Atari Mania Review
It’s amazing how Atari With so many hits that he has had as a company, he still manages to still launch games. This is how they bring us to the title Atari Mania, a collection of microgames taken from the classic Atari 2600 titles. But it’s not just that they just put those old games on us, it’s the way they knew how to mix the gameplay of each game to give us a hybrid with many possibilities.
Atari Mania is a self-homage, which has a funny history full of references about the same company and can be considered an attempt to preserve games. They will be around twenty-five Atari games, ranging from Centipede, Pong, Adventure among others.
Another day at the office
The story begins when the main character, known as the Supervisor, begins his day-to-day life in the Atari offices, where his job is to clean, manage and ensure that the arcades offer fun to users.
However, he realizes that the place is riddled with dead pixels sucking in company-created characters. Among the characters to find are Milli from Centipede, Torr from Swordquest and even Pong’s bars. In addition, she discovers who is behind this disaster and must put a stop to it.
The game has two different aspects, one is its level design in which the Supervisor must explore as if it were an old dungeon RPG in the company offices. Along the way, we must make our way through simple puzzles on each floor and complete some tasks. In addition to acquiring objects that will help us on each floor, such as searching for keys, activating switches and cleaning dead pixels through Wario Ware Inc.-style microgames.
The other aspect is that when we enter one of those black spots, we must play quick mini-games of three classic games that will be mixed. While we play, we will advance through squares even if we win or lose until we reach a boss. The sections have a number of boxes that varies between 6, 10, 21 etc., with a health bar that goes down as we lose in those minigames.
fun but unbalanced
What is interesting here is how the gameplay of the titles presented is mixed. To give an example, we started playing Pong, Centipede and Adventure, to later have the protagonist of Adventure with a Pong bar avoiding attacks and trying to score a goal in the opposite goal. They are crazy and fun combinations, although some are frustrating due to their gameplay.
However, many of these combinations are not entirely clear what we have to do and we will be losing without even realizing that we did wrong. Sometimes the controls are very sensitive, in others we will have little time to execute or the enemy will have an advantage. Also, some games come with glitches from their glory days like collision detection, inhuman stick sensitivity and even crashes.
In addition, the game increases its difficulty with each floor, as many more squares and us with less life. Other than frustrating, unfair. It would have been great if they balanced all those errors because it is a game that can be fun.
pixelated office
The game has a very fun and detailed pixel-art art design with many animations despite its conception. Equally catchy music, especially the one played in the office section.
In addition, we will have collectibles in the form of the covers and manuals of those games. To unlock them we must find secret rooms and search well in each one because they are hidden. Another way to unlock them is through quite demanding game sections.
Verdict
Atari Mania wants to be a fun anthology of very old games with the concept of microgames. It has a funny story filled with a lot of tribute to the company with a funny character. It is interesting to see how the games are mixed to give rise to hybrid microgames with some entertaining ones. However, it becomes a frustrating game because the mechanics of some of its games were not polished.
Note: This review was done on Nintendo Switch and the code was provided thanks to Atari.
Reference-gamersrd.com