Included Content

First of all, here are the individual stats:

Analysis

As you can see, both have their highs and lows. While the NES may have less games than the Mega Drive, half of the 80 games included on the Mega Drive are low quality throwaway games (falsely listed as "Sega Arcade") that were added just to pad out the fluff. The Mega Drive does make up for this with the ability to play cartridges and it comes with two controllers instead of one, but the NES can use its controllers with the NES titles on the Wii's and Wii U's Virtual Console service. Plus if you don't want to buy a second controller, that's fine too as it can also work with the Wii Classic Controllers. The real deciding factor though is tough to determine. As I have stated many times in the past, I grew up with Nintendo games, so I'm a bit biased toward the NES Classic. Yes, it does have less games than the Mega Drive, but they are of objectively superior quality. It's just a shame that it can't be played on an old CRT TV set; retro games somehow look better on those older TV's.

Final Verdict

Even if I wasn't as Nintendo biased as I am, I'm going to have to give the upper hand to the NES Classic Edition. Considering the fact that not everyone owns a CRT TV anymore and most modern HD TV's no longer have support for composite cables, I don't think the Mega Drive Classic Console will be able to thrive in this new plug-n-play "console war" as much as I would want it to. So if you like retro games, get the NES Classic Edition when it is released on November 11th of this year; don't even bother with the Mega Drive unless you were a fan of those games in the past and still own cartridges that it can use, and/or if you own a CRT TV. But until then, I'll be seeing you.

Atari Flashback Classics for the Nintendo Switch is a compilation of all three volumes previously released for XBox One and PlayStation 4 over the past couple of years. Individually they each had 50 games; roughly 10 arcade titles and a handful of home games, most of which from the Atari 2600, to pad out the total. As such the Switch version has all 150 games without the need to swap volumes. This is a very nice convenience especially since the Switch version is $20USD cheaper than buying each volume separately.

Visually, the games in the collection vary in terms of quality. Some look stunning even to this day, but many others look like a steaming pile of digital feces. This is also reflected while the game is undocked as many of the Atari 2600 games that had sprite flicker don't show up very well on the Switch's screen. That doesn't always reflect how the game plays though. There are a small handful of games in the collection that look like crap, but are some of the most fun games of the bunch. If you can just stomach past their looks and have a friend that will play with you, online or otherwise, I'm betting you'll have a grand time.

Now considering that most of the arcade titles on this collection, and some of the Atari 5200 games, used special controls like a trackball or dial, they can't be emulated perfectly. That being said, Code Mystics did a decent job with what they had. While the left stick controls are WAY too sensitive even on the lowest setting, they ingeniously managed to incorporate the Switch's touchscreen for controlling many of the games that had those unique controls. It's just a shame that those controls are only available when the system is undocked.

Overall while this collection is miles above the plug-n-plays that AtGames has been producing, it is not for the average gamer. It is for collectors, and for those who grew up with these games. Like I said at the beginning of this review most of the games on this compilation did not age well, but there still glimmers a shining light within those crusty visuals. The addition of achievements and the inclusion of the manuals for the 2600 and 5200 games is very nice and I love the fact that they also included the SwordQuest comics from back in the 80's. It's little touches like that that really make collections like this stand out, even if they only stand out an extra inch or two amongst the crowd.

AUDIO

CHALLENGE

CONTROL

VISUALS

ORIGINALITY

EXECUTION

PROS:

• Lots of games
• Cheaper than buying each volume separately
• Online play
• Achievements
• Touchscreen support
• Small download size

CONS:

• Quantity over quality
• Stick sensitivity is too high even on lowest setting
• Online leaderboards only work with paid service
• Visuals degrade when console is undocked
• Some games are duplicates for different Atari systems