Atari has announced its interactive game experience Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration will release on Nintendo Switch.
This promises to deliver “a robust interactive history of Atari and the creative individuals who set the video game industry in motion told through a combination of classic and modern games, videos, and unpublished interviews.”
Digital Eclipse is the developer behind it, creating an experience that will let you explore an interactive linear timeline to learn about more than 90 games organised by era – accompanied with early development sketches, hardware schematics, internal memos, images, videos and other “artifacts,” many of which are accessible for the first time.
Emulating eight different Atari hardware platforms in one package, behind each game are the stories about what was happening at the company, what went into the creation of the games, and the hardware they ran on – told by the people who were there.
“We cannot think of a better way to celebrate our golden anniversary than to share the decades of fun, innovation, and talent with our fans worldwide through this truly remarkable collection,” enthuses Atari CEO Wade Rosen. “To say it’s an honor to bring this collection to life is an understatement. I speak for everyone at Atari when I say we are elated to share this new Atari experience with the world as our 50th-anniversary celebration.”
The publisher has outlined the game’s key features as below:
- Artifacts: A rich collection of discoverable photos, sketches, early marketing materials, and even classic console schematics are accessed by uncovering relevant points on the interactive Atari timeline, all of which put Atari’s library of games in historical context.
- Video Games by Era: Explore the Atari timeline and unlock games across decades as you learn the background of each, including their inception and the talented individuals behind the projects on six platforms: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Atari Jaguar, and Atari Lynx.
- Bonus Games: Unlocked through completing challenges and uncovering certain Artifacts, bonus games include dozens of newly finished “never-completed” or unreleased games from the 1980s, experimental new versions of classic titles, and mash-ups that marry beloved early-era titles into a single, fluid experience.
- Expert Insight Through Storytelling: The collection is outfitted with a handful of various never-before-seen interviews with Atari leadership, past and present, as well as other prolific names in the games industry; complemented, of course, by the video game developers who helped raise Atari to become an industry icon.
- Reimagined and Revisited: The team at Digital Eclipse created five new games for the collection that reimagine some of the most beloved Atari classics or play on classic game themes, including Haunted House, Neo Breakout, Yars’ Revenge, Vctr Sctr, and the infamously never-finished Airworld.
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration will release at retail and digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch worldwide in November 2022.
