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Atari Vault Hits Steam, Play 100 Classic Games On PC (slashgear.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article on SlashGear: Classic and retro video game fans will be eager to hear that Atari Vault has just landed on PC via Steam, making it the easiest way possible to enjoy 100 of the most iconic arcade and home console titles from the early generation of gaming. This eliminates the need to use emulators and ROMs to enjoy games like Asteroids, Centipede, Pitfall, and Pong, not to mention it being cheaper than buying several included titles individually.
Atari, Namco, and others released most of their popular old-school titles (in "anthology" form) for the PS/2 years ago. If I remember correctly, every anthology disk I bought was less than $15 - and I think a couple were under $10.
#DeleteChrome
That comes off as kind of weird, really. Surely they could have slapped together some kind of Mac or Linux rendition in 23 minutes.
People have been pirating music for years and yet Amazon and iTunes still manage to make money selling music. It's hard keeping the honest people honest when the only legitimate way to play these games is by using machines that haven't been sold for years.
is to play the extinct Atari and non-Atari games that will never make it to the "Atari 100" list.
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BMO
I'll keep my money then and buy weed with it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
[...] Asteroids, Centipede, Pitfall, and Pong [...]
Pitfall wasn't an Atari title, it was an Activision title. Not sure why it got included in this list.
Atari Vault only includes games created by the company. Classic 2600 games from companies like Activision, Namco, Parker Brothers, and others aren't here, including Berzerk, Empire Strikes Back, Frogger, Joust, Pitfall, Q-Bert, and Pole Position.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3048362/windows/the-atari-vault-hits-steam-with-100-classic-games-to-scratch-your-retro-2600-itch.html
I already have 'Atari: 80 Classic Games in One!' in my Steam library, which appears to have been removed from the Steam store 6 months ago. https://steamdb.info/app/2790/
Have you seen the system requirements for this?
Processor: 2.0 Ghz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL 2.0 or higher compatible
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 1 GB available space
What sort of bloat have they put into it?
I actually installed the Steam client and set up an account for this. I was whipping out my credit card to make the $17 purchase... then I saw that it's only available on Windows. Oh, well. Hopefully they'll port it to Linux before too long. Or even OS X.
Your paddle wearing down isn't 'bitrot'. Please don't erode the meaning of words on Slashdot.
But I thought they'd managed to recover the code from its burial in the desert, dammit.
I guess the rest of us will be sticking with our emulators for the time being.
And does it differ from:
Atari: 80 Classic Games in One!
Which I got on Steam several years ago. The store page is long-gone but it's still in my library and substantially the same program.
Apparently, plan to release a linux port after they fix some things.
Reference:
https://steamcommunity.com/app...
That's bullshit. That's the game everyone want to play.
You need to add:
- "Illegally" to the first part.
- "Legally" to the second part.
It may not mean anything to you, but some people will pay for that kind of thing if the product is available.
Cry me a river.
Steam is as Linux-friendly a distributor you'll find anywhere. But this is the reality of PC gaming on Steam:
96% of Steam gamers run Windows. 34% 64 Bit Win 10. 3% OSX. 1% Linux. 0.4% Ubuntu. 0.1% Mint. Steam Hardware & Software Survey: February 2016
Wow, 100 Atari games?!? For only $15?!? The easiest way possible?
And here I was thinking that the 500+ free Atari games playable for free in your browser on archive.org was the easiest possible way.
well, consider a case of asteroids vs. blasteroids.
and this is the most generous comparison on games aging on something that has ATARI slapped on it, too.
blasteroids is a 1987 arcade game, an asteroids clone/sequel, with basically vga grade graphics, some sample music and fm sound and such. as a game it doesn't look too bad and could be something released for mobile this year labeled as "pixel graphics". amiga/atari st versions of it look passable in comparison with the arcade.
asteroids original is a line graphics game, same controls and all that, but something with that style of graphics would not have been released this year for anything. someone with no apprecation for the graphics style/technicalities of it would just complain of headache. the 2600 version of it is just awful.
what's particularly shitty about this compilation is that it's all late 70's/early 80's stuff - early arcades and 2600 .also, I would imagine the target audience having had bought the very few good titles on the 100 list already SEVERAL TIMES on ALREADY RELEASED COLLECTIONS that have bee on the market for OVER TWENTY FUCKING YEARS - with the exception that those other collections usually included some of the better aged later titles. this compilation has a strict cutoff point of: "Would this game concept as it is have sold in 1986"?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Nolan Bushnell once said his biggest regret was selling Atari to Warner when he did. "We could have been Apple and Nintendo under one roof," he mused.
Valve have been pushing into the console space, and they've been doing it very persistently, with Steam OS and Steam Machines and Steam Link and the Steam Controller, not to mention their developer tools. They're encroaching on the console world and also trying to break away from dependence on Microsoft. None of this stuff has been a runaway hit yet, but they just keep hammering away at it, and there's no indication that they're going to back off anytime soon. And somehow it reminds me of Atari back in the Good Old Days, before everything spiraled down the toilet.
And that reminds me. . . Is there NO GAME anywhere on Steam that's anything like Tempest 2000? (Or Typhoon 2001?)
You also need to add "unethical" to the second part since the rights owner is clearly exploiting the copyright system far beyond the purpose which justifies it's existence.
Furthermore, it's not strictly unethical to download ROMs, and it's not even illegal in all jurisdictions. Cases can be made both that the originals are out of production and no longer deserving protections, and that owners of the original products have every right to acquire additional copies for themselves.
AFAIK Dungeon Master wasn't published by Atari. It was from FTL Games. You might give Legend of Grimrock a spin.
The other great game from FTL was Oids, which was like an addictive hybrid of Gravitar and Choplifter. And now there is Graviton 2, which I haven't bought yet, but it looks like a near-clone of Oids.
It doesn't help that current music sucks to a large degree.
I think the vector graphics games actually aged decently. Take Tempest for example. It looks stylized and neat.
I don't know if I could play some of the 2600 games though. I have enough trouble getting beyond the look of C64 and Spectrum games as it is.
They've had an ipad/iphone version called Atari Greatest Hits with the same content for much less for some time. I assume there's an android version also.
All I want is Kaboom! and a USB paddle controller :(