Title: Atari Arcade 1
System: Evercade
Price: $19.99
Release Date: Late 2021

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Prelude

This set of Atari classics is a somber one, folks. Until the Atari Super Pocket hits stores a month from now, this marks the final Atari product made for the Evercade, and I can kinda see why with how there are some odd aspects to this product.

This was made back when Atari had different ownership (the bad Pong Stock/NFT era Atari), and to be quite honest I much, much prefer the current ownership of that company, since it brought us great games like Quantum Recharged and Atari 50. The Super Pocket appears to have some seriously good gems on it, so maybe those will be handled better than how the old Atari handled things here? Well, we’ll find out soon, but for now let’s go over this lone volume of Atari Arcade classics.

Presentation

We’re back with another set of Arcade games, and for the most part they’re emulated as well as they can. These are early era Atari games after all, so you’d hope something like say, Skydiver wouldn’t be too hard to emulate to begin with.

However, the two earliest games in this collection have weird quirks to them that lead to their representations here being rather strange. Night Driver and Pong were made before dedicated ROM technology was really standardized, and thus as in Atari 50, they’re recreations, rather than being an ordinary ROM. This means Pong looks very sharp and looks like you’d expect it to, but doesn’t play well at all. Night Driver also looks incredibly sharp, with the car looking waaaaay better than you’d expect an old game to look, but once you realize it’s just recreating the old game with a higher res piece of art, the way these two look make a lot more sense.

The other games are typical ROM titles and look and emulate mostly as you’d expect, though Asteroids Deluxe uses the background from deluxe, but not the main game, for… Odd reasons I’ll go into shortly. A lot of these games were made with Trackballs or spinners, but that doesn’t impact how they look or sound at all and here that aspect is completely accurate across all but three of the games.

Gameplay

We have some oddballs, a false advertisement and some true scorechasing gems to enjoy here, so let’s get into it!

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PONG– Debated as one of the worst games on Evercade. But why? It’s the 1972 game that changed coin-op as we know it! Well, that’s because this recreation just sucks big time. You immediately start in a game upon booting this up, and you have a CPU player to duel with.

You didn’t have a CPU player in the original Pong. To make things annoying, this CPU is pretty tough. You can still score against it, as I managed to five times, but it’ll be pretty fast and the reproduction of the paddle control is pretty middling here. Thus, this CPU will always be faster than you unless you hit the ball at an angle and it misses the corners.

Oh yeah, the balls can sometimes phase through said corners. That’s how I got my points against the CPU and sometimes missed some of the balls that should have hit my paddle.

And then upon the CPU hitting 21 points, the game didn’t end, even though I swore it was supposed to. It just kept going and going. That’s about all you can do in this version of Pong, and while I had an OK time playing it with friends from time to time, this is very clearly a bad recreation. Just not well done at all.

Night Driver– This is a game where the main goal is to shift gears, increase your speed and go on for the longest ride you possibly can! Decent fun for a little while, but incredibly simplistic with not much to it. I can’t even compliment it for the scorechasing aspect as it seems to flat out not work here; your final score never records as a high score and it resets to 0 after the game is over, so this has next to no replay value. Junk game.

Canyon Bomber– Now we get to the fun ones! This is a simple game where you drop bombs, clearing out rocks for points as you compete against a CPU or real friend! While the competitive aspect against the CPU is nonexistent, (the CPU is stupid) this is really darn fun with a friend, and even by yourselves when trying to get a new score. For an early game it’s very simple but one I got a kick outta playing for a bit.

Skydiver– This one is weird, but once I got the hang of it I started enjoying it a lot more. Your goal here is to jump out of a plane, open your parachute, and land in your designated zone without crashing or missing it. The closer to the ground you open the chute, the more points you get. A great risk and reward idea!

Sadly, this game can be a bit annoying, since wind is a factor, and if the plane spawns in a spot where the wind won’t cooperate and you don’t notice in time, it’ll be flat out impossible to hit your zone. Every time the plane goes off screen without dropping your guy off, that’ll count as a life loss, so you’ll be losing lives rapidly no matter what you do.

Still, this was incredibly fun to scorechase in, and like Canyon Bomber, it was even more fun with a local friend to play with. I just wish it was less mean with the wind direction.

Super Breakout– A brick breaking classic, but without a way to go faster with the paddle. The paddle speed is OK here, but without a dial controller it isn’t really that accurate at all, and you’ll be missing balls constantly until you get used to it.

I’m just stunned they didn’t add a way to speed up your paddle, as that singlehandedly makes this version a lot less fun to play. All the modes are here, but I barely get much time in them as the ball just zooms by before I can reach it.

Lunar Lander– I never liked this one. You have to land in the right spots to get points, with some spots being riskier than others, but even with how careful I was, I’d explode constantly. Thankfully while playing for this review, I finally got my first successful landing pulled off, probably no doubt thanks to me managing it in Beyond, but I still didn’t find this game all that fun once I did manage to land properly. It just ends up as an incredibly annoying game with a lot of tension I don’t like dealing with. This one I can safely say yu should just play the modern sequel instead.

Asteroids… Deluxe?- Ohhhhhh boy, here we go. The game on this collection I’m disappointed by the most. See, Asteroids is great, but Asteroids Deluxe is better, thanks to the shield system and some slight improvements to the gameplay. So I was eager to check this out when the cart dropped with the VS, and despite the background seeming Deluxe-like, and the cart advertising it as Deluxe, and the box advertising it as deluxe…

…This is just Asteroids. Normal, ordinary Asteroids. So what the hell is this bait and switch for? Well from what I gather it wasn’t on Blaze’s end that this mixup happened; they probably just got the wrong ROM with a weird background and that was that. What confuses me more is the aftermath of this situation.

See, Blaze hardly ever mentioned trying to get the real game patched in. I don’t think they even promised to do such a thing. A lot of store websites still list this as having Deluxe on it, but that’s just outright false. Blaze’s own site for this cart on the other hand does properly label it as Asteroids, so kudos on them for that, but why the cart itself doesn’t, or why they’re seemingly so shy to fix this is beyond me. Some gag order from old Atari? Some weird contract nonsense?

Either way, it really irks me that I bought this for one of my favorite Atari arcade games, only to end up getting a pretty good, but not as good version of said game instead. And we’ve been three years past this launch, so I’m confident in saying they’ll never fix this messup. A pure travesty, and big shame on everyone involved in this false advertisement.

But yeah, Asteroids. Good, but not as good as deluxe. Decent scorechaser, can’t go wrong with it. I wish the vector graphics weren’t so blurry here, and I feel they could have been reproduced in a better fashion but the game is still fun. I just can’t play it much due to how bitter I still am.

Centipede– A fun vertical shooter! Take out the centipede and all the pesky insects and rack up points. Simplistic, fun, and to the point. A great TATE mode game for the EXP, and while Millipede is far better, this original isn’t a bad game by any means. Controls well on Evercade despite being a trackball game.

Missile Command– Another trackball game that controls well! Target the incoming missiles before they blow everything up, and manage your ammo wisely. Pretty darn fun and moreso than I remember the original being. I prefer the modern Recharged games myself, but this original game holds up surprisingly well, and it doesn’t take too long for the game to get frantic and fun. A great scorechaser, and a classic of the 80s for good reason. Maybe a bit too frantic by the fourth stage.

Millipede– The best game on the cart, bar none. This is Centipede but bigger and better in every way. You have wonderful bombs to set off for that sweet score bonus, and more scoring opportunities in general. It may seem redundant with Centipede here, but this is just a lot more fun and every time I boot it up, I can’t help but keep trying to play until I get on that local leaderboard again. Controls well with the Evercade, just like the other two Trackball games.

Liberator– I forgot all about this game before prepping for this review, but wow, it managed to surprise me. This is like Missile Command, except you’re the Atari Force defending planets from bases with deadly weapons stationed on them. You gotta take out the bases and their fire, while also defending your cannons from being disabled!

A pretty darn fun game with great scorechasing opportunities, and even the option to start later in the game, so you can get right to the frantic, fun stages that require your full attention to have a chance at surviving. Controls pretty well here on Evercade too, even though I think this is also a trackball game.

Warlords– My second favorite of the cart! Imagine Breakout, but with four players fighting each other. Don’t have four players? Well the CPUs are a decent challenge to deal with, and this even has enough scoring elements to be pretty fun! Despite being a dial game, I found the controls here much better than Breakout, and was even able to clear out a wave of opponents just fine.

Being able to catch and fire the ball back makes this game a blast to play, and if you play with a buddy like I did, this can be a really great party game. Easily one of the best 4 player games on the VS as of now.

Crystal Castles– A decent trackball game where you control Bentley Bear as he goes for his crystals, trying to defeat an evil witch getting in his way. This one I liked a ton on Atari 50 and other compilations, but I didn’t click with it here, and I think that comes down to how the trackball sensitivity is here. It’s too slow!

You can still beat the stages fine as taking your time is a valid way to clear them, but nothing made me more thrilled than being able to rapidly spin the ball to get the hat in stage 4 before the witch could even spawn, and doing that in this version is much harder. The speed is just completely gone, and that makes this game a lot more boring to me. The other trackball games handled the transition OK here, but this one suffered the most. Still decent, but far from the best place to play it.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Atari Arcade 1 is a mixed bag. You have some real gems like Missile Command, Liberator and Warlords, some earlier titles like Skydiver and Canyon Bomber, but also some dull games like Lunar Lander or Crystal Castles. Then you have the false advertising mess of Asteroids Deluxe, which I argue stains this cartridge the most, except the bad versions of Pong and Night Driver exist, and at least ordinary Asteroids is still Asteroids.

All in all, a compilation that I feel could have been way better, if the real Deluxe was included, the versions of Pong/ND were better, and if maybe one game like Night Driver or Lunar Lander was swapped out for Tempest or Major Havoc. I’m bummed this is the final Atari cart we have at the moment, but hopefully the Super Pocket is a sign of better things to come. Hey, maybe that’ll at least have a better PONG…?

I give Atari Arcade 1 a 5 out of 10.