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WolfAmongWolves

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  1. Thanks for your response, Somebooks. You're right, it's not exactly what I was looking for. There are many great two player games with the players playing at the same time, usually opposing each other, e.g. Combat, Outlaw, Surround, etc. Then there are a few like Mines of Minos where the second player controls the enemy, e.g. Dodge'Em and G.I. Joe. I was interested to know if there were any other games where the players take turns playing consecutively, but don't have to wait for the other player to die before they get their turn. Those seem to be very rare indeed.
  2. When I was a kid playing Atari with my friends, there was almost always the issue of unbalanced game time. Since most two-player games with alternating turns switch to the second player only when the first player dies, it's a real bummer for a novice playing with an expert. Usually whoever owned the game had the home advantage, as they'd had much more opportunity to play the game than the friend who was over for a visit. When I was over at a friend's house who wanted to show me his new game that he'd been playing the heck out of for the past two weeks, he played for several minutes before dying, after which I got between 10 and 20 seconds of gameplay before biting the dust, and then he'd be at it for several minutes again, etc. When I had friends over at my house the roles were reversed. It was one of the main reasons I never got my little sister to play Atari with me back in the day, as she simply got bored watching me clear five screens of Pac-Man on one life while she barely made it to the first power pellet. That's why I was so pleasantly surprised when I got Shark Attack, because that game broke the mold by switching to the second player each time the first player cleared a maze. Gone was the time of endlessly waiting for the other player to die before you got your turn. I recently noticed that Towering Inferno does something similar; it switches to the second player each time the first player clears a floor. Besides Shark Attack and Towering Inferno, are you aware of any other two-player games that switch between players in that way, i.e. without the other player necessarily having to die?
  3. Thanks for making the video, there was a lot of new info there for me!
  4. I actually used to listen to Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever" while paying Pac-Man on the 2600 back when I was a kid. It actually improved my score.
  5. Are you sure the M Network boxes were meant to be opened from the bottom? I don't have Kool-Aid Man, but the M Network games I have are all meant to be opened from the top. The cart stopper is at the bottom, but you have to insert the cart from the top, with the thin part of the cart facing down. The thin part then fits snugly between the flaps of the cart stopper, with the wider part resting on top. If you opened the box from the bottom and tried to retrieve the cart, you would rip the cart stopper, because the wide part wouldn't fit through. Maybe M Network had different styles of boxes? Personally I'm not a big fan of the box style that opens from the bottom, especially the Imagic boxes. Even as a kid I loved the boxes and kept my games in them. I found the Imagic boxes annoying, because it was always hard to reinsert the cart tray all the way. It would often get caught on the top flap and stick out a half inch or so, and then you had to jiggle it around or open the top flap to insert it all the way.
  6. Hmm, I guess it really depends on how you define weird. A lot of games may have unusual gameplay, but they still have a story/objective that makes sense. Going by that definition, Sneak'n'Peek isn't actually all that weird. It's two people playing hide and seek, pretty normal stuff. For me, an example of a truly weird game is Amidar. A gorilla being chased by warriors and a paintroller being chased by pigs, trying to fill in squares on a grid. There's no rhyme or reason to the characters or the objective. The same goes for Quick Step, which features a squirrel and a kangaroo jumping on trampolines. No story, no motives, it's pretty much just random nonsense. In both of these games you could replace any of the characters with pretty much anything else, and it would make just as much sense as before.
  7. I think I found one of the examples you are referring to. In Season 1, episode 25 of Shaun the Sheep "Shaun the Farmer" there is a very short scene of the farm dog playing video games. You can't see the screen, but the sound effects are clearly 2600 Donkey Kong. It's at the 5:53 mark.
  8. I agree with what most people here have said - most of these late games are awesome. In particular, Solaris stands out to me because it is one of the reasons I got back into the 2600. I have a large gap in my 2600 history; I got one in the early 80's as a kid with a handful of games. I think the newest, most advanced game I had back then was Dig Dug. Around 1985 I got a Commodore 64 and the 2600 ended up in a box in the attic, where it stayed over the next 25 years. I had pretty much forgotten all about the system when in 2010 or so I came across a 2600 video on Youtube and watched it, gripped by sudden nostalgia. It was one of those videos that showcased about thirty 2600 games in a few minutes. Among them were some games I knew, some I didn't, and Solaris. When Solaris came up, I thought the guy who posted the video got his systems mixed up and had posted a 7800 or Colecovision game by accident. The graphics, the scaling, the complexity - to me it just didn't seem possible that this could be achieved on my dusty old 2600 moldering in the attic. So of course I had to get the game and see for myself, and it blew me away. Then I discovered AtariAge, the late 80's 2600 library, modern homebrews, etc. and here I am today, a 2600 gamer and collector. So yes, many of those games rock.
  9. Wow, very broad topic, there are just so many. Bally Midway's Tapper is absolutely awesome. Turmoil (20th Century Fox) is high up on many "best" lists, including mine. I also have a soft spot for Space Cavern by Apollo, but that's probably a minority opinion.
  10. In the early 80s, I think the Imagic games were the most advanced. At the time many of their games just went a step beyond other publishers in terms of visual and aural details. Demon Attack is a prime example. The way the demons appeared, the pieces flying in from the left and right of the screen to form the complete creature accompanied by that scary whooshing noise just blew me away as a kid. Then, as you progressively shot the demons, the pitch of the music became higher and higher, adding a sense of urgency to the game. Compared to other shooters at the time it definitely stood out. I also remember playing Laser Gates for the first time. Those epic explosions when you shot down the enemies in the tunnel, with glowing sparks flying in all directions and then fading, was unlike anything I'd seen up to that point. Each obstacle also had its own distinctive sound, so even with your eyes closed you could tell whether you were fighting a Byte Bat or a Homing Missile, or what type of force field you were coming up against. And finally Cosmic Ark: that huge scintillating spaceship descending from the top of the screen accompanied by that awesome warbling sound, the beasties that changed every two levels, and that escape shuttle that zipped away at the end of the game.
  11. Totally agree with this. As a kid I liked the game, but the constant firing in conjunction with the original Atari joystick totally did my thumb in, to the point where I had to stop playing the game because it became so painful. Otherwise I thought it was an engaging game, especially on the smart bomb settings. I also liked the fact that you could land and repair the ship after a hit, a feature that to my knowledge no other game had at the time.
  12. I have a few PAL cartridges, and they all have that vertical rolling issue. I still have an old TV with a vertical hold knob, so it's easy to fix. You just have to accept the weird colors. I'm not sure if there is a fix for a more modern TV though.
  13. Are the colors off as well? Might be a PAL cartridge.
  14. Thanks for the info, guys. Let's see if Dan can shed some light on this matter. I'd be really interested to know if the non-appearing energy pod is a bug or if it is just generated randomly and sometimes the player is just plain out of luck.
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