Atari Announces Expanded Edition of Their Atari 50 Collection, Launches October 25!

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Atari and developer Digital Eclipse have just announced a successor to their 2022 collection of Atari games, which was known as Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection. This new version, entitled Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition, will add two new timelines and 39 games to the playable Atari retrospective. It's launching on October 25th on Steam.

Don't worry if you already own Atari 50 though, rather than having to buy the Expanded Edition as an entirely new product, the new content added in the Expanded Edition can be bought as DLC for existing Atari 50 owners.

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's 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.

We don't have too much information on the collection besides this. We do have pricing but it was only disclosed for the physical editions of the game on Switch and PS5, which was $39.99, the pricing may be similar or slightly lower for Steam players.

There is a Steelbook version (again, only for PS5 and Switch players) which retails for $49.99, and it does look neat, the Steelbook itself is fairly platform-agnostic as are the additional extras you get with it, so if you are into collecting things like this or are just a big Atari fan, it might be worth a look. You don't get a PC copy of the game with this though, obviously.

We can probably assume that the new Atari 50 collection will work on the Steam Deck, given its very retro nature. There's no Steam page yet, or indeed any screenshots or videos of the new games featured in the expanded edition, but we'll let you know as news undoubtedly filters in about this new Atari 50 collection.

Are you glad to see a new entry into the Atari 50 series? Let us know what you think about it in the comments below!

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