| Title | Atari 10-in-1 Games System | |
| ESRB Rating | Everyone | |
| Developer | Infogrames, Atari | |
| Publisher | Jakk’s Pacific | |
| Release Date | November 2005? | |
| Platform | Any TV with RCA inputs | |
| Genre | Arcade |
Atari has had some financial troubles in the past years – the company trademark sold from company to company over the years until it was finally snatched up by Infogrames, which has used the Atari license to publish many games, including the Unreal franchise. Infogrames set up a licensing agreement with Jakk’s Pacific, makers of several toy electronics, to publish a nostalgic Atari 2600 game system, ready for any standard TV.
Overall, it can’t really compete with the present console market in terms of gaming experience and has a number of shortcomings including touchy controls, a limited software library, and insufficient multiplayer support—definitely not a 360 killer. However, it is dirt cheap.
The unit comes completely intact: everything you need to play is in one piece. The reset, select, and start buttons are integrated into the base, as well as a power switch and red power LED. The video and mono audio cable are also permanently attached to the joystick’s base. The game system is powered by 4 AAA batteries (not included), which are inserted into a compartment on the bottom of the base. The batteries make the base a little deeper and the weight a little heavier than an original Atari joystick. Other than that, this has the same nostalgic ergonomics of the original Atari joystick (horrible though they may be).
The unit includes 10 games that the maker describes as “classic.” Classic or no, I must admit that the games were like nothing I had ever played before. The unit takes a few seconds to “boot up” when the power switch is turned on, which then presents a splash screen followed by a selection menu with all 10 games. The games are selected by using the joystick. Once a game is selected, the user is then presented with a short synopsis of the game and instructions. Pressing the lone fire button skips past this screen to start the game.
Once in the game the user must start the game in the same way as the original Atari 2600 – either press Start to begin at the default settings and difficulty, or press the Select button to toggle through different game modes. Once your mode is selected, pressing Start starts the game. All games are controlled using the 8-way joystick (replaced in today’s consoles by the D-pad) and a single red Fire button. The fire button feels very clicky, and the joystick responds with a little pressure in each direction. You don’t actually feel the stick move – it feels rather stiff, but responds well. The pressure and leverage of the stick makes the base want to tilt, so the player should have a death-grip on the base if they don’t want this “console” it to come flying out of their hands.
Here’s a snippet from the Jakk’s Pacific website:
The award-winning Plug It In & Play TV Games™ products are gaming systems that contain multiple games in one single controller and featuring today’s hottest videogame and entertainment licenses. All that is needed are batteries and a TV — no videogame consoles are required. Simply plug the TV Games™ unit into the A/V jacks of any standard television set, turn it on and play! The lightweight, compact, all-inclusive controller houses a combination of videogames with all of the hardware and software built right in. This technology allows gaming fans to enjoy a number of videogames with just one single purchase.
Here is a breakdown of the 10 games in the order that they are listed on the console’s menu, which appears to be a random order.
In Adventure you must run around a labyrinthine world while using objects to collect a chalice and return it to the yellow castle. This game actually uses clipping as a gameplay device, with objects occasionally lodging themselves within the walls. There are dragons, but don’t worry, you can find a sword that wishes it were a crossbow. Touch a dragon with the sword and poof! It dies. If you don’t have a sword and a dragon gets close enough to you he will totally freak out and eat you. I felt bad killing the dragon because, hey, the poor thing’s just hungry. The game, while more varied that some offered here, doesn’t ultimately make sense because if you find the sword then the three dragons can be killed easily and it will just be matter of time before you find and return the chalice (The game engine could have easily been adapted for an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade license). One point in the game’s favor is a maze that is only partially visible and has confusing colors, making it the forerunner for my favorite Doom 3 game mechanic.
Asteroids works fairly well because the gameplay is kept simple, and the controls work all right. Rotate. Shoot. Rotate. Shoot. Rotate. Shoot. Thrust. Shoot. Rotate. Teleport. AH, teleport. DFHJFSDG DFGTELEPORTWREHYFRGDG!!!!!!!! Explode. It’s fun, even though it only portrays space as two-dimensional, clearly contradicting NASA engineers who are actual rocket scientists and should know what they’re talking about.
If Pong is like kicking a ball back and forth and trying to get it by the other person, then Breakout is like trying to get the soccer ball past a balsa wood Great Wall of China. Yes, it will crumble, but it’s still a big obstacle and inexplicably returns the ball to you with greater force, which I believe is another violation of accepted scientific norms. Breakout would be more fun if, after hitting the little ball at the wall about five times, it didn’t reach mach speeds. Also, the touchy joystick makes it all too possible to “Matrix” around the ball and completely dodge it. This is the first game that really emphasizes the controller’s non-precision, making playing a frustrating experience.
Centipede is latest attempt to adapt Starship Troopers to video game form, and it succeeds in keeping the novel’s intense social and political commentary intact. You get to shoot a manic centipede, a drunken spider, and a run-of-the-mill scorpion. The controller works find in this game, because you usually just want to get away from something, rather than move a specific distance in any given direction. The various game modes don’t offer a lot variety and the gameplay gets old quickly.
Circus Atari is a stupid game. It doesn’t have clowns, or monkeys, or elephant dung, but it also doesn’t have tigers or motorcycles driving inside spheres, three things that might have improved it. This is perhaps the only game in this collection to feature actual physics in the gameplay. You must move a see-saw so that one of the acrobats will land on one side propelling the other one up into balloon things. The realistic physics mean that the only way to get the men to fly high enough is to land a guy at the very end of the see-saw. This, however, is extremely difficult, because of the twitchy joystick. The most enjoyable part of this game is seeing the acrobats go splat, which was perversely funny.
A surprisingly deep game that actually features three dimensions! Just not all at once. When the game starts, you are in a top-down perspective (at least it feels that way) solar system where you will manually have to keep your spaceship from drifting into the sun. What, no futuristic subroutine (maybe using punch cards?) to take care of this mundane task? From there you can land on planets and fly up/down left/right and again try to not let gravity pull you into the ground. There. That’s the game. Oh, you can also shoot aliens, which is an exclusive feature of this game.
Missile Command is an extraordinary, epic, spectacular human drama set upon the doomed landscape of humanity’s future. It’s also one of the more enjoyable games included in the set. You fire a cannon thing at bomb things that are falling on your town things. It’s surprisingly cinematic, and the explosions of your poor settlements look cool. I shed a tear whenever I completely lost one of them. All-in-all, it’s not a very optimistic game; it could easily been called Doom if that name wasn’t taken more than a decade earlier.
# Pong
This game suffers from the same problems Breakout has: twitchy controls. I need to move the paddle up to hit the ball? Oh, too bad, I just shot way past it. I nicknamed the paddle Neo and every time I messed up I yelled at the screen “YOU MOVE LIKE THEY DO!” If you can get a handle on the controls, then the game will be absurdly easy. The AI is very straightforward, so once you know what angle to hit the ball, you should be able to win handily. This game needs a two-player mode to be worthwhile.
First of all, this is not a good volleyball game. Second of all, the girls—if the pink stick figures are in fact girls—are not as hot as the ones in Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Thus, what’s the point?
Yar’s Revenge is the most comprehensive fly (as in the insect) simulator released this century. Hands down. It has no challengers. In fact, it might be alone in its genre. It’s a combination of Breakout and… a game involving a mega-gun thing. It was kind of hard to figure out what to do, and once I did it was just boring. I just couldn’t get into it. Sorry.
Of the 10 games, maybe I would consider playing Asteroids and Missile command sometime in the future. And maybe Circus Atari, because I like hating it so much. You’d probably get the most fun out of this if you brought it out at a party with other gamers, cheered each other on and passed the controller around. As a solo activity, there just really isn’t a lot of gameplay. But, you must also take into account the bargain price and weigh how much use you think you’ll get out of it.
Oddly enough, when I let my dad play with it a little he seemed to have a pretty good time. I think there was even a gleam of recognition in his eyes, but I don’t know what to make of that.
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