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New Atari 50 DLC shows the Intellivision acquisition is already paying off

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An Atari 2600+ sits on a table.
Giovanni Colantonio / Digital Trends

Digital Eclipse’s Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is an excellent and comprehensive look back at the company’s now classic video game lineup, with games to play and extra content to interact with. So far, it’s gotten one DLC: The Wider World of Atari, that added even more titles. Now, it’s about to get its second, thanks to an acquisition it made earlier this year.

Atari announced The First Console War on Friday, and it’s about, as you can guess, the company’s first console war with the Intellivision, although it’ll touch on a specific element of it. In the 1980s, Mattel was publishing games on the Intellivision. At some point, it decided to release versions of these console exclusives for its main competitor, the Atari 2600, under the M Network label. There are 19 of these games coming to Atari 50 with The First Console War, which is set to launch on November 8 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4 Atari 50 owners.

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You might not recognize some of the names. For example, what is Astroblast? Is that like Astrosmash? Well, a lot of games got different names when Mattel ported them over. Thankfully, the Atari M Network names are similar to the originals.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Trailer

Atari acquired its rival Intellivision in May, therefore ending the video game industry’s oldest console war and acquiring over 200 games, including more than a dozen M Network games. Atari CEO Wade Rosen said following the announcement that the company wanted to distribute the games, and was looking into possible ways to create new games based off those IPs.

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Digital Eclipse, which Atari also owns, makes games that are both retro remasters and interactive museum exhibits, and The First Console War is no different. The DLC will feature interviews with M Network programmer Jane Terjung, game historians Leonard Herman and Mike Mika, and former Atari developers David Crane and Garry Kitchen, along with a new timeline breaking down this era in video game history.

Here’s the full games list:

  • Air Raiders: 2600 M Network
  • Antbear: 2600 M Network (unreleased, based on Stern IP)
  • Armor Ambush: 2600 M Network
  • Astroblast: 2600 M Network
  • Frogs & Flies: 2600 M Network
  • International Soccer: 2600 M Network
  • Dark Cavern: 2600 M Network
  • Star Strike: 2600 M Network
  • Super Challenge Baseball: 2600 M Network
  • Super Challenge Football: 2600 M Network
  • Swordfight: 2600 M Network (rare, unreleased)
  • Sea Battle: 2600 M Network (rare, unreleased)
  • Tower of Mystery (unreleased prototype, recently rescued)
  • Video Pinball: 2600
  • Basketball: 2600
  • Hardball: Atari 8-bit (XE)
  • Final Legacy (prototype): 5200
  • Xari Arena: Atari 8-bit
  • Desert Falcon: 7800

Correction: A previous version of this story identified a game called Anteater when it should’ve been Antbear.

Carli Velocci
Carli Velocci
Former Contributor, Games
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
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