Going in, I was already impressed by the way they rebuilt a lot of these games in a way that makes them easier to contextualize for people experiencing them now for the first time. But I had no idea the structure was going to be so brilliant.
The first Namco Museum collection was the best one. To play those games, you'd walk around in first person through a virtual museum with first person PS1 controls that made King's Field look agile, soaking in the immaculate Vibes™ and exploring things like scans of the original arcade boards, as well as promotional materials, flyers, posters, etc. Each room was themed to that specific game both aesthetically and materially. They'd built a delightful little polygonal recreation of the arcade machines themselves to interact with. There were six discs total, with a handful of games on each, to really let each one share some time in the spotlight and get the appropriate attention.
I've yet to see another historic collection of games do that kind of work to express and incite an appreciation for the games themselves as works in a real life context that could be virtually translated like that. Intellivision Lives! was pretty cool, but for the most part, collections like these tend to be functionally indistinguishable from firing up an emulator shell and picking from a curated list of ROMs, limited by who owns the rights to what. Sometimes you got stuff like the PS2 era of SEGA AGES 2500 games that often included budget 3D remakes or re-imaginings, but usually it's just "here's some games". That's better than nothing! Lots of genpop folks aren't going to jump through the hoops of figuring out emulation and downloading no-intro ROM fullsets and configuring x-input or whatever. I'm always in favor of making as many old games as possible accessible to the broadest amount of people as possible.
But Digital Eclipse has a history of going the extra mile. They scanned all that original artwork for the Mega Man Legacy Collection, they saved a long lost Samurai Shodown game that was completed but never released. They have a pretty long list of Cool Stuff like that.
But holy damn, they've outdone themselves--and everyone else--here.
ATARI 50 gives you the option to just jump into the game library any time with the push of a button, but it defaults to something much more valuable and interesting, I think. It presents a cleanly designed interactive timeline that delivers a mix of Drew Scanlon's phenomenal documentary work with excellent interviews of the people who were there in the first place, with actual new and novel thoughts and information, followed by scans and photos of everything from promotional materials and Atari's unsurpassed graphic designs to things like design decks and legal documents and rough sketches and hand-scrawled notes. It's all presented in a remarkably useful and surprisingly digestible way. All of these things come in-between the games themselves, with brief descriptions and fun notes from the designers, and photography and 3D renders of the actual cabinets. The games are playable with all kinds of customization options of course, including the most impressive emulation of a vector monitor I've ever seen. Sure, my OLED can't get anywhere near as bright as an actual vector monitor, but this is damned close, and the hazy glow effect they've implemented is a huge part of the experience of playing these games that's been lost in every home translation up to this point in history. Some of these games are playable builds of lost demos that were never completed, or were completed but never released. It's fascinating.
On top of that, some of these games have brand new remakes alongside them, that help to highlight the actual value and importance of their design, separated and abstracted from the technical limitations of their era. Those technical limitations are important! But having the additional option of being able to experience the core of their design in a more modern wrapper is key to communicating what made these games work to a new audience that may have some difficulty navigating the mental barrier of simple, blocky games from the '70s. I have a personal history with these games in their original state, but my kids don't, and they have a much easier time getting into this delightfully goofy new 3D version of Haunted House than they would on one of our 2600s on the CRT in the other room. They're still experiencing what made these games what they are, just in a re-framed context that presents their naked design outside of the dust of history. It's a very fine tightrope to walk but I think Digital Eclipse is teaching a masterclass on just that here.
My favorite example in my time with it so far is VCTR-SCTR, a brand new game that effortlessly combines Asteroids, Lunar Lander, Tempest, Gravitar, etc. into one fluid wave-based experience that shows off all of those games in their absolute best light, in rapid succession. I know lots of folks come to collections like these to play these games from a stance of historic curiosity (that's certainly my approach for most of Atari's mid-80s arcade output, honestly), but things like VCTR-SCTR serve as an explosive reminder of just how damn fun these games can be, and the timeless value of clean, simple design.
Anyway, I've still got a lot more game to dig into, but my copy arrived last night and I couldn't stop playing it, and I can't stop thinking about it today. The way it organizes all of these materials across media and modes of interactivity feels exactly like walking through a really well considered museum. I'm so grateful for the monumental effort here from Mike Mika, Chris Kohler, Drew Scanlon, and everyone at Digital Eclipse. I hope this is a sign of things to come. This is how you preserve video game history in a way that benefits and attracts an audience--by providing the context that holds it all together, and rebuilding the bridges that this industry has traditionally been happy to leave to crumble in neglected disrepair.
