Relive Video Game History! / For Playstation Memory Card - 1 blocks

This baby's fully loaded with 30 of your all-time video game favorites!

In the first and largest arcade collection of its kind, Activision Classics gives you all the gameplay of the original Atari 2600 games - now for your Playstation game console.

Activision Classics: It's serious old-school fun.

Average Customer Review: ( 15 customer reviews )
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The graphics of the games is identical to that of the Atari 2600, but that's about all that's exactly the same. I have to admit, it is a bit different trying to control these games with a controller instead of a joystick. Once you get used to it, that won't be a problem. The only major drawback I found in this game is that in some of the ones I have for the Atari 2600 such as Megamania and Pitfall, the sounds aren't the same or they have been left out.

If you grew up with the Atari 2600 or used to play it a lot, I would recommend getting "Activision Classics." But if you haven't ever played the 2600, you might not be too fond of these games. If you're a longtime fan of Atari, this will bring back a lot of great memories.

12 of 13 found the following review helpful:

Entertaining but imperfect.Jul 18, 2000

For the money, this is a decent deal; 29 Activision games and 1 Imagic game for less than a buck a pop. As anyone who remembers the Atari will tell you, though, these kinds of games aren't usually engrossing; half the fun is being able to play a game for a few seconds or minutes and then popping in a new game. The more games you have, the more you're likely to do this. So, you'll find yourself constantly stopping games in progress and starting up others...

The overall package has some problems. First, considering the small size of the ROMs, there is no reason Activision couldn't have fit their entire catalogue on here, including Imagic and Absolute games (minus the licensed titles). It might have been difficult to emulate Pitfall II since it contained a separate sound chip, but everything else could have been included easily.

Second, the loading times are bizarre- these games are only 4-8k in size originally; the load times are so long that it seems the emulator is being loaded up fresh every time- this makes switching between games annoying. It would have been a lot more efficient to simply load the emulator into memory first, and then just load a ROM into memory as needed.

Third, an option to use the PSX mouse/trackball or analog/Dual Shock for Kaboom! would have been nice. Kaboom! was a paddle game originally, and digital controls just don't cut it.

Fourth, I would have loved to see some multimedia content. Considering the paucity of the instructions in the manual, scans of the original manual would have been nice; interviews with programmers and/or a multimedia history segment would have been really nice.

For the joystick games (all but Kaboom!), the controls are pretty good. It sometimes would help to have a joystick like the original Atari one, because a control pad doesn't offer the same amount of precision.

Overall, a decent entry in the retro/emulation category. More of a selection than any other title except Activision's Intellivision Classics. A little more polishing and it would have been a 4 star game; as it stands, though, it gets just a 3 for being a plain but competent compilation.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:

I'm ten again! I'm ten again! Oh no, i'm thirty-one.Mar 18, 2000

This is a wonderful look back on the way I wasted my early teens. I bought the disc for my 16-year-old brother and we spent the entire night playing Pitfall, Enduro, Chopper Command, River Raid, you name it. I only wish Atari would put together some of their own classics: Joust, Berzerk, Combat, Asteroids, or Space Invaders. Oh no, I'm thirty-one.

7 of 8 found the following review helpful:

Our 7 year old daughter loves Mom and Dad's favorite games.Feb 18, 2000

I bought this game because I loved the old Atari games. My husband, brother, mother, father, and I all enjoyed the game very much. It reminded us of when we were younger and allowed us some good times and memories. I asked my daughter to come and see what our games used to look like. We compared them to the games of today. She was amazed at the difference. She sat down to watch at first, but she couldn't help herself, soon she picked up the controller and started playing. I had to make her shut off the machine and go to bed. I also love that these games do not have so much profanity and other things that the newer games have. Also they do not spin around so much that you get a headache. Everyone in our family loves this game. It is excellent.

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

Fun, But if You Have a PS2 Pass it byAug 07, 2009
By MonkeyJoe "RPG Fan"
Don't get me wrong, I loved this collection. I'm old enough to rember fighting over the Atari 2600 with my brother and sister. You'll find all the classic old-school games here, and a few not so classic. River Raid 1, River Raid 2, and Sea Quest were the best, and Pit Fall alone was worth the price. If you only have a PS One, and can rember the Atari 2600, get this disk. However, if you have a PS 2 there is another collection under the same title with all the same games as this one as well as some that weren't included on the PS One version. The PS 2 version also has some other nice bells and whistles and is, for my money the better collection.

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