32 in 1 for Atari

The Atari 2600 and the Atari 7800 both had their share of great and fun games to use to pass the time, and these games were relatively cheap to manufacture and package. Moby Games, a company that specialized in streamlining such older classic video games, decided to create a large compendium of some of the classic Atari games and put them all on one disc/cartridge for easy access. However, 32 in 1, which is what this collection is called, isn’t just a menu where the player can go in and select a game to play. It’s a little different – it randomly picks a game to play every time the Atari is turned on.

32 in 1 was never released in the United States, the NTSC version. Instead, it was released as a PAL in Europe and Australia. It was released on the Atari 7800, and most of the games were previously released on the Atari 2600. Much like the Super Mario All-Stars game, the graphics, sounds, and other gameplay elements remained the same as they did in their earlier versions, with little changed or added. Then again, given the actual games, there really wasn’t too much that could be changed or added and still have the same game.

So what games are available here? Pretty much all genres of Atari games are included: fighting games, shooters, racing games, adventure games, and more. There is overall a very wide selection available, though you won’t know which you’re going to play at the game’s start-up because it simply randomly chooses a program from its list. You don’t get to choose, but the game manual offers a list of all the games available. As said, there are 32 possibilities, so you have plenty to work from with one single cartridge/disc for the console of your choice. Usually, this is the Atari 2600 or Atari 7800. There was no version of this package released for the Atari 5800, unfortunately, but it did often come with the 2600 when this system was released in the United Kingdom.

The package includes 32 games. UFO, which was a redo of Space Jockey, is included. It’s a Defender clone more than anything else. Flag Capture, Human Cannonball and Surround are three action/strategy games where you have to think about how you’re going to capture the flag in the game. Fun With Numbers is an educational game, and it used to be commonly used in math classes to teach children how to count and add basic numbers. Space War, Air-Sea Battle, and Combat are primitive military strategy games. Space War was actually the first video game ever made, anywhere, back in 1963. Obviously nothing too advanced. All of these are games that could fit probably five hundred times over on a floppy disc, but they’re fun to play to kill an hour or two nonetheless. It’s the basic reason why newer games like Tetris are so effective – there isn’t a lot of having to sit down and get into the storyline, learn complex control schemes or anything of the sort. You basically put the game in, plug in the controller and play for as long as you want.

This package also includes a lot of the Atari’s sports games. Don’t expect to see licensed teams or anything like that; these games are only really able to show generic teams or athletes. Baseball, Football, Boxing and Bowling are several examples. With Baseball, you plugged in one of the controllers for the batter and another for the pitcher, and that’s pretty much what the game was, just due to the limits of the console and games themselves.

Not too much is to be found in the way of cheats or secret codes for the games in the 32 in 1 package, because they’re so simple they really don’t need to have secrets, plus there wasn’t room. The games are easy to simply pick up and play without having to have a large time commitment, and the packaged compilation really isn’t too hard to find – it’s likely on Ebay or Amazon. In fact, it’s even possible that a fully working Atari 2600 or 7800 will be available online for purchase if you know where to look. If your Atari console is the US version, though, it’s not certain as to whether you’ll be able to play it, because the game was never released Stateside and there are differences between the consoles overseas. If you can manage to mod your Atari (note that this would fall under voiding the warranty), then you should be able to play it regardless of your system.