When it comes to retro games, you can hardly get any more retro than Atari’s arcade titles.

Though Atari weren’t responsible for the first arcade machines, several of the games on this Atari Arcade cartridge certainly did prove that arcades were going to be the next big thing at one point in time.

It’ll come as no surprise, then, that the games featured on this cartridge – which date back as far as 1972 (!), with the most ‘recent’ game on the collection having been launched in 1983 – are incredibly dated, quaint and simplistic by modern standards.

Not to mention the standards of other arcade collections already released on the Evercade; even those featuring games from just a few years later seem remarkably advanced when compared to the titles included here.

Yet, with 13 games included – compared to the slimmer selections on other arcade collections – there’s a nicely varied selection on this cartridge, with some genuinely off the wall ideas that demonstrate the experimental, anything goes attitude of arcade developers and manufacturers of the time.

Despite – or perhaps even because of – the simplicity of these games, they remain (for the most part) reliant on their gameplay to draw you in, as what were once technical marvels when spotted in their beautifully designed, custom cabinets are now far from impressive from an aesthetic point of view.

There’s still some real charm to the now lo-fi offerings here, however.

Games such as Pong and Night Driver aren’t particularly well suited to the Evercade’s controls (regardless of which Evercade you’re playing on); they’re an admirable attempt but just don’t offer enough feedback or accuracy.

Pong, for example, works brilliantly with dial-based controls – but struggles with the lack of speed on any Evercade controller’s dpad.

Night Driver, shorn of its immersive cabinet, has only its incredibly inventive use of minimalist visuals to fall back on – but it’s a very punishing and not especially enjoyable experience.

Another game that just feels a bit too simplistic to be fun is Canyon Bomber, with its one button controls and timing based gameplay.

It is a more enjoyable experience if you’re playing it against another human on the Evercade VS, but only marginally so.

Another game that’s a bit hampered by its controls is the inventive maze game Crystal Castles, which is perhaps the most advanced game on the collection from a visual point of view.

In the arcade, the machine had a trackball – which allowed for incredibly fast movement across the levels. Though that had its own issues, the dpad control here ends up making you stick to scenery a little too often – and in a game where the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly, that’s a bit of an issue.

Shorn of its own trackball controls, Missile Command actually proves to still work nicely with a dpad. It’s a pretty timeless game, in all honesty – and one that’s still hugely enjoyable to play today.

Liberator is a sort of evolution of the Missile Command formula, where you defend your own ships from projectiles and spaceships fired from a planet’s surface.

It’s got a nice sense of style despite its age and I found this to be a pretty excellent experience too – it’s great to see it here, as it’s definitely a lesser known title from Atari’s well worn back catalogue.

Asteroids Deluxe is another timeless classic despite its extreme minimalism; like Night Driver, there’s a neat attempt to bring the non-computer based, physical art into this version too, in order to more closely replicate the arcade experience. It’s still a very addictive high score chase.

Centipede and Millipede are unusual single screen shoot ’em ups with an insect/garden-based theme. They’re not massively different – though an upgrade, Millipede isn’t a huge audiovisual or gameplay leap over its predecessor – but both are still fun, if hugely challenging experiences.

That said, given that all of these titles were designed to part addicted players from their coins, they’re pretty much all incredibly challenging.

Lunar Lander is another ancient relic that may just be too exacting and demanding for modern players – you’ll think you’ve done well to land your tiny craft carefully and it’ll suddenly explode.

The bars for success are set astonishingly high, but it’s an unusual and very straightforward game, despite the difficulty level.

Late 70s title Skydiver is another fun high score chase in which you – and either a human or AI opponent – attempt to safely drop onto tiny landing pads after jumping out of planes.

Super Breakout veers between being too fast and too slow, but its a hugely influential title that remains fondly remembered – though my rose tinted specs were damaged a bit in playing it.

Lastly, there’s Warlords – which begs to be played on the Evercade VS, given that it supports four players at a time.

It’s a sort of multiplayer-focused, medieval-themed Breakout, in which you must defend your castle walls from the fireballs spat out from a dragon’s mouth; the catch is that other players are doing the same, so you’ll need to have your wits about you to defend your territory from all angles.

Overall, whether or not you think Atari Arcade 1 is worth a purchase is going to come down to either your nostalgia for the games included or your tolerance for very minimalist, though admittedly ground-breaking, experiences.

These are truly pure games from the dawn of the arcade age, where gameplay was king and Atari were all too eager to take your money.

So they’re often quick blasts of simple, pick up and play experiences – little more than high score chases, rather than anything with a meaningful narrative or game end that you’ll be working towards.

If that’s your thing, you may well want to pick up Atari Arcade 1.

It’s worth noting that Atari themselves have become much more involved in directly republishing their own retro games and producing new hardware to play them on, so Blaze will soon be unable to sell their Atari cartridges.

With that in mind, note also that this means Atari Arcade 1 will soon be disappearing from store shelves – so, if you’re an Evercade completist and you haven’t got it yet, now’s the time to do so.

You can purchase the Atari Arcade 1 cartridge from Amazon here.