CRAP I did it again... I go to edit the review and then I accidentally put in draft. Oh well... now I just feel dumb
Airlock is one of those games that you forget exist, until one day you look at your shelf and you see it there, you think to yourself "how bad could it be?". You play it and then you remember... This is one of the stupidest, shallowest, and unnecessary games ever crapped out onto the 2600. Data Age really outdid themselves here, this has got to be, in my opinion, the worst gam
This game is rather special to me, since it was the FIRST Atari 2600 game I had ever played, and it seems like a good time to review it since in about a week I’ll have something very special relating to pinball and the 2600 coming in, and I’m so very excited. Video Pinball is just one of those 2600 games, y’know the type, the games that sit on your shelf forever, but when you look at it you smile knowingly and nod your head, like “I know this game sucks, but I like it anyway”. And honestly, I wo
I have been debating whether or not to review this game for a while now, mainly due to how complicated is actually is, but I have steeled my nerves and clenched my buttocks and am now gonna review Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin on the Mattel Intellivision. This is technically a sequel to AD&D Cloudy Mountain, which despite being a very complex game in its own right, did not live up to the moniker of ‘Advanced’ Dungeons & Dragons, there were no classes no leveling up,
Copyright is a fickle thing, and many people do not understand copyright, in fact most people don’t, and as soon as somebody has an idea that is remotely similar to another more successful idea legal action is usually filed. This was the case with Magnavox/Philips K.C. Munchkin, a clone of Pac-Man that expanded upon the initial premise and modified much of the gameplay, which constitutes fair use. Atari, who owned the home console rights to create and distribute Pac-Man did not see things the sa
Wha- wait! Where am I!?! Why is everything so polygonal? Oh dear it seems I’ve stepped away from the second generation of gaming consoles and made the leap to the fifth, bit rude though, such a massive generational shift without any warning. Yes, today we’re gonna review a game on the N64, and since I only have three I don’t have too many options, lemme see here… uh… Lego Racers? No, what about Mario Kart 64? No, that one’s been done to death, alright that just leaves one last game, so today let
When people look at high profile failures on the 2600 the list usually starts with E.T. and ends with Pac-Man with nothing in between, but there is a game that is oft overlooked by the general public and that game is the one and only Journey: Escape. This is the game that killed Data Age, the marketing for this game cost the company 4.5 million dollars, roughly adjusted for inflation that’s over twelve million dollars today, that may not seem like a lot for a game today, but think of it this wa
I have seriously underestimated Epyx, I honestly didn’t realize how many games they produced back in the 80’s, but I’m not gonna get ahead of myself listing every one the games they published since we would be here all year, instead I’m going to focus on one of my favorite games on the C64 (apart from Monty On The Run) and that is Epyx’ Super Cycle. I love arcade style racing games, games like Rad Racer, Top Gear, Enduro, Outrun, even games like Extreme G and Lego Racers on N64 are some of my fa
I must admit, even though I’m not very informed in the world of retro computing I do have a small and burgeoning love for the Commodore 64. As I found out after buying mine though most of the games are either on cassettes or 5 ¼ inch floppy disks, I have no desire to buy and set up such bulky machinery in my room as I don’t have the space for it, so I cheated. I bought an SD2IEC SD card reader, and intend on loading it up with all of the best, and worst, games for the system and play my life awa
The Odyssey 2 was unfortunately lacking in many key genres its competitors dominated in, in today’s case the ‘F.P.S.S’ or the First-Person Space Shooter. As far as I know the odyssey 2 only had one (please correct me if I’m wrong) and that game is Cosmic Conflict, or 2076 STAR COMMAND as the cartridge states boldly. Sadly this game emphasizes why the Odyssey 2 struggled, in my opinion, it’s not a bad game but I would hesitate to call it a ‘good’ game. Almost all of the Odyssey 2’s competitors ha
Ladies and gentleman… I have returned, and today I’m going to be doing something a little different. A little while back I played ‘Story Machine’ by Spinnaker Software for the C64, and it was probably the greatest thing I ever experienced as a player and peruser of retro videogames. Today I will not be reviewing the gameplay, sounds and graphics; I will be doing something else. The game has a story generator and I’ll be transcribing five stories for all of you today. I’ll include screenshots if
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 is a day to be remembered in the short history of this blog, today is the day I review my first Odyssey 2 game. The Odyssey 2 was Magnavox’ 13th foray into the home console market (they made a lotta Pong consoles), but this was Magnavox’ first console with interchangeable ROM cartridges. The Odyssey 2 is an absolute beast, this is mainly because of the large QWERTY style membrane keyboard mounted on the top of the system, now correct me is I’m wrong but this is the only ‘Home Videogame Cons
I didn’t originally plan to write a review on this game so I’ll keep it short. I bought this game a while back and had only gotten around to playing it a couple days ago, and when I did, I discovered something truly magnificent. Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man™ is one of those games that you remembered existing but remembered nothing about otherwise, but today I found something worth remembering it for, which you shall see in a little while.
First impressions are great; there is
At LAST! This is the final game from Starpath, Sword of Saros. I’m gonna try to keep this review a bit shorter since they seem to be getting longer and longer these days. From what I have gathered from talking to several folks at my local game store and reading some reviews, this is one of the least liked Supercharger games ever made, now that’s quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately I somewhat agree with much of the criticism leveled at Sword of Saros, it is DEEPLY flawed, and unfortunately the
It’s time we turn our attention away from the Supercharger games that had the nice boxes and manuals, and look at the final two games released for the system. These games were not sold in stores, and were only available through mail-order, which as we know from other mail-order games increases the rarity and value immensely. Unfortunately these final two games are sometimes regarded as the worst games for the Supercharger, which is rather unfair since they are both as original and perhaps even m
I’ve said before that some games are difficult to review, but this may actually be the hardest game to review out of the lot of them, because it’s very difficult to review a party game by yourself. It’s mainly because I don’t know a single person in 50 miles that actually wants to play 2600 with me, and I only have a single pair of Paddle controllers to boot. This game is rather amazing, in both concept and execution, a four player party game with three minigames that actually engage all four pl
Alright folks this is going to be a difficult game for me to review today, mainly because I have a rather large bias against this game. The game today is The Official Frogger by Sega, and I have a confession to make… I kinda hate Frogger. Yes-yes-yes, get your torches and pitchforks and skewer the heretic, I know Frogger is an absolute classic, but there’s something about it that just doesn’t gel with me, I’ll try to explain it more in the review, but suffice to say, this will be a bit difficult
Alright, so what genre of game is Starpath trying to improve upon today? We’ve already gotten FPS space shooters, Galaga, Breakout, Asteroids, first-person-maze-puzzle-solving, RPG, and Defender, out of the way, so what’s popular and doesn’t have a particularly amazing home port? Well Q*Bert of course! Yes, Starpath’s eighth offering, Rabbit Transit, is a Q*Bert clone, and a damn good one if I might add. I’ve already done a comparison review on the three most popular console ports of Q*Bert, so
Let us cast ourselves back to that dark room where the brains behind Starpath worked their magic. They have already taken on several popular genres of games and come out the victor, but it seems it was time for something a bit for traditional, a sidescrolling space shooter in the same vein as Defender perhaps, but since it’s Starpath it’s gotta have a twist. It was this line of thinking that has led us to what I think is one of Starpath’s weakest efforts ‘Killer Satellites’, a Defender clone. I
Well now, ain’t this a surprise, when one thinks ‘Atari 2600’ they usually think low resolution graphics, E.T., arcade ports that rarely stack up to the original, but not a top-down turn-based RPG, never that. Clearly Starpath saw what was going on over in the land of PC’s and was like ‘yeah we can do that on the 2600, easily’ and they did it, and the outcome was Dragonstomper, the only turn-based RPG ever made during the systems original run. The story is classic, there is a picturesque peacefu
Despite how limiting the 2600 hardware was, there were several companies who attempted to create first-person maze exploration games, some were pulled off rather well, like Tunnel Runner from CBS. There were also maze exploration games that were a little crappy, games like London Blitz from Avalon Hill and, Fox’s Crypts of Chaos were slow moving clunky and were either too easy or too difficult. I’m excluding games like Milton Bradley’s Survival Run, while being a first-person game; it’s not the
Alright… A show of hands, who here has played Asteroids? Hmmm, okay, that’s a good number of you, who here has played the 2600 port? Oh, even more of you, that’s interesting, who here thinks the 2600 port of asteroids is a good port? Well there go a few hands, alright a few more. Who here has heard of Suicide Mission? Well that’s not many hands at all… how disappointing. Last one, who here thinks that Suicide Mission, a game that many of you haven’t heard of is as good, if not better than the 26
There are many Paddle games for the 2600; some of them are excellent, like Kaboom! And Warlords, others are not so good, like the drek from Mystique, or the laughable crap from Data Age. If you were to ask me what the best Paddle game was I’d likely reply with the classic Kaboom! But today I’m not so sure. After playing Fireball by Starpath, I think the bar has been raised again, because I believe that Fireball may just be the best Paddle game ever made for the 2600. I understand that that is a
Oh man, these guys are on a roll, only their second game and they’re redefining genres, with their first game Starpath took on the First-Person Space Shooter genre, and with their second they’ve taken on the ever classic Fly-Around-The-Bottom-Of-The-Screen-And-Shoot-At-Things genre, which contains juggernauts like Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, Demon Attack, and GORF. Due to the restrictive hardware the Atari 2600 could only present most of these games in a restricted or cut back form, Galaga
First-person space shooters are nothing new on the 2600, you have your classics, like Star Master, Star Raiders, and Star Voyager, then there are your not-so-classics, like Star Ship, and Space Attack, but there is one game that gets swept under the rug every time the topic is brought up, maybe it’s because the title doesn’t begin with ‘Star’ or ‘Space’ but the game is Phaser Patrol, and in my opinion it’s better than all of the others combined. I think the main reason why it doesn’t come up ver
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