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Review : Activision Anthologies for Playstation 2
In the early 80s Activision dominated the Atari 2600 market with the most creative and sheer fun games of the day. They got it the idea that it is the elements of gameplay that really make one game more fun to play than it's competitor. They have preciously released a anthology collection of their old Atari 2600 games on the PSOne but the PS2 game is one hell of a package.
There is a cool 3d game menu set in a bedroom in the 80s with an era phone, old school Atari 2600, rack of games, TV and cassette deck stereo. It really inspires me to play Grand Theft Auto : Vice City.
When you go about playing the 60+ games included on this disc you and give them an honest shot you will find that they are more fun than modern Java based cell phone games. There is a 100% accurate emulation of the games and the origional instructions, cartirage art and box art is included when you pick a game to stick in the virtual Atari 2600. As you play the games and achieve certain goals in the games you will unlock several goodies such as classic Activision game commercials, interviews with game designers, "game patches" ( you know like sew on patches for your acid washed denim jacket. ) , and special graphic filters.
Now this is not just for the 20 something game who is nostalgic for the old school but this would also appeal to the Gen-Y kids who love WarioWare.
I have not yet mentioned the best part of the anthology. They licenced a real soundtrack chock full of early 80s goodness. It actually has a really impressive collection of early 80s music with new wave, some metal and it really kicks the whole experience up several large knotches. I would probably buy the soundtrack if it were on a CD or MP3 but since the games is already 20 bucks it is worth getting for the music. The music selectable as virtual radio stations that you can set at the mini-boombox. I would have enjoyed a full selectable playlist of all the availible tracks but they opted for a system that is clearly inspired by the radio stations in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City.
This is a prefect gift for a gamer from 25 to 40 and younger gamers should probably learn about their gaming roots by playing some of these.
Jake at March 6, 2004 
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Comments
that's a fine pack of classic games especially with the unlock feature and all the stuff around it and i would definately go for it if i had a PS2. until that i have to bear with MAME emulation which itself isn't a bad thing as well imho.
Posted by: drcolossus of dataleak at March 7, 2004 6:55 PM
I don't think you can run Atari 2600 in MAME. Stella was my favorite Atari 2600 emulator ( http://stella.sourceforge.net/ )
Posted by: Jake at March 7, 2004 9:23 PM
what i mean was that many of the games were also available as arcade machines so they can be played in MAME. uhm, note sure if activision released so many arcade versions tho.
Posted by: drcolossus of dataleak at March 7, 2004 9:52 PM
don't think they have this for xbox. doh.
Posted by: gringo at March 8, 2004 8:35 PM
