Competition games are just the worst, because you know there were so many disappointed kids out there who wasted their money on the game hoping to win the grand prize and only getting a mediocre game instead. Name This Game is one of those disappointing competition games, and like many competition games before it the competition was never completed since the company folded before it could be finished. We’re now left with a nameless game, even though it has had multiple over the years when it was
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
Its games like this that simply make me wonder “Why?” Why did a company release this game, what could they have hoped to achieve with a game like this? The short answer is always money, these companies that had no experience whatsoever in videogames simply got into the industry for the perceived wealth it would bring. Enter Zimag, these guys were in the game industry for less than a year, and guess which year that was? Yep 1983… so you can bet they didn’t last long. They released a grand total o
Apollo, Apollo, Apollo… How many times must we kick your teeth in? And how many times must I attempt to think of something creative to write about in the first paragraph to impart formerly unknown information to the reader? Well in Apollo’s case it’s too many times, I can’t really think of anything to say about them. Well, if I can’t say anything at all interesting about the company, then what about the game itself? Today we’re looking at one of Apollo’s final games, Wabbit, and correct me if I’
There were a lot of “Me To!” games back in the day, whether it be from Pac-Man or Space Invaders there were a lot. Very few “Me To!” games actually expanded on the initial idea of the game they’re taking inspiration from, that’s where GORF comes in. GORF was basically a five-in-one arcade machine where you face off against marauding space aliens who have different behaviors and configurations in every game. The first game is basically a direct rip of Space Invaders; the second was the laser barr
I have never seen anything like this before. The inside is similar as the regular 45 game catalog it just has a different front cover. the # is CO16725-Rev. D just like a regular catalog
Are you ready to jump down the rabbit hole again? Because I am... Not too deep though, I don’t want to get a concussion. Froggo, Froggo, Froggo, what a weird little footnote in the history of gaming, in some ways I’m grateful to Froggo for making accessible several European titles that would only be available in PAL format or simply too expensive to acquire otherwise (I’m looking at you Panda). Froggo usually stole from Sancho, even though at that point in time Sancho was simply a lifeless husk
Telesys was one of those oddball publishers that I view in the same vein as Commavid, while not garnering a HUGE amount of success they still made creative and fun games that quickly got rarer and rarer as they slowly died a horrible painful death during the Video Game Crash. Most collectors will have three of their six games: Cosmic Creeps, Coconuts, and Fast Food. I’ve already looked at Coconuts a long, long time ago, so it seems to be about time that I look at another of their games, Fast Foo
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
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
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
It’s arcade time! And today let’s looks at one of the rarer conversions on the 2600… Bump ‘n’ Jump! I have only just recently played the actual machine for the first time and I gotta say… Nice. Originally B-n-J was published by Mattel under their M-Network label, but I was lucky enough to stumble across a boxed copy of the slightly rarer NTSC Telegames variants on Etsy of all places. It seems a lot of those Telegames re-releases are in the PAL format so I just got really lucky with this one sinc
My opinions on Data Age have changed somewhat as my collection has expanded, it seems that I got off on the wrong foot with this particular company since I have found several games from them that I can actually glean some form of enjoyment from. Out of their eight released games I actually enjoy four of them, those being Frankenstein’s Monster, Bermuda Triangle, Journey: Escape, and Encounter at L-5. Of those four I have only reviewed one, so it seems to be around the right time to review one mo
I normally avoid sports titles on any console, I simply don’t enjoy them, but I may have found one that I actually like. The last game I reviewed that could be defined as a sports game was bowling which was my ninth ever review and as it was amongst the early Atari releases it was nothing to look at. But unlike with bowling, baseball had several versions released starting with Home Run in 1978 and ending with Pete Rose Baseball in 1988, I think we’ll review the latter of those two today. I still
Imagic makes me sad… I oftentimes wonder how such an amazing game company fell so far and so fast, then realize I can just look at the Wikipedia page for it and find out. Imagic was one of the most high profile deaths of the Video Game Crash starting out strong in 1982 and quickly crashing in 1984, eventually their games were distributed by Activision in the black box/blue label variation. Many of Imagic’s 1982 releases are well known and fondly remembered as well as cheap to buy, their 1983 rel
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
If you were to ask me what the greatest game on the 2600 is from a graphical, technical, and gameplay standpoint, I would hands down say ‘Solaris’. This game squeezed every drop of potential the 2600 had then added in a splash of its own, and the result is something that one would assume could only be created for a much more powerful system. As you would likely assume, ‘Solaris’ is a Red Box game and as such was released late into the 2600’s lifespan, even though it was 1986 I get the feeling 26
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.
This game has been on the docket for a very, very, long time, but for the longest time I was completely stumped by it. I simply couldn’t play this game properly, until recently when I sat down and just played it, and looked up the manual on Atarimania but that isn’t important, what is important is that this is one of the strangest and most unique titles on the 2600, whilst having one of the most unique titles on the 2600. Snail Vs Squirrel or Snail Against Squirrel, or just Squirrel, it doesn’t
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
Of all the ‘Avoid-it’ games I think I have the most experience with Sky Jinks, after my furious battle in last year’s HSC I can firmly say that Sky Jinks is one hell of a fun game. In essence Sky Jinks is a giant slalom; you must guide your little plane around the colored pylons whilst avoiding strategically placed obstacles. The graphics are rather plain, the only thing I thinks is worth noting is the shadow that your plane casts gets further away from you as you gain altitude, otherwise there
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
Hmmm, I don’t like Freeway; I feel that it is too simple for its own good. In Freeway you are a chicken who must cross the road for no discernible reason, its ten lanes of traffic and you’ve gotta cross all of them. My main problem with this game is how simply boring it gets, you can only go up, there is no moving around like in Frogger you are stuck on a single straight line. There is also a second player but you are not likely to get somebody to play a quick game of Freeway with you. This game
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
You may recall a short time ago when I mentioned ‘style over substance’ in my Smurf Rescue review, sadly I think Barnstorming falls into such a category. Graphics-wise the game is absolutely stunning, the background with the mountains and the beautiful sunset, the foreground with the giant barns and windmills. The best looking thing in the game though is that bi-plane, the propeller spins and the pilots scarf whips around in the wind, it truly is a visual marvel. Sadly the gameplay for this one
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