16. Yoomp! [Atari 8-bit]
Another game from
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Yoomp! is a game for Atari 8-bit computers, developed in 2007 by homebrew developers Marcin 'Eru' Żukowski, Łukasz 'X-Ray' Sychowicz, Bartek 'BeWu' Wąsiel and Piotr 'OxF' Fusik. It was included in
Atari 50 both as a symbol of the homebrew community surrounding Atari systems, and as an example of how much the Atari 8-bit hardware was really capable of. And wow, yeah, this game really shows that off. I am super impressed that they got something like this running on Atari 8-bit hardware. I mean, just look at it! THIS butttery-smooth pseudo-3D title is running on the same platform as that choppy barely-playable
Food Fight port??
But not only is
Yoomp! technically impressive: it is also really fun to play! I think the best term I can give it is a rhythmic cylindrical platformer? You control the ball, bouncing through the cylinder. You can move it left and right, and it will move forward one square with every beat of the music (which is very catchy by the way). Different tiles will have different effects on the ball, like launching it over a tile, sending it sideways or warping it to the other side. Your goal is simple: make it to the end of the 21 levels.
It's really addicting! Most games in
Atari 50 were games I was content trying out for a few minutes and then moving on from, but this one instantly hooked me. I just kept playing it until I beat it. This is without a doubt a highlight of the collection. Hats off to the developers.
You can download the game for free on the official website by the way, to emulate or to run on a real Atari 8-bit computer if you have one. And I recommend it! It's really fun!
https://yoomp.atari.pl/EDIT
17. Atari 50: The Anniversary CelebrationSo Atari 50 is a collection of games from across Atari's history, but it's also a digital museum tour with a lot of background information. I've decided to count finishing the museum tour as "beating" Atari 50 itself, and then counting all the games in the collection (when beatable) as separate entries. Hence why the last two games before this were games that were in this collection. So I've now finished the museum tour, and at least tried out every single game that's part of that tour.
Context: I'm from 1998, so I didn't grow up on Atari. However, I am of course aware of their impact and legacy, and ever since I was a kid, that did intrigue me. I remember once finding and playing an Atari machine (I think it was Centipede?) as a kid and just being fascinated by it. And as someone with interest in that history, I found this to be a joy. This game is filled with video interviews with some of the key people from Atari's history, along with scans of ads, behind the scenes documents, manuals, box art, artwork, etc. I think in that sense this title holds a lot of value, as a digital archive of those stories. I definitely enjoyed watching these interviews and looking at these images.
Since this is an entry about the whole title, I'll also briefly mention the game collection as a whole here. It's Atari. I think you can estimate from that what you think of it. It covers their entire history: arcade, 2600, 5200, 7800, 8-bit computers, Lynx, Jaguar and a few miscellaneous things. Of course you have your classics like Asteroids, Missile Command, Pong, Centipede, etc. You've got some cult classics too that this title makes easily accessible, like Tempest 2000. And there's some hidden gems in here too: Yoomp! was a standout for me. The modern reimagenings of titles are a nice touch too, even if I mainly just like the novelty.
However, let's also just be fair: a lot of Atari's library either just does not hold up or has never held up. A lot of the 2600 titles may have been good for the time, but have not aged well. And many of the titles for the Lynx and Jaguar were never good to begin with. Now granted, especially the older titles also need to be viewed through the lens of time. And Atari 50 isn't a simple rerelease: it's a digital museum of Atari's history. And in that context there's absolutely value in these games being preserved here. But if you're going to get into this title, I think you need to see it through that lens. As a look into history, a museum tour, rather than a compilation of games you all want to endlessly replay. And thus you need to be interested in that.
If you are though: I can recommend Atari 50. It was neat to learn about this essential part of gaming history, and to try out all of these classic titles. I'm not sure how often I'll come back to it, but who knows, there's some stuff in here that even decades later is still as addicting as ever.
