Atari Anthology

The year was 1980 and the young video game company Atari was on top of the world. Atari not only had a strong arcade division that was robbing kids everywhere of their lunch money, but they also made millions selling their popular games at home. OK, the company is no longer the video game giant it once was but the name still holds a lot of weight -- even after all these years. I still see tons of Atari logo T-shirts out there and there's still a high demand to play these legends all over again. So, how do you get your retro fix these days? You could - A: buy a dirty old unit off eBay or a pawnshop and hope that it still works. You can - B: try to download the games off the net and pray that it doesn't come with a virus or - C: you can play the upcoming Atari Anthology on your Xbox, complete with a huge set of 80+ games on one disc. C sounds pretty good, eh?

Here is the full list of the 18 classic arcade games in the collection:

Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
Battle Zone
Black Widow
Centipede
Crystal Castles
Gravitar
Liberator
Lunar Lander
Major Havoc
Millipede
Missile Command
Pong
Red Baron
Space Duel
Super Breakout
Tempest
Warlords

If that wasn't enough, here is the massive list of 60+ game from the Atari 2600 (or VCS) era:

3D Tic-Tac-Toe
A game of Concentration
Adventure
Air Sea Battle
Asteroids
Basic Programming
Battle Zone
Blackjack
Bowling
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Casino
Centipede
Circus Atari
Codebreaker
Combat
Crystal Castles
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dodge СEm
Double Dunk
Flag Capture
Football
Fun with Numbers
Golf
Gravitar
Haunted House
Home Run
Human Cannonball
Math Grand Prix
Maze Craze
Millipede
Miniature Golf
Missile Command
Night Driver
Off The Wall
Outlaw
Quadrun
Radar Lock
Real Sports Baseball
Real Sports Football
Real Sports Tennis
Real Sports Volleyball
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
Slot Racers
Space War
Sprintmaster
Star Raiders
Star Ship
Steeplechase
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football
Surround
Swordquest: Earthworld
Swordquest: Fireworld
Swordquest: Waterworld
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Pinball
Video Olympics
Warlords
Yar's Revenge

You may notice that Atari also included several 2600 versions of many of their arcade hits, such as Missile Command and Warlords. It may sound like you're getting the same game minus all the glamour of the arcade titles, but most of the 2600 editions have tons of bonus options so you can customize your own game (Asteroids alone has 66 game variations). It's also great to see some rarer games in this collection too. The game Swordquest: Waterworld was only released by Atari's mail order service and finding a real cartridge on auctions may cost you over 100 dollars.

Although this is a great list of games here, if you're a fan of the Atari 2600, you may notice a few big games couldn't make it. For example; where the heck is Space Invaders? Taito's Space Invaders was not only insanely popular in the arcades during the 70's, but when the game came to the 2600; it was also credited for placing the system on the map -- after a rough few years. A good reason you won't see this and many other favourites like Defender and Moon Patrol is so that Atari could keep costs down and avoid paying royalties. On the plus side of things though this also means that we won't be getting Atari Pac Man (the 2600 version sucks) and that super horrible E.T game.