It’s tricky to talk about 2022’s Atari Mania without mentioning the Wario Ware series, so I may as well get it out of the way: Atari Mania is brazenly influenced by Nintendo’s celebrated microgame compendiums. In some ways it’s more diverse, but never any better for it. And it certainly isn’t any better than even the first Wario Ware.
You play as the caretaker of the fabled Atari vault. Upon arriving at work one day, presumably to dust the exhibits and watch reruns of Mork & Mindy, they discover the presence of ominous dead pixels swallowing up the stars of various Atari classics. It soon emerges that Bentley Bear is in some way involved, fearing a future of becoming infected with dead pixels themselves.
The black holes left in the path of destruction consume the exhibits while spawning red-eyed bosses. The only way they can be defeated is to play a sequence of random mini-games before going head-to-head in a more elaborate challenge. A handful of lives are at your disposal, which helps to alleviate some frustration with the occasionally finicky controls, and towards the end of the adventure a trio of bosses appear which can be tackled in any order.
The vault forms a hub world with collectable cover art, puzzles, NPCs, and the ability to unlock not-particularly thrilling game manuals. There are fifty dust piles to clear up too – again, not exactly a thrilling pursuit. The vault itself isn’t much of a looker either. While some rooms are themed around the exhibits, grey is the most predominant colour. The only exception is the room featuring a demonic red pentagram etched into the floor, which I’m guessing isn’t something found within Atari’s offices. Except perhaps for that time when they dabbled with NFTs.
At least the mini-games themselves aren’t lazy recreations of Atari’s classics – everything has been redrawn using an 8-bit art style which showcases brighter colours and more fluid animation. They aren’t merely ten second snippets either; the majority are mash-ups of three titles, often cleverly blended. You may have to protect the millipede from Millipede using a Pong bat, or play as a cowboy from Outlaw while trying to defeat said invertebrate. The tank from Combat also shows up in Warlords and Dodge’em. Atari Circus, somewhat predictably, is mixed with Breakout, replacing the bat ‘n ball with circus clowns and a seesaw. It can get quite silly at times, placing you in control of the Pong ball instead of the paddles, or giving control of the drawbridge in Adventure and tasking you with nudging enemies off screen.
While this may sound fun and creative, these mini-games greatly lack intuitiveness. Wario Ware had a great sense of immediacy with clear, one word, instructions for each game – shoot, catch, hit, pick, and so forth. Here, some mini-game descriptions comprise of multiple sentences, and it isn’t always immediately obvious which character is under your control. I also had multiple problems whenever Warlords was involved. One challenge entails winning a game in thirty seconds, but due to the randomised nature of the ball physics and the fact that you’re up against three AI competitors, winning is a struggle. Another challenge involves a one-on-one battle with a boss, which took me around ten attempts due to the cramped playing area.
Atari Mania isn’t a disaster. It’s conceptually sound, and the presence of puzzles – facilitated by the caretaker’s growing inventory – between mini-games adds much to the proceedings. Collectable cover art is a nice feature too. But this is also an experience where every few minutes you’ll be presented with a mini-game that should’ve ideally been left on the cutting room floor. There’s a lot to be said for keeping things simple. What should’ve been a celebration of Atari classics inadvertently made me not want to revisit some of their games for a very long time. Specifically, Warlords.