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DamonicFury

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Posts posted by DamonicFury

  1. Posted

    I also bought this recently at Target. I figured at the price of a DVD, it would provide at least an evening's entertainment. And it did, but it is really is to be avoided by everyone except the collectors and the curious. The programmers did try hard to duplicate the 2600 gameplay, and I give them credit for the effort involved, but the feel of most of the games is way off.

     

    It might have been better to not try so hard to duplicate the sound and graphics of the 2600/7800 games, but instead to program the best version of the games possible using the NES hardware. Doing so might have provided some really delightful versions of these classic games.

     

    As an Atari collector, this was worth the purchase at the low price. But for someone who just wants to play the games, I would HIGHLY suggest skipping it and recommend the Flashback 2 instead.

     

    btw, the most fun I had with this product was finding the 2nd hidden room in Adventure (thanks to Curt for clueing us in that this existed!) But, wow, does the bat and the bridge ever behave differently in this version!

  2. Posted

    Star Wars: Death Star Battle:

    This Parkers Brothers Star Wars game is based on the final Death Star battle in Return of the Jedi. The player controls the Millenium Falcon in two different stages. In the first, the player simply destroys TIE fighters until a hole opens up in the shield that can be flown through. In the second stage, the player tries to shoot through the body of the Death Star to hit it's central core. Once this task is accomplished, there are a tense few moments in which the player must dodge fireballs as the space station explodes. The shield looks quite nice (although it was invisible in the movie) and the starships all look more or less as they should. Overall, this is a fun game that is a must-have for Star Wars fans.

     

    Frogger II: Three-Deep!:

    While this is a sequel to the popular Sega arcade game, the gameplay was designed by Parker Brothers for the 2600 and various other game and computer systems of the time. Like in the original game, the goal is to guide Frogger into his caves, but this time the caves are scattered throughout the river surface, underwater, and sky screens. The game is colorful and fun, and worth seeking out for Frogger fans. It was programmed by Mark Lesser, who also programmed the unreleased Lord of the Rings: Journey to Rivendell.

     

    Mr. Do's Castle:

    Originally programmed by Coleco, the game was licensed for release by Parker Brothers as Coleco had stopped publishing games for the 2600. It would become one Parker Brothers' last releases and it is one of their rarest games. Like in the arcade game, the player controls Mr. Do as he tries to rid his castle of unicorns by dropping floor blocks onto them. By knocking out the three key blocks and then reaching the door at the top of the castle, Mr. Do can turn the unicorns into Bonus Letter unicorns. Elimiating these unicorns to spell out "EXTRA" will earn the player an extra Mr. Do. The game graphics are bad even by 2600 standards. Combined with weak control, Mr. Do's Castle is hard to recommend to anyone other than hardcore collectors.

  3. Posted · Edited by sdamon

    Frostbite:

    Another great Activision game by Steve Cartwright, who also wrote Barnstorming, Megamania, Seaquest, and Plaque Attack. In this one, the player controls "Frostbite Bailey" who hops back and forth across across an Arctic river, changing the color of the ice blocks from white to blue. Each time he does so, a block is added to his igloo. While the gameplay borrows somewhat from both Frogger and Q*bert, it still has it's own flavor and is a tremendous amount of fun. Players who scored above 40,000 could send away for the "Arctic Architects" patch.

     

    Ghostbusters:

    While numerous Activision games were ported from the 2600 to computers, this game is actually a port of the Commodore 64 game by David Crane. Like in the 1984 hit movie, the game stars the Ghostbusters who patrol the city trapping rampaging ghosts, taking them back to their headquarters, and finally facing the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Dan Kitchen's port incorportates nearly all of the computer game's complex gameplay, although the graphics had to be stripped down a great deal.

     

    Private Eye:

    This very unique title by Bob Whitehead is a challenging multi-screen adventure game. To succeed, you must learn the fastest way to negotiate the city to collect all the necessary items and return them to specific locations. You cruise around a city in a Model A auto, which can jump over obstacles. There are five different scenarios available in which the map and items are changed to make the game increasingly complex. The graphics are up to Activision's high standard, and for gamers with the patience to learn the maps, it can be a great deal of fun. Players who could beat the third scenario were able to send away for the "Super Sleuth" patch.

  4. Posted

    Fire Fighter:

    After programming Breakout and Asteroids for Atari, Brad Stewart created Fire Fighter for Imagic. The game places you in the role of a fireman attempting to save someone from a burning building. The goal is simply to achive the rescue in the minimum amount of time (7 seconds is the world record.) Games tend to be very short, although variation 9 allows the player to rescue 8 victims in a row from increasingly taller buildings. Like most Imagic games, Fighter has good graphics, but the gameplay is unlikely to engage most players for very long.

     

    Trick Shot:

    Trick Shot was released alongside of Demon Attack and Star Voyager as Imagic's first three games. The game is the only pool simulation available in the 2600's library, but it does it's job quite well. It is limited by the 2600's limitations to having only three balls and a cue ball on screen at once. There are three modes available: Trickshot, Pool, and English Billiards. Trick Shot was programmed by Dennis Koble, who went on to write Atlantis, Solar Storm, and Shooting Gallery.

  5. Posted · Edited by sdamon

    Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

    This is the first Star Wars video game created on any platform. It is set during the battle on Hoth, which the player taking the role of Luke Skywalker as he fights the Imperial Walkers in his snowspeeder. The Walkers can be destroyed by either hitting them with your blasters 50 times, or by hitting a "bomb hatch" which appears on the Walker's body from time to time. The game is fun, fast-paced, and has a larger number of variations for customizing the difficulty to the player's taste. It was released alongside of Frogger as Parker Brother's first two releases for the 2600. The game was programmed by Rex Bradford, who went on to program Star Wars: Jedi Arena and the unreleased Kabobber for Activision.

     

    Star Wars: Jedi Arena

    This second Star Wars game by Rex Bradford and Parker Brothers is somewhat weaker than their first release, The Empire Strikes Back. Loosely based on the scene in the first movie where Luke Skywalker is practicing his lightsaber using a laser-firing remote, this game imagines an arena in which two lightsaber-wielding opponents face off with the remote floating in between them. Both players are surrouneded by a sheild that must be penetrated piece by piece using shots from the remote. The paddles are used for controlling your lightsaber as well as the angle of shots fired by the remote at your opponent. As both the concept and the graphics are somewhat abstract, and the gameplay isn't all that exciting, Jedi Arena is one of the weaker Parker Brothers 2600 titles.

     

    Frogger

    Frogger was one of the best-selling games of the 2600's library. It was based on the Sega arcade game and was one of the first two titles released by Parker Brothers, along with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Programmer Ed English (who later whent on to port Mr. Do and Roc N Rope for Coleco) did an excellent job of re-creating the gameplay of the original arcade game on the 2600, although the graphics were necessarily less accurate. Starpath later created a second, more arcade-like 2600 version of this game for use with their Supercharger add-on product, which was legal as they sold their games on cassettes instead of cartridges.

  6. Posted · Edited by sdamon

    Cosmic Commuter

    Programmed by John Van Ryzin before H.E.R.O, but released a year afterwards. It's a fun, fast-paced shoot-em-up in which you dodge or shoot obstacles, pick up passengers, and try to avoid running out of fuel. It was released in 1985, a year after the Great Videogame Crash, and is one of the rarer Activision games for that reason. The cartridge features a simple blue and white label that is quite different from that of any other Activision game.

     

    Seaquest

    This is an excellent shoot-em-up from Steve Cartwright, who programmed numerous Activision classics such as Frostbite and Megamania. In it, you control a yellow submarine who must find us numerous waves of sharks and enemy subs, all while trying to rescue friendly divers. It has excellent graphics for a 2600 game, and it's also noteworthy for it's very satisfying sound effects. Like many of the best 2600 games, it starts slowly and ramps up to become quite frantic in it's later waves.

     

    H.E.R.O.

    Considered by many to be one of the finest games for the 2600, H.E.R.O. was released in 1984, the year of the Great Videogame Crash. For that reason, it wasn't able to reach the same large audience as that of Activision's earlier masterpieces. The gameplay involves guiding R. Hero through caverns filled with flying critters, tentacles, moving walls, and other dangers. He's equipped with a jetpack, laser beam, and a limited supply of dyanmite, all of which will be needed to negotiate a path to his ultimate goal, the trapped miners. Control is perfect, the concept is quite unique, and the gameplay is highly addictive. The game was programmed by John Van Ryzin, who also programmed Cosmic Commuter for Activision.

  7. Posted

    Fathom

     

    Another great game from Rub Fulop, programmer of Night Driver, Missile Command, Demon Attack, and Cosmic Ark. Unlike his previous hits, this one is a slower-paced adventure game, in which the player alternates between playing as a dolphin and a seagull. The goal is to swim and fly through multiple screens, searching for starfish that will give you a piece of Neptune's trident. Once the trident is assembled, you can release Neptune's mermaid daughter from her prison at the bottom of the sea. The game is colorful and fun, but can become frustrating in it's later levels.

     

    Shootin' Gallery

     

    This rare Imagic game is quite similar to the arcade game, Carnival. Both games represent an old fashioned shooting gallery in which conserving bullets and careful selection of targets is key to getting a high score. It was programmed by one of Imagic's veterans, Dennis Koble, who also wrote Atlantis, Trick Shot, and Solar Storm. This game should not be confused with the Atari Corp. prototype Shooting Gallery (which uses the XE Light Gun.)

  9. Posted · Edited by sdamon

    Here's a list of the 77-81 games, which may not be perfect, but should be pretty close.

     

    1977:

    Air-Sea Battle, Basic Math, Blackjack, Combat, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, Video Olympics

     

    1978:

    Basketball, Brain Games, Breakout, Codebreaker, Flag Capture, Hangman, Home Run, Hunt & Score, Outlaw, Slot Racers, Space War

     

    1979:

    Backgammon, Basic Programming, Bowling, Canyon Bomber, Casino, Football, Home Run, Human Cannonball, Sky Diver, Slot Machine, Superman, Video Chess

     

    1980:

    3D-Tic-Tac-Toe, Adventure, Boxing (Activision), Championship Soccer, Checkers (Activision), Circus Atari, Dragster (Activision), Dodge 'Em, Fishing Derby (Activision), Golf, Maze Craze, Night Driver, Othello, Space Invaders, Video Checkers

     

    1981:

    Asteroids, Bridge (Activision), Freeway (Activision), Laser Blast (Activision), Lochjaw (Apollo), Lost Luggage (Apollo), Kaboom (Activision), Missile Command, Racquetball (Apollo), Skeet Shoot (Apollo), SpaceChase (Aplollo), Space Cavern (Apollo), Skiing (Activision), Tennis (Activision), Video Pinball, Warlords

  10. Posted

    To answer my own question, after playing with it some more, it seems the options make the game a bit harder (game 1=easier game 4=hardest) by doing things like reducing the number of balls and shortening the paddle.

     

    Interestingly, before cleaning it up, the onscreen paddle wasn't jittery like it would be on a 2600 with a dirty paddle, but instead was 'fuzzy'... the paddle looked like it was disintegrating on-screen when you tried to move it.

  13. Posted

    With my heavy-sixer, it takes a LOT of force to get Atari red-label (such as Solaris and Gravitar) carts in. I've found a nice solution however... the select-a-cart add-ons like the Video Game Brain

     

    Admittedly, it's easier to use a different style of Atari 2600 (or 7800), but if you REALLY want to play red label carts on your heavy sixer, this is probably the best way to do it.

  15. Posted

    I've always loved their Falcon label for Star Voyager (as you can see from my long-standing avatar)... didn't know they'd done something similar for Subterranea!

     

    I also didn't know they had a picture-label version of Subterranea... glad I'm not a label-variant collector!!

  18. Posted

    An emulator wouldn't help all that much as the ROM's for these games haven't been been released.

     

    I, too, am interested in these games, but will have to wait until I can save a bit more $.

     

    Just from reading these boards, I've heard good things about Alia Quest, mixed reviews on the rest.

  19. Posted

    With many, many thanks to Dennis Debro for his Kaboom! disassembly, Kirk Israel for his 2600 programming tutorial, and Edwin Blink for his Bit Hacker tool, I present a small hack of Kaboom!

     

    Just two small differences:

     

    1. You never lose buckets when you miss a bomb, although the levels increment and decrement normally.

     

    2. The Activision logo has been replaced with the word "Cheater!"

     

    This was something I'd wanted for years, as I love Kaboom, but get frustrated when I screw up at it and have to restart. Now I can practice as long as I like!

     

    Hope someone else finds this useful!

     

    Note: If you want to use this game in Z26, don't forget to enable the paddles. (z26 -m0) Thanks again to Dennis for pointing this out to me!

    kaboomhk.zip

  20. Posted

    I recently found a game called "Super Pitfall" for the NES at a thrift store. I had no idea such a thing even existed at the time. Turns out the thing is kind of a mutant cross between Pitfall II and Super Mario Brothers. (Pitfall Harry looks A LOT like Luigi! And they gave him a gun for some unexplainable reason.)

     

    After searching around the Internet, I've found the game is regarded as a true abomination by most Pitfall fans, but I've found it to be somewhat enjoyable, if not anywhere near as good as the original games.

  22. Posted

    For me personally, and with no disrespect intended to 5200 fans, the Atari 8-bit is a better choice. It has a much larger library of software, and standard 2600-style controllers. And it's a pretty simple matter to hook it up to your PC (with a SIO2PC cable) and be able to instantly sample any 8-bit/5200 game of your choice.

     

    As a collector, I can understand why some might prefer the 5200 (the labels, the more limited library of software, nostalgica), but as a gamer, the Atari 8-bit computer is my clear choice.

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