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
Gamma-Attack, much like Air Raid, has languished in obscurity and myth for many years until its eventual discovery in 2008. From the get-go this game was set up to have a very limited release, and to truly understand HOW limited we have to briefly take a look at the company that made it, Gammation. Gammation was a one man company out of Ohio that made and sold turbo attachments for the 2600 through mail-order. The only way to get business would be to have ads in the large gaming magazines, and f
As is common with many rare games from the first few generations, they were just one-offs from no-name companies trying to either break into the market, or simply to advertise themselves. I honestly have no idea where Eli’s Ladder falls in the spectrum of one-offs, but as one-offs go this one’s pretty darn good. Eli’s Ladder is a math tutoring game that teaches the player addition, subtraction, and counting, it also came with a console overlay for both six and four switch Atari’s which leads me
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’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
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
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
Sorry for missing the review yesterday, but for reasons way within my control I just simply couldn’t (I.E. I was just lazy). I had a friend over yesterday to play some games, and even though the big winner of the night was Pachinko! On Odyssey 2, because he was winning by a country mile the whole time, followed by Survivor by Synapse, since it’s just a damn fun game, the third most played game was Capture the Flag by Sirius on Atari 800 and that’s the game we’re looking at today. Sirius Software
Well now if this isn’t a sight to behold, we’re back in the land of Xonox. These guys produced some of the most advanced, and beautiful games on the 2600, and they packaged them in a very unique way. When it comes to exotic cartridges Xonox has the competition beat with their Double Ender cartridges, each side has a different game and the things are massive. Playaround also did double ended cartridges but we don’t like to talk about them, since Xonox did it first and they did it best. I have on
I had my heart broken by this game; it was the subject of the first major regret of my collecting career. In Madison and the surrounding areas we have a Goodwill equivalent called St. Vinnie’s, every year there are a couple of game sales at St. Vinnie’s where basically everything videogame related that came in gets put up for sale ridiculously cheaply, like half to a quarter Ebay and resale price. It was my first time going, and I didn’t know much about what was rare and what was desirable, at t
I don’t like Amidar, I don’t like how it looks, or how it plays, it was a game that was best left in the arcades and forgotten about. If you like the game then good for you, you can find enjoyment in something that infuriates me, to be honest. Amidar was an arcade game that was developed and published by Konami back in 1981, and by all accounts it was a decent game, but when Parker Brothers brought the game over to the 2600, well, they screwed it up something fierce. Now Amidar was pretty much
Sorry about missing the review yesterday, I've been under the weather recently. I managed to get this review out for you guys today, because I like ya, and you deserve it.
We’re back in Mattel territory with Lock ‘n’ Chase which just so happens to be another Pac-Man clone. Lock ‘n’ Chase was one of the several Mattel games that were released both on the 2600 and on the Intellivision. While the Intellivision version was a slow and monotonous mess with unresponsive controls, the 2600 version
I bought this game expecting the European version, which is the version that had the only other voice sampling apart from Quadrun. What I didn't expect though, was 'I Want My Mommy', a game released in America by Zimag. The version I own is a Taiwan Cooper bootleg which as far as I can tell is exactly the same as the Zimag version. I know these Taiwan Cooper bootlegs aren't known for having very pertinent box art but Open Sesame takes the cake as far as I'm concerned. The box art shows The Tramp
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
Happy Monday! I recently got this Taiwan Cooper cart from Venezuela for one reason, the picture on the back. Sadly the game on the cart is not the game shown on the back of the box, an odd misprint. Does anybody know what game this is? It looks like some sort of Missile Command/Atlantis clone, and like all Taiwan Cooper boxes the description makes absolutely zero sense, so no help there. Any help would be appreciated, because I'd really like to play this game, it looks and sounds fun. If you wer
It is no secret that I’ve recently acquired an Atari 800 computer, and when I asked on the forum which games were the best to play on it, one game was recommended above all else… Star Raiders. I found this a little confusing since I had played Star Raiders on the 2600 and was thoroughly disappointed, but the game store I bought the 800 from did have a copy of it, so I bought it and played it, and now I know why people like it so very much. The 2600 Star Raiders absolutely pales in comparison to
It’s time for some spooky shit. Yeah, you all know it, you all may or may not like it, it’s Haunted House. Basically Haunted House takes the gameplay format of Adventure and makes it spooky. I had originally planned to review Haunted House on Halloween, but as you can see that didn’t happen, instead I reviewed Star Fox which is scary for an entirely different reason. Your objective is to simply recover three pieces of an urn and leave the house, you will be harried by ghosts and ghouls but runni
How many games has Bit Corporation made?!? (Or at least been credited with making/stealing) I keep finding more and more all the time, as is the case for today’s game. Technically I can’t play this game since the copy I own is in the PAL format and will therefore display improperly on my TV, but I still own a physical copy so it’s okay. It seems though in the definitive list of Bit Corp. games I have reviewed all but two, and soon it shall be one, the one I don’t currently own is Space Tunnel, o
So… This Atari 800 computer was found in the basement of West High School in Madison WI. It was with 2 other 800’s, and 800X and a 520ST, there was also an Atari 820 printer, four 5 ½ inch floppy drives, and an Atari 850 interface. The 800X works as do all the floppy drives,the 520ST is not functioning due to an issue with the power button and likely something else,and two of the three 800”s are functioning as well, it is unknown if the 820 or 850 work since we have no idea how to hook them up
Since I don’t normally post reviews on Mondays I decided to do something a little different. Instead of posting a review how about I put up a list of my personal favorite games on my personal favorite console the Atari 2600. These aren’t in any particular order; they are simply the games that have given me the most enjoyment during my time playing the 2600. There may be some titles that you think should be on this list, so please tell me your favorite games in the comment section. 20th Century
Anybody who grew up in the 1990’s remembers Tiger Electronics, the creators of numerous LCD games of varying quality, and of the Game Com. Tiger had a video game division that went by the name of Tigervision who ported many different games from different publishers onto the 2600 and the more popular home computers of the time, they are also responsible for the game I’m reviewing today. Jawbreaker was originally programmed by Sierra On-Line, but the job of porting it to the 2600 fell to Tigervisi
IT’S PADDLE TIME!!! If you ask me the Paddle is one of the most under-utilized controllers ever made, there just weren’t enough games made that use them, and even fewer actually used them to their fullest potential. Unfortunately the game we’re looking at today doesn’t use the Paddles in any new or interesting way; actually I don’t think I could classify any of this game as ‘new or interesting’ in fact it’s somewhat generic which is weird from a company like Imagic. Yeah this is an Imagic game,
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
It’s time to finish off the unholy trinity. I’ve really been dreading reviewing this one, mainly because I view this as amongst the worst games ever created. Star Fox by Mythicon is an absolute train wreck, and yes it is one you can look away from. Star Fox was the third and final game from infamous publisher Mythicon before they went belly up in 1983. While the games that preceded it, Sorcerer and Fire Fly, are virtually identical to each other, Star Fox is actually an original game, much to my
I am saddened by this game, since I can see a little glimmer of greatness in there but it is so masked by how garbage the rest of the experience is that it doesn’t really matter. Sssnake is an awful game that makes you feel awful when you play it and absolutely relieved when you turn it off. I’ll admit that this particular game is hard for me to review; it’s pretty well known that I do enjoy bad games, but those games are entertainingly bad, Sssnake is just… bad, so I’ll try to keep it brief (bu
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