After touching base with their major rival and now acquired property along with expanding an already dense set of documentaries, Atari 50 now delves into one of the famed companies most well-known business ventures: their relationship with Namco during the early days of what is now one of the giants of the videogame industry. In Atari 50: The Namco Legendary Pack, we get to see what made that partnership so special and get to play some of the fruits of it in their original form.
As with previous Atari 50 content, this Namco-themed DLC is presented as its own timeline in the menu. Quickly starting out with an explanation on what led it to come to place, that is the failure of Atari’s Japan subsidiary and eventual acquisition of it by Nakamura Manufacturing Company and the porting of some of their most iconic games to a cavalcade of Atari consoles over the course of a decade or so.
The most noteworthy parts, as usual, are most certainly the few bits of new documentary footage starring two key figures in the programming side of Atari in the US Tod Frye and Mark Ackerman, with them talking about the absolute magic that they were able to pull off porting full-blown arcade games to the extremely limited hardware of the 2600. Simply put, flickering was the key in making these games work and play so well, as they, as put by Frye, scraped the bottom of the barrel when putting them together.
There isn’t much runtime-wise to be had in this DLC, but what there is on offer is quite excellent. I especially liked the candid talk between Tod and Digital Eclipse studio head Mike Mika about Pac-Man’s two-player mode and how Mike used to sneak out of school during his lunch break in order to play it. It’s a hilarious and absolutely adorable account. I’m sure many would share similar stories from that time if they had the chance, huh.
Outside of the videos, which include original TV commercials for some of the games, there’s also a number of scans of magazine reviews from that time, and of course, actual playable versions of a number of them. Like Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, a few are conspicuously missing, namely the Atari 2600 version of Xevious, which is mentioned by name in the documentary. It would’ve been nice to follow up on the watch with a quick play of that port, but I guess I’ll have to make due with the 7800 port…
Atari 50 was already an extremely hefty “game doc” in and of itself and these DLCs bring even more value to one of Digital Eclipse’s most impressive works so far. As they tease in The Namco Legendary Pack, maybe we’ll get to see more of Namco’s rich history down the line, but I hope they don’t stop here with the Atari stuff. As someone who did not grow up playing their consoles, it’s been a blast getting to learn about it in such a package full of care and effort by that team.
