4.5/5 ★ – elkniodaphs's review of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration.

When I was young, my dad built for me a flight cockpit out of parts he had sourced from his government job. It was fully enclosed, had trim lighting, and a mounted Super-Deluxe Competition Joystick seated in front of a sleek Zenith "Smart Set" television. The Atari 800 sat in the middle of all this and acted as a flight control console. I would enter through the gull-wing door and buckle-in to the reclaimed aircraft seat and toggle on various systems completing a ritual pre-flight checklist - most importantly, I had my Capri-Sun in the cup holder. This whole thing was built around the idea that I would be playing Flight Simulator II (which I did), but my preference was Star Raiders. Star Raiders was complex, but this was a time of sole infatuations. Learning one thing deeply was putting forth the same effort of learning many things broadly. In this way, a child could learn complexities beyond their expected capacity. Despite the depth and sophistication of modern games, Star Raiders remains quite complicated, but Atari 50 includes a 21-page digital manual for the game which is accessible at any time, and emulation grants the ability to save state. The Atari 5200 version of Star Raiders is the included release, and it has been enhanced and overclocked. It's a better game now than it has ever been before, yet I still prefer the Atari 2600 version. Swordquest: AirWorld is an obvious standout, as Digital Eclipse worked hard to create the fourth and final Swordquest game. Swordquest has a fascinating history and I recommend a YouTube video titled "The Legend Of SwordQuest," (sic) from a channel called Debunk File. In contrast to the first three Swordquest games, completion of AirWorld does not decode a hidden message to send to Atari via post. I had planned to decode the message and send it in, just for old times' sake. Another standout is VCTR-SCTR, a remix of Asteroids, Lunar Lander. Tempest, and more - the perfect game to play while Master Boot Record plays loudly from your turntable. Of course, simply listing games included in a compilation doesn't really convey anything other than already disseminated information. Rather, the writing focus should be on what makes the compilation unique, perhaps what makes it better than others. I have a direct comparison here as I've also spent considerable time with Atari Flashback Classics, a 150 game compilation on the same console. Atari 50 doesn't have as many games, about 100, but they're emulated better, and the post-processing effects actually look great here, giving the games texture and life instead of simply trying to ape the look of a CRT display. Atari 50 also offers guided timelines through its arcade origins, its push into the console space, and more. Video interviews are surprisingly candid, some mentioning overt drug use at Atari, and some timeline content highlighting old advertisements that were objectifying women. It would have been easy to not include these things in the material, but these timelines are presented as an academic repository of both the highs and lows of Atari. Despite their misdeeds, Atari was an early adopter of women in the programming space. One such woman was Betty Ryan, creator of Quantum, who I learned about through the arcade timeline; I was surprised, I hadn't heard of her before. Because of this, Quantum has quickly become one of my favorite games on the compilation. I think Ernest Cline is a horrible author, but it's these kinds of packages that establish a creative bubble for him to write in. Other such bubbles might be The Monster Squad gaining a cult following large enough for Andre Gower to justify producing the documentary 'Wolfman's Got Nards,' or how interest in The Golden Girls has been steadily rising since 2007 prompting the sale of countless graphic tees and adult coloring books. Atari 50 isn't going to build a flight cockpit in your living room, but it will present dozens upon dozens of titles, beautifully emulated on modern hardware. If nothing else, I must thank Digital Eclipse for spotlighting Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar, It's the raddest game I never had a chance to fall in love with.