Joystick Nostalgia

If

your fondest video game memories are of playing Pong in the 1970s or duking it out with Asteroids in the '80s, Atari has two new ways to help you recapture those childhood thrills. One is Atari Flashback, a $40 gaming console that plugs directly into your TV. The other is Atari Anthology, a $20 disc of games for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Retro games don't have the eye-popping graphics of today's hot sellers, but that doesn't make classics like Centipede and Missile Command any less addictive. To find out how well the updates replicated the originals, I asked a dozen TIME staff members to test them. The verdict: Anthology most faithfully recreates the Atari classics, whereas Flashback is a disappointment, lacking in both depth and performance.

The best thing about Flashback is that you don't need a PlayStation or an Xbox to use it since all the games are built into the device. Testers liked playing Centipede, in which your goal is to shoot and destroy insects that are rapidly wiggling their way down the screen. "I feel like I have more control," said one woman, comparing it with the Anthology version.

On the downside, Flashback has more than 75% fewer games than Anthology, and its cheap-feeling joystick was often hard to maneuver. Even in Breakout, where all you do is hit a ball with a paddle in order to demolish a wall of bricks, I found it impossible to glide the paddle smoothly from one side of the screen to the other.

More problematic was Flashback's rendition of Adventure, in which you must find a golden chalice and take it to a castle. The sounds were noticeably altered from the original, and the game's closing sequence was a poor imitation as well. Noted a tester: "This thing is a total rip-off. The only reason to play these games is for the nostalgia value, and it doesn't even have that."

Anthology, on the other hand, is a good deal, with 85 games for just $20. Testers loved the games, even when they lost. "I'm as bad at this as I ever was," said a guy hooked on Battlezone. As for Asteroids, another noted, "the sound effects are exactly the same [as the original]."

There were a few gripes. As with Flashback, it was hard to maneuver at times using the PS2 controller. And the sports titles have not aged well. "It's stick figures hitting ground balls," said a tester who played Home Run and Realsports Baseball. Still, for $20, Atari Anthology makes a great stocking stuffer.