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I review games... How original...

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Towering Inferno (Vidtec/U.S. Games)

This game I think will be the hardest for me to review... I can't decide whether I like it or if I hate it, if it's well done or poorly done. I'm caught in the middle and I don't really have an answer. This game fills a void in the Atari library, that void being firefighter games. The only other firefighter game on the Atari was Imagic's aptly named Fire Fighter, which is regarded as the weakest game in Imagic's stellar lineup, can Towering Inferno trounce the mighty might of Imagic? I think it
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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Tower of Doom (INTV)

Tower of Doom (INTV)

Some Atari fans may know of the unreleased AD&D prototypes for the 2600, Treasure of Tarmin and Tower of Mystery. These prototypes exist but have not been released to the public because of copyright issues with T$R and Wizards of the Coast. Thankfully both of these games exist on a contemporary console so we at least know what the games might be like on the 2600.  Of all the consoles from the early 80’s, the Intellivision is the only console that has the classic D&D trilogy with Cloudy M
DoctorSpuds

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Tooth Protectors (DSD Camelot)

Well, with the advent of my UNO Cart I know have the entire NTSC Atari 2600 library at my disposal. What game should I review/play first? Hmmm, there are so many to choose from… How about Tooth Protectors from Johnson & Johnson programmed by DSD Camelot. TP is not as well known as Chase the Chuck Wagon, perhaps it’s due to it not being tied in with a particular product or it just doesn’t have as flashy of a name, I honestly don’t know. Despite it not being as notorious as its counterpart is
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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Tomarc the Barbarian (Xonox)

Tomarc the Barbarian (Xonox)

Between the time of the Maganavox Odyssey and the rise of the plumbers of Nintendo, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Cona—I Mean Tomarc, destined to wear the jeweled crown of mediocrity upon a pixilated brow. It is I, his reviewer, who alone can tell thee of his game. Let me tell you of the days of not-so-high adventure. Call me crazy but if they could have I think Xonox would have preferred Conan the Barbarian over Tomarc the Barbarian, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t r
DoctorSpuds

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Time Warp (Zellers)

Alright kiddos, sit down and SHUT UP, because papa Spuds is gonna go real obscure on you today. To those collectors who live in the U.S. and Canada Zellers cartridges aren't too rare, they are far less common in the U.S. but they still show up once in a while. A little context is probably necessary, Zellers is a budget store that currently operates in Canada, back in the 80's instead of paying Atari or the other third party companies who published games for it's console, Zellers simply stole the
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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Thunderground (Sega)

Thunderground was an oddity from Sega; clearly this game has some serious arcade potential, but was never released in the arcades. This game exists solely on the 2600, which is rather unfortunate since I think this could have gone on to be a hit, both in arcades and on the other home consoles. I was lucky enough to find a Taiwan Cooper version of this game that goes by the highly generic name of ‘Tank Mission’. The odd thing about the ‘Tank Mission’ box is that it seems to have been repurposed f
DoctorSpuds

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Thunderball! (Magnavox)

Remember the old saying “anything you can do I can do better”? Well when Atari is riding on the top of the world, there were a bunch of console manufacturers and game programmers saying that exact same thing, usually followed by failure. The Odyssey 2, we all know about the Odyssey 2, I’ve talked about it before, and how it was rather disappointing, never quite living up to the slogan ‘The excitement of a game, the mind of a computer’. It seems that Magnavox/Philips saw what Atari was doing with
DoctorSpuds

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Thunder Castle (INTV Corporation)

Thunder Castle (INTV Corporation)

Many recall, and perhaps lament, the transition from Atari Inc. to Atari Corp. The transition was a period when Atari and most all of its assets were sold by Time Warner to the Tramiels, who owned it until the very end. The Intellivision also had a similar transition from being owned by Mattel to being owned by INTV Corporation. INTV owned the Intellivision copyright and all of its games and licenses from 1984 through to 1990 when the Intellivision was officially discontinued because of Nintendo
DoctorSpuds

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Threshold (Tigervision)

Threshold (Tigervision)

Originality in games is not a dead concept though it is getting harder and harder to find as more and more games fill the same genres while attempting to stand out from the rest with a unique concept, visual style, gameplay element(s), or some mix of the three. Some games succeed at originality and other don’t, but the game I’m looking at today isn’t even trying to be original, in fact it almost seems to relish how generic it is, but it shouldn’t have been this way. Threshold is a game made by O
DoctorSpuds

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This is a Blog

Hello this is a blog... in this blog I will review things. I did not say that I would review them well or completely, I just want to. If grammar is a sticking point for you then turn away now. I'm a fan of run-on sentences, commas, and ellipses... so viewer beware. I have a lot of games and a lot of opinions about said games. I will try to post a review every couple of days. I've got, like, all of these games and then some.. reviewing them will give me an excuse to actually play them.
DoctorSpuds

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The worst thing I ever bought.

The worst thing I ever bought… Well that’s a pretty easy answer for me.   Before I say what it is, I first want to justify myself, because this is a pretty stupid thing to buy in the first place. I had just gotten my tax return in and I was feeling expensive and impulsive, and I really wanted an item that I could show off and perhaps have to act as a conversation starter. I knew it was going to be a reproduction cart of some sort, but it had to be even better, a repro cart and box, now
DoctorSpuds

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THE WEEK OF VIDTEC!

Who's ready for disappointment? Because I'm gonna review every game that was released under the Vidtec label. The games will be... Space Jockey Word Zapper Commando Raid Sneak 'n Peak (Ugh) Towering Inferno Not in that order... Expect some of these reviews to be rather short since in some cases I don't have too much to say, but hey... it's content... One game makes me want to break it? Find out soon!
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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THE WEEK OF STARPATH

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
DoctorSpuds

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The week of rarity!

I’ve had a little idea… How about I do another week of, but instead of reviewing games that I own, I review games that I will NEVER own, ever. And what games would these be? How about some R10 games! Due to the fact I’d have to pawn off my kidneys to even afford a single one of these cartridges I’ll have to forgo the “Own It to Review It” rule I’ve been working under. Unfortunately many of these R10 games are there simply to them having a rare cartridge shell, I’m looking at you Xante, or being
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Tiger Strikes Back! (LCD handheld games)

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
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Version 2 (Wizard Video)

Since I talked about it so much in the previous review it seems only fair that I review The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Version 2. This version of the game was never released even though it seems Wizard Video already had packaging planned and produced before scrapping the game to release the one programmed by Ed Salvo. The guy who programmed this version, Robert H O’Neil, was also responsible for Polaris from Tigervision and the unreleased Flesh Gordon that Wizard games was going to try and shoehorn
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Wizard Video)

Of all the licensed games that have been released I would put Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the top of the ‘least likely to appeal to anyone’ list. The Atari 2600 wasn’t really known to have much success with ‘adult’ oriented games, as we all know it appealed more to kids and teens with the huge amount of arcade conversions, and I suppose the adults were there too but it seems they were after much the same as the kids. Oddly enough TCM was programmed by our old friend Ed Salvo who programmed Skeet
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The St. Vinnie's Game Sale

Over here in Madison we have a chain of thrift stores known as St. Vincent DePauls, St. Vinnie’s for short that has a big game sale every six months at one of their locations around the city, I have attended one previously and the one today, and as a collectors you all know how great it is to get good games for cheap. Sadly though, and I hate to admit it, but this St. Vinnie’s game sale was a bit of a bust. I arrived at 8:30, they opened at 9:00, in the freezing cold and wind only to see through
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Sega Game Gear

The Sega Game Gear

Sega had a really good thing going with the Genesis. Back in 1989 Sega was unrivaled with its 16-bit powerhouse console. But unfortunately Sega had glossed over a very important part of the gaming market, handhelds. While Sega was busy being king of the console roost with the Genesis, Nintendo sneakily released the Gameboy to fill the portable gaming void that had been plaguing gamers for almost a decade ever since the Milton Bradley Microvision left a rather disappointed taste in people’s mouth
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The RCA Studio II

The RCA Studio II

Man, I hate to do the cliché thing of calling the thing I’m reviewing ‘terrible’ right off the bat, but seriously, the RCA Studio II might just be the most woeful games console I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Just a warning, my Google-Fu is pretty weak for this console in particular, mainly because there isn’t a whole lot that exists on it, and because it was disco-ed so quickly.   I got lucky recently. At my local game store he gets all sorts of weird crap in, and by weird
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Official Frogger By SEGA (Starpath)

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
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Music Machine (Sparrow)

I made an executive decision to skip Pepsi Invaders since it is just Space invaders with the aliens replaced with PEPSI, with infinite lives and a three minute time limit. I've already reviewed Space Invaders, which is basically the same thing, except with those few changes, so I'm just going to skip straight to The Music Machine   I actually have surprisingly little to say about Music Machine, it was sold in religious bookstores alongside the record of the same name, it is likely that to shif
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Intellivision II (Is it even worth it?)

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
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The forgotten pool game Pocket Billiards! (Magnavox)

Well this is awkward. I purposefully wrote my previous review to get all of those pool games out of the way so I’d never have to think about them again but believe it or not I missed a game. I suppose I could be forgiven for forgetting this particular game since the idea of it is so strange I almost can’t believe it exists. Pocket Billiards on the Magnavox Odyssey2, released in 1980, might just be the first Pool/Billiards game ever released on home console, unless the Channel F had one I didn’t
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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The Earth Dies Screaming (20th Century Fox)

The Earth Dies Screaming (20th Century Fox)

Alright ladies and gentlemen, the word of the day is satisfaction. What is the most satisfying game you’ve ever played? I think that I may have just inadvertently stumbled upon one of the most satisfying games in the 2600 library, and it’s from our good friends at Fox. Not at all based on the 1964 movie of the same name, The Earth Dies Screaming is a fun little space shooter and is an excellent example of excellent sounds and graphics overpowering subpar/standard gameplay to make something truly
DoctorSpuds

DoctorSpuds

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