Development
The game's editorial director, Chris Kohler, joined Digital Eclipse in July 2020, following the departure of Frank Cifaldi. The team were working on a re-release of Jordan Mechner's Karateka (1984), which Kohler described as being in a "different sort of prototype and in a different sort of state" than what would become The Making of Karateka (2023). Kohler went through Mechner's journals he kept while in college, discovering that the material could be used to chronologically tell the history of game's development. He wanted to place the game's history in a timeline, showcasing earlier games developed by the creator and prototypes of the game that would lead to its final form. While developing The Making of Karateka, Digital Eclipse were called upon to develop the Atari 50 compilation. As they had been already making an interactive documentary for The Making of Karateka, they applied what they had developed into Atari 50. The full title Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration references the company's 50th anniversary. Stephen Frost, producer of Atari 50, found that as there had been several compilations of Atari games, it was important to expand on the concept in a new release that would give the story of the company and how their hardware influenced both the arcade and video game industries. This led Digital Eclipse to apply the interactive timeline which presents text, images, video footage and playable games to form a narrative. The engineers at Digital Eclipse built a system that allowed them to add material in a timeline without extensive programming.
Some games could not be included with the release as Atari no longer had the rights to them, such as the arcade games Marble Madness (1984), S.T.U.N. Runner (1989), and San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing (1996), the rights to which belonged to Warner Bros. following the bankruptcy of Midway, which had previously had the rights to Atari Games. Other games that were not included were attached to other licenses, such as the arcade game Star Wars (1983), the Atari Jaguar game Alien vs Predator (1994), and the Atari 2600 game Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982). Frost explained that processes were started on getting permission to include certain titles and art assets for other games, which was allowed for games like Yoomp!. Some initial work was made on an emulator for the Atari ST line of computers, but halted when Frost concluded that there were not enough resources to complete the emulator to the quality required.
Programmer Dave Rees said that a few games for the Atari 2600 required unique emulation. These included Secret Quest, which uses the switch to display a code-entry status screen. This game required unique code to get it to toggle with a press of a button. Rich Whitehouse created the Atari Jaguar emulator and found it particularly challenging. Whitehouse stated that there was not a lot of documentation for the system's hardware, and what documentation did exist had inaccuracies or was missing information. Whitehouse stated that getting the system to run smoothly on the Nintendo Switch "ended up being its own challenge."
Digital Eclipse created new games for the compilation based on Atari properties and individual members' interests and expertise. These six new games are under the Atari Reimagined label. These are Haunted Houses, Neo Breakout, Quadratank, Swordquest: AirWorld, VCTR-SCTR (pronounced "Vector Sector") and Yars' Revenge Reimagined. Swordquest: AirWorld was developed by Dave Rees as an attempt to make a final game in the Swordquest series of games. He consulted Tod Frye, who worked on developing the game in the 1980s, on what the new version would be like. Yars' Revenge Reimainged was developed by Mike Mika. The game adds more effects and audio to the original game. VCTR-SCTR is a completely new game, inspired by vector graphics, by Jeremy Williams. Williams wrote his own software renderer that let him model vertices in a 3D space and connect them to form wireframes.[3] Haunted Houses was also developed by Rees and featured 3D and voxel-based graphics. Neo-Breakout and Quadratank were developed by Jason Cirillo and Mika respectively.[3]
Digital Eclipse gathered video footage from The Strong, the National Videogame Museum and the Museum of Videogame Art and private collectors to include in the release. Kohler, said that there was no shortage of footage to draw from, but that they had to whittle the content down to what was important for the narrative. All archival footage is captured from original sources. Commercials for Atari were provided by Hans Reutter, including a film scan of an Atari theatrical advertisement.
Downloadable content
On October 31, 2023, Atari announced that they would acquire Digital Eclipse. The deal was closed by November 6. A free update to the collection was subsequently released on December 5, 2023, adding twelve games, including Bowling, Circus Atari, Double Dunk, Maze Craze, Miniature Golf, MotoRodeo, Super Football, and Warbirds, as well as two unreleased prototypes (Aquaventure and Save Mary), and two homebrew 2600 games (Adventure II and Return to Haunted House).
Following Atari's acquisition of the Intellivision brand, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition was announced on June 24, 2024. This version adds two new timelines: "The Wider World of Atari", which contains 19 additional games, a spotlight on Atari logo inker Evelyn Seto, and archival and contemporary interviews with employees, fans and homebrew developers; "The First Console War" focuses on the rivalry between the Atari 2600 and Mattel's Intellivision, and includes new documentary videos and a further 19 additional games. The former was released digitally on September 26, 2024, with the latter arriving on November 8, alongside a physical edition for PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
The games added in "The Wider World of Atari" are: Berzerk
