Review: Atari Anniversary Edition computer game

Atari is synonymous with computer gaming and, of course, any CD-Rom featuring 12 retro - for which read quarter-century-old - arcade games was always going to fare well in an office populated by children of the 1960s and '70s. However, Atari Anniversary Edition is more than just a collection of aged arcade games ñ but more on that soon.

In alphabetic order, £5 buys the following games: Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, Super Breakout, Tempest and Warlords.

Now, even if you've never heard of any of these titles, take it from us that at least eight of them are genuine arcade classics, every single one has all-but-instant playability. We defy anyone, for example, not to immediately take to Tempest, which requires little more control-mastery than swinging the mouse left and right while shooting - great stuff.

But don't mistake easy to get started with easy to complete; there's enough here to keep your interest for a long time.

We noted earlier that there's more to Atari Anniversary Edition than the games. Supporting each title is a variety of digitised memorabilia, from photographs of the original arcade cabinets, to promotional flyers, scans of instruction booklets and all sorts of other interesting stuff (well, interesting to those have a historical interest in such things, anyway).

It is, in short, a great collection. The only thing that would put us off recommending this title is a high price. But Atari Anniversary Edition costs just £5 - an out-and-out bargain.

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