Evoking fond images of the old ABC Wide World of Sports program from Sunday afternoons, Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari digs deeper into the details of additional games added to the collection, history and lore about Atari, and even a comparison and contrast of the coin-op and consumer division within the company. In short, it’s a fun additional treasure trove of information that will have history-oriented fans salivating. Using the same timeline format as the main game, Wider World of Atari appears in the timeline at the very bottom. You navigate from left to right and up and down within the timeline and its branches and from there can select videos, still images, 3D box renders, and of course the games. Everything is easy to navigate and incredibly responsive with one of the best GUI interfaces around.
That makes it especially fun to watch the video documentaries with many of the original Atari employees. Of particular note are the vector graphics clip, the creation of the Atari logo with Evelyn Seto, and the discussion about the rivalry between the coin-op and consumer divisions with Al Alcorn. The vector graphics clip details how vector works and why it looks as good as it does and Owen Rubin’s enthusiasm is particularly engaging.
With the design of the Atari logo, we learn a lot more about how decision-making worked at Atari and get some insight into the graphic design work of Evelyn Sato. She talks about some of the alternate logos proposed as well and the changes to box designs throughout the years. It was also fascinating to learn about the pay differences between the console and coin-op developers and how devalued console designers were in comparison, especially after revenue started to rise significantly in the home market.
Dovetailed in with all those interviews and plenty more including the creation and myths of Berserk are 19 new playable games (excluding variants). Some of these titles were mail order only like Atari Video Cube and others were retail, sometimes released only at Sears (a now-defunct department store chain for those of you not in the know). Included in Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari are: Adventure II, Atari Video Cube (2600), Aquaventure (2600), Avalanche (800), Avalanche (arcade), Berzerk (2600 Voice Enhanced), Berzerk (2600), Berzerk (5200), Berzerk (arcade), Desert Falcon (2600), Destroyer (arcade), Double Dunk (2600), Football (arcade), Frenzy (arcade), Off the Wall (2600), MotoRodeo (2600) Red Baron (arcade), Return to Haunted House (2600), Save Mary (2600), Sky Diver (2600), Sky Diver (arcade), Steeplechase (2600), Stellar Track (2600), Submarine Commander (2600), Super Bug (arcade). Whew!
Naturally your mileage may vary from game to game, even with just the expansion titles, but we’ll talk about a few of the most interesting ones and a few fails here today. First off, is Red Baron, a vector game very similar in style to Battlezone. Instead of being on the ground, you’re a WWI flying ace, shooting down enemy biplanes, zeppelins and tanks. It’s a challenging game and unforgiving as you’ll slowly get the hang of the controls and start blasting enemies to rack up your scores. Next is Save Mary, a homebrew action puzzler that is challenging and fun. The best part about Save Mary is that the gameplay is entirely intuitive and for those of us who didn’t grow up with some of these titles, there’s a certain charm about being able to pick up and play without having to read a long, involved manual.
That’s exactly the problem with Stellar Track, one of the Sears exclusive games. The whole concept sounds great. A sci-fi text-based game that lets you input commands and interact with the story in turn-based gameplay. Unfortunately it also requires you to read or memorize pages of commands and the entire game is so non-intuitive and lacking in overall detail that only the most OCD players might enjoy it. Even with the high resolution manual available, you’ll still be zipping back and forth between screens repeatedly and zooming in on the tiny text. It’s just not fun.
In between these two extremes is where most of the games end up. Steeplechase for example lets you race horses and it’s fairly intuitive but the jumping physics aren’t very responsive, making racing a struggle in pixel perfect button mashing. Off the Wall looks like a decent breakout clone until you realize how incredibly fast the ball is and how imprecise the controls are, making it incredibly frustrating. Aquaventure is also neat but the fish are extremely fast and it never seems like you have an opportunity to get far and your character doesn’t quite move quickly enough. And MotoRodeo is fantastic fun with floaty physics but your car doesn’t always respond the way you’d like and mastering it will take you a while.
On the other hand, Super Bug is great fun, a crisp arcade racer that handles well and is enjoyable to play. Desert Falcon is quite intuitive as well, an early isometric proto-shmup with some painful collision detection but clever designs. And Atari Video Cube is actually quite fun with surprisingly intuitive gameplay, even if it lacks the depth of more modern puzzlers and might not present as much of a challenge as it should. Games like Skydiver and Avalanche might better be left forgotten however.
If you haven’t noticed by now, one game was left out of the above descriptions. That’s because Berserk is heavily featured in Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari with no less than four different versions of the game and an interesting video about the game accompanying the artwork and other extras. Berserk is easily one of the most enjoyable games in this collection and having the arcade version, the inferior but still fun 2600 version and the voice enhanced upgraded version is particularly cool because comparing and contrasting control styles and firing abilities with regard to how they affect the game is fascinating. An unforgiving game, Berserk has you shooting a variety of robots as they shoot at you, typically immediately after you enter their line of fire. Take too long and you’re chased down by Evil Otto, a deranged smiley face that cannot be killed. It’s an entertaining game with shifting wall patterns, vicious attacks, and a gameplay loop that is surprisingly satisfying. The early synthesized speech used in the game adds to player immersion too with a variety of phrases. As one of the first games to use any synthesized speech, Berserk is a technical marvel that very much stands the test of time.
Also included is Frenzy, the sequel to Berserk. While it doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, Frenzy is fun in its own right and a solid game, but the real gems in this collection are the Berserk versions, Save Mary, Super Bug, Atari Video Cube, and Aquaventure, and Red Baron. That’s not a bad list of games in addition to all the lore, artwork, and video clips you’ll pick up with the Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari. At only $8, you’re getting a lot of additional content that noticeably expands Atari 50 without breaking the bank. Normally we’d also go into the graphics and sound of the game, but in this case, original Atari games aren’t all that fancy and we’ve already talked about the GUI. It is neat to be able to tinker with the video display settings and add or subtract screen borders, but none of those settings is revolutionary, although they are extremely smoothly implemented here.
All things considered, while Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari is small in comparison to the main game, the amount of content packed into this DLC is quite high and it’s more than enjoyable to learn about the history of Atari in even more detail directly from the people that were there. Being able to play that content as you learn about it is fun and intuitive too and if every game isn’t a winner, there are still enough that are to more than justify this excellent expansion to Atari 50. If you’re trying to decide whether to grab the expansion, don’t hesitate, it’s worth your time and you’ll be sneaking back to revisit this new enhancement to your Atari collection for years to come!
This review is based on a digital copy of the Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari DLC provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Atari 50 and Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari are also available on Playstation 5, Xbox, and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.