It has been over five decades since a small team in Silicon Valley combined their creativity, curiosity and passion into making video games and hardware. The result of their efforts was Atari, one of the most recognizable and enduring entertainment and pop culture brands in the world.

Atari 50: the Anniversary Collection is an interactive journey through 50 years of video games through interviews with designers, developers and industry leaders, documentary footage, product design documents, and of course, more than 80 playable games.

At the heart of the 50th Anniversary Collection is a curated list of over 80 games that span seven different hardware platforms – a true feat of emulation by the team at Digital Eclipse. Behind every game are the stories of Atari, what was happening at the company, what went into the creation of the games and the hardware they ran on … told by the people who were there. It is a rare opportunity to get a rich, behind the scenes look at the history of video games.

Atari and developer Digital Eclipse are excited to announce a significant expansion to their acclaimed 2022 release Atari 50: the Anniversary Collection. The new version, entitled Atari 50: the Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition, adds two new timelines and 39 games to the playable Atari retrospective.

The Wider World of Atari timeline, which includes 19 playable games and eight video segments, takes a series of deep dives into stories from Atari history, showing how Atari continued to influence creators and fans over the decades.  New interviews, vintage ads, historical artifacts, and more have all been researched and presented with Digital Eclipse’s signature style. Highlights from the new timeline include a deep dive into Stern Electronics' robot-blasting Berzerk; unusual and underappreciated innovations and hidden gems from the late 1980s; a spotlight on the artist Evelyn Seto, who helped create the iconic “Fuji” Atari logo; Pong creator Al Alcorn explaining the birth of Breakout; and an exploration of the fan base’s role in discovering unreleased prototypes, creating “homebrew” games, and preserving Atari history.

The First Console War timeline, which includes 20 playable games and half-dozen video segments, tells the story of the first major console war in the gaming industry between the Atari 2600 and Mattel’s Intellivision. The team at Digital Eclipse curates an exploration of the rivalry, including Mattel’s quixotic decision to create games for the competing Atari 2600. Highlights include a selection of M Network games, including some fan-favorites; a mix of Atari and M Network sports games, and some rare Atari 2600 and 5200 prototypes. New interview features include former Intellivision game director Don Daglow, M Network programmer Jane Terjung, Activision’s David Crane and Garry Kitchen, homebrew programmer Dennis Debro, and historians Leonard Herman and Mike Mika.

The new timelines and games will be offered to owners of the original Atari 50 release as DLCs later this year.

Atari 50: the Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition is coming to PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and the Atari VCS on October 25, 2024, including a physical release on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.

The physical release will include a Steelbook version for Nintendo Switch, which will come with Atari 2600 art cards, miniature arcade marquee signs, an Al Alcorn Replica Syzygy Co. business card and a Steelbook case. The standard version will retail for $39.99 USD and the steelbook will retail for $49.99 USD.