76 replies to this topic

[snicklin]

For you, which game do you find most unplayable on the Atari? I'm looking for games which may (or may not) technically be brilliant, but the gameplay just lets it down completely.

My vote has to go to "Ace of Aces" because the frame rate is so slow, it never fires at what you want to. And also, it was on cassette and had to be reloaded after one game.

[olavese@online.no]

House of Usher and the first Jet Set Willy ... Awful

[sloopy]

AutoDuel, the premise and most of the game are decent, but the actual principal game play isnt what it should be...

this didnt stop be from playing it... alot...

sloopy.

[wood_jl]

I have to include A8 Arkanoid, and it's a shame because it's one of my favorite games of all times.  While it graphically compares to the Commodore 64 version, the Atari version is super slow and the framerate inconsistent.    Shame, because the C64 version is smooth and fast, comparatively.

Arkanoid is one of those games that needs "fixing" by modern programmers.

[Thorsten Günther]

Racing Destruction Set - still wondering how they managed to implement choppy scrolling like that on a machine that has hardware scroll registers for all directions...

Oh, and The Last V8 - incredibly hard due to the small vertically visible area, and stupidly short if you ever watched the Youtube video.

[doomguy]

Mirax Force and Thunderfox.  The finicky controls and the difficult to discern walls that blend into the background.

Black Lamp is gorgeous, but ridiculously difficult.

Fred is also great looking, but the framerate is unplayably slow.

[ProWizard]

Thrust is a fabulous game but the controls in the original game are too hard IMHO ... There is a hack to play the game with the joystick which is better...

[Rybags]

I think it was Haunted Hill had a big playability problem.
It checked for specific joystick values for left/right, so if you inadvertantly did diagonal instead, nothing happened.

Elektraglide - OK, technical masterpiece, but the steering envelopes were ridiculous. the momentum of steering took too long to bleed off on the faster ones and the slower one was useless.  Plus the difficulty was a bit too high overall.

Can't think of many right now.  When a game was not well playable I usually didn't bother much with it.

[Bryan]

Thorsten Günther, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:28 AM, said:

Racing Destruction Set - still wondering how they managed to implement choppy scrolling like that on a machine that has hardware scroll registers for all directions...

It's called "conversion in an afternoon."

[a8isa1]

snicklin, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:33 AM, said:

For you, which game do you find most unplayable on the Atari? I'm looking for games which may (or may not) technically be brilliant, but the gameplay just lets it down completely.

My vote has to go to "Ace of Aces" because the frame rate is so slow, it never fires at what you want to. And also, it was on cassette and had to be reloaded after one game.

For me it was any game with disk swapping.

Lots of games now seem unplayable due to slowing reflexes and my no longer having the patience to put in practice time. However, I always considered Dropzone and Attack of the Mutant Camels unplayable, too hard to control speed.

Super Zaxxon is tough because without the good ship shadows that the arcade version has it's too hard to determine if the ship is at the correct altitude to pass through openings in walls and force barriers.

Qbert I could never play well.  95% of the time I'm fine but at critical moments I got disorientated and jumped in the wrong direction. It's the joystick being up, down, left, right but the jumps being on the diagonals.

Caverns of Mars is extremely difficult but it seemed impossible with CX40 joysticks.  It's still a game I love even though my games are now very short

Berzerk isn't unplayable but somebody please tell me how to survive levels with the fast, white robots!

It's probably just me but in Kangaroo I can never jump the rolling apples at critical times. When I think I'm timing the jump just right the kangaroo doesn't jump at all.

There are many other games but my being bad at them isn't sufficient reason to call them unplayable. They are merely unenjoyable.

Edited by a8isa1, Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:28 AM.

[Mr SQL]

wood_jl, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:14 AM, said:

I have to include A8 Arkanoid, and it's a shame because it's one of my favorite games of all times.  While it graphically compares to the Commodore 64 version, the Atari version is super slow and the framerate inconsistent. Shame, because the C64 version is smooth and fast, comparatively.

Arkanoid is one of those games that needs "fixing" by modern programmers.

See how you like the Atari 2600 version

[snicklin]

Mirax Force, Elektraglide and the original A8 Arkanoid I have to agree with so much!!

[tep392]

a8isa1, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:24 AM, said:

[Qbert I could never play well.  95% of the time I'm fine but at critical moments I got disorientated and jumped in the wrong direction. It's the joystick being up, down, left, right but the jumps being on the diagonals.

It helps me to rotate the joystick 45 degrees.

[NRV]

Fight Night?
I believe that it ""streamed"" some moves or animations from disk..
Last V8, but in NTSC!

wood_jl, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:14 AM, said:

I have to include A8 Arkanoid, and it's a shame because it's one of my favorite games of all times.  While it graphically compares to the Commodore 64 version, the Atari version is super slow and the framerate inconsistent. Shame, because the C64 version is smooth and fast, comparatively.

Arkanoid is one of those games that needs "fixing" by modern programmers.

Then go for this:

http://www.atariage....ost__p__2431105

Find the last (available) version in this post:
http://www.atariage....25#entry2449002

[CharlieChaplin]

Well,

for me: Elektraglide, Amauroute (even the update is much too hard and unplayable for me), The Last V8, Red Max, Robin Hood, Castle Top, Frenesis (this is the top of the flops), Sidewinder 2, Gunlaw and last not least Piekielko:

http://www.atarimani...piekielko_2.gif

in Piekielko you get 255 lives and in less than a minute you lost them all (in the screen you see above).

Nice additions of brand-new programs, with more or less good gfx, but extremely bad controls:
Dino, Fester`s Quest (a -10 for controls!), Luki Lak. Hopefully the programmer will ask someone someday who can code good/better controls for his games...

Edit: Ooops, I forgot, you asked for games that are technically briliant, so forget about Robin Hood, Castle Top, Frenesis and Piekielko, they are pure crap. Maybe I should add "Starball" by Jakub Husak then, in which the gameplay is so hard and frustrating, you will learn to love & hate it at the same time...
-Andreas Koch.

Edited by CharlieChaplin, Sun Jun 10, 2012 5:14 PM.

[emkay]

Koronis Rift. Technically superb, graphically brilliant... gameplay bugwasted...
Well, it really IS buggy in the gameplay, and has controlflaws. Which made the aimed "best game for the A8" some OK game to mention about the nice graphics.

And, well Amaurote, still... the update makes it far better, but it doesn't help with the "overall mismatch". Play the Speccy version for 10 minutes and you know how things had to go.

Zybex. You can play through it, but you cannot collect all items due to game design flaws. So it is "unplayable" at that point.

[devwebcl]

a8isa1, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:24 AM, said:

Caverns of Mars is extremely difficult but it seemed impossible with CX40 joysticks.  It's still a game I love even though my games are now very short

I totally disagree. Caverns of Mars is very playable and kind of easy with CX-40.
I was a very good playing it, in my 400 with CX-40. As usual for games from the 80s the trick was to memorize where appear the objects (very common, in particular at arcades).

[snicklin]

CharlieChaplin, on Sun Jun 10, 2012 5:07 PM, said:

Nice additions of brand-new programs, with more or less good gfx, but extremely bad controls:
Dino, Fester`s Quest (a -10 for controls!), Luki Lak. Hopefully the programmer will ask someone someday who can code good/better controls for his games...

I very much agree here, especially with Fester's Quest. There is a game that is technically superb and quite original too. And then it is ruined by it's controls. I can't seem to make sense of them and try for so long that I end up giving up.

My request for these games is that a version 2 is made available for all of them, with sensible controls.

Edited by snicklin, Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:08 AM.

[mimo]

Airball and Congo bongo are games that I find impossible to play

[Mclaneinc]

Spelunker nigh on drove me insane, the times I fell off ladders, I tried every stick in the book..

I loved it tho....Only ever finished it on a cheat...

Also, any tempest type game, any time I had to go to the top of the screen and come back down I lost what way I had to push etc etc...

Edited by Mclaneinc, Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:17 AM.

[Nukey Shay]

Caverns of Khafka was pretty neat for an "economy" title.  It sucked how it would blast you through walls for no reason at all, tho.

I had high expectations for Archon II (since the first one was so innovative).  Too bad the computer opponent picks armageddon if you even THINK of making any progress in the sequel, tho.  Whatta letdown.

Racing Destruction Set blows on every level.  Too crappy and slow for plain racing...and not enough options for a smash'em up.

[Rybags]

Some of the racing games were utterly destroyed by the mere fact you have to press forward rather than using the button to accelerate.

Sad that just little things like that potentially ruined what could have been otherwise decent games.

[Heaven/TQA]

I love Spelunker...

[wesmond]

Yep, Jet Set Willy was very hard - and I don't find the ported version very easy either! Last V8 I found the controls very unintuitive... but I actually got quite used to Elektraglide after a while and complete it most times now. The original version of Amaurote was pretty tough - I haven't had a good try with the recent optimised version, which runs at a much more arcade-like pace, so the slightly silly bouncing bombs are easier to time.

Crumble's Crisis I found annoying in that the first level was fairly tame, but the second level was "quite a step up!". I think there were 5 levels, but I could only last about 5 seconds on level 2, and then hard to restart from level 1 again...

[wesmond]

PS - I think it's pretty harsh to mention Zybex in a list of unplayable games... Sometimes the power-ups landed awkwardly, but I never had a problem getting the critical tokens. I'd say that's got to be one of the most playable games ever - especially 2-player simultaneous...