwards compatibility.

Seems like a peculiar omission to not see it covered at your site.

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BlasteroidAli
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Re: Atari Flashback Classics Vol 1 (PS4)

Postby BlasteroidAli » December 17th, 2016, 1:53 am

I got them and was really disappointed that they did not include mega mania or Pitfall... lol. Yeah I know both activision games.
Oh they have not released it in the UK, so your review will be as close as I am going to get to it.

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Atariboy
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Re: Atari Flashback Classics Vol 1 (PS4)

Postby Atariboy » December 17th, 2016, 11:38 pm

Xbox One and Playstation 4 are region free, if that's any help to you.

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BlasteroidAli
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Re: Atari Flashback Classics Vol 1 (PS4)

Postby BlasteroidAli » December 18th, 2016, 5:35 pm

Atariboy wrote:Xbox One and Playstation 4 are region free, if that's any help to you.


Thanks for the reply. I might invest. Though I still have it on xbox from 10 years ago 15? That one includes Battlezone and I loved the 2600 version of it so much.
Think this is why I love this site so much. I could do an rss feed and see the critics thoughts but it so much more interesting to read the thoughts of like minded people.


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