I love classic arcade collections, but you don’t see them as much anymore.  Nowadays, game companies opt to sell you each game separately to download, rather than put a bunch on one disc.  So when I found out that there were two games on the PS4 that were collections of Atari arcade and 2600 titles, I nabbed them right away when I got my PS4.  And since I like writing about them, I also wrote four blogs about each of the games in these collections over at GamerDad.com.  Please click on the links if you want to read about them in more detail.

The Atari Flashback Classics collections have a pretty decent amount of games.  They also have nice extras like scans of each game’s instruction booklets, pictures of the arcade cabinets, and a dashboard with the 2600 console before you start a game so you can see easier the game modes you can switch to and stuff.  But I do wish they would’ve gone the extra mile like the Activision Anthology on the PS2 did.  That 2600 collection had all of what’s listed above, plus they had old TV commercials, virtual patches you could earn, and they had 80’s music in the background as you played.  Plus I just think that most of Activision’s 2600 offerings were more fun. So if you’ve never played Activision Anthology, you really should! Anyway, let’s take a look at the games on these Atari collections.

The Games of Atari Flashback Classics vol. 1, Part 1

For the first game, I talked about the arcade games as well as the 2600 ports of those games, so I wouldn’t be repeating myself later.  The arcade games on vol. 1 include Black Widow, Centipede, Millipede, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Space Duel, Tempest, Warlords, and Pong.

The Games of Atari Flashback Classics vol. 1, Part 2

Part 2 of the first game I just went over the rest of the 2600 games on vol. 1.  But I only went over them briefly for two reasons.  One, there were so many games.  And two, I don’t really have many memories playing on the 2600 as a kid because I didn’t have one.  We had an Apple ][+ as our first family computer, and it played much better games than the 2600 did.  My first home game console was actually the Atari 5200.  I know the 5200 gets a lot of flak now, but when I was a kid I didn’t know any better and I loved it.  In fact, when the NES came out I didn’t want to get it right away because I was still perfectly happy playing Pengo on my 5200.  When they do these Atari collections, I wish they wouldn’t focus so much on 2600 games.  I would like to see them branch out to 5200 and even 7800 games in their collections, too!

The Games of Atari Flashback Classics vol. 2, Part 1

So for volume 2 I repeated the process.  I first talked about the arcade games and their 2600 ports.  For this we had Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Major Havoc, Missile Command, Red Baron, Sprint, and Super Breakout.  One small complaint I have about the arcade selection is that I wish they could’ve included some games from Atari in the mid to late 80’s, rather than just ones in the late 70’s/early 80’s.  Stuff like Blasteroids, Marble Madness, Gauntlet, and RoadBlasters.  I liked those games.

The Games of Atari Flashback Classics vol. 2, Part 2

And last is the rest of the 2600 batch from vol. 2.  I hope you enjoyed reading about these games.  In the comments section, let me know YOUR favorite classic Atari games and memories.  That’s all for now, later!  --Cary