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Interesting game variations?


eegad

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I've just started reading Jamie Lendino's "adventure" book about the 2600. In the part about the Surround cartridge he mentions game variations 13 and 14 which are simplistic "paint" programs. I never knew about that until now.

 

Back in the day I had maybe 30-35 game cartridges, and whenever I got a new one I always read through the manual so I'd know about all the game variations on the cart. When I got back into playing with my Atari 8 years ago or so, I ended up getting a Harmony cart and filling it with roms of just about every game. While I've played every game at least once, I rarely looked to see what game variations there might be...I just played whatever the first game on that cart was when you load it up.

 

So the paint program thing in Surround got me wondering what other interesting game variations are on other carts that I probably never knew about. And along the same lines, what carts have multiple games on them that are very different from the first game (ie - canyon bomber has the depth charge games which are very different from the canyon bomber games)

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The earlier titles typically pack a lot of variety on them--sometimes even completely different games! Some of my favorites:

 

Canyon Bomber - Sea Bomber

Street Racer - Slalom, Dodge 'Em (not to be confused with standalone cartridge Dodge 'Em), Scoop Ball (Recommended difficulty: A for player, B for CPU)

Star Ship - Game 4 (Recommended difficulty: B)

Air Sea Battle - All "single-player" games w/ obstacles; Polaris/Bomber/Vs., Submarine (Recommended difficulty: A)

Space Invaders - Zig-zaggy missiles and/or moving shields; 2-player co-op games

Video Olympics - Basketball, Volleyball, Foozpong

Outlaw - the 1-player target games w/ obstacles (still not as good as 2-player, but better than shooting at a cowboy that doesn't move or shoot back!)

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I've just started reading Jamie Lendino's "adventure" book about the 2600. In the part about the Surround cartridge he mentions game variations 13 and 14 which are simplistic "paint" programs. I never knew about that until now.

 

How is that book so far? I looked it up and it looks like it would be worth reading since it isn't like all the other books going game by game.

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How is that book so far? I looked it up and it looks like it would be worth reading since it isn't like all the other books going game by game.

 

I'm roughly halfway through it and I've been enjoying it. On the one hand, having lived through it, and being an atari fan for so long, there's not a lot of information that I didn't already know. But little tidbits I hadn't heard before are nice - such as the "paint" game in surround, or that Actvision games never had those little black lines scattered about on the left side of the screen because they made *every* scan line have a have a black line, thus making one solid bar that looks more clean. Or why the pieces in chess have visible lines in them.

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I'm roughly halfway through it and I've been enjoying it. On the one hand, having lived through it, and being an atari fan for so long, there's not a lot of information that I didn't already know. But little tidbits I hadn't heard before are nice - such as the "paint" game in surround, or that Actvision games never had those little black lines scattered about on the left side of the screen because they made *every* scan line have a have a black line, thus making one solid bar that looks more clean. Or why the pieces in chess have visible lines in them.

 

Sounds great! I may have to pick a copy up soon...

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I never knew about game 4 on Casino when I was a kid, I just played blackjack and poker with my family. Game 4 is a one-player solitaire where the player tries to arrange 25 random cards in a matrix, with each row, column and diagonal making a poker hand. Because of how the hands intersect, it's a complex strategy to try and make as many viable poker hands as possible - while always leaving one option open for a big scoring play.

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I never knew about game 4 on Casino when I was a kid, I just played blackjack and poker with my family. Game 4 is a one-player solitaire where the player tries to arrange 25 random cards in a matrix

 

Sounds like a good one - that's what I was looking for....a game variation that plays very differently from "game 1". I'll have to read the instruction manual and check this one out.

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There are 2 player game variations in Demon Attack in which control switches between players every 5 secs or so.

 

There's a 2 player co-op mode in Atlantis.

 

Breakout has 4 player 2 vs 2 team modes.

 

Video Olympics has quadrapong which has 4 player 2 vs 2 team modes with a goal on each of the 4 sides of the screen - you can see how it could be considered an inspiration for warlords.

 

Ultimate mode in Yars' revenge adds some extra rules that ups the tactics a bit - worth checking the manual out for that.

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