The Atari 50 compilation will add two new timelines and more than 30 games with a new edition

Atari and developer Digital Eclipse have announced that Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration will have an Expanded Edition with two new timelines and 19 games that will go on sale on October 25 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch and PC through Steam in exchange for 39.99 euros. The version for PS5 and Switch can be purchased in both physical and digital formats. Owners of the original game will be able to access the new content through DLC that will be available throughout 2024.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is an “interactive journey” through Atari’s 50-year history, featuring more than 100 games from seven platforms (Arcade, Atari 800, 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar and Lynx) divided by timelines, as well as material in the form of interviews, archival footage and behind-the-scenes content. The Expanded Edition adds two new timelines with 39 games, which like the rest have passed through the hands of Digital Eclipse for emulation and modern quality of life improvements.

Atari’s Wide World timeline includes 19 games, eight video segments, and other materials. Atari advances that one of the “highlights” of this timeline is an analysis by Berzerk of Stern Electronics, a shoot ’em up where the player must survive in a maze full of robots, and a section dedicated to artist Evelyn Seto, who helped create Atari’s iconic Fuji logo. Allan Alcorn, creator of Pong, also appears to talk about the birth of Breakout, and an exploration of the role of fans in discovering unreleased prototypes, creating games homebrew and preserve Atari history.

The second timeline that Expanded Edition adds is called First Console War and includes 20 games and half a dozen video segments to narrate the fight between Atari 2600 and Mattel’s Intellivision. Included here are a selection of games from M Network, a division of Mattel that developed games for Atari, as well as interviews with Dan Daglow, former head of games at Intellivision, programmer Jane Terjung of N Network, David Crane and Garry Kitchen of Activision, The programmer homebrew Dennis Debro and historians Leonard Herman and Mike Mika.

In total, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition features more than 140 classic games, including some that have not been available for a long time, as well as extensive material about Atari such as archival and contemporary interviews with employees, programmers, executives, artists, creatives and historians, archive images and more. All presented through timelines and groomed by Digital Eclipse.