The Midlife Crisis begins

My other half looks unimpressed with our latest foray into retro gaming.

There's nothing quite like the unadulterated joy of holding a joystick in your hand and figuring out how to make it do exactly what you want - and that isn't even some kind of euphemism. As a kid I dreamed of owning a "proper" games console, like some of my friends had - a C64 or an Atari - complete with proper games rather than games with unconvincing names like "Let's Play Maths!", complete with redundant exclamation marks in an attempt to make them sound enjoyable, that you could play in school for ten minutes every other week. Instead, I made do with a borrowed BBC micro every holiday (plus side: better graphics, relatively speaking, and short loading times, but no joystick) then, a few years later, a borrowed Acorn (plus side: Lemmings!) Now, more than two decades on, as I approach my mid-life crisis, I finally have my Atari.

The Atari flashback comes with 2 joysticks and 60 pre-loaded games which, according to one of the websites "defined a generation". This seems needlessly hyperbolic: I don't think anyone would claim that the likes of Human Canonball and Nightdriver defined a generation. Pacman or, say, Space Invaders possibly did, but they're not on there. Instead you get an eclectic collection of games that range from the gloriously addictive to the comedically unfathomable. The result of this combination is hours of pure pleasure.

The Atari flashback had mixed reviews. Some criticise it for its "basic" graphics and clunky gameplay, which begs the question: "what did you expect?" Others wax lyrical about the simplicity of the games, which strikes me as missplaced nostalgia, because some of the games are positively crap, even by early 80s standards. The reality is somewhere in between: some of the games are genuinely fun, and don't require the ostentatiously high-tech spangliness of their modern counterparts. Others look laughably amateurish and are, by today's standards, just plain dull: "adventure" games where your pixellated alter ego totters from "room" to "room", symbolised by different coloured squares with gaps for doors, just don't cut it if you've ever played on anything developed since.

As ever, the guide which comes with it is at times as enjoyable as the product t accompanies. It doesn't actually perform any useful function, like tell you what the heck you're meant to be doing when confronted with an unidentifiable shape on the screen which doesn't seem to actually move anywhere but seems to be being shot at (we also gave up on "Miniature Golf", which consists of several squares of various sizes which don't appear to do anything). Instead, its contents are a colletion of factual descriptions interspersed with statements of the blindingly obvious with a smattering of wistful geekery. "Now this is an interesting concept for a game", says the writer at one point, raising our expectations until we discover that it isn't. "The aim of this game is to score as many points as you can", he says at superfluously at another (really?) "Collect as many dots as possible to win points", begins a third. Dots? Really? Surely they symbolise something - coins, perhaps? Treasure? Some life-saving elixir or weapon you can use later on to destroy your enemy? Apparently not: they are just dots. The description of "Wizard" is delightfully baffling: "Get hit by an imp's magical bolt or touched by an imp and your damage goes up by 2 points. Hit an imp with your own magical bolt and their damage goes up by 2. However the Flame seems to have a mind of its own and goes deeper into the catacombs with each confrontation." Good. Glad we cleared that up. As for "Fun With Numbers", someone should report the name to advertising standards: the aforementioned "fun" is simply a series of sums, but at least you get to "choose" from addition, subtraction, division AND multiplication. Get in! I bet that was well worth your hard-saved twenty quid back in 1981.

As usual I've rambled on for far too long, but I will at least pick a couple of games that I and my trusty gaming sidekick have singled out for special praise.

Frog Pond: This. Is. Brilliant. A two-player game, you are a frog (inexplicably pink or luminous green) and you get points by catching flies on your tongue. The flies look uncannily like birds, but hey. Detail.

Bowling: Who needs the Wii when you can bowl on an Atari? AND you get to see your character perform a nice little dance to the accompaniment of some marvellous sound effects and epilepsy-inducing flashing lights when you get a strike.

Circus Atari: I have no idea what the significance of the dots at the top of the screen are, except that you get points for hitting them. You basically have to catapult a stick man on and off a deceptively difficult-to-move see-saw, but there's something sadistically pleasing about the underwhelming splat when you miss.

Soccer: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Table football on a screen, with a square ball and no concept of the offside rule and no ability to move the goalkeeper on his own. Great stuff.

You probably have better things to do and far superior technology with which to do them, but if you fancy a bit of untainted enjoyment do pop round some time.