For the past 175 or so reviews I have focused only on the games, and more recently the packaging. One element of playing games that seems to be often overlooked by anybody is the controller. We all have that one controller that we’ll choose no matter what. So I thought to myself “Do a thing about controllers dsjgbpoiubdsajln nsamldfoi” and then the static set back in. I have a decent selection of Atari 2600 and 2600 compatible controllers, so I thought I’d write a paragraph or so describing them
I get the feeling that this will be the final game I review from Apollo in a very long time, there is only one left for me to review after this and it’s Guardian and I don’t have the 100+ dollars lying around to buy it with. The game I’ll be looking at today is Racquetball, and is the perfect example of a good idea executed poorly. I would also say that Racquetball is also a victim of the 2600 hardware itself, a game this complex simply needed better hardware to power it, probably something arou
Long has this game eluded me, but now I have it in my possession, sort of. I’ve really wanted to get my hands on Star Wars: The Arcade Game for a long while but the price has always been a prohibitive factor, mainly due to it being a late release Parker Brothers game coupled with a big IP driving the prices up dramatically. It seems though that I’ve been after the wrong version the whole time, because as I was focusing on the 2600 version, as I tend to do, I has completely neglected the other ve
And the award for the worst name for a game ever goes to… Tape Worm by Spectravision. Did they actually know what a tapeworm was? Awful name aside the concept for this game also doesn’t really make sense, especially when you compare it with the title. In this game you play as Slinky, a ‘Spectraworm’, who loves fruit but is unable to acquire it so he eats a bunch beans and then acquires the fruit with excessive flatulence, wha-? We all know this is a ‘snake game’ but this whole package so far is
Outsourcing is nothing new; almost all big companies do it. Many different industries outsource whether it be for assembly, manufacturing, or acquisition of raw materials. Outsourcing is fairly common in the videogame industry as well; games like Aliens Colonial Marines were famously outsourced to smaller less capable developers much to the chagrin of the consuming populace. Fox is no different, when first breaching into the new burgeoning videogame industry they licensed the initial lineup of g
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
Alright, this is it, the final game from Apollo that I have yet to review. I have stated multiple times that I have absolutely zero interest in reviewing Lost Luggage on several occasions, but it seems now I have no choice. Honestly the only thing that spurred this decision was something that I saw in the manual, so let’s not dawdle and let’s just review it; I’ve done 10 of these already I have nothing to fill the first paragraph with at this point.
There are elements of
Okay so I know I usually do write-ups on games, not companies, but Panda was just so batshit insane that I feel they are deserving. The guys at Panda were the OG bootleggers, for a short time in 1983 they slithered onto the scene and vomited their wares, but before they could finish they vanished quite suddenly. Now, Panda was the supreme budget brand, they made their games out of the cheapest materials they could get, and cut as many corners as possible, i'm not sure what they sold for original
I've decided to expand my operation to Wordpress in an attempt to get my reviews in front of more eyes. This does not mean I'll stop posting here though, you'll keep getting your regularly scheduled dosage of reviews don't you worry. Starting off I'll be posting my old reviews a couple a day so it'll take a while for it to catch up with the blog here, the only difference between those reviews and the reviews here are a hefty amount of spellchecking and punctuation correcting.
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
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
Children’s games are nothing new, just about every console has them and most of them suck due in large part to them being far too simple and condescending for even children to play, but that hasn’t always been the case. On many of the older consoles, especially the 2600, you had games made for both adults and young children at the same, the one that comes to my mind is Missile Command where it has a disclaimer printed on the box that it has additional versions for young children, even Draconian
Continuing with my trend of reviewing old PC games I present to you what is at first glance the most unimaginative piece of crap you’ve probably ever seen. Pinball for Windows by Impressions Software is just one of hundreds of crappy pieces of software shoveled out for the ‘new hotness’ Windows 3.1. The box boasts ‘GREAT ANIMATIONS’ and ‘4 Pinball Tables’ to select, my goodness! I’m astounded! Seriously these guys are really trying to sell you on this like it’s the best thing since sliced bread.
We’re back again with Tigervision and what might just be the best box art on the 2600; yes there can be no other its Espial. An obscure console game published by an obscure company (at the time) based on an obscure arcade machine it is positively slated for success. I dunno, it seems Tigervision had a deal with both Orca Group and Sierra On-Line to publish their games for them on the 2600, it all seems rather strange and since we don’t know who actually programmed the game it is entirely possibl
Ah, Spectravision we meet again… You confuse me Spectravision, you have published so many unique and enjoyable games, while at the same time publishing absurd crap that also winds up being unique in its own way, I simply cannot find it in myself to dislike you. I think I’ll look at another one of Spectravision’s unique titles today, how about Cross Force? Yeah I think that’ll do nicely. Imagine Demon Attack, except you fire from the top and bottom of the screen, your two cannons move in the reve
And the award for the second worst game title goes to… … …Ram It! I don’t even know why they went with this name in particular because you don’t actually do any ramming in the game whatsoever. I wish I could give this game a full review but due to the simplistic nature of every aspect of the game a single paragraph will have to do. Graphically the game looks good but doesn’t impress me all too much, sure the amount of colors on display are cool but I’m just not getting any of that Wow Factor lik
I normally avoid sports titles on any console, I simply don’t enjoy them, but I may have found one that I actually like. The last game I reviewed that could be defined as a sports game was bowling which was my ninth ever review and as it was amongst the early Atari releases it was nothing to look at. But unlike with bowling, baseball had several versions released starting with Home Run in 1978 and ending with Pete Rose Baseball in 1988, I think we’ll review the latter of those two today. I still
Whoa shit! It’s been over a year since I last posted a 2600 review. Where does the time go?
Looking back on it I really have been distracted. I wrote two books that I have deemed unpublishable, a small library of short stories pertaining to said scrapped books, and am now neck deep in another one that I actually hope to work into a publishable form, fingers crossed.
But, I think it’s been long enough since I reviewed a game, at least one for the 2600. Something a bit spec
Where to even start with this one… Well how about the name? Gauntlet, which in retrospect has caused a lot of confusion over the years, yes there was a Gauntlet on Atari but it isn’t Atari’s Gauntlet, same name different game. Even the company is shrouded in mystery, mainly because I can’t find a decent shred of info on them anywhere, all I really know is that they were a mail-order only company, they programmed three games but only released two, and that a majority of their games exist only as
Yesterday I finally crossed a big name off of my ‘get’ list, a working Atari 5200, I have long had a busted one that I’ll just keep around for parts now. I don’t intend on buying any games for it or even hooking up to my TV because I still can’t really play it. I suppose that’s the unique thing about the 5200, some consoles are unattainable because of the price of the games, or of the unit itself. The 5200 is unique for a totally different reason, the controllers. Oftentimes a working 5200 contr
I recently had an idea about what to do on Mondays when I don’t write reviews, I want to fill that day with something but I just didn’t know what, until like four minutes ago. As is fairly well known I am a collector of 2600 games, and for most of the time I’ve been a collector I’ve tried to collect my games complete in box (CIB), mainly because it just adds that extra ‘wow’ factor to the collection, and it just makes me happy. I recently realized that I’ve only been focusing on a tiny part of m
Hello readers of my mediocre content! I’m here to announce the next Week Of…
Some may have seen that earlier in the week I bought a Starpath/Arcadia Supercharger. As of writing this I have NONE of the games, I still intend to write reviews for every officially released Starpath Supercharger game though. I’m bending the rules here, since I have stated before that I will not review a game which I do not own, technically though I do own all of the games, as MP3 files stored on my crappy MP3 pl
I’m gonna level with you right now, I don’t like Burgertime, I think it’s a slow monotonous game with very little payoff, every version I play whether it be the arcade, Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari (any of them), or even the NES I wind up feeling the same way. I like the overall concept of creating giant burgers while being pursued by evil foodstuffs but it just feels too constricted and slow. I don’t really expect anybody to agree with me but I feel that I should get my opinions out there
Telesys was one of those oddball publishers that I view in the same vein as Commavid, while not garnering a HUGE amount of success they still made creative and fun games that quickly got rarer and rarer as they slowly died a horrible painful death during the Video Game Crash. Most collectors will have three of their six games: Cosmic Creeps, Coconuts, and Fast Food. I’ve already looked at Coconuts a long, long time ago, so it seems to be about time that I look at another of their games, Fast Foo
Well, this is it, this is the final Apollo game I have any interest in covering. Apart from Lost Luggage I have one final game from the Apollo catalog that I have yet to review, it is their final and rarest game, Guardian. Guardian was shipped in incredibly limited numbers, mainly due to the fact that the moment the game made it into production the company was shut down by its creditors, there was only one batch made before the company was dissolved. It wasn’t a bad run, eleven games over the c
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