Atari 50‘s latest DLC, The First Console War, brings new platforms and new games to the massive collection.
Everyone claims there was a “first console war” but the funny thing about the Intellivision is that it just fell by the wayside almost immediately because Atari had the better games. There was only a console war in hindsight, and it wasn’t much of one, but we need to document it because it was the first time there was an actual challenger to Atari. And so this DLC covers that, with the same painstaking amount of detail as all of Digital Eclipse’s other work, and makes something that was fairly mundane end up kind of compelling.
This DLC is the final piece of the Atari puzzle. Now that they own the Intellivision IP, they’re free to include it into their products. So it makes sense to add on a very important little piece of the Atari history that can kind of wedge in here now as that “war.” At that time Mattel was one of the biggest toy companies in America. They owned the toy store shelves, not wanting to give up a single inch of shelf space to anyone else, Atari included. So they got their butts in on the game development and hardware business pretty early on.
This DLC covers that entrance into gaming, and Atari’s response, with video clips and stories and documents, alongside games that appeared on the platform. I think the documentary footage in this is definitely my favorite of the Atari 50 package altogether. It’s really fun because it’s a lot of the people at Mattel talking about working on the games and knowing there’s looked better but had no viable marketing compared to Atari and its brand. This extends to interviews about THAT CONTROLLER and trying to take on Atari in an increasingly flooded market. Atari had the games people wanted, even if Intellivision had the better visuals, but their mistakes and missteps were coming from a place of not understanding the difference between toys and video games in the 80s.
The real meat and potatoes of this package is the focus on the M Network, which was Mattel’s brand to sell their Intellivision games on the 2600. So, all of the playable games on this DLC are those M Network versions. We might recognize the game, but the name is new, because Mattel didn’t want to cannibalize their own market. The sports games, though, are much better than their 2600 counterparts. Somehow Mattel was able to downport these onto the console and *still* be better than Atari’s native developed sports games. It was a big get for Mattel at the time, even though it necessarily didn’t last.
And so, with this DLC it feels like Atari’s story from the Eighties is now complete. Digital Eclipse has run the length of the life cycle, across platforms and through the people and controversies of the era, to deliver a concise package of what gaming was in the pre-Nintendo/Sega days. This isn’t focused on the games themselves, because let’s face it: they’re not really any good (time hasn’t been kind). But the archival work and the interviews and the way the entire story has been woven together is worth the admission. It’s easy to sit down, get some popcorn, and watch the couple hours worth of great storytelling and have a full appreciation for what the developers went through.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on The SideQuest Live for November 12, 2024. Images and video courtesy Publisher.
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