Atari Mania - (in VCS Store)

[+swlovinist]

 

Here is the first 20 minutes of gameplay for Atari Mania.  I wanted to show the game, but not ruin the experience for anyone.   I look forward to seeing others post their videos as I am currently at a part of the game that has me stumped.   The puzzle solving aspect to the game is challenging.  

 

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[Atari_JaguarVCS]

The games now up on the VCS store! Really looking forward to playing this.  

[Mockduck]

Game's good! A lot to explore and unlock. Really interesting ideas going on as a way to celebrate old school Atari and look at what it means in 2022.

[OBLIVION23]

This is exactly what I was hoping for.  This game is fantastic. 

[Mockduck]

I really like how relatively deep the story is; it has some things to say about old games and relevance to generations that didn't grow up with them. It's good stuff on top of fun gameplay.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

Amazing game! Atari delivers yet again. The game plays great on the VCS I’ve really been enjoying it. I’ve not tried the Switch version yet but I’m sure it’ll be excellent when playing in handheld mode. 

[justclaws]

There's a great new video about the game, from Atari themselves. 🙂
 

 

[The LazyGamer23]

Is anyone else having trouble downloading this game from the Atari VCS. Every time I click on buy now, I am brought to an all white "dead" screen. As if its frozen or won't transfer over. 

[Nall3k]

I'm honestly surprised the game is being review bombed on Steam. I bought for Switch and enjoying it!

[RadiATIon]

You can purchase it on the VCS's Store ? I can't. I have seen on the Atari VCS discord channel that this problem is known. Indeed, I get a blank page instead of the checkout page. Wait and see...

[MrMaddog]

4 hours ago, Nall3k said:

I'm honestly surprised the game is being review bombed on Steam. I bought for Switch and enjoying it!

 

I'm not... Steam reviews always attract idiotic incels who get bored after playing  harassing kids in Roblox.

 

Yes I get my PC games on Steam but I actually spend my free time playing them instead of acting up just to impress some group of social media morons.

 

[leech]

3 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

 

I'm not... Steam reviews always attract idiotic incels who get bored after playing  harassing kids in Roblox.

 

Yes I get my PC games on Steam but I actually spend my free time playing them instead of acting up just to impress some group of social media morons.

 

Just asking for Native Linux builds of games... some of them act like you just did their mom, she liked it, and then couldn't stop bragging to them how good you were.  The really sad ones are when you can see the same person making it their quest to make sure that no one ever support Linux in any way.

[DavidD]

12 hours ago, Nall3k said:

I'm honestly surprised the game is being review bombed on Steam. I bought for Switch and enjoying it!

Is there a reason they are giving for the poor reviews?

[roots.genoa]

2 hours ago, DavidD said:

Is there a reason they are giving for the poor reviews?

I'm not sure it can be called review bombing (which usually happens for reasons unrelated to the game itself) but if I had to guess, I would say the game is priced quite high for Steam. On the other hand, Steam users can be very forgiving with free or very cheap games. 😩

[DavidD]

3 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I'm not sure it can be called review bombing (which usually happens for reasons unrelated to the game itself) but if I had to guess, I would say the game is priced quite high for Steam. On the other hand, Steam users can be very forgiving with free or very cheap games. 😩

I went and read through the reviews and I noticed they fall into two broad camps:

• Generally positive.
• Complaining about the game being either too imprecise (controls), too limited/repetitive (as opposed to something like Wario Ware), or too shallow (no high score tracking).

I haven't played it myself, but the complaints sound reasonable ... and it looks like the user reviews are about 50:50 with regards to the game.

[MrTrust]

3 hours ago, DavidD said:

I went and read through the reviews and I noticed they fall into two broad camps:

• Generally positive.
• Complaining about the game being either too imprecise (controls), too limited/repetitive (as opposed to something like Wario Ware), or too shallow (no high score tracking).

I haven't played it myself, but the complaints sound reasonable ... and it looks like the user reviews are about 50:50 with regards to the game.

 

The reviews are pretty accurate.  I bought this one mostly because I really liked the Recharged series and wanted to keep giving Nu Atari a shot, but I can't say this is up to that standard.

 

First, yeah, no high scores, leaderboards, multiplayer, any unlockables beyond (so far as I can tell) scans of 2600 game manuals?  At $25?  No excuse for that.  Also, at least on the Switch, the load times are excessive for something like this.

 

Second, personal preference gripe, but I do not like the art style they went with on this.  This is that faux retro thing that looks primitive for the sake of achieving a retro look, yet no retro game ever actually looked like this does.  Some of the redone characters look pretty decent, like the wizard and the rogue actually appear to be what the original cover artists envisioned, and in a reasonably close resolution to the backgrounds.  Nothing else looks like it coheres.  They're too blocky against the rest of the scenes.  Also, the dialog has the feel of a mid 00s indie flash game, back when all these emo college students were making these bad platform games that weren't any good, but full of all these immature, art house attempts at profundity.  It just doesn't work for Atari stuff.

 

The biggest issue, though, is with the microgames themselves.  They're just not very good in too many cases.  Sometimes they are inventive, fun ideas; for instance, Human Cannonball, but you're shooting at a moving target who intermittently reverses the controls on you.  Nice twist on the original; doesn't deviate too much that it no longer makes sense, and it's a challenge.  Too many of them, however, are the same.  Breakout, but it's on a Centipede screen and the ball bounces off the mushrooms.  Yay.  Pong, but you have to avoid the ball.  Pong, but you can move the paddle in all four directions.  Pong, but the Circus Atari characters are holding the paddle and it's vertical now.  Pong, but...

 

You're flying the Canyon Bomber plane over the inventory screen from SwordQuest, and the game wants you to bomb the grappling hook and not any other item.  Okay, fine.  Other than the graphics, how is that any different from just normal Canyon Bomber?  Because you changed the rainbow bars in SwordQuest to paddles bouncing balls back and forth does not change the gameplay in any way.

 

There are far too many games that just ain't very clever.  It's as if they wanted to have "100+ Microgames" as a bullet point to put on the sales sheet, so they just made up a bunch of trivial variations to get to that number.  The would have been better off limiting the number of different variants and making more challenges to do within that smaller set.  Also, for a game that is so heavily dependent on paddle and trackball games, the controls are digital only!  WTF?

 

I've only played it part of the way through, so I could be missing something, but all in all, it ain't great, and I would probably enjoy it more as a cute diversion if it was $10, but at the price it is, it falls far short of expectations considering what the Recharged series doles out at much lower prices.

[MrMaddog]

16 hours ago, leech said:

Just asking for Native Linux builds of games... some of them act like you just did their mom, she liked it, and then couldn't stop bragging to them how good you were.  The really sad ones are when you can see the same person making it their quest to make sure that no one ever support Linux in any way.

 

That's odd considering the VCS version is Linux based and there's people using Steam Decks.  Proton is suppose to make Windows games playable on Linux systems, but then again we are dealing with radical neckbeards who are still stuck in the 90's.

 

9 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I'm not sure it can be called review bombing (which usually happens for reasons unrelated to the game itself) but if I had to guess, I would say the game is priced quite high for Steam. On the other hand, Steam users can be very forgiving with free or very cheap games. 😩

 

Well I do agree that $25 is a lot for a minigame title, $20 at the most is more apporiate since this is 'not' going to be a true comprehensive compliation like Atari 50th will be.  Even Recharge titles aren't that much.

 

5 hours ago, DavidD said:

I went and read through the reviews and I noticed they fall into two broad camps:

• Generally positive.
• Complaining about the game being either too imprecise (controls), too limited/repetitive (as opposed to something like Wario Ware), or too shallow (no high score tracking).

I haven't played it myself, but the complaints sound reasonable ... and it looks like the user reviews are about 50:50 with regards to the game.

 

The controls are hard to master after the initial level, especially the Asteroid ship & Combat plane & tank...plus you don't get much time to even figure out what the heck to do.

 

Doesn't make it totally unplayable, which would call for a bad review and even a refund.  It's just merely annoying...

 

 

[leech]

2 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

That's odd considering the VCS version is Linux based and there's people using Steam Decks.  Proton is suppose to make Windows games playable on Linux systems, but then again we are dealing with radical neckbeards who are still stuck in the 90's.

Proton is an always hit or miss prospect, where you have to hope you can find a particular version of it that will work.  Native is always preferred, and it has nothing to do with being a 'radical neckbeard'  Not to mention that multiplatform development tends to help crush bugs much better than just targeting a single platform and then hoping translation layers will keep up to date with patches, etc.  Then there are those developers who are actively hostile toward Proton / Linux users and keep shifting their game around or even the Anti-Cheat stuff that causes it to break.

 

But what is really odd?  Steam only has the Windows version of Atari Mania.  Guess if I want to play it on my desktop I have two choices.  Buy it on Steam and play via Proton... or I can buy it on the VCS and copy it over to my desktop and play it.  I'll probably do two, as then I can support the VCS

Edited October 15, 2022 by leech

[roots.genoa]

5 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Second, personal preference gripe, but I do not like the art style they went with on this.  This is that faux retro thing that looks primitive for the sake of achieving a retro look, yet no retro game ever actually looked like this does.

Completely agree, real turnoff for me. To be fair, I'm in charge of a retrogaming website so I'm biased, but I really prefer what I call "orthodox pixelart" with minimal 'cheating' (16/9 format, no sprite limitations, maybe a few lighting effects, etc.).

[bradhig1]

I got to the final boss on the roof and couldn't beat it.  second round two long hands come out of the walls and trap you while ghosts chase you.  I got to the third round a couple of times where you are in box with a ball of light in front of you and three demon things coming at you.  Didn't know if I was shouldn't to shoot them or dodge them.

[justclaws]

There are several reviews already, but I found this one very good - no connection to reviewer.
The game is fun, but also very frustrating, so far, with the long waits to try a challenge again.
 

 

 

[bugcatcher88]

On 10/14/2022 at 11:50 AM, Nall3k said:

I'm honestly surprised the game is being review bombed on Steam. I bought for Switch and enjoying it!

Some of those reviews are a complete joke. One person complains about input lag and nothing else (repeating the same thing over and over). Another just has a Shreck face. These reviews don't have any substance to them so they should be disregarded. All others, whether positive or negative, look to be fair.

[DavidD]

5 hours ago, bugcatcher88 said:

Some of those reviews are a complete joke. One person complains about input lag and nothing else (repeating the same thing over and over). Another just has a Shreck face. These reviews don't have any substance to them so they should be disregarded.

...unless, of course, there is heavy input lag, which would be bad in this sort of game.

 

Not sure about the Shrek face, though!

[roots.genoa]

5 hours ago, bugcatcher88 said:

One person complains about input lag and nothing else

Probably AtariAge's own Steven Pendleton, then! 😉

 

Anyway, every game gets that kind of reviews on Steam, but the more reviews there are, the more relevant ones as well.

[killersquirel]

I would love to buy this game, but I am only getting a white screen when I try to purchase it on the VCS.