JeffVav

getting back to this one... I noticed the inclusion of the playable arcade ROM/Hack Tempest Tubes. OK, true. I didn't really count that one as hidden, though. The two hidden ROMs are Atari 2600 Tempest and Tank AI (i.e. 1-player Combat, included with Zach's permission).

Yeah, that's the speed I expected it to be, but on my Xbox, it's significantly slower... here's a sample: ]My Xbox startup It's not a big deal or anything, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going insane [/url] Oh, I think I know what's going on. I think the console switch pop-up is slowing it down as it slides off screen. Damn. As to why a simple animating pop-up would slow it down, don't ask...

Honestly, it seems it never occurred to anyone. Never came up. We were just concentrating on the features that enhanced the games themselves, I guess (e.g. HDTV for the vector games). Given the time constraints, we did have to be somewhat selective about what we could include, anyway. (Also, even if it had come up, that would've qualified as a UI adjustment, and the UI was in feature lock pretty early. The UI is already simpler than what we had envisioned.) Actually, the thing I did think of that I'm very disappointed we weren't able to do for the PS2 version was adding Stelladaptor support. Nope.

You're probably correct - I noticed the same thing with the 2600 Super Breakout "game start" sound - the three notes are distinctly slower than the original. OK, I looked into this. I've made audio captures of both my original 2600 and Atari Anthology. Super Breakout: It's hard to compare directly since it plays one of a random selection of start sounds. However, the tempo seems the same to my ear. The duration of the sound measures the same in Wave Studio (about 0.65 seconds). Here are the samples I used, reseting several times for about 10 seconds: Actual Atari 2600 playing Super Breakout (sample is about 1MB) Atari Anthology playing Super Breakout (sample is about 1MB) Blackjack: OK, this one I do notice a difference, but it's not the tempo. Looking at the wave forms, I think it looks like they're being smoothed out, possibly by the hardware. Smoothing a waveform is somewhat like applying a low pass filter, which in more casual terms is turning up the bass and turning down the treble on your stereo. Anyway, here's the comparison again: Actual Atari 2600 playing Blackjack (sample is about 90K) Atari Anthology playing Blackjack (sample is about 90K)

More consolidated replies... Could it be ... this game? Good guess' date=' but no. On the PC version Basic Programming was officially in the package in the Mind Games section.[/quote'] I'll give another hint. Look here.

I think it nearly exhausted every Atari 2600 and arcade game Atari had that's not a licence. I count 13 games for the 2600 in the AtariAge database that are listed as Atari manufactured, not a licence, not a prototype, and not already covered. That's not to say we couldn't lobby Atari for a 5200, 7800, Jaguar and/or Lynx compilation... Mike... you're out there, right? You'd want a Jaguar compilation, wouldn't you?

Random replies, consolidated... Xbox Live, 720p and 1080i. To be fair, I think the PS2 controllers are a bit more usable on the paddle games. Could it be ... this game? Good guess, but no. On the PC version Basic Programming was officially in the package in the Mind Games section. You're probably correct - I noticed the same thing with the 2600 Super Breakout "game start" sound - the three notes are distinctly slower than the original. Interesting. This implies a frame overrun, which seems pretty extraordinary considering how fast it runs without the speed restraints on. There must be another cause. Maybe different cartridge versions? I'll check it against my 2600. At least neither of these occur in a timing-critical situation.

Oh, you're spoiling it. Yes, when I said there were actually 87 games counting the two hidden ROMs, I should've clarified that this applies to the Xbox/PS2 versions, too. (Actually, the PC version had a number more hidden -- though somewhat pointless -- files in it, including a couple test ROMs I wrote to extract sounds and colours from my original-issue Atari 2600 via a Cuttle Cart. It also had something pretty "basic" buried in one of the directories that I think no one has found yet.)

Long ago, I was looking forward to this, even though I knew full well that it would have C64-esque 3D. Any chance of the game being revisted for GBA or DS, and if not, is there a ROM to leak to us hungry wolves? I wish. Midway paid for it, though, so it's not mine to release. Closest I can offer is to look at those tank/recogniser levels in Tron on the GBA for a flavour of what the engine would've looked like. (Not the same engine, but same concepts.) Tron might be of interest to people here, in general, since it contains the arcade versions of Tron and Discs of Tron. That's the first time ever released to a home game system.

Oh. How about that. Well, I honestly can say it's a coincidence, since, as I said, no one here who had a hand in this one had ever looked at Activision Anthology. I think the only thing I've seen of that game is the screen shot of the bedroom-themed interface, and the song list. Not the first time I've seen something like this happen. (I've been on the other side of such coincidences, too.) Thanks! To answer your question, play the arcade games in their challenge modes. Each arcade game has a challenge score you must beat to unlock the challenge modes of one of the 67 home games. (I feel like we should release the grid of unlockables to the web. I should ask Atari about that...) p.s. I think that release date I found must've been the GBA version....

p.s. just thought I'd share a thought on the challenge modes... The thing about it is, when there was a rash of updated versions of retro games a few years ago, the frequent complaint would be that they weren't true to the original, didn't capture the spirit, etc. I was among the people that felt that way. So, we asked ourselves, what can you do to these classic games to freshen them up, that doesn't really kill what they are? Well, first, don't change the mechanic. That originally led to the enhanced modes in the Atari Arcade Hits releases in 1999 and 2000, but that didn't change the game play at all. So, I was thinking about what I did when I got bored when I was originally playing these games. Well, I might start playing them while looking at the TV upside down, or I might start doing a hot potato joystick swapping with my friends, or play Asteroids with constant thrust, etc. The Challenge Modes are the same idea. (In fact arcade Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe will fire the thrust every 2 seconds in trippy mode.) We had a quite a number more challenge mode ideas we didn't do that are probably pretty silly. I just regret now that I didn't think, until after it went to master, that we should've done an Ultimate Challenge mode that combined into a single game all the features of the five challenge modes available. (i.e. a trippy double speed time warp hot seat time challenge.) Oh, and no offence to Nolan, but in a fit of insanity induced by sleeplessness, I created Challenge Modes of all the Nolan Bushnell interviews. (No, they aren't in the final product.) I meant no disrespect by it, but after seeing those videos edited and tested for about the 100th time, I had to do something. (I originally planned it as a gag on the QA guys.) As it turned out, half the office ended up quite mesmerised by the trippy version of Nolan Bushnell. Anyway, sorry if I'm being self-indulgent here. Just thought some background might interest people.

Although I am a big fan of Jeff and Digital Eclipse I do have to point out that the PS2 edition of Activision Anthology was released in late 2002, while the Atari 80 Game Collection came out nearly a year later. In addition, even the PC version of Activision Anthology was released shortly before the Atari 80 Game collection. My mistake. My apologies. Got the release date from IGN. Well, at least you know I didn't run out and buy one to copy from as soon as it launched.

Now that I've had my little fit above, I'll try to answer some questions that have been posed... The interface is only conceptually similar to the PC version from last year. It's not a flat 2D thing, but now 3D, in a hopefully non-intrusive way. (Hint, if the transitions between the "galaxy" and an individual constellation is too slow, just keep pounding the A button on the Xbox or X on the PS2.) For those who don't know what the PC was like, there were 85 games (yes, 85, not 80 as the box says) grouped into genres. Each genre was represented by a constellation in a night sky. You'd zoom in to a constellation, and each star would be a game. In the PS2/Xbox version, there's an extra step. When you zoom in on a star, you see a solar system. The sun is the standard game, and the planets (move up/down to select) are Challenge Modes. The Challenge Modes are just fun alternate modes for the game: a kaleidoscopic mode with decaying trails called "trippy", time warp mode (which speeds up and slows down), double speed (like it sounds), time challenge (score the most points in X seconds), and hot seat (the game you're playing changes every 10 seconds, cycling between multiple games). Personally, I find that the challenge modes add a lot of freshness to the games. Trippy Asteroids and Centipede are great, and you actually have to develop a new play style for them. And, as easy as Asteroids on the 2600 is after a time, double speed Asteroids is still a challenge for sure. (Yes, the Challenge Modes never made it into the PC version last year. They were cut, unfortunately, but they made it this time.) On the line-up, the PC version said 80 on the box for reasons I won't get into, but there were indeed 85 games (87 if you count the two hidden ROMs). The PS2/Xbox versions also have 85 games, but three of them are different. Namely, the three keyboard-based games (Code Breaker, Concentration and BASIC Programming) are gone. In their place are Backgammon, Hangman, and Atari Video Cube. The Xbox version features the whole Live Aware feature set, with high score posting for the arcade games. Yes, the lower resolution modes for the vector games are gone in this latest release because the vectors are now anti-aliased. In the PSone version, since, in 1996, we didn't have the CPU power to do everything at full frame rate and still anti-alias the vectors, we had to provide a trade-off that lowered the resolution when aliasing made the vectors illegible. Because the PS2 and Xbox are up to the task (so much that they can run all the games double-speed, in fact), we could get anti-aliasing at full resolution, we could do away with the trade-off. In fact, the PS2 can do 480p and the Xbox can do 480p, 720p and 1080i. The vector games looked really good on our HDTV, IMHO. (Of course, you can take an objective reviewer's opinion on that. Obviously, I can be accused of bias.) Yeah, I do recommend turning off the cabinet art and stretching the screen as large as you can, BTW. The smallish screen (sans cabinet art) is that way so that, out of the box, everything is visible even on the worst TV, but most people don't own the worst TV, hence the adjustment. For those who might see some issue with the sound or emulation, please, I'd really appreciate it if you could give me specifics. They seem accurate to the original hardware we compared against. We certainly try our best, and they are indeed emulators, but if we missed something, I want to know. I love these games. I grew up on these games. When I work on these compilations... it's corny I know, but... I just want to pay Atari back for all the fun they gave me... to do justice to their legacy. (And, yes, I would've loved to have the licensed Atari 2600 titles in there like Space Invaders, Pac Man, Superman, etc., but that's simply not something we were allowed to do. And, yes, I love the Activision games, too. Starmaster was the first one I bought, but from that point forward I eagerly anticipated just about everything in their catalogue, for a number of years.)

Ken, "copied your idea?" I have no clue what you're talking about here: (a) Atari Anthology was thus named by Atari. Honestly, I personally objected to the name and suggested there'd be brand confusion. I preferred to call it "Atari Universe" myself (hence the interface theme), but Atari did not agree. You must know that the publisher is the driving force on these things. (b) this is largely a PS2/Xbox enhancement/port of Atari: The 80 Classic Games in One, which was released to the market last year, about three months before Activision Anthology. © I don't recall ever speaking to you ever about doing any work. Maybe someone in Emeryville talked to someone at Activision via the Spider-Man group or something, but I don't recall being aware of it. Feel free to email me specifics if I'm wrong. I did mention to Brent when I saw him at E3 that if he heard wind of Activision wanting to do a compilation, pass our names along, but that was it. (I'm even surprised to hear you were part of the decision process, since typically producers are not assigned 'til after the contract is signed.) (d) we've been doing classic compilations since 1993 -- well before anyone else but Microsoft -- but I've never accused Activision of "copying our idea" (even though I approach Activision in 1993 as a contractor, prior to working with Digital Eclipse, with a DOS-based Atari 2600 emulator prototype, well before Action Pack for Windows was released). The Atari Anthology concept for this Atari compilation was actually floating around since 2001, but it was only this year that Atari green lit the console version (but again, the PC version shipped last year, before Activision Anthology). (e) FYI, none of us ever looked Activision Anthology once. I admit, I was given a copy by a friend at Activision once, but have never even cracked the seal. We're quite capable of doing this stuff all by ourselves as our portfolio of over 30 classic compilations shows. (Exactly what were we supposed to have consulted for reference in Activision Anthology? Did you have the challenge mode stuff in there too? If so, that's an extraordinary coincidence.) Please, I'd expect a little more restraint than this. It's a small industry, you know. I really don't like doing this in public (and this is very public), but I feel I must speak up in defence, especially in light of your later post's suggestion that we have an inflated ego. If you want to continue this further, I suggest you email me (shouldn't be hard to figure out my address, since all the company's addresses are the same format and you say you've spoken to someone here). Or, for that matter, phone.

The only ones I remember maxing out now were Chopper Command and Laserblast. I wrote in both times with shots of the screen. For Chopper Command I got a non-form letter that apologised for there being no special reward plus a second Chopper Commandos patch. For Laserblast there was a special badge 1,000,000 points badge that's well documented elsewhere on this site.

Is this a software difference or a hardware difference? I'm not really allowed to get into the details, but it should be fairly clear that there's at least a hardware difference. If you're looking to unlock or hotwire unadvertised features, though, I don't think it's a very likely prospect.

Actually, the two player unit has all variations of the Canyon Bomber cart in there. Basically, in the one player unit, you can play the one player variations of a game, and in the two player unit, you can play the one and two player variations of the game. Also, arcade Warlords is nearly running the original arcade machine code.

I haven't tested it on the Stelladaptor, but it should already work. Out of the box Atari 80-in-1 had the ability to use two PC joysticks to control arcade Battlezone, and, also out of the box, joysticks connected to the Stelladaptor worked with Atari 80-in-1.

Well, thanks to encouragement from Rob Mitchell and Mike Mika, I've created a Stelladaptor patch for Atari 80-in-1. You can find it here: http://www.digitaleclipse.com/live/main/main.php?v=sp It even supports the driving controller for arcade Tempest and Major Havoc, but after applying the patch, you'll need to go into those games' Joystick Setup and select "Driving Controller" if that's what you want to use.