Today Atari announced a brand new collection coming to your DS this Christmas. If you’ve been into gaming since the 70s and 80s and are an avid retro-gamer like myself, chances are you’ve bought at least one copy of Atari’s Greatest Hits over the last decade or so. Atari is hoping you’ll do it again.

So what are they offering? For starters on the arcade side it’s the standard lineup of: Asteroids®, Tempest®, Lunar Lander®, Space Duel, Pong®, Centipede®, and Missile Command® and a couple others. *yawn* That spectacular lineup is followed by some 50 Atari 2600 classics including:

• 3D Tic-Tac-Toe
• Adventure
• Air-Sea Battle
• Asteroids
• Atari Video Cube
• Basketball
• Battlezone
• Bowling
• Centipede
• Championship Soccer
• Dodge ‘Em
• Flag Capture
• Football
• Fun with Numbers
• Gravitar
• Hangman
• Haunted House
• Home Run
• Human Cannonball
• Math Gran Prix
• Miniature Golf
• Missile Command
• Outlaw
• Realsports Baseball
• Realsports Boxing
• Realsports Football
• Realsports Tennis
• Realsports Volleyball
• Sky Diver
• Slot Machine
• Slot Racers
• Sprintmasters
• Starship
• Stella Track
• Submarine Commander
• Surround
• Swordquest Earthworld
• Swordquest Fireworld
• Swordquest Waterworld
• Tempest
• and Video Checkers
• Also included will be an Atari trivia game that when you’re connected online scores can be posted.

As with previous collections, Atari has decided to not change a thing where the name is concerned.  It will be called:  Atari’s Greatest Hits: Volume 1. There will be a couple of differences on the DS version though.

Each title will sport a “pick-up and play control scheme” presumably attempting once again to emulate picking up a cartridge and stuffing it into a VCS.   They have also planned updates to modernize the titles for the Nintendo DS platform–which I’ve never been a particularly huge fan of–mostly because it ends up looking like an exercise in programming rather than adding anything useful to the game.

However, the additions that are most notable are:

• Original game manuals.
• Memorabilia showcase
• New single cartridge multiplayer mode to such games as Pong, Space Duel and Outlaw.

Though some of the features are new and borderline innovative for the DS platform, quite frankly this just seems like another attempt to milk the retro community for a few more bucks.  Chances are if you’ve kept up on every platform over the last 15 years, you probably own several copies of these games for varying systems.   The one advantage is that this will have a hard copy for collectors to hang on to and hopefully one day milk it on eBay for a few dollars more.

Atari Arcade Hits suggested retail price is $29.99.

via PR Newswire