By Todd Russell
The headline is whispering during a metal concert. Microsoft will likely not listen to/hear anything published here at PlayGamesMore, but the good news is some of you reading might/will.
My co-host of the High Noon Hollywood Polo show (still in season hiatus, as of this writing) shared this Metal Jesus Rocks video embedded below about the new Xbox Retro Classics section in Game Pass.
For those that don’t want to watch the vid — and MJR does a pretty good job hitting the high points — it’s Antstream teaming up with Microsoft’s Blizzard/Activision division to finally do something with the classic Atari 2600 Activision. It’s something they should have done sooner and been a part of the awesome Atari 50: collection (Replay Game Spotlight (RGS #6): Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection).
Ask any of us old timers and/or Atari 2600 historians and fans what made that system great and they will invariably point to Activision. Those were the best games on the system. Really, really fun games like River Raid, which, not so coincidentally is trending #1 in MJR’s video lol.
In the PGM Discord on 5/22/25 when this was shared and discussed, my immediate thoughts were as follows.
Another PGM member replied that he didn’t have any interest in this service, prompting this reply from me:
A number of PGM members, myself very much included, dig modern versions of classic videogames. POOSH is mentioned above as a good example of modern games with a classic focus, and we are still score chasing that, see: Cross-platform Score Chase Added to PGM: POOSH XL and POOSH XL Free Update Adds New TATE Mode, Features, Leaderboard.
Again, doubling down on what made these classic Activision for Atari 2600 games so good was they were often very simple controls, but focused on that component of the game. They also had better graphics than some of the other Atari 2600 games. Yes, they are all crude compare to modern games, heck even games 10-20 years later were light years ahead graphically.
The point is games can be plenty fun to play, and replay, without amazing photo-realistic graphics and stellar sound. Yes, modern gamers might demand more of this, but games like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite? They aren’t exactly the best graphics that money can buy in gaming, and they are hugely popular today (see: Nearly 25% of all game time in 2024 spent playing six games with top 3 over 7 years old).
Clearly, this author is a fan of games that are fun to play, regardless when they were created. Activision Atari 2600 games are some of the best videogames ever made. No, they aren’t visually that exciting to a modern generation, I’ll concede that, but they remain and always will be good games. The best games on the Atari 2600.
This brings us to the other question being posed: why aren’t these Activision Atari 2600 games part of the Atari 50 collection? I don’t know the answer to this, so just guessing, but feel like it must have to do with licensing. There’s more than a little history between the old Activision company back when this stuff was newly released. The Activision group were former Atari employees that broke away and created their own company. Based on my limited research and my memory, it wasn’t a friendly split. Atari wasn’t able to profit as much from the Activision games because they weren’t first party titles.
A little Googling is all it takes to lead to the following article about the four employees that left Atari to form Activision: David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead.
“I remember looking at that memo with those other guys,” recalls Crane, “and we realized that we had been responsible for 60 percent of Atari’s sales in the previous year – the four of us. There were 35 people in the department, but the four of us were responsible for 60 percent of the sales. Then we found another announcement that [Atari] had done $100 million in cartridge sales the previous year, so that 60 percent translated into $60 million.” – Activisionaries: How Four Programmers Changed The Game Industry – Game Informer
Yeah, it’s money. Always money. CEO of Atari Ray Kassar, didn’t see the programmers deserving to be paid royalties. And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and led to Activision.
But today, in 2025, none of that really should matter any more, because the Atari today isn’t owned by Warner Bros and Activision is owned by Microsoft, not those original four talented game designers and programmers.
This is what I had to say in the PGM Discord:
Is it as simple as higher than desired licensing fees? Don’t know but Antstream worked on this and they cited this as a reason why they stopped working with Warner Bros. (see: Breaking: Antstream Arcade Losing Warner Bros. / Midway License).
Going back to that article linked above from Game Informer, there is a really good quote in there about the legacy of Activision. Creative people aren’t always the best business people, unfortunately and the four that made up Activision, made all those great Atari 2600 games didn’t weather the business much better than Atari.
However, brand names are important and the people that founded Activision may not be the people working there today, but the name, the brand, remembers.
“Much of Activision’s success today is built on that brand name, but its legacy is larger than a single company. Crane, Kaplan, Miller, and Whitehead envisioned an industry where game makers were credited as artistic visionaries who shared in the profits of a game’s financial success. They envisioned an industry where games were not just seen as toys, but as entertainment products comparable to movies, music, and books. It was a vision of today’s industry, a reality they helped shape.” – Activisionaries: How Four Programmers Changed The Game Industry – Game Informer
So, friendly readers that remember and/or still enjoy playing Atari 2600 Activision games like Pitfall, River Raid, Kaboom and others, do you, too, see the huge hole that is missing from the Atari 50 Collection without Activision? Maybe Microsoft and the current Atari will right this ship and give us that DLC for the collection.
If the licensing gods will allow it.