There’s a “new” Atari arcade game, and I can’t put it down

Atari's new 50th-anniversary compilation is stuffed with historical filler, but one new game contained in the package won't let me go. I'm talking about Vctr Sctr, a retro-style arcade shooter that melds the addictive gameplay of classics like Asteroids and Tempest with modern gameplay concepts.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection is a high-water mark for retro video games. The "Timeline" feature weaves archival materials like design documents and manuals, explanatory context and contemporary quotes from the game's release, and new video interviews with game creators into an engaging, interactive trip through gaming history.

The games contained within Atari 50 don't always perform well. The games from Atari's glorious arcade era are some of the most replayable classics here. The majority of Atari 50's selection of over 100 titles feels like a waste of time. Most modern players wouldn't want to play Missile Command 3D on the Jaguar for more than a few minutes.

Vctr Sctr is a game that attempts to recreate the feel of a classic Atari title with modern hardware and design touches. It's a game I've been playing a lot in the last few days for the kind of easy-to-pick-up, hard-to-put-down high- score chase that I haven't experienced in a long time.

Emulating a dead display technology

As the perhaps-too-cute name implies, Vctr Sctr (pronounced "vector sector") is a love letter to arcade gaming's all-too-brief love affair with vector graphics. Unlike raster displays, which assemble an image from sprites laid out on lines of horizontal pixels, vector displays bend an electron beam into discrete lines or curves that make up simple geometric shapes on the glowing phosphor.

Compared to arcade games of the '70s and '80s, which were characterized by blocky, pixellated graphics,vector games like Asteroids or Major Havoc featured sharp, crisp lines that animated in easily scaled and functionally infinite resolutions. The advantages came at a price, with the simple lines creating "hollow" looking wireframe characters and objects.

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It was nearly impossible to re-create the glowing, precise lines of the display on a standard-definition TV of the '70s and '80s. You had to invest in expensive flops like the Vectrex if you wanted the experience at home.

The developers of Atari 50 wanted to capture the glow of Atari's classics. Digital Eclipse engineer and Vctr Sctr designer Jeremy Williams told Ars that they tried to duplicate the look of a classic monitor. We were really interested in that. It's all drawn in an 'additive mode' so it really does look like avector display.

The "phosphor effect" that leads to blurry after-images on the display is part of the quest for authenticity. Williams said he went to the trouble to calculate the "bloom" that flickers around individual monitor lines, which is compellingly with the bass- heavy soundtrack.

It was important to capture issues that were considered flaws on the day's displays. If your display is really dialed in, you can get a little bit of movement for all the lines. Every line is flickering independently.