The year of Atari continues on! Today, Atari revealed that an even more content complete version of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration will hit consoles, the VCS and PC this holiday. The new and improved release will hit the usual digital storefronts for all platforms, and for PlayStation and Switch players, will also be available as a standard physical edition and a more deluxe Steelbook edition.
As for new content, Atari 50 will add two new timelines (Wider World of Atari and First Console War), each with around 20 playable games a piece. The timelines will offer quite a few video segments and deep dives into the history of the respective titles that are highlighted.
Existing Atari 50 owners will be able to pick up the new content as DLC around the same time as well. Check out the full press release and info below!
Atari and developer Digital Eclipse are excited to announce a significant expansion to their acclaimed 2022 release Atari 50: the Anniversary Collection. The new version, entitled Atari 50: the Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition, adds two new timelines and 39 games to the playable Atari retrospective. The game will release October 25 on PC, Switch, Xbox One and Series X, and PlayStation 4 & 5, and the Atari VCS this holiday, including a physical release on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.
The physical release will include a Steelbook version for Nintendo Switch, which will come with Atari 2600 art cards, miniature arcade marquee signs, an Al Alcorn Replica Syzygy Co. business card and a Steelbook case. The standard version will retail for $39.99 USD and the steelbook will retail for $49.99 USD.
The Wider World of Atari timeline, which includes 19 playable games and eight video segments, takes a series of deep dives into stories from Atari history, showing how Atari continued to influence creators and fans over the decades. New interviews, vintage ads, historical artifacts, and more have all been researched and presented with Digital Eclipse’s signature style. Highlights from the new timeline include a deep dive into Stern Electronics’ robot-blasting Berzerk; unusual and underappreciated innovations and hidden gems from the late 1980s; a spotlight on the artist Evelyn Seto, who helped create the iconic “Fuji” Atari logo; Pong creator Al Alcorn explaining the birth of Breakout; and an exploration of the fan base’s role in discovering unreleased prototypes, creating “homebrew” games, and preserving Atari history.
The First Console War timeline, which includes 20 playable games and half-dozen video segments, tells the story of the first major console war in the gaming industry between the Atari 2600 and Mattel’s Intellivision. The team at Digital Eclipse curates an exploration of the rivalry, including Mattel’s quixotic decision to create games for the competing Atari 2600. Highlights include a selection of M Network games, including some fan-favorites; a mix of Atari and M Network sports games, and some rare Atari 2600 and 5200 prototypes. New interview features include former Intellivision game director Don Daglow, M Network programmer Jane Terjung, Activision’s David Crane and Garry Kitchen, homebrew programmer Dennis Debro, and historians Leonard Herman and Mike Mika.
The new timelines and games will be offered to owners of the original Atari 50 release as DLCs later this year.