Area 51 (Atari)

Area 51 is an arcade game that was released by Atari Games in 1995. It is a light gun shooter game in which the player takes the role of a soldier taking part in an operation to prevent aliens from taking over Area 51. You must make your way through various sections of Area 51 including warehouses and tunnels. The ultimate goal is to set activate the nuclear self-destruct mechanism.

Atari Games was in pretty bad shape at the time and Area 51 really was a last ditch effort to turn their fortunes around. Fortunately for them, it worked. While Area 51 received more or less mediocre reviews from critics, it was loved by players and was among the most successful games of its type. It spawned both a direct sequel (Area 51: Site 4) and sort of a spinoff that was the same type of game using the same hardware but with a different setting (Maximum Force).

The hardware itself is a bit of an interesting story. Originally, the plan was to stream game data from a CD-ROM. However, due to speed limitations, this would have meant that only a letter-box display was possible. So instead, it was decided to use modified Atari Jaguar hardware and a hard disk drive. Only Area 51 and Maximum Force were released on this hardware.

Ironically, these games were never ported to the Jaguar despite running on practically the same hardware. Apparently Atari Games decided that the Jaguar was no longer a viable platform at that time, even though this was 1995, the same year the Jaguar CD was released.

If you do want to give this one a try, the arcade version is of course the best. But if you want to play on a home console then the PlayStation version beats out the Saturn version. Light gun fans should definitely give this one a try if you have never played it.

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