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About this blog

I review games... How original...

Entries in this blog

 

Demon Attack (Imagic)

OH YEAH! Now here's a game I can get behind! I love me some Demon Attack. This classic game from Imagic is regarded as being one of the best games released for the 2600, I'm tempted to agree with that statement, but but there's competition afoot. The 2600 wasn't the only console to receive Demon Attack, the Intellivision also has Demon attack in it's library and I think it might just be better than the 2600 version. There was also a version on Odyssey 2 but I'm not paying that much for Demon Att
DoctorSpuds

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Amidar/Spiderdroid (Parker Brothers/Froggo)

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
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Space Jockey (Vidtec/U.S. Games)

Space Jockey is... a game... I think that's truly the highest praise I can give it, It does nothing new, it does nothing special, it is the most vanilla side scrolling shooter on the system. This is rather saddening since this game was programmed by Garry Kitchen... The same Garry Kitchen who programmed Keystone Kapers, Pressure Cooker, and Donkey Kong, I don't know what happened, but to see such creativity boiled down to something so basic is rather sad to see. Your first clue as to the basenes
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Word Zapper (Vidtec/U.S. Games)

This game is so weird... It takes a concept that should never be made into a game, spelling, and made it into a game.This is one of the few third party educational games for the 2600, though I would say it accomplishes neither of the criteria to be an educational game, that being educational, and fun. This game learns you nothing and is not fun to play.. So what is it!?... Say it with me!! Crap, Crap! CRAP!! Who thought this was a good Idea? Was Vidtec U.S. Games dumping ground? Was Vidtec to U.
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Lost Luggage (Apollo)

Lost Luggage (Apollo)

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
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Finally Got A 7800 & Bootleg Enduro!

It has finally happened! I have finally gotten my grubby hands on an Atari 7800! Thank you all for your advice with this beast of a machine, the warning about the fragility of the case especially. I got this thing cheap, cheaper than usual. I got the system, power supply, two Pain-Line’s, a set of Paddles, three games, and a small storage case for about 71 dollars, and whaddaya know it was packed pretty horribly.  The rear left corner of the system cracked into several large pieces and many tiny
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Bachelor Party (Mystique)

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
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Alien (20th Century Fox)

I hate to say it but I’m feeling a bit lazy, so how about we pick some low hanging fruit for our review today. I’m feeling like a crappy movie tie-in game, how about that? There aren’t many to choose from, especially on the 2600, the only ones I can think of off-hand are Krull and Alien, ooh let’s review Alien! Yeah this is going to be different, I totally haven’t reviewed a Pac-Man type game before… hah hah haaah… Oh wait I reviewed Pac-Man. Screw it! I’m going to review Alien and there’s nothi
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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
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Front Line (Coleco)

You may remember how yesterday I commented that a top down shooter in the style of Ikari Warriors was impossible... Or was it? Well there is a game that gets this style of gameplay down, and it does it almost perfectly, that game is Front Line. This is the game that Ikari Warriors wishes it was. It works off of the same exact formula, but it does it well, unlike Ikari Warriors or even Activision's Commando. This game was released by Coleco, who had a decent but somewhat spotty record when it ca
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Infiltrate (Apollo)

Apollo presented the games market with a very mixed bag of games. Some were rather fun to play but not very original, like Space Cavern, others were original but not at all fun to play, like Racquetball. One game though seemed to rise above the rest, garnering a somewhat cult status in some circles, that game is Infiltrate. It’s impressive that a game company which appeared and vanished so very quickly even had any offering at all; Apollo was a flash in the pan even when compared to other third-
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Fire Fly (Mythicon)

Alright! I'm reaching for some low hanging fruit today. Fire Fly from Mythicon, oh boy what a glorious mess of a game. This has got to be one of the most hated games on the 2600, and is without a doubt one of the worst.This game has been drawn and quartered, beheaded, and burned at the stake, in a figurative sense at least, by the retro gaming community at large. But is this game's persecution warranted? Or, perhaps, is this game a misunderstood masterpiece, that transcends all known standards o
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Popeye (Parker Brothers)

There are a lot of strange games out there, I know I keep reiterating this point but it’s like if I sneeze I find more weird games. I had previously though this particular game to be fairly normal but then I gave it a little though and realized that no this is a strange game indeed. Cast your eyes over to Japan and to Nintendo, it was 1982 and their home console, the Famicom, was still a short while away so what do they do in the meantime? Arcade games I guess. I don’t know why they chose Popeye
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Eli's Ladder (Simage)

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
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Gamma-Attack (Gammation)

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
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Keystone Kapers (Activision)

You’ll likely remember how in Sunday’s review I criticized Barnstorming for being ‘style over substance’, well I think Keystone Kapers may have finally balanced these two opposing forces. The premise is fairly basic, you are a cop who needs to catch a burglar who is escaping through a shopping mall, you must avoid obstacles in order to catch the thieving fiend. Everything in this game screams effort, from the animated escalators, to the running animations of both the cop and the burglar, to tha
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Food Fight

Food Fight

Hype, I don’t get it, all it usually does is raise expectations to a ludicrously high degree. Usually the expectations get so high that the final product could never fulfill those wild expectations. What if then, you have a game that flew under the radar for so long that nobody but a small few even noticed it, add onto that the fact that it was only released in any quantity on a console that almost nobody owned. Food Fight falls perfectly into that oddly specific category of game. Originally it
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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
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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
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My thoughts on the 5200

My thoughts on the 5200

The other day I referred to Sub Scan from Sega as a bad idea… That got me thinking, or well, recalling something I had been thinking of previously. By 1983 the Atari 2600 was a pretty old console by console standards, and was being faced with fierce competition from Mattel with their superior in almost every way Intellivision, Magnavox need not apply themselves to this squabble. Atari needed a console that would trounce the Intellivision and the rumored super-console from Coleco, so Atari gather
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A tiny wafer thin update!

Ah, well this seems familiar. First off, no I’m not taking a break; I’m just writing this to give you a few updates on future reviews and a small update on the book. Also I’m using this as an excuse not to write a review for today. Sorry.   Recently I’ve had the monumental task of repairing several Atari 5200 controllers, and it seems I still have to open them up every so often to coax more functionality out of them. The local game store had four standard joysticks and a Trak-Ball cont
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I'm giving Wordpress a shot

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.
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Battlezone (Atari)

Battlezone is one of my absolute favorite arcade games, and as we all know when it comes to the 2600 arcade conversions can be rather hit or miss. Battlezone 2600, fortunately, hits it outta the park, it is seriously an amazing conversion. The graphics on display are, at least in my opinion, better than the arcade’s sparse vector lines, it just so full of color and detail that it’s a treat to the eyes. I think Atari borrowed from Activision a bit though since that sunset seems a little bit famil
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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
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Something odd...

So today I did something that I've never done before. I took a broken, non-working system, specifically an Atari 2600, and fixed it. I bought the system and box together (matching serial numbers), with no inserts, paperwork, or controllers, at a highly reduced price. The last time I snagged a matching SN console and box it was a Vader with the box only and working for 90$, this time I got lucky and got this non working four switch Woody for 50$, and considering this guy sells working 2600's at 4
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