Blaze Has Announced an Atari Arcade Collection 2 Cart?!

When Blaze first began selling their Evercade system, one of their first licenses was Atari. Unfortunately, after a few years, that license expired and five of their cartridges are now legacy products and much more expensive to purchase today. With that in mind, it’s surprising to report that an Atari Arcade Collection 2 has been announced and is scheduled to be released in April for Evercade!

From what we know, it includes ten titles, many of which look like quality action games. These are,

• Berzerk
• Dark Planet
• Fire Truck
• Frenzy
• Lost Tomb
• Maze Invaders
• Mine field
• Moon War
• Rescue
• Tazz-Mania

For the games listed above, some of the most noteworthy inclusions are Berzerk and Frenzy, with the former being especially popular. Most of the other ones are also rather fast paced and not found in many other Atari collections.

However, when I first heard of this collection I really wanted to know how many were available elsewhere. After all, Blaze Entertainment’s sister company, Hyper Mega Tech!, sells an Atari Super Pocket that contains 50 games and can also play Evercade cartridges. For Steam users, there’s Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration that contains over 100 games, along with two DLCs that can be purchased.

While doing analysis on the games, these are what I’ve been able to find out. These are the titles on the Atari Super Pocket and also Atari Arcade Collection 2:

• Berzerk
• Frenzy
• Lost Tomb

Meanwhile, Atari 50 has these games either in the base game or in its DLC:

• Berzerk (DLC 1- Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari)
• Frenzy (DLC 1- Atari 50: The Wider World of Atari)
• Fire Truck (Base Game)
• Maze Invaders (Base Game)

From these two shorter lists, it means that half of the games on Blaze’s Atari Arcade Collection 2 are available elsewhere, with one of them only available on a portable device (Lost Tomb). This may make some buyers less inclined to purchase this latest offering if the others have already been purchased. Yet, I will still say that I consider this to be a really good collection.

A number of the games are highly regarded, and others look to be a lot of fun. Among those I’ve never played, I’d really like to try out Lost Tomb, Dark Planet, and Moon War. Furthermore, Berzerk is just downright fun and addictive. Finally, I think it is little bit of a stretch to think that most people will have both the Atari Super Pocket and Atari 50 with its DLC. Consequently, most people will either have 3-4 of these games, or none at all.

Those are some of the big reasons why I am not concerned about the overlap between these releases.

So, let me ask you, what do you think about the collection? Feel free to share in the comments below!