Computer games go back to the future

COMPUTER games fans who have not quite grown up can now revisit their misspent youth, when sophisticated graphics meant a white ball bouncing across a blue screen.

Atari has decided to release a collection of classic games from the arcade of console history. More than 85 will be upgraded to be compatible with the modern game consoles Xbox and PlayStation 2.

The company hopes that childhood memories will be rekindled with the revival of classic titles from yesteryear such as Centipede, Asteroid, and Pong.

Stephen Daultrey of Computers & Video Games online magazine, said the thought of taking a trip down memory lane sent a "shiver of excitement" down his spine.

He said: "It is purely based on nostalgia, but having said that, there is definitely a massive market for it. It has never been done before. The other retro games that are currently being brought up by other companies are much more late-Eighties. The Atari releases date back to the beginning of computer games."

And in a concession to the generation that didn’t grow up in the late-Seventies, Atari is promising an innovative twist to each game with new Challenge Modes such as the psychedelic Trippy Mode, Time Warp and Double Speed.

Atari’s chief executive, Bruno Bonnell, said:

"The more primitive [the game] the better. It shows that video games are not just about high-end graphics or sophisticated representation. It’s about the game-play, the challenge to the player."

Reissuing classic games in the modern consoles has become common over the years. Sonic the Hedgehog and its sequels from the early 1990s turned up on Nintendo’s GameCube, and the old martial-arts challenge Street Fighter series returned on PlayStation 2.

But those titles still look like science-fiction dreaming compared to the jumping dots and boxes of the old Atari games.

The initiative is only one of the nostalgia projects that Atari will push into the market. The second is Atari Flashback, a slightly miniaturised version of the old Atari 7,800 from the mid-Eighties. It will have 20 games built into it, including Breakout, Solaris, Crystal Castles and Battlezone. It also comes with a pair of old-school joysticks.

First released in the UK in 1977, the Atari, with its wood-grain console, and stubby rubber joysticks, soon became a fixture in many homes.

Despite the basic range of games, Space War, Breakout and Tennis were hugely addictive.

But fans will have to look to the US, as the anthology is currently only scheduled for release there around November.