Activision Anthology in development for 8 years?!?!?

[Fretwobbler]

Just been re-claiming some room in my house and come accross some old PC mags, in particular, the January 1995 issue of PC Format (UK mag).

 

I'll quote the text from the mag -

 

At the time of going to press, rumours are rife that Activision are planning to launch an Atari 2600 Emulator with a compilation of classic games ready to run, provisionally titled The Lost Treasures of Activision {i prefer the anthology name myself }. Its thought there will be 10 games in the bundle including Kaboom, River Raid and Pitfall. Expected for release next spring {thats spring '96 folks!} the price of the bundle has yet to be fixed.

 

If Ken's reading this I'd love to know if this was true at the time. If it is true, the Anthology must hold the world record for the videogame that spent the longest time in development .

 

I'd scan the article for you with pictures an all but erm, i dont have a scanner.

[joeybastard]

It probably refers to the Activision Action packs for PC that came out a few years ago.

[sku_u]

There was also an anthology for PS1 that came out a number of years ago.

[Flojomojo]

That must have been talking about the "Action Packs" for PC and Mac. The PSX "Activision Classics" didn't come out until September 1998.

[Albert]

I can tell you with certainty that the PS2 Anthology was not in development for eight years. More like one year..

 

..Al

[mos6507]

It took a while before the project was officially approved, though.

 

And as far as I know, Ken had nothing to do with Activision Classics--Bryant Bustamante was the 'producer' who went through the motions on that abomination.

[NE146]

Did anyone else JUMP on those Activision packs for the pc like I did? They came out before there was a good 2600 emulator available (I think there was one that was really early in development.. pc26?.. anyway I couldn't get it to work). But that Activision pack worked great on my good old Windows 3.11 However, if I remember correctly it'd only play 16k roms and of course only Activision ones (I particularly remember Frostbite).

 

So what I'd do is take other roms, rename them to "frostbite.bin" (or whatever the filename was) and voila! Instant 2600 emulation goodness for most any rom. I think I used a program to resize smaller roms to 16k as well. For some games it worked great, for others it was a little wonky.

 

Anyway.. It's funny now, but it just goes to show the lengths we used to go to to play a simple game of Adventure or 2600 Crystal Castles on the pc. We really do have it good these days. But are we spoiled?... nah

[Fretwobbler]

But that Activision pack worked great on my good old Windows 3.11

 

Windows for Playgroups , glad to see the back of that, *phew*.

 

You have had a General Protection Fault.... aaaarrgghhh!!!! give me the Win 9x blue screen of death anyday

[joeybastard]

When those Action Packs came out I snapped 'em right up. The emulation was really good, at least on my old 486 it was. I kept hoping for more Action Packs of other titles from Atari, Imagic, etc. Eventually I found StellaX so it all became moot.

[Flojomojo]

Yeah, I did the same thing -- renaming other BIN files to make 'em run under the Activision emulator. We really do have it good now. Every game we wanted as a kid is available for free play. For once, the good times are far from over, they're cumulative!

[Big Player]

I bought all three Action Packs. It rekindled my interests and lead to my collected the real carts.

 

Wow, it never occured to me to play other games on the Action Packs. But then, I had no idea how to load a cart onto a computer back then. Hell, I still don't know exactly--but yes, I do know it's called ROM dumping.

 

I was not ever sure it really was emulating the games since the games seemed a bit off.