Digital Eclipse on going the extra mile with Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration
We spoke to Digital Eclipse about how they chose games for Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration and the effort and rhetoric behind the chosen games.
Digital Eclipse has been on a roll with the development of classic gaming collections over the years. Earlier this year, the studio launched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, and now the team has more recently released Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. It’s a collection of Atari games across the last 5 decades that celebrates the history that the company contributed to video games. It wasn’t just good games, but historically relevant games and we got to speak to Digital Eclipse about how the studio curated the games and experience in Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration.
One of the main priorities of implementing and curating the collection in Atari 50 was curating games that were significant in the company’s ups and downs. It’s not just a greatest hits collection, but rather a walk through the lengthy history of Atari, for better and for worse. Editorial director Chris Kohler recalls a conversation about the Atari Jaguar game, Club Drive, which was an interesting 3D open-world driving game, but not very successful. Nonetheless, Digital Eclipse felt it was a part of the history they wanted to include along the greats such as Missile Command.
Another major part of the design was creating not just proper emulators that could play the games, but also particularly making sure the games perform better than ever. According to software engineer Dave Rees, Digital Eclipse president Mike Mika created an analyzing system for Atari home console game Star Raiders that recognized when the frames of the game drop due to performance issues. He claims it boosts the performance of the emulator in those moments to compensate and make Star Raiders a far smoother experience. There’s also options to play the games in their original modes with all of the kinks, but these new modes allow fans to play the games like never before.
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Atari VCS. Want more videos like this Atari 50 interview? Be sure to check out our Shacknews and GamerHubTV YouTube channels where you can find our latest video interviews, reviews, unboxings, gameplay, and more on the latest video games, technology, and toys.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Digital Eclipse on going the extra mile with Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration
