I really love this modern version of Atari.
I’m not going to pretend every game they publish is a banger. But the ones that are good are genuinely brilliant, and it feels like the whole world is sleeping on them.
The story behind Mr. Run and Jump is that it started as a homebrew project for the Atari 2600. And it’s a pretty nice platformer, which I’m saying with the full knowledge that Pitfall exists.
A lesser company would’ve ignored it. Nintendo and Sega ignore homebrew on their old systems all the time. Atari looked at this and went: yeah, we can make something of this. So they did. They turned it into a modern release, while still letting the 2600 version exist as the weird little origin story it is.
The game even starts with a nod to that homebrew version. Then it opens up into this full glowing neon version of the idea.
And it’s a precision platformer. No gimmicks. Just tight movement and a ton of jumping options that chain together. Double jumps, dives, long jumps, wall jumps, all that stuff. You’re basically learning to fly, except the game is constantly trying to kill you for it.
There are enemies everywhere, but you don’t fight them. You dodge them. Spikes, skull-looking things, bouncing hazards, crush blocks. The whole world is an obstacle course and you’re just threading needles at full speed.
This is not a graphical tour de force, and it shouldn’t be. It’s built on an Atari 2600 homebrew concept. It stays true to that DNA.
But the music is excellent. The soundtrack is genuinely catchy, and the sound effects are satisfying in that clean arcade way.
Also, the funniest part is you can buy this as an official Atari 2600 cartridge, and it even runs on the modern 2600+ hardware on an HDTV. That’s such a niche flex, but I respect it.
Atari isn’t making blockbuster hits anymore, and I’m fine with that. What they’re putting out instead is gold. I want one of these to break through and become a real hit, because I like what they’re doing and I want them to keep doing it.
And I’ll give them credit: they’ve been letting indie developers make things with their IP, and a lot of the time it’s turning into something actually worth playing. Mr. Run and Jump isn’t even nostalgia bait. It just feels like an Atari game made in 2023, which is a harder trick than it sounds.
So yeah. If Atari was a key part of your childhood like it was mine, this is one you should pick up.
It was my first console when I was 3 years old. I still remember it. And this game feels like it belongs in that lineage.
* **The Joy of Putting** – a Bob Ross-inspired mini-golf inspired by Flash games of the '00s.
