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
Oh boy here we go! Star Ship, a game that was so bad when it came out in 1977 that It was removed from sale by Atari in 1980, and Atari almost never pulled games from sale so you know it's gotta be bad. I will be cutting this game a lot of slack in this review though, due to the fact it was released in 1977 as a launch title, and we all know that many of these games have not aged well at all, with perhaps the exception of Indy 500. This game is a first person space shooter, now that sounds aweso
Xonox was truly an oddball publisher, being the only other company besides Playaround to release double ended cartridges. Much like Telesys Xonox' game rarity varies wildly as well due to the fact they also released some 'single ender' cartridges, which are pretty self explanatory. For example, the Spikes Peak/ Ghost Manor double ender, which is the one I used in this review is only a four out of ten on the Atariage rarity scale, while the Spike's Peak single ender is a nine out of ten. Xonox on
I think it’s about time I finally review one of my favorite Xonox titles, Motocross Racer. This is the pinnacle of pre red box programming; seriously the sheer amount of game they managed to stuff into a little 8K cartridge is amazing. I don’t really have much to say about Xonox as a company, I think I’ve already said all that could be said but for those of you who haven’t heard… Xonox was a subsidiary of K-Tel a telemarketing company that sold a wide variety of products on daytime and late nigh
Dammit Mystique! I thought I took you behind the utility shed and put a slug through your miserable skull a long time ago. As it turns out I’m a fool, Mystique never dies, it is a zombie of a company, shuffling around and vomiting its wares into any store that would take it. Mystique! What do you have to say for yourself? “It’s a joke?” My boy, this isn’t 2015 YouTube anymore that shit won’t fly, it didn’t fly in 1982, and it sure as shit doesn’t fly now, that being said I don’t care. Bachelor P
This game has been on the docket ever since I started writing these reviews, but until know I couldn’t really put my feelings about it into words, I probably still can’t but I’m gonna try anyway. It is likely I avoided reviewing this game early on because I didn’t want to review two very similar games so close together, the first review I ever did was Wizard of Wor and I probably felt that Dark Cavern was just a bit too similar. But as my range of games has expanded I think it’s been more than e
Now... Here's a weird one. This game as far as I can tell is not a bootleg or a slightly modified version of an already existing game this game is original. This game was originally put out by Bit Corporation over in Europe, and some way or another it made it's way over to America. I'm lucky enough to own a slightly rare NTSC Taiwan Cooper bootleg of Mission 3000 A.D., but I know reproduction carts were sold not too long ago. Nevertheless this game remains an enigma, nobody really knows who prog
When one has worked in a grocery store, as I have, they sometimes will just pick items off the shelf and read the back, sometimes to see the nutritional information, or just to see which mega-corporation made it. Monopolies and Duopolies are nothing new, they’re everywhere: Proctor & Gamble, Nestle, Disney, and Unilever own much of the business in the U.S. and abroad, sometimes a brand that you thought was independent is actually owned by one of those big mega-corporations. The brand that su
Entombed is… a game? I think it’s a game; it may not be though, maybe a tech demo, or something along those lines. If you’re looking for slapdash, cheap entertainment that may or may not be entertaining look no further than Entombed, brought to you by Quaker Oats. This game is light on the graphics, sounds, and gameplay, so I think I’ll just wrap this review up with a single paragraph. You move a vaguely person shaped object through a bunch of vertically scrolling ‘mazes’ that are rife with unav
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
Of all of Activision’s 2600 games I feel that Enduro is probably one of their best. There were very few games of this style released on 2600; you had Pole Position, Fatal Run, Night Driver (debatably), and Enduro, and the only one out of those four that I actually enjoy is Enduro. Unlike most Activision ‘Avoid-it’ games, in Enduro your goal is not to set a best time, your goal is to drive past a set amount of cars over a period of time, and if you do you continue the game. Graphically this game
Okay so despite already doing a box review this past week I’m still going to do one this Monday, because consistency. Usually I will hem and haw in front of my shelf for several minutes when choosing a box to review but today was different; it almost seemed as if the boxes were calling out to me. It seems that nobody, not even a potato on the internet, can resist the power of pornography. Yes we’re looking at the Mystique boxes today, and even though I only have two of the three I think I can st
Berzerk is an undeniable classic; everybody likes Berzerk it seems, apart from me. I’m not a fan of Berzerk but I can’t deny its legacy. Berzerk was one of the earliest top-down shooters and also one of the earliest games to have voice sampling. Inevitably the game was ported onto the 2600 where it maintained its success, and it was later ported to the 5200 and 8-Bit line as well. The 2600 port is very faithful to its source material, since the arcade wasn’t a very complex game to begin with. Th
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
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
Now this is a special review... Not only is this my 50th review, this is also my first Homebrew review. I actually only own one Homebrew game, and I think I have one of the best, that being Spiceware's Draconian. I love Namco's Bosconian, even though I'm not very good at it, so when I saw Draconian on the AA store I was immediately smitten. I bought it almost as soon as I saw what it was, Bosconian on the 2600, and when it arrived I was not disappointed. This has got to be one of the most advanc
Alright… So I promised that I would never review this game a long time ago in my Ghost Manor review but I feel that I now know enough about the game to give it a proper review. Spike’s Peak makes me cringe; I can find zero enjoyment from this game no matter how much I play it. Right now Spike’s Peak is the only Xonox game I have that I’ve yet to review and there is a very good reason for that, because playing this game puts me in a bad mood, so I must approach this game while already in a bad mo
Whoever programmed this game knocked it right out of the park since Mr. Postman is one of the most varied and interesting games I’ve ever played. When you look on the Atari Mania page for Mr. Postman you’ll see that it has been released by almost all of the cheap bootleg publishers out there, from Brazil to Australia and almost everywhere in between, this game has permeated the Atari 2600 library like a virus. I am unsure of who actually programmed this game originally, was it Bit Corp. or was i
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!
The main thing that I find characterizes these ‘Avoid-It’ games is simplicity, these games are simple therefore anybody can pick them up and have a good time with them, and because they’re so simple I think I’d be forgiven for giving many of these a single paragraph review, so without further ado lets review Grand Prix.
I believe James Rolfe (AVGN) said it best “It’s a bunch of kazoos flying through a cabbage patch…”, and I rather agree with him. The cars, while simple in design, are colorfu
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 game seems to be rather polarizing in the community, mainly since it’s the only game I have been actively told to avoid reviewing at all costs, but mankind never got anywhere by playing it safe. So… for your delectation I present to you Karate by Ultravision. Unlike its brother game Condor Attack, Karate actually had an accessible and affordable re-release in the form of Froggo, and the inevitable Taiwan Cooper bootleg. I decided to get the Taiwan Cooper version for one deciding reason, and
This game is just plain awful. Game-play , sounds, and graphics are just plain awful. I will attempt to make it more clear in this review just how this game sucks. Data Age weren't known for making the best games, or even average games, in fact they mostly made crap. Games like Sssnake, Bugs, Airlock, and Journey: Escape, tend to be on the bottom of the barrel when it comes collecting, apart from Frankenstein's Monster, for some reason that game has gotten rather expensive. But despite all of th
So I’ve been thinking back on my Skeet Shoot ‘review’ and I’ve come to the realization that three paragraphs of me saying hahaha isn’t sufficient to vent my frustration with this game, so I’m gonna go the whole nine yards and give this lousy piece of shit a full review, not because the game deserves it but because I want to insult it more. Skeet Shoot was Apollo’s very first game, and boy does it feel like it, though I’d say it feels like a first year game dev major’s scrapped project more than
So we're back here again... And so soon, it's almost like I'm running out of ideas! Almost. I'll get around to mocki...reviewing Mythicon's other opus Star Fox, but for now we're looking at Sorcerer, which is arguably Mythicon's best game, it's the king of the crap. I recently bought a boxed copy off of Ebay for a fairly decent price, and have received on the night I'm writing this review, now I wasn't originally going to review this game, but it has something that none of my other Mythicon game
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