We had an Atari 2600, or Atari VCS (Video Computer System) as it was originally known, at home when I was growing up.

We had it years after its peak; picked up second hand with a couple of cartridges (Pac Man and Moon Patrol, initially), we’d often pick up more cartridges for a quid or two at most, at local car boot sales.

Though it felt dated even in the mid to late 80s, it was frequently the only video game console I had access to at home, at least until I got my Sega Master System in 1988.

Consequently, I spent hours on end playing on the Atari, and grew really fond of games that most dismissed as terrible; the Atari’s version of Pac-Man is widely seen as atrocious, for example, yet I genuinely enjoyed playing it.

So when the Evercade was released back in 2020 (yep, it’s now four years old!), I was really excited for the Atari cartridges, especially as the first two, Atari Collection 1 and Atari Collection 2, contained 20 games each (it’s worth noting that, with Atari revisiting the old catalogue of hardware and software themselves recently, that these two collections are now out of print and becoming increasingly harder to find).

I wasn’t disappointed; they were full of brilliantly simple and inventive games, many of which I’d never played before.

They weren’t just limited to 2600 games either, with Atari games from their subsequent consoles also present, such as the batshit crazy, excellent, very rare Atari 7800 title Ninja Golf.

In my review of the second collection, there were two games I dismissed as, and I quote, “…too minimalistic to be fun” and “probably the least interesting games on the cartridge”.

Those two games were Bowling and Human Cannonball.

In an effort to stop myself from impulse buying a heavily reduced Atari 2600 Plus console from Amazon recently, I instead decided to revisit the Evercade’s Atari compilations, and I discovered something really strange.

Bowling and Human Cannonball are fantastic games.

That minimalism, enforced by the capabilities of the hardware, actually forms a huge part of the charm of these games, which tends to be the case with the older Atari titles in general.

The multiplayer modes make both games really sing, with explaining (and playing) both games being more simple than modern gamers could possibly imagine.

One button controls and minimal use of the controller in both cases – as one-off aftertouch in Bowling or to set your cannon’s angle in Human Cannonball – make them real pick-up-and-play experiences.

So, Bowling then. You get 10 frames (that’s two ‘shots’ per frame) to get the highest score; 300 is a perfect game.

So it’s basically like real bowling in that sense; you can even play against another player to compete, rather than just to go for the highest score possible.

You can move your player up and down to position them, pressing A bowls the ball and you can move up or down once to curl the ball in a specific direction once thrown.

It feels next to impossible to get a Strike (that’s hitting all 10 bowling pins on the first shot of a frame) at first, but it just requires very precise, very central positioning.

The difficulty in getting a Strike makes it incredibly satisfying to do when you finally get one!

That’s it; there’s nothing more to it. It’s very basic, it’s not flashy, but it has a few charming, amusingly dated touches such as the sound and animation effects when you hit a Strike or Spare.

Yet it’s so incredibly addictive when you’re playing against someone else, and much more entertaining than it looks, or than you may initially give it credit for.

It’s a very good example of how sometimes, less is more.

Countless bowling games have been released over the years and so many are genuinely disappointing in so many ways (except you, Wii Bowling!); the Atari 2600 Bowling may not boast realistic visuals, audio or physics, but it’s a genuinely fun game to play.

That can also be said for Human Cannonball, which, like Bowling, was released in 1979.

In Human Cannonball, your hapless human must be fired into a bucket of water, with the angle of your shot being adjusted to aim for success.

Things like the cannon speed and position may be randomly adjusted depending on the mode you play, so it’s about trying to work out the right angle when taking all of the other factors into consideration.

It’s a very simple game and, played against the computer, isn’t great. It’s too simplistic and you can even memorise certain patterns to score a point every single time.

Play against another human, however, and it becomes a gloriously funny competition, as you fling your stick figure human at the water and inevitably miss.

So in both cases there, I think I was a bit too harsh; in fairness, at the time I originally reviewed those games, I didn’t have an Evercade VS and therefore couldn’t try their multiplayer modes, even if I’d wanted to.

In fact, both of these titles are perfect examples of just how Atari ended up ruling the home console market for a good few years, certainly before they were, at least in part, responsible for the mostly-US based video game crash.

Atari have brought their original console back, with connections for modern TVs, in the form of the aforementioned Atari 2600 Plus, which plays original 2600 and 7800 cartridges, as well as modern cartridges designed for those consoles.

It just shows that Atari as a brand and as a potent piece of nostalgia continues to endure, and that minimalism that allows fans to immediately pick up and play games they last played 40 years ago or more, or maybe never before, is a big part of their appeal.