Oh man, these guys are on a roll, only their second game and they’re redefining genres, with their first game Starpath took on the First-Person Space Shooter genre, and with their second they’ve taken on the ever classic Fly-Around-The-Bottom-Of-The-Screen-And-Shoot-At-Things genre, which contains juggernauts like Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, Demon Attack, and GORF. Due to the restrictive hardware the Atari 2600 could only present most of these games in a restricted or cut back form, Galaga
There were plenty of weird game publishers out there, Amiga, Milton Bradley, and Zimag are the first that come to mind. There is one publisher that I think stands above the rest, or at the very least is on par with the strangest of them, Avalon Hill. Avalon Hill made unique, innovative, and very complex board games, though I’ve never played any of them myself. These guys weren’t a one-and-done publisher; they actually managed to release four games on the 2600 before packing up shop and moving to
Since I mentioned it earlier in my Skiing review, I feel rather obligated to review it now. The Intellivision also has a skiing game called ‘Skiing’ and in my opinion, despite being on a far superior console is nowhere near as good as the 2600 version. Despite most of the game being identical to the 2600 version, the Intellivision’s Skiing has some flaws that completely kill the experience for me. Just a note before I dive into the review, actually this is something that kinda confuses some new
This game shouldn't have been made. A game based on a 1980 movie that was based on a forty year old TV show, this should not have happened, and it's almost a crime for it to be this good. I've never watched the show, even though as I'm writing this I'm staring a a two VHS Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe set that I bought forever ago and still haven't watched, so I'm going to be remedying that soon. I've also never watched the movie, but from what I've heard I'm not missing much. But there is
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
This genre bender cones from the same time period as one of my previous Imagic reviewees Laser Gates. This was a period of great decline for the company as the crash was getting into full swing and Imagic hadn’t prepared in the slightest, leading to its untimely demise in 1984, I already spoke about the death of Imagic in my Laser Gates review so let’s move on from that, shall we? The first thing that immediately strikes me about No Escape! is that box art, wow, that guy looks so out of it, at l
I have seriously underestimated Epyx, I honestly didn’t realize how many games they produced back in the 80’s, but I’m not gonna get ahead of myself listing every one the games they published since we would be here all year, instead I’m going to focus on one of my favorite games on the C64 (apart from Monty On The Run) and that is Epyx’ Super Cycle. I love arcade style racing games, games like Rad Racer, Top Gear, Enduro, Outrun, even games like Extreme G and Lego Racers on N64 are some of my fa
There are many Paddle games for the 2600; some of them are excellent, like Kaboom! And Warlords, others are not so good, like the drek from Mystique, or the laughable crap from Data Age. If you were to ask me what the best Paddle game was I’d likely reply with the classic Kaboom! But today I’m not so sure. After playing Fireball by Starpath, I think the bar has been raised again, because I believe that Fireball may just be the best Paddle game ever made for the 2600. I understand that that is a
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
I don't like this game, I REALLY don't like this game. This game takes the standard Space Invaders/Gorf/Galaxian move-around-on-the-bottom-of-the-screen-and-shoot-things affair and makes it worse. You fly your blue Christmas tree around the bottom of the screen and shoot enemy ships. That. Is. IT. Unlike Space Invaders which had impending doom as the enemy ships moved closer to the bottom of the screen and speed up as more of them were destroyed. Unlike Galaxian with enemies dive bombing you, or
Once upon a time, this game was rare, I mean THE rarest, I of course am referring to the fallen angel that it Motorodeo. Once it sat at a kingly R10 on the AtariAge rarity scale, now it only at a modest R5, how the great have fallen. We can thank Venezuela for this influx of new old-stock, these days you can find almost all of the Atari Red Box/label games for a modest price brand new, as long as you can stomach the shipping times. Venezuela also has a large amount of Taiwan Cooper carts which m
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
If you’ve never seen or read a Garfield comic then you’ve been living under a rock for the past forty years. Garfield is the king of Sunday comics and has been running consistently since 1978. It seems sometime in the early 80’s somebody reached out to Jim Davis or his company to make a game based on Garfield and Friends. Here’s where the problems begin, or actually the one problem, the game was copyrighted 1984, and as we all know Atari wasn’t doing too well in 1984, so this game along with a l
After a bit of persistence I finally managed to complete the Data Age collection, that’s right, now I have a copy of every single Data Age Title. This is probably one of the easiest and cheapest publisher collections to finish due to the fairly low number of games released and how common most of them are. The only other publishers I can think of that might be easier to complete are Mythicon, and Vidtec/U.S. Games for the same reasons as Data Age. But… almost every publisher has that one game tha
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
When people look at high profile failures on the 2600 the list usually starts with E.T. and ends with Pac-Man with nothing in between, but there is a game that is oft overlooked by the general public and that game is the one and only Journey: Escape. This is the game that killed Data Age, the marketing for this game cost the company 4.5 million dollars, roughly adjusted for inflation that’s over twelve million dollars today, that may not seem like a lot for a game today, but think of it this wa
Now then if I were to ask you what the most unique boxes were for the 2600 I’d expect to hear answers like Commavid for their amazing box art, Bomb for their unique cutout design and included iron-ons, Tigervision, Mystique, the list goes on. Almost every publisher had a thing that made their boxes stand out on the shelves, but what if the best of these boxes were never actually sold on the shelf, and were instead sold online. What about homebrews? Yes, the homebrew scene on the 2600 is immense.
This review may be a bit biased because I actually like this game, a LOT! I like the simplicity of the game and how it achieves what it sets out to accomplish... Which is golf on the Atari. Many golf games from this generation take after golf on the NES, top down perspective, selectable clubs, wind, and giving the green invisible hills and bumps to bring the game more complexity almost verging on simulation(I'm Looking at you Intellivision Golf). I like Atari Golf because it has none of those th
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-
Uh… What!?! They made a Chuck Norris game? Wait… Xonox made a Chuck Norris game!?! Well I just gotta play it now… …
… I vastly regret… everything.
So, this game exists. This game was released in 1983, right around the time that ol’ Chuck was gaining mainstream popularity, but he was doing Westerns not Kung Fu flicks (yet), which is what Superkicks would wind up being if it were a film. It’s just a classic case of “we’ve got a license for a celebrity, or other IP let’s just plaster their fac
If one were to look at the most ambitious titles in the 2600 library Moonsweeper would undoubtedly be near the top, it’s so ambitious that the only game I can really compare it to is Solaris, which as we all know is another one of, if not the, most advanced games on the system. Moonsweeper was released in 1983, Imagic’s final proper year of operation, and as we all know they went belly-up in ’84. The programmer of this game, Bob Smith, has quite an impressive track record if I do say so myself,
I’ve debated whether or not I should review this game for some time, due to its complexity, but I’ve decided that now is the time. There are advanced games for the 2600, Solaris, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Dragonstomper being excellent examples, but there is one that I think beats them all out in terms of volume, and complexity. Mountain King is one of those OG games that never seems to get talked about anymore, kinda like Miner 2049’er or the Jumpman series of games, games that were big for a
It seems we have returned to the realm of the obscure. I have reviewed a game from this company before, and ever since I have been yearning for another of their games. Commavid is one of THOSE companies, none of their games ever had a wide release despite their overall quality and are as such rather rare today, two more companies I would define as one of THOSE companies are Tigervision, and Avalon Hill. AS I was browsing through Ebay, as one does, I found a listing for Room of Doom by Commavid i
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
We’re back in Sega territory today, and the game of the day? Well, how about Congo Bongo? Sure that sounds good. Congo Bongo is a fairly blatant Donkey Kong ‘rip-off’, I only put rip-off in quotes because is almost every way Congo Bongo surpasses Donkey Kong. The original 1983 arcade had an isometric perspective coupled with beautiful graphics; the arcade still holds up today, it’s absolutely gorgeous. Sega took initiative and decided to port Congo Bongo to the major consoles of the time themsel
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