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Give Activision Anthology: Remix Edition a Spin

By Brad Cook
Some may prefer to forget the 1980s. Others may not remember much of the “Gordon Gekko decade” at all. But ask anyone over 30 about Atari, and odds are they’ll wax nostalgic about the early days of the videogame business. (Cue flashback sounds and wavy picture…

…as we head back 20 years to a time when few people had heard of the Internet but most knew about this new thing called videogames.) Videogames then were primitive compared to today’s world of polygon-based 3D images, but skilled programmers could get the most out of a console like the Atari 2600, which was a Model T Ford next to today’s Corvettes.

That was certainly true of Activision’s engineers, who dreamed up a wide of variety of imaginative games that pushed the 2600’s capabilities to its limits. To commemorate their achievements, MacPlay put together Activision Anthology: Remix Edition, which contains over 75 games published by the company for the 2600 during the 1980s. (The collection also includes a few of the most popular games from Imagic, another publisher from the era that’s now defunct.)

From Ice Hockey and Baseball to H.E.R.O. and Pitfall!, Anthology represents a wide range of genres and showcases many of the best-selling games from those years. In fact, many of the games in the collection were the first of their kind: Pitfall!, for example, created the action/adventure genre while Ice Hockey was as close to the real thing as the technology allowed.

Step Into Our Game Room
Anthology’s main screen evokes many teenagers’ rooms from that era, complete with a small color TV that sports rabbit ears, a spinner rack full of cartridges, and an Atari 2600 with wood-grain paneling. (The console was redesigned a couple times, but the wood-grain look was the original one.)

The main screen also features a bulletin board where you can place digital versions of the same patches that Activision used to give out to die-hard fans who racked up high scores in certain games. If you can pull off certain feats in other games, like scoring four goals in less than two minutes against the computer in Ice Hockey, you’ll also receive such bonuses as the actual commercials that used to air on TV and special gameplay modes.

Those gameplay modes include one in which a spinning cube displays the game on all six sides, another that bounces the game as you play, and a whirl effect that slowly spins the game 360 degrees.

To complete the 1980s feel, you can also turn off the Atari 2600 “beep-boop” sound effects and instead listen to songs from Blondie, Twisted Sister, Flock of Seagulls, and other popular bands from the era as you play. Listen to Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance” while playing Megamania in disco mode and you may suddenly feel a sense of dread, as if your mother is about to barge in and demand that you clean up your room. That or you’ll begin to worry that your stocks are headed for a fall.

Note: Activision Anthology: Remix Edition is no longer available from MacPlay, however you may still be able to find it at your local retail store.

Pitfall!. Pitfall Harry was the first action/adventure hero in the videogame business.

The Way It Was. Step into your bedroom circa 1983.

System Requirements:

	Mac OS X version 10.2.8 or higher
	400MHz PowerPC G4 processor
	16MB video card or higher

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Downloadable Games

History is Made

The videogame industry was a much different business in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Back then, Atari ruled homes with the Video Computer System (VCS), later known as the 2600, and personal computers hadn’t quite become mainstream yet. When Atari engineers Alan Miller, Larry Kaplan, Dave Crane and Bob Whitehead demanded better contracts, company president Ray Kassar balked and the four of them left, part of an ongoing exodus of key Atari talent.

The four friends started Activision in 1980 with plans to make games for the Atari 2600. Their ex-employers, however, insisted that they had no right to do so and launched a series of lawsuits, claiming that only Atari could make games for their best-selling console. Activision won and in the process became the first third-party publisher in the videogame business.

Today, such companies are commonplace, but Activision was a novelty at the time. They won over retailers and consumers, though, with games that featured better graphics and sound and more imaginative gameplay than Atari’s releases. Their efforts forced Atari to create better games and paved the way for Imagic — another company founded by ex-Atari employees — and other third-party publishers.

Imagic and many of its brethren didn’t survive the decade, however. The videogame industry experienced a severe downturn in the mid-1980s, allowing Nintendo to rise from the rubble and dominate the late 1980s and early 1990s with its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Activision, though, held on for the ride and actually changed its name to Mediagenic before changing it back in 1992.

Today, Activision creates many of the popular games that make their way to the Mac, including the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer, X2: Wolverine’s Revenge, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Star Trek: Elite Force II, and more.

Tips and Tricks for Select Games

Atlantis

Atlantis: Practice blasting enemy spaceships with the angled cannons on the left and right sides of the screen. It’s easier to take out the opposing force with the middle cannon, but it’s the first one to go when the bad guys start destroying the city.

Beamrider: Fire your torpedoes sparingly. They’re the only weapon you can use against the Sector Sentinels. When the Sentinel appears at the end of the level, wait on one of the beams while the green blockers swarm to it. Then move to an open beam and fire a torpedo at the Sentinel.

Boxing: Don’t get close and allow your opponent to hit you. Instead, time your punches so that you hit him when your arm is fully extended, thus earning you points while keeping him at bay.

Ice Hockey: If the puck goes your way after the face-off, grab it and execute a couple quick back-and-forth moves to confuse the computer-controlled goalie. Slip past him and put the puck in the goal.

If the puck goes to the computer player, move your goalie out and attack him in an attempt to knock him down and grab the puck. That’s a better strategy than waiting for him and trying to knock the puck away when he’s right in front of your goal. When you get the puck from him, don’t forget to pass it off the sides of the rink to your other player; angled passes are much harder to intercept than straight ones, and you might just score that way.

Tennis

Kaboom!: Score 10,000 points and you’ll surprise the bomber.

Laser Blast: When your ship gets hit, steer it toward one of the tanks on the ground as it falls. You can still take out an enemy that way.

Megamania: Pay attention to the aliens’ patterns as they zig-zag across the screen and you can still avoid them even when they reach the bottom. You can also use those patterns to time your shots.

Pitfall!: If you get a late start running across one of the pits that opens and closes, jump just before you get to the other side and you should avoid getting swallowed. And when you cross the crocodile swamps, stand on their heads and you won’t die when they open their mouths.

Pitfall! II: The Lost Caverns: You can freefall through a mine shaft to the river below, but watch out for bats along the way. If you fall off a level by accident, push Pitfall Harry to the right or left and the cavern wind will nudge him in that direction, where he should land safely.

Spider Fighter: Shoot the egg-layer first at the beginning of each level; this will keep more spiders from showing up. And when the egg-layer stops moving erratically and heads in a straight line, it’s about to go after the fruit, so make sure you shoot it.

Tennis: Hit the ball with the edge of your racket and it will sail over the net faster.