Format: Advance
Genre: Collection
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision

Contains 55 games and 1 Tech Demo. Activision Anthology is a throwback to the Atari era of gaming. 55 of, I guess, Activision's early games on the atari are playable on this GBA game. Most of them suck. The early Atari games were, for lack of a better wording, garbage in their design. Most games required you to reset the entire console after it gets to the dead/lock screen. This game brings back that feeling and mechanic. Many games have multiple modes that can be played/switched between. Since this was before the era of randomization the switch modes play an important role in extending gameplay. There's also difficulty switches as well, and color mode switches. The Atari Joystick only had 1 button on it as far as I know, hence why every single game uses button combinations like Down+A or Hold-UP. Trying to break down how playable 55 games are is a bit troubling so I'll give my general review of the good and the bad. Beamrider was an enjoyable shmup-type game where you shoot enemeies in a vertical affair that relied on jumping between lines. Chopper Command is a true classic where you try to protect cargo trucks with a helicopter by shooting down enemy bombers in a horizontal scrolling mess. Fast action on that one. Cosmic Commuter was a weird but fun game where you try to pick up passengers while avoiding asteroids in a horizontal scrolling field. Enduro is basically rad racer or outrun on the atari, the goal is to pass a certain amount of cars before daylight breaks. Megamania is a true vertical shmup game that plays like invaders, gets faster the more you win. Oystron is a very weird flaky and odd horizontal shmup that's surprisingly enjoyable. I'm still not sure what the goal in Oystron is. Robot Tank is a first person 'Tanks!' game on the atari. You have a radar, shoot at an endless amount of enemy tanks that spawn one after the other. Seaquest is the atari version of the nes game 'Jaws!'. The goal is to rescue scuba divers, shoot enemies, and surface to increase score. Lastly Spider Fighter is a very strange vertical shmup that has an insanely fast speed to it. Now onto the bad games list! Baseball was absolute garbage that constantly switched between player 1 and player 2. Bloody Human Freeway is literally just the Freeway game that was included as well, except they replaced the graphics on one sprite. Bridge is a card game that shouldn't exist. Ice Hockey was impossible due to the AI literally cheating as well as having shit controls. Okie is a stupid game that's not even an old atari game. It's that stupid flip on-off puzzle game. Space Shuttle was a space flight simulator.. on the atari. yeahhhhh.... TitleMatch Pro Wrestling, like all wrestling games, doesn't have the right to exist. It was clunky, controls were horrible, and the AI cheats to all hell. Video Euchre is another card game that shouldn't exist. An honorable mention here is pitfall and pitfall II. Pitfall admittedly gave me too much trouble with hitboxes, but I managed to beat pitfall II on my first attempt. It was probably the most time I invested in any single game other than barnstorming. The barnstorming thing was a matter of pride. I said this earlier as well but there was 1 tech demo on the game too. That tech demo is known as 'Venetian Blinds' which apparently was a joke game made by activision to mock atari because of a lawsuit they had for copyright theft. It's a weird story but also supposedly activision trademarked sunsets later because of it or something. While the concept of 55 games in a single cartridge is impressive, it's earnestly not the best buy in the world. They clearly wanted to resell old crap and take people's money for it. For one, there's no "game music" in game. There's game music in the menus, but not in game. They also didn't update the controls for each game, but rather, modified the GBA to fit the controls of the atari setup. Essentially you're playing an atari emulator on the GBA. They could have done a lot with quality of life features, but choose to go a greedier path with this one. Credits in Menu.

All in All, This one scored a middle ground 5.0 score for it's quantity over quality approach. No in-game music, emulator style gameplay, reset upon victory/defeat, most games are shit, subpar collection attempt with no QoL features.