This is the Re-mix?

If there's any game that should win an award for its box cover, it should be Atarimix: Happy 10 Games. The box art will not look out of place in a modern arts gallery. Take a look for yourself:
The box art features a line of arcade consoles in the foreground, followed by an interesting background of a rocket in the shape of the Atari logo launching with pink (and starry) smoke billowing. Pictures paint a thousand words, so I'll just stop at describing and please look at the picture instead.

The box-art of this Japanese language game certainly differs from that of the US release (and thank goodness for that) which is also known as Retro Atari Classics. The US box art certainly looks garish:

As the title suggests, Atarimix is a compilation of 10 retro games along with their "re-mixed" versions. This is the first time I purchased a game based on box-art alone, but there is some substance in the retro games offered by this compilation.

The games are:

• Warlords
• Asteroids
• Break Out
• Centipede
• Gravitar
• Lunar Lander
• Missile Command
• Pong
• Sprint
• Tempest

Some of you old school gamers might just recognize these games. Having not played the original games on the Atari, I can't say whether these are faithful ports or otherwise. The re-mixed versions bring nothing much to the table, and I had more fun playing the original version of Pong in this compilation.

The extensive use of the touch screen might be a turn of to some people but I guess the developers implemented the control scheme without much thought or the fact that they were coding for the DS.

"Oh, looky here..we are coding for the DS! Altogether now chaps.."Touchscreen control...Touchscreen control..."

Collectors and nostalgic gamers might do themselves a favour and get this compilation as compliations are probably the only opportunity for retro games to be released on this platform.

This compilation is available at Play-Asia.com (here)