There’s a “new” Atari arcade game, and I can’t put it down - Ars Technica

Enlarge / A look astatine an alternate world wherever vector displays ne'er died.

Atari's caller 50th-anniversary compilation is stuffed with humanities filler, but 1 caller crippled contained successful the bundle won't fto maine go. I'm talking astir Vctr Sctr, a retro-style arcade shooter that melds the addictive gameplay of classics similar Asteroids and Tempest with modern gameplay concepts.

As a package, Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection sets a caller high-water people for retro video crippled compilations. The collection's "timeline" diagnostic deftly weaves archival materials similar plan documents and manuals, explanatory discourse and modern quotes from the game's release, and caller video interviews with crippled creators into an engaging, interactive travel done gaming history.

But portion the presumption shines, the games contained wrong Atari 50 often don't. Sure, determination are a fewer genuinely replayable classics connected connection here, particularly successful the games from Atari's glorious arcade era. That said, the bulk of Atari 50's enactment of implicit 100 titles feels similar filler that conscionable doesn't clasp up from a modern crippled plan perspective. Dozens of "classic" Atari games—from 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe connected the Atari 2600 to Missile Command 3D connected the Jaguar—boil down to specified humanities curiosities that astir modern players would beryllium hard-pressed to tolerate for longer than a mates of minutes.

Then there's Vctr Sctr, 1 of a fistful of "reimagined" games connected Atari 50 that effort to re-create the consciousness of a classical Atari rubric with modern hardware and plan touches. It's a crippled I've gravitated toward perpetually successful the past fewer days for the benignant of easy-to-pick-up, hard-to-put-down high-score pursuit that I haven't experienced successful rather the aforesaid mode since Geometry Wars.

Emulating a dormant show technology

A speedy look astatine Vctr Sctr gameplay.

As the perhaps-too-cute sanction implies, Vctr Sctr (pronounced "vector sector") is simply a emotion missive to arcade gaming's all-too-brief emotion matter with vector graphics. Unlike raster displays, which assemble an representation from sprites laid retired connected lines of horizontal pixels, vector displays crook an electron beam into discrete lines oregon curves that marque up elemental geometric shapes connected the glowing phosphor.

In opposition to astir arcade games of the '70s and '80s—which were characterized by blocky, pixellated graphics—vector games similar Asteroids oregon Major Havoc featured sharp, crisp lines that smoothly animated successful easy scalable and functionally infinite resolutions. But those advantages came astatine a price—the elemental lines created "hollow" looking wireframe characters and objects, and aboriginal vector displays could lone show a azygous colour (four-color vector games would travel later).

The glowing, precise lines of vector displays were besides astir intolerable to re-create connected standard-definition CRT TVs of the '70s and '80s. If you wanted the vector acquisition astatine home, you had to put successful expensive flops similar the Vectrex, which had built-in vector monitors.

A glimpse astatine however Tempest looks connected a existent vector monitor.

Capturing the unsocial glow of Atari's classical vector games was a precedence for the developers of Atari 50. "We tried our champion to emulate the look [of a classical vector monitor]," Digital Eclipse technologist and Vctr Sctr decorator Jeremy Williams told Ars. "We truly cared astir that a lot... It's each drawn successful an 'additive mode' truthful it truly does look arsenic overmuch similar a vector show arsenic we could."

That quest for vector authenticity includes small touches similar emulating the "phosphor effect" that leads to blurry after-images that persist connected the show for a divided 2nd aft a vector enactment disappears. Williams said helium besides went to the occupation to cipher the subtle ghostly "bloom" that flickers astir idiosyncratic vector show lines (and pulses compellingly with the bass-heavy soundtrack, successful Vctr Sctr's case).

Even issues that were considered imperfections connected vector displays of the time were important to seizure for this reimagining, Williams said. "Depending connected whether oregon not your vector show is truly dialed in, you tin get a small spot of question for each the lines," helium said. "So each enactment is benignant of moving a small bit, each enactment is independently flickering."