Mystique is a punch-line to a bad joke that never should have been asked in the first place, that joke being “what happens when you put porn on the Atari?” This is an absolute travesty, and sadly enough there were two more punch-lines waiting in the wings, them being Universal-Gamex and Playaround. There is no way of sugarcoating these games; there are no positives that outweigh the overbearing negatives. These games are the lowest that the videogame industry has sunk, and that is quite an achie
This review is going to be very different than what you’re used to, instead of just reviewing a game I’m going to review and ENTIRE console. Enter the Mattel Children’s Discovery System, a drab little computer that was meant for very small children. I thinks this is one of the ugliest pieces of hardware I’ve ever laid my eyes on, its microscopic screen (16x48 Matrix LCD screen), and awful membrane keyboard make using this thing an absolute chore. Now this is actually a cartridge based computer,
Phillip is pain... All it feels is an endless wash of pain. Phillip waits for death patiently and quietly for it knows its death is nigh
Data Age
Encounter At L-5 – Most sprites are slightly warped but you can see it most on the Data Age logo at the top right. Sounds are mostly the same with an off note here or there, nothing serious.
Bugs – Most ‘Bugs’ are intact but some are scrambled to high hell, the transition scene is unaltered. Sounds are intact with nothing seriously
Here's a forgotten classic, lost to time. Montezuma's revenge was one of the earliest platformers on the market, it had many ports to many different systems, but I'm going to focus on two ports of this game today, the one released on the ill-fated Colecovision, and the one released on the ill-fated Sega Master System. This is the first Third Generation game I've reviewed so far, but I'll still give the Colecovision a fair shot when compared to the superior SMS. First things first... these games
Pong is a game that needs no introduction whatsoever, so I won’t provide one. We’ve all played Pong since it’s either been bundled with other games, or is so freely available on the internet that I’m surprised Microsoft and Apple don’t include an advertisement filled version with the newest install of their operating systems. I won’t be looking at any modern iterations of Pong though; I’m looking much further back, further than I’ve ever gone before. 1976, the APF TV Fun Model 401 is released, a
UHHHG! Where to start with this one… Well let’s start with a basic trigger warning, 35 years on and this game is still highly offensive, so if you have strong opinions I would recommend that you avoid this one, even though I’m going to lambast this one as much as possible, it does actually have one or two positives. Let’s begin with the company itself, Mystique, it was founded by the Caballero Control Corporation, who originally, and still do, produce pornographic films. With the emergence of th
I have what might be considered an odd fascination with old LCD handheld games; I just can’t get enough of them they’re just so weird. In today’s world of pocket computers and mobile gaming these things just seem like pointless shitty relics of a bygone era, but they’re not. Each of these games are complex works of art that work together to create a game, perhaps they’re not as complex as console or computer games of the time, but let’s face it, you’re not taking one of those on the plane or on
This review is rated M for Mature…
Well, I never thought I’d be coming back here again, the Land of Pornography. But I’m here and I feel the uncontrollable urge to review something, I will of course stick to my preferred console, the 2600, but what to play? Many of the Playaround original titles haven’t seen a lot of coverage, but then again there’s a game even rarer than those, how about X-Man. This game has languished in relative obscurity for a long time remaining mostly within the Atari col
Defender... One of the hardest classic arcade games ever made, what more is there to say about it? Well.. despite not being the first side scrolling shooter ever, it was the game which popularized the genre. Seriously this was the go-to game back in the 80's, which makes sense since it was Williams best selling arcade machine, they sold over fifty five thousand of these suckers. It's also one of the highest grossing arcade games ever, and for one simple reason, it's addictive. And when you combi
Windows 3.1 is an utter bastard! And I love it! More specifically I use Windows 3.11 for Workgroups as a customizable frontend to launch MS-DOS and early Windows games, it works well but it tends to misbehave. I have had my fair share of freezes and crashes (of the virtual machine, not my actual computer) which has lead to some strange behavior that is usually sorted out with a hard reset. My two personal favorite glitches are when the color scheme alters to something wild like magenta and black
Videogame consoles are rarely ever small, it doesn’t matter which generation you’re looking at whether it be the first, the eighth, or anywhere in between, these things are monstrous. But a game console rarely ever stays large, as technology get’s better and smaller, the consoles shrink with it, couple this with revised designs, and cheaper parts, and you have the birth of the slim console. A slim console is a console that is sold several years after its original release in a smaller more conden
This is going to be a comparison piece between the three most popular console ports of Q*Bert from the second generation of game consoles. We will be comparing the Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, and Colecovision ports of Q*Bert. Despite all being the same game there are a hefty amount of differences between the three. But the outcome of this review is not certain. since all the versions have their own strengths and weaknesses. Let's start with the graphics.
Which console has the b
This game doesn't sit right with me... I'm not a real big fan of this game in the first place. The first time I played this game was on an NES 250-in-one multicart, and something about it just rubbed me the wrong way. The 2600 version, which is the only version of Pooyan that was released for the home console market outside of Japan by the way, is far inferior to the Famicom port which is far inferior to the arcade, a winning combination if I've ever seen one. Graphics?
Ugly... It seems that
Alright so I decided to just release my Ebook for free here on the forum so here ya go. It comes in EPUB and MOBI flavors for Kindle users.
101 Reviews for the Atari the Good, the Bad, and the Weird.mobi
101 Reviews for the Atari the Good, the Bad, and the Weird.epub
"Oh, no honey... Don't do that..." Those were the first words I uttered when I heard that Ikari Warriors was ported onto the 2600. This was one of the final games on the system, released in 1990, the death year of the system, this game was inadvisable, even back then. This game is in the same vein as many of the late release red box games... Ports of games released on the NES, games like, KLAX, Xenophobe, and Roadrunner. Games that were just too big for the 2600, this is definitely one of those
It’s sequel time, and boy do we have a doozy today. We all know about the Atari 8-bit line of computers that were launched in 1979 starting with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. Without question the most beloved game on those computers is without a doubt Star Raiders, it is a classic. So what do you do when you have such a popular game? Well, you make a sequel of course! Luckily for Atari a member of their Coin-Op department Aric Wilmunder had almost completed a sequel to Star Raiders; it truly was
Style over substance, an unfortunate vice that seems to grip many games released nowadays, as it seems all of the budget for them went to making the game look good not leaving enough for a developed plot or characters. We’ve seen this most recently with the Star Wars Battlefront games from EA, which, while being absolutely gorgeous have some of the most lackluster gameplay I’ve ever witnessed. There are games that do the opposite though, games like Stardew Valley and Terraria have very simple gr
OH YEAH! Now here's a game I can get behind! I love me some Demon Attack. This classic game from Imagic is regarded as being one of the best games released for the 2600, I'm tempted to agree with that statement, but but there's competition afoot. The 2600 wasn't the only console to receive Demon Attack, the Intellivision also has Demon attack in it's library and I think it might just be better than the 2600 version. There was also a version on Odyssey 2 but I'm not paying that much for Demon Att
Hmm... Now here's a game that definitely would have benefited from some more powerful hardware, that's why they made versions for the Colecovision and Intellivision, unfortunately both of those versions are very expensive, the Intellivision version in particular. But we're lookin' at the Atari 2600 port of the game, which is by far the most inferior port. I am rather indifferent to this game in all honesty. It does have positives which deserve recognition and it also has negatives which need a l
OOPS! I accidentally put this one in draft and left like that, this review originally came out July 28th 2018.
Bobby Is Going Home has go to be the most well known game from Bit Corp. This is a very strange game, both in premise and in practice, this game is a basic Pitfall! clone, it shares many aspects with Pitfall! I will go into further depth later on in the review, but let me just say these this could be the unofficial sequel to Pitfall! it's so similar. I happened upon this game on Eba
We’ve all heard of the famous Commodore 64, so I won’t be going into any extraneous detail about it. But if there’s one thing many people don’t know about the C64… and that’s just how many games were released for it, my best guess puts the count near 17000 games, with more being discovered all the time, this thing is a serious gaming powerhouse. Instead of delving into the weird and the strange, I’m instead going to delve into the downright freaky with Kickman. Produced by Commodore under licens
This arcade conversion- wait... this was an arcade game? Huh... never heard of it, but if it's as decent as the 2600 version is, it must have been fairly popular... Okay, so I just looked a klov.com and this is one of the least common and/or popular arcade machines on there. Hmmm... Well it seems, for once, the port is better than the arcade game it was based on. This game was put out by CBS, who, as far as I can tell, has one of the best records in the 2600 library, no major stinkers whatsoever
We are going to start with the defacto ‘rare’ game in the 2600 library, Air Raid. Very little is known about this cartridge, and it seems that every step taken towards finally knowing who created this oddity leads further down a rabbit hole of craziness, and red herrings. I have browsed through several Air Raid centric threads and it has been suggested that the creators were drug smuggling members of the Cuban cartel, or even participated in slavery. But it seems that the only promising lead has
I have a rant for you, I’m very tired and it’s very rambly but I think I may have made a few good points.
Here’s something odd that many people have a hard time coming to terms with, rarity does not equal value. When the topic of old games comes up in conversation I usually have to reiterate this multiple times, and almost every time I do this the person I’m talking to gets that greedy little gleam in their eye. “Oh, I have a Nintendo/Atari/Sega in the basement, and I have a bunch of
This rather obscure game from Imagic, despite the silly box art and silly name, is quite good. Now this is a game that couldn't be made for the Atari 2600. Only the Intellivision's beefier hardware could handle all of that horizontal scrolling, though I think it would have done well on the Colecovision as well. In this game you play as Clarence, on half of a recently shipwrecked couple who washed up on a tropical island, Doris the other half of the couple is swiftly being dragged away by the ba
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