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Activision Anthology Adds Homebrew Games, Classics Lauded

Posted by simoniker on from the hurrah-for-yesterday dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for their review of Activision Anthology for the GameBoy Advance, as the compilation of Atari 2600 titles such as Pitfall! and River Raid goes portable, following a previously released PlayStation 2 version. The creators of the compilation "recruited Bradford W. Mott, the creator of the personal computer Stella Atari emulator, to write the underlying code" for the anthology, and, as IGN Pocket points out, "there are also several homebrew 2600 games included in this pack", including Skeleton+ and Climber 5. There's a lengthy thread on the compilation over at AtariAge, and elsewhere, Slate has passionate words to impart about classic games and how "restrictions... inspire creativity", and Yahoo/Reuters has similarly nostalgic musings about the recent retro revival.

27 comments

  1. Beware of Bugs by 2Flower · · Score: 3, Informative

    Initial reports from the gameboy version of Activision Anthology say it's got a number of obvious bugs, and the colors are kind of off due to the frontlighting / nofrontlighting depending on which Gameboy you have.

    That said, the Playstation 2 version absolutely rocks. If it had the score-saving and original badge requirements the GBA version has, it'd be perfect.

    1. Re:Beware of Bugs by Robmonster · · Score: 1

      You cant save your high-scores on the Ps2 Version!!?!

      Thats insane.

      --
      I have no sig yet I must scream.
    2. Re:Beware of Bugs by 8tim8 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Initial reports from the gameboy version of Activision Anthology say it's got a number of obvious bugs...

      Which bugs are you referring to? I read the AtariAge Forums and saw some references to the GB slowing down slightly in three games, and multi-player functioning oddly (everything is displayed on the primary GB screen while the secondary is blank). Is there anything else? They don't sound like show-stoppers to me, especially with 50+ games on the cartridge.

    3. Re:Beware of Bugs by Doctor_Jest · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nope, and that is one minor missetep in an otherwise great console compilation.

      Apparently, according to the developers, it was pulled at the last minute (along with online components that would allow you to get more games...hence the empty spaces in the rotating rack). Poor marketing decision, but not mind-numbingly terrible, considering the only way to save your highscores in the good ol' days was to take a photo of your screen.

      Crumudgeongamer had an interview with the fellow who worked on the Activision Anthology, as well as the current "Atari 80 Classics" for the PC, and the other Atari revival titles that came out for the PC a couple of years ago. The link escapes me at the moment, but that's where I got the info about online and highscores.

      I still play Activision Anthology almost once a week now after 2 years, and ironically, that's the only PS2 title that's ever kept my interest for that long (I even got frustrated by SSX Tricky on the Level 5 trickbooks. Insane.)

      --
      It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
  2. Misleading Advertising by robbway · · Score: 3, Informative

    This game is pricy at $29.95 MSRP (USD). The Playstation 2 Anthology is only $19.95. Also, the advertising on the box claims that some games like Pitfall 2 and others have never appeared in an anthology before. Many games haven't, but Pitfall 2 is most definitely on the PS2 disc. Bottom line: the reason to buy this must be portability of the Gameboy and/or those home-brew games or you're wasting your money if you're buying another Activision anthology.

    I'll be the first to admit that buying Namco Anthology (Pole Position, Ms Pac Man, Galaga, Galaxian) on Gameboy Advance was a repeat purchase that was incredibly worth it ($12.99 at most stores!) for the portability factor. Not to mention it keeps the kids busy.

  3. Better graphics on the primordial retro games by AtariAmarok · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The older games had better graphics. Hold on a sec, don't reach for that troll button just yet!

    What I mean is that a lot of the games (not by choice) were easier to look at. Too many of the more recent games have gone "muddy low-contrast black and brown" making things rather hard to see. The worst I would say is Doom for the N-64: all dark brown and black with a few flashes of red and green here and there. Now, while it wasn't realistic, there was no annoying and pointless urge to aim a flashlight at the screen when you played old Atari-2600 "Adventure" or "Breakout"

    Not all modern games are this way, and the "cel-animation style" trend is a refreshing step toward clarity, and recent "Final Fantasy" games appear to be stepping out of the Dark Ages, achieving leading-edge "realism" without the darkness and fuzziness.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Better graphics on the primordial retro games by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 3, Informative

      What I mean is that a lot of the games (not by choice) were easier to look at. Too many of the more recent games have gone "muddy low-contrast black and brown" making things rather hard to see. The worst I would say is Doom for the N-64: all dark brown and black with a few flashes of red and green here and there. Now, while it wasn't realistic, there was no annoying and pointless urge to aim a flashlight at the screen when you played old Atari-2600 "Adventure" or "Breakout"

      What you must realize is that Doom is a bad example, being a 10-year-old game with a limited colour pallete caused by it's original platform's limitations at the time of creation. Most of the console versions of Doom were not much more than ports, with little to no enhancements (except, of course, to get them to work with the controllers). The same could be said about Quake, despite having steeper requirements than Doom. Q2 and Q3 had much richer colour palletes than either Doom or Q1. Many other games, even from the same time period, had better diversity in the colours used.

      Not all modern games are this way, and the "cel-animation style" trend is a refreshing step toward clarity, and recent "Final Fantasy" games appear to be stepping out of the Dark Ages, achieving leading-edge "realism" without the darkness and fuzziness.

      It's all a matter of the style of the game. The dark and dingy look was part of the game's look and feel in most cases, and if you didn't like it, it just meant that you didn't like that game. Even FF games from the same time period as Doom had a brighter look to them, before 'realism' started creeping in on them. Cel shading is just another look made possible by technology, and has just started to be used appropriately within the last year or so.

      The Atari 2600 stuff was limited by the system's pallete. Doom and Quake were limited by the number of colours you could display while maintaining real-time play (meaning that even though a computer was capable of displaying more colours than an Atari 2600, you still could only display so many colours on the screen before your framerate went to hell while trying to render 3D images). Current games rarely run into problems with the number of colours displayed on the screen, and Q3 was among the first to actually show the usefulness of fully-realized 32-bit colour. Now, of course, John Carmack is talking about pushing on to 64-bit colour, which currently isn't supported by most hardware, and could offer who knows what kind of accuracy in displayed images.

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
    2. Re:Better graphics on the primordial retro games by WorselWorsel · · Score: 1
      "What you must realize is that Doom is a bad example, being a 10-year-old game with a limited colour pallete caused by it's original platform's limitations at the time of creation. Most of the console versions of Doom were not much more than ports, with little to no enhancements (except, of course, to get them to work with the controllers)."

      Doom 64 wasn't a direct port. It had entirely new maps, a few new enemies, and two new weapons (some hell lazer and the Doom II double shotgun).

    3. Re:Better graphics on the primordial retro games by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 1

      Doom 64 wasn't a direct port. It had entirely new maps, a few new enemies, and two new weapons (some hell lazer and the Doom II double shotgun).

      That's all nice, but were the graphics any different? Adding in some weapons, maps, and enemies doesn't really change the appearance of the game, nor the way the game plays. Overall, though, since I never had an N64, nor play many FPS games on consoles, I really wouldn't know beyond the fact that every Doom port I've seen has been basically the same as the original (excepting the modifications made to the Doom source release made precisely to add new features).

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
    4. Re:Better graphics on the primordial retro games by WorselWorsel · · Score: 1

      The graphics were reworked. It had totally new textures and revised monster and item sprites. It also had anti-aliasing on most textures, an animated sky, environmental fog, and objests that faded out in the distance rather than just disappearing. It also had some of the exclusive Doom II enemies added.

    5. Re:Better graphics on the primordial retro games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most monitors/tv sets have brightness/contrast settings you know ;-)

    6. Re:Better graphics on the primordial retro games by DeadScreenSky · · Score: 1

      I completely agree with you. Don't forget all of the weird anti-aliasing issues you have in many current PS2 games, or the N64-era textures Nintendo likes to use on their Gamecube games. Poor low-res textures in general are really making many modern games simply ugly.

      --
      There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
  4. It's just so cool by gasaraki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that 7 year olds of today are still playing games like Pitfall (and hopefully enjoying them). Just goes to show that simple games like these can be just as entertaining as the multi-million-dollar budget extravaganzas we get today. Graphics can only really get you so far.

    1. Re:It's just so cool by SuperMo0 · · Score: 1

      Gameplay will always be king.

  5. A little disappointing... by sammaffei · · Score: 1

    I do love the anthology, but, the emulation is somewhat slow.

    I mean games like H.E.R.O. (my personal favorite) and Pitfall! make the slowdown quite noticable.

    I thought the GBA would be fast enough to handle Atari 2600 at %100 speed.

    --

    Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.

  6. Emulators becoming a stepping stone? by SuperMo0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The fact that they hired the author of Stella intrigues me. If they made a SNES anthology for Nintendo's next system (hey, could happen), would they hire, say, the ZSNES developers to help code the emulator for it? It seems that emulators are becoming a stepping stone to getting into the video game business.

    1. Re:Emulators becoming a stepping stone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Nintendo probably wouldn't.... whereas the Atari specifications, secret docs, and what have you, have long been scattered, Nintendo has all the old docs on the SNES right there. They've also gone over them recently in order to port games to the Gameboy Advance.

      I'm sure the developer of ZSNES would be the first to acknowledge that what Nintendo knows about the SNES just isn't out there in the emulation community. Moreover, they don't WANT it out there, so hiring outside emulator developers would mean a contract so restrictive that it killed off development on whichever emulator was involved.

    2. Re:Emulators becoming a stepping stone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then again, the homebrew genesis emulator for Dreamcast seems to work better than the one that Sega created for the Smash Pack...makes ya think, don't it!

    3. Re:Emulators becoming a stepping stone? by robbway · · Score: 1

      If they made a SNES anthology for Nintendo's next system

      Actually, good news! The GBA is playing many ported SNES games already. The only bad news is they're charging full price again.

      However, on the Gamecube, I Nintendo has released several Zelda games that appear to be emulated versions of N64 (Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask)and NES games (Zelda, Zelda II). Not to mention e-reader emulation on GBA and Animal Crossing, as well as Metroid Prime (it has Metroid in it).

    4. Re:Emulators becoming a stepping stone? by n0wak · · Score: 1

      I dunno about SNES, but they already have a decent NES emulator for the GameCube: think Zelda collection, the Metroid in Metroid Prime, and all those many, many, wonderful games in Animal Crossing (which alone are worth the price of admission). I'm pretty sure they all use the same core engine, and I'm quite confident saying that it was likely built in-house. Now if only they could release a real NES anthology... You hear that Nintendo!?

    5. Re:Emulators becoming a stepping stone? by SuperMo0 · · Score: 1

      It's been the subject of many a discussion with my siblings of how many NES games Nintendo could fit on one GCN disc...

  7. Re:Misleading Advertising - nope. by Kris_J · · Score: 1
    This game is pricy at $29.95 MSRP (USD). The Playstation 2 Anthology is only $19.95. Also, the advertising on the box claims that some games like Pitfall 2 and others have never appeared in an anthology before. Many games haven't, but Pitfall 2 is most definitely on the PS2 disc
    I think that the Activision Anthology for the PS2 and the Activision Anthology for the GBA are considered to be different flavours of the same release and therefore both contain the claim that Pitfall 2, amongst other titles, has never been released before. If a Gamecube version of "Activision Anthology" is released (has it been?) it will probably make the same claim.
  8. Re:Beware of Bugs - nope by Kris_J · · Score: 2, Informative

    That multiplayer thing isn't a fault either I might add, it's just the way they went and I don't see the problem. I've been monitoring the product on a number of forums and I've seen no mention of "bugs", only that some titles may be up to 20% slower than they should be, and that only seems to affect gameplay in one title, H.E.R.O. -- which is reported to be too damn easy, but we'll see.

  9. Re:Beware of Bugs - nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't see the problem in the second player not being able to see his screen? Wow...

  10. Another Fundamental Truth: by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

    "Slate has passionate words to impart about classic games and how "restrictions... inspire creativity""

    Well, we all already know the converse is true, that bloatware inspires crappy games...

    Time to go download the latest version of DirectX!

  11. Re:Beware of Bugs - nope by Kris_J · · Score: 1

    No, the two of you just look at the same screen. It's not like Atari 2600 multiplayer games are for LANs or anything, both players are on the one screen at all times. It's even more of a non-problem if you use a GB Player.

  12. Re:Beware of Bugs - nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But, then what is the point of using two GBAs? Why not just use the one and pass it back and forth?