A Black Falcon

Finally, part two of this two-part series is complete! There are 24 summaries this time, which added to the 19 (really 17) from the first list, completes my Intellivision Game Opinion Summaries list so far. Before I begin though, I got two new games, one from the part of the alphabet covered last time and one added to the second half, and also got an IntelliVoice speech synthesizer addon, so I will begin with new summaries of the two IntelliVoice game summaries from part one because I can play the games now, then the new game, and then the second half of the new summaries. The IntelliVoice is a nice unit because it outputs the speech through your TV, not from a speaker on the box like some synthesizers then did such as the Odyssey 2 one, and can do multiple different voices, which is a nice touch in the games. Unfortunately, only four games plus one Intellivision Computer Module game support it at all, which is disappointing. Why didn't any of the later titles optionally support the IntelliVoice, with voices added here and there if you have one, like a bunch of O2 games do with the O2 The Voice? But no, games either require it or don't support it at all, unfortunately. So, it's a $20 addon for four games, which isn't great but is probably worth it for the low cost. Or read this on my website with a bit nicer formatting: http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=1239 Table of Contents B-17 Bomber Bomb Squad Frogger Microsurgeon Mission X Motocross (aka Moto-Cross) Night Stalker Pinball (1983) Safecracker Sea Battle Sharp Shot Skiing (Tele-Games ver. of US Ski Team Skiing) Snafu Space Armada Space Battle Space Hawk Space Spartans Star Strike Tennis Triple Action Tron: Deadly Discs Vectron Venture Zaxxon The Summaries B-17 Bomber - One player, IntelliVoice addon required. B-17 Bomber is a flight simulator, a fairly impressive thing for an early '80s game. In probably the first attempt at a "realistic" flight simulator on a console, you control a B-17 bomber during World War II. Your mission is to choose a target in occupied Europe, fly to your destination, bomb the site, and return alive. This will be pretty hard, though! With many different jobs to control all at once, including four gunners, pilot, navigator, and bomber, challenging enemies which can very easily permanently knock out your gun turrets, tricky bombing, and limited fuel, finishing even a short-range run in this game is tough indeed. This is yet another game that's extremely impressive for the time, but may be hard to go back to today. To start, you choose a target on a map. There are different kinds of targets, including airfields, factories, and more. Closer targets will be easier to deal with, ones deeper into Europe harder, of course. Then, you set the acceleration up and then switch to the pilot's seat and take off. The whole map is rendered in 3d, impressively. The framerate is very low of course, but that's to be expected, this game is a fully 3d flight game, on the Intellivision! The manual is invaluable here, by the way, you need it to know what to do. I don't have an overlay for this game, but fortunately do have a manual. Once you reach Europe, enemy fighters will come at you, and a voice sample will tell you which direction they're coming from. It's quite useful. Then, you switch to that gun, and will need to try to shoot them down before they hit your turrets, which you have one of on each side of the plane. Finally, a pre-crash flight combat game where the turret-style flight combat actually makes sense! I found hitting the enemy fighters frustratingly hard, though, and you have no margin for error: if you miss the enemy fighters will shoot your turret in notime, and if a turret gets hit even once that's it, you lose it for the rest of the run. That's maybe too harsh, but oh well. You'll need to navigate by looking at the map every so often, there aren't on-screen indicators telling you where to go to get to your target, by the way. Once you get there, you can switch to bombing view, and try to drop bombs with the right timing so you hit the target. Bombing is not too hard, but you only have a short window over the target. Then, you'll need to try to turn around and fly back, though good luck with that, in my tries I didn't have even close to enough fuel to get back. With practice you'll get better, of course, but while this is a pretty cool game for the time, with complex gameplay and the IntelliVoice for very helpful voice samples in different voices for enemy warnings, various stations, and more, the core gameplay is simple and challenging. The turret-shooting sequences are more frustrating than fun, I think. Still, if you have the hardware and a manual take a look, B-17 Bomber's interesting. Hard and dated, but interesting for sure. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Bomb Squad - One player, IntelliVoice required. Another one of the four games requiring the IntelliVoice speech synthesizer, this one is a bomb-defusing puzzle game where you follow voice commands as you try to defuse each bomb. In this somewhat imposingly difficult game, you've got a lot to do to defuse the bomb. First you choose a difficulty, with three speeds and up to three numbers to find available. Even on the slowest speed and only needing one number, though, at first this game is tough! I'm sure that it gets easier with experience, but good memorization skills will be required to be good at this game. Once you choose the difficulty, a grid of numbers appears, with each number broken up into an 8x4 grid of spaces, fitting with the number of LEDs used to display the numbers. You then choose a space that you want to know the status of, hit the correct button, and you go into a puzzle. Next, you'll see a screen with a lot of wires and circuitry on it, and some objects on the board that you can interact with. Then the Intellivoice will tell you the order you need to replace or remove some of those pieces in. You'll need to memorize this order and what you need to do in each one; you can press a button to have it repeat the instructions, but this uses time, of course. Having a voice tell you this is a great use of the voice unit, it works very well. Next, you use your tools to remove those chips and replace them with what's needed. Accessed with face buttons, you've got cutting scissors, grabber pliers, a soldering iron, and a fire extinguisher. First you cut out the object you're removing. Voice instructions will helpfully tell you to move up, left, right, and such, to get your object correctly centered to make the cut. Again, that is great use of the voice unit here; this game wouldn't work well without it. Next you switch to the pliers, grab the chip, take it out, and drop it off the field on the right. Now, you interact with side buttons, and while most Intellivision games duplicate the buttons on the left and right sides of the controller for left or right handed players, this game doesn't do that; grab is on the left and drop on the right. It's a bit odd, but the game is slow-paced enough that I guess it works. Before you drop it make note of the shape and color of the object, though, because when replacing, you need to replace each part with one that matches its color or shape. Next, put the right part in, solder in the wires connecting it to the board -- don't forget this step! -- and then move on to the next part that needs dealing with. Once all parts on a board are fixed, you hit a number button to return to the main screen, and choose another space. It's a slow process. You can move the cursor faster by holding the upper button, but still this is a slow-paced and very memorization-heavy game. All this time, a timer is counting down. On the slowest setting you have a half hour. Once you think that you know the number code, or are almost out of time and have to try anyway, you can try to guess the code to disarm the bomb. If you get the code right, you win and save the day, but if you're wrong the bomb goes off and blows up the city. There's a little animation to end the game showing those results. Overall, Bomb Squad is a pretty interesting and experimental puzzle game, but I don't find it very fun, so far anyway; the ticking timer makes the game very tense, and I find it hard to keep everything memorized. I've watched a video of a good player playing the hardest mode of this game well, and it's quite impressive but I doubt I ever could be that good. The gameplay is all rote memorization and repetition, too. You go through the same steps with every part, slowly removing and replacing it, and it gets repetitive. Bomb Squad is very interesting and is definitely worth a look, but some will like the gameplay loop more than others and I'm not sure that I will play this game a lot more. Frogger - One player. Frogger is one of the more popular arcade games of the early '80s. In this simple but quite fun game, you play as a frog, trying to get across a road and dangerous river to the safe ground on the other side. You move left and right, dodging cars and trying to not fall in the water in your quest to get all of the frogs across the road. Originally by Konami, the early home ports of Frogger were made by Parker Bros., this version included. Parker Bros. released many more games on Atari 2600 and 5200 than Intellivision, but did have six Intellivision releases, including this one. And very much like the Atari 5200 version, this game is a tale of contrasts. In particular, the contrast between the reasonably nice-looking representation of this arcade classic on the one hand, and the frustratingly poor, imprecise controls on the other. The graphics here are probably closer to the Atari 2600 version than the 5200, but still, they look good. However, the circle pad, like the Atari 5200 joystick, is kind of awful for arcade games like this that demand precision! Sure, most of the time I make the move I intended to make in this game, but I'm sure to accidentally make a wrong move sometimes, and the controller is more at fault than me, I think. Getting into the far-left top spot is particularly difficult in this version, it seems, more so than it probably should be. Frogger is a great game and this is mostly a good version of the game, with nice graphics and accurate audio, but the barely serviceable to bad controls really bring it down. Overall Frogger for Intellivision is not recommended because of the controls. Stick to versions on platforms with accurate digital controls. Microsurgeon - One player. Microsurgeon is a fascinating, but extremely slow-paced, early twinstick shooter from Imagic. Yes, this is a twin-stick shooter! This game has a very interesting concept: you control a miniscule robotic drone, and fly around inside a human body to destroy ailments. You can choose different patients, which all look identical but vary in difficulty, as the number of illnesses increases with each difficulty level. Oddly, you do not continue to fix multiple patients in each game' instead, once a patient is saved or dies that's it, the game ends. You will need to start a new game with a different patient to challenge the harder levels. It works. The controls are done pretty well, though they take some getting used to. You use two controllers, and move with one disc while shooting with the other. Buttons on one of the pads switch between your three different weapons... that is, I mean medicines, that you can shoot. You need to select the correct type of medicine for each different ailment. Which one to use for each illness is listed in the manual. Another button lists the health status of all body parts on screen, so you know where to go, presuming you know where in the body each of those parts is that is. This game may seem like a lot at first, but Microsurgeon is actually a somewhat simple game once you get used to it. Using your little drone, you move around the body, going to the damaged organs and fixing them by shooting the bad cells with the correct kinds of medicines until the organ is healed. While you do this, the body will try to destroy the intruder by sending white blood cells and such at you; try not to kill too many of those, if you can. Microsurgeon is an interesting game, but you move excruciatingly slowly. You move more quickly in blood vessels or other passages, and very slowly if going through organ walls and the like, but either way you move very slow. This helps keep the tension up, and makes games last a reasonable amount of time, which is important for a game where the whole body only takes a couple of screens, but can make it feel boring, as you slowly edge around towards those damaged organs so you can shoot the bad things in them. This game has a great idea and it is good, and is definitely innovative for the time, but the slow pacing keeps it from staying fun, I think. Microsurgeon was only also released on one other platform, the TI 99/4A computer. That version is better, with higher-res graphics and on-screen patient status and minimap displays, but the core gameplay is the same. Mission X - This is another port of a Data East arcade game, along with Burger Time and Lock 'n Chase. For some reason Data East was the only arcade company Mattel got rights to at the time, I wonder why; I guess Atari and Coleco locked down all the other big ones? Anyway, this game is a vertical scrolling shmup, but it has a height component, you can fly up and down... which naturally makes hitting flying enemies in front of you nearly impossible, since judging height is not going to happen. Fortunately, most targets are on the ground; you spend most of this game bombing Xevious-style, at a target in front of your ship which moves forward or back depending on your altitude. It's neat to see a scrolling shmup from '82, but this game gets old fast. The height component is a real issue too, one which makes this game much harder to deal with than regular shmups, when you're fighting planes and not only ground targets. That most of the targets are on the ground isn't the greatest either though, as you need to be very precise to hit them with your bombs, making hitting them frustratingly difficult. I never have really liked this style of bombing in shmups, either here, in Xevious, or elsewhere; the set forward distance you can bomb at is no fun! This game tries to deal with that by letting you bomb closer when you're at lower altitude and farther forwards when you're at higher altitude, and that does work, but you still need to be very precise to hit your often small little targets. And while it'[s helpful for bombing, again the height component makes fighting those initially few airborne foes very difficult, so this kind of design has issues either way. ANyway, though, Mission X is an okay game, but with sometimes frustrating gameplay and almost no variety, it has some issues. I like shmups, but these very early scrolling shooters often aren't my thing; I don't love most Atari 2600 scrolling shooters either, Vanguard and such. Mission X is an interesting and perhaps influential game for the time, but ultimately is average, I think. Arcade port. Motocross (aka Moto-Cross) - One or two player simultaneous. Motocross is a slightly newer overhead racing game. And like Auto Racing, the controls are a bit tricky. Motocross takes what Auto Racing did and makes a more complex experience out of it, with rolling hilly terrain, an AI opponent to race against if you want, and a track editor. The game also has both car-relative or camera-relative control options, so anyone should find one they prefer. Whether it's better than Auto Racing is a matter of opinion, though, because this is another game which may have tried to do too much for its hardware, as the framerate is excruciatingly low, and figuring out the terrain undulations can be pretty difficult at this resolution! Additionally, the method this game uses to make both bikes visible is problematic. In this game, there is no split screen. Instead, both bikers are on a single screen together, and if one person gets too far ahead they stop, and will not be able to move forwards again until the other poerson has caught up a bit. This can lead to incredibly annoying games of tug-of-war, as the person behind tries to catch up, gets a little forwards, then instantly is pushed back thanks to the person in first now being able to move again, leading to both stopping and starting repeatedly unless the one ahead slows down to let the other person catch up... which means you might get passed, of course, since you can't take a real lead. When this happens it's not much fun. I have played newer racing games that use a similar method to this, such as Moto Roader on the Turbografx, and it's frustrating there as well. Micro Machines' solution, with a points system, is a far better one. Despite the issues, though, I do appreciate the AI opponent option. The AI tries to stick to a good line so they are a reasonable challenge, and having someone to race against adds quite a bit to this game over Auto Racing, even with the issue I outlined above. I have always much preferred racing against opponents, rather than pure time-trials. But with its extremely low framerate, choppy gameplay, simple track-layout design that struggles to hold your interest through the relatively long laps of each race, and sometimes annoying way leads are handled, Motocross is at best only slightly better than Auto Racing. I'm not constantly going off the track in this game like I do in Auto Racing, and again I like racing against someone, but while it's an interesting early take on motorcycle racing which does things I haven't seen in any other pre-crash racing games, Motocross is a bit below average. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Night Stalker - One player. Night Stalker is a slow-paced single screen topdown shooter. This game plays a bit like a slower-paced and deliberate, and slightly stealthy, take on Berzerk or Wizard of Wor, except sort of like in some other games like Turtles, before you can fire you need to get ammo by picking up gun powerups. Yes, you start out with none, and they will randomly spawn around the maze as you go. You play as a little guy in the classic Intellivision style, and move around a single-screen maze, collecting ammo and shooting bats, spiders, and robots. The graphics are nicely drawn, with creepy enemies and an environment made of black walls and a blue background, with some nice touches like a large spider-web in one corner. There is only one screen, unfortunately, though; multiple screens would have been nice. The gameplay is good, but extremely repetitive. This may be a maze game, but unlike Pac-Man and most other games in the genre, not only is the game endless like most such games, but there aren't even discreet levels. Instead, you just go around the screen, collecting ammo and shooting things, as the game slowly gets tougher as more and harder enemies appear, until you die too many times and get Game Over. So, your little guy will explore the one-screen maze, get gun powerups, shoot enemies, and repeat. You get points for killing enemies, and that is the only way to score here; there are no pickups that get you points, unlike most maze games, but like Berzerk, this is a pure shooter. Your movement speed is somewhat slow, so you will need to think ahead to avoid the shots the robot will shoot at you, giving this game adifferent feel from Wizard of Wor or Berzerk. The challenge level is fairly well-balanced, as it starts easy but gets hard as you go, but the very simple gameplay and lack of any alternate screens makes this game very repetitive, though. Sure, it has nice creepy graphics and okay to good gameplay, but the gameplay loop doesn't have enough to it, I think. I'm not a big fan of Berzerk either, it's just a bit too simplistic and makes me wish that there was a point to your quest beyond just playing until you lose, but at least there the maze changed on each screen. Here it's always the same, and having to go pick up ammo all the time is both bad and good; it does add complexity, but running out of ammo can be frustrating. Overall Night Stalker is a fairly highly-regarded game on the Intellivision, but I don't think I will be going back very often; it's too repetitive and just killing things for points until you die isn't enough of a purpose to keep me playing this long-term. Still, it is good, if you don't mind the slow pace. There is also an Atari 2600 version of the game, under the title Dark Cavern. It's not quite the same as the Intellivision game, with worse graphics and less complex enemies and such, so while it's an okay, average game, the Intellivision version is a bit better. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Pinball (1983) - One player. I had pretty low expectations for this game because the other pinball games I have played on consoles from the '70s are pretty bad, particularly in their physics, but Pinball surprised me. Going far beyond pinball games on the 2600 or Odyssey 2, not only does this game have multiple screens and some solidly good table design, but for the time the ball physics are actually decent. And yes, there are even two different screens in the table, instead of just one! The table here even kind of looks like a pinball table, too, except stretched horizontally of course. The graphics aren't amazing, but looks alright, and having multiple screens is a big advantage over other pinball console games of the time. The game controls well, with the expected controls with a flipper on each side and tilt buttons, and is reasonably fun to play. Figuring out the scoring options, how to get to the second screen, and such are fun and will keep you coming back for a while. Pinball is a pretty limited game from a modern pinball game standpoint, but for the pre-crash era it is probably the best pinball console game I have played. The game usually is not as cheap as a lot of Intellivision games are, but it's a pretty good game and released later in the system's initial run, so perhaps not as many copies sold as did for earlier games. Pinball for Intellivision is well worth playing if you like pinball, to see a console pinball game that does about as much as one could in this era. That isn't saying all that much, pinball physics were not properly possible yet and this holds this game back for sure, but it's something. Do try Pinball if you can. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Safecracker - One player. Safecracker is an interesting, but strange, Intellivision-exclusive Imagic game where you play as a spy, breaking into safes all over a city. This pretty good-looking game has two elements, driving and safecracking. You start the game with 7, 8, or 9, for Easy, Medium, or Hard. Once you begin, first you drive around the city, going to a building the game directs you to. The directions are obtuse, as the game has a colored border that changes colors based on which direction you need to go at each intersection, so you'd better have that manual to know which color means which direction. This is definitely confusing until you get used to it, and after more than a few games I still can't; even after looking up the manual online, the whole colors-for-directions thing is very confusing, and figuring out which buildings you're actually going to is quite annoyingly difficult. At first you're looking for Embassies, which have diamond-shaped windows. You need to pull over by the diamond windows, stop, and hit Enter to go in and try to take on the safe. It's easy to miss the buildings and wander around lost, though; these directions are hard to follow and don't make much sense. Additionally, the turning controls are odd -- you don't turn with the circle, but by holding the lower button and then hitting left or right on the circle to turn. You cycle between directions as you tap left or right while holding the button, or turn around by hitting down while hitting the button. This is also confusing and poorly thought trhough. Using the circle on its own moves you around in the lane, to avoid oncoming civilian traffic or the police. The controls work, awkwardly, but could be better. The graphics are nice, though, and the large city scrolls well, better than in Auto Racing or Motocross I would say. It's a little jerky and there are only a handful of buildings that repeat, but looks great. You're just driving at first, but as you progress, the police will try to stop your car. You can shoot back at them to get them out of your way. I only wish this nice engine was running a driving game that's fun to play... oh well. If you manage to find your next target building and stop at it, your spy will enter, and you're faced with the other part of the game: the titular safe-cracking. Here, you need to figure out what number will open the safe, giving you its contents. You hit one side button to quickly make numbers scroll by, and when it passes the target number it'll beep. Get close and then get to the number by increasing the count by one with the other button, and you'll unlock the safe. There is a tight time limit, so this can be tricky. If you want, there is a TNT button (on the overlay, it's 4 I think) that will destroy regular safes, giving you the contents but alerting the police and not giving you a Treasury number. Either way, you return to your car and follow the directions to drive to your hideout in town, where you see your score and such. You then move on to the next target building, using the same process, but with more numbers to guess and police to avoid. Your goal is to get four numbers from other safes that unlock the safe in the Treasury building in the city. Crack that safe and the game probably ends. I haven't gotten anywhere remotely near that far though, sadly. Safecracker has a good concept and engine, but the bad driving controls and very confusing directions make this a game to probably avoid, unfortunately, unless you have a lot of patience for this kind of thing. Sea Battle - Two players required. This is a sadly two-player-only naval strategy game. It looks pretty interesting and is way above anything like this on Atari, so it's really unfortunate that they didn't make any AI for the game. The game plays on a single screen, and two players, each with a fleet, move ships around in an effort to defeat the other player's fleet and take their base. The map is well-drawn and looks good. This game is a strategy game much more so than it is action, so it takes some learning to figure out how to play, but if you have someone to play against and know how, it looks like it could be fun. Unfortunately, I won't have many opportunities to play this one because it's multiplayer only. Oh well... This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Sharp Shot - Two player simultaneous (or one player with no opponent). This very simple minigame collection looks like it was for kids based on the box, and it's pretty simplistic -- it's a one-button game where you just need to hit the button at the right time to do something. There are four minigames on the cart. One minigame is football passing. You control the quarterback, and hit the button at the right moment to throw the ball straight ahead to an open player. In the next one, you shoot enemies in space when they fly through your target sight. Hit the button with the right timing. In the third, you are an archer, and shoot enemies with arrows. You move back and forth automatically, and have to shoot with the right timing to hit the enemies. And in the last minigame, you are a ship, shooting enemy ships with torpedoes as they move into your path. The game has okay, average graphics for the console and the four minigames give it some variety, but they are all extremely, extremely simplistic one-button affairs. If you hit the button at the right times you get points, if you don't you won't. It gets boring in minutes. This is meant as a two player only game, so the two players compete to see who got a better score, so there isn't any AI opponent. You can play solo though, if you record your best scores on paper or such. Either way it's not that good really; Sharp Shot had an idea, but is too simple and boring to be any good. It may be amusing for a couple of minutes, but even back then I'm sure you can find much better kids' games than this. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Skiing (Tele-Games ver. of US Ski Team Skiing) - One or two player alternating. Skiing is another game which shows Mattel's focus on making the Intellivision the home for more realistic and complex games, when compared to the Atari 2600. So, where skiing games for Atari or the Odyssey 2 are very simple ski-straight-down affairs where you just move left and right to stay in the gates, Intellivision Skiing has much trickier controls and much improved graphics. Does that make for better gameplay, though? Well, maybe, or maybe not. First, like those games, there is no AI opponent here; either you take turns with another human, or you're only competing against yourself to see what best times you can get in each of the several ski racing modes available. The game does have those more realistic controls, though, and while that makes it different, it also means that turning is a lot harder than in those other skiing games. You'll need to turn hard and accurately to make the turns, and will slow down to a crawl if you don't turn correctly. You can jump and slow down with the side buttons, and will need to do both at the right times, but correctly angling your skiier with the disc is the most important challenge. You will need to memorize each course in order to do well at all, as you do need to have some sense of where the gates are to be able to make them in good time. The game is okay, but this is another game where the disc controller makes for tougher controls than you'd have on a d-pad, as it's just not precise at all. You need to be exactly lined up with the gates in order to make them and not have to stop and lose all your speed, but turn just a little too much and oops, you stopped anyway. Once you get used to it the game plays okay, but where Activision's Skiing for Atari 2600 is a very simple but fun little game, the slightly more simmish style here has probably aged worse; it's not actually realistic, it's just enough so to be a lot less fun until you put more time into it. The game looks alright though, with nicely drawn trees and such. In gameplay, however, this is another average game for this system. Seeing a slightly more realistic take on skiing from 1980 is interesting, but the controls can be frustrating and the pace slow. The game does have speed options, but it always feels a little slow. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Snafu - One or two player simultaneous. Snafu is Mattel's take on the classic game Snake, except in multiplayer, against human and/or computer opposition. The game has a bunch of diffent modes, and is somewhat impressive. In fact, this game is my favorite Intellivision game that I've played so far. So, being a Snake-inspired game, Snafu is a lot like Surround on Atari 2600 -- think Tron's Light Cycles, but before that, and with up to four players on screen. Yes, four. You can compete against three AIs at a time, and indeed that is the default, which is pretty awesome. No "multiplayer only" disappointment here! There is also a two human and two AI mode, for multiplayer play. As in the games that inspired it, in Snafu each player controls a moving dot which represents a vehicle, and which leaves a trail behind it. Everyone is always moving, and if a vehicle runs into any players' trails, or another player, they are destroyed and their trails are removed from the board. So, as players lose the board opens up, though whether the remaining players can capitalize on that depends on their situation. The core gameplay here is always the same, try to be the last one alive, but Snafu has many variations on that basic theme present that you can play. The modes include simpler ones with only the regular four-direction movement of most games in this genre, and some with eight-direction movement, which is a lot to get used to in a snake game; I've never used eight-direction movement in a snake or lightcycle game before, I don't think! But it's here, and it's pretty interesting. There are also variations for how many obstacles are on the screen from the start, from none to quite a few. Once you select amode, you select how many wins it will take to get an overall winner. Then, you play that mode, with each player, or computer, getting a point for each win until one reaches the target number. With that the game is over and that competitor wins. There is sadly no championship or anything, only single games that end once a player wins after which you select a new mode to play, but still, for a game this early Snafu is pretty feature-rich; that kind of thing became more common later on. The game controls fairly well, and the Intellivision disc gives you good control of your direction, but eight directions in this genre is more than I've seen before and it is hard to get used to at first. It is probably advisable to stick to the more traditional four-direction modes at first to get used to the game. They are also a lot of fun, and play like you'd expect. Then, after a while, try the weirder stuff like 8-direction mode. You can pass through a diagonal trail if you're heading on the right diagonal angle to it, so this adds a lot of strategy to the game. I like Snake and Tron lightcycle games quite a bit, and this is a very good one, with features I haven't seen elsewhere and some good competitive gameplay. Once you get used to the 8-direction movement on the disc, the additional movement options it opens up make for some fun and challenging gameplay, which allows you to escape from certain death... or run into even more walls, depending. The other gameplay options are interesting to play around with also, to have a simpler or more obstacle-filled screen for example. Snafu is a very good game, and it is definitely recommended. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Space Armada - One player. Space Armada is Mattel's take on Space Invaders, one of the most popular games of the time. It's not as good as Space Invaders, though -- there are fewer aliens, very few modes, and a big programming problem here, unfortunately. The game plays well enough at first, just like Space Invaders: you move left and right, and shoot upwards with a button. However, perhaps due to the system's low resolution, there may only be a few rows of aliens, but they start pretty close to you so it gets hard quickly. The game mixes things up as you go on with invisible enemies sometimes, too. You'll need to kill all of the invisible enemies before they reach the bottom or you lose. You have a bunch of lives, but if an enemy reaches the bottom it's an instant game over, as with Space Invaders. Space Armada is fun, but the difficulty balance is very poor, as the game gets almost impossibly hard very quickly -- not too far into the game, the enemies start so low on the screen that it becomes effectively impossible to win. I'd recommend playing the versions of Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 or 5200 instead, the 2600 version's graphics aren't as good but the gameplay is much better and there are a lot more modes and options there. The enemies in Space Invaders don't start as close to the ground as they do here, either. Space Armada is a very cheap game maybe worth having if you have the system and see it for a dollar like I did, but don't expect much; it's average to bad, due to the difficulty. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Space Battle - One or two player alternating. Space Battle is a first-person space shooting game with a simpler strategic component that separates it from other games like this on other platforms. The first-person space shooting game was a relatively popular one, and this is Mattel's take on it. First, you choose a difficulty, from several available. This game has two screens, the map view and battles. On the map view, you are defending a starbase that is under attack. You have three fleets of fighters to send at the enemies that approach from the edges of the screen, and your controller buttons will order fleets to head towards different enemy groups. The controls are a little tricky, but eventually kind of make sense. I had trouble at first figuring out how to get your fleets to go where I want, but the way it works is that some keypad buttons select the fleet you're controlling, then other buttons change targets and tell them to head towards the currently-selected enemy. You can't send fleets to specific points, unfortunately, only towards enemies. Once one of your fleets and an enemy one collide, a battle begins. You fight the battle yourself by hitting another keypad button; it isn't automatic. Again, the controls are clumsy. Once you do take command, you'll find a fairly standard for the time first-person space shooting game. Like many Intellivision space games there is a nice starfield background, but the gameplay is familiar Atari-like stuff. As per usual for space combat games from the pre-crash era, this game may look like you're in a space fighter, but really it's just a target-shooting game, you don't move your ship around. Instead, just move the cursor and fire when you think you will hit an enemy, as the enemy ships zoom around in front of you. It's simple stuff, but works. While you fight, it is important to note, the rest of the game is still progressing, so other fleets will advance. You can return to the map screen at any time with the press of a key, and may need to if another fleet is getting close to the center and you need to try to stop them more than the one you are currently fighting. It's a solid concept for the time and can be fun. However, this is one of those 2nd-gen games that's over in minutes. Either you'll win and defeat all the enemy fleets, or lose and die, but either way there's only one level then the game ends. Again the game does have multiple difficulty options to add some playtime, thankfully, but still this game is very short, and the default difficulty is very easy, I won in only a few tries. The higher settings are tougher, but still this is not a challenging game. Most 2nd-gen games that aren't endless are like this, second gen games usually either never end or are absurdly short. Oh well; the industry was young and people didn't know what would work yet, and making games in the tiny amounts of memory they were allowed is difficult. The strategy bit about aiming fleets around is interesting, though the controls are a bit confusing, and the shooting works fine, but it's nothing special. Overall Space Battle can be fun, but is average. Also on Atari 2600 under the title Space Attack, though as usual the graphics are better and controls more complex here. The starfield background looks nice on this version, and it's a better game on Intellivision. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Space Hawk - One player. Space Hawk is another game inspired by Asteroids, but unlike Astrosmash, this game takes its inspiration in gameplay and not just graphics. In Space Hawk, you're a person in a space suit with a jetpack, and fly around in search for the Space Hawks. You can fly around endlessly in any direction, looking at the Intellivision-style starfield scrolling behind you, but don't actually go anywhere, really; the Space Hawks will come at you regardless of which direction you go, so the movement element is just for avoiding their fire and such and not for exploring a level. You will be attacked by one Space Hawk at a time, and it will fly around, on and off the screen, shooting expanding shots that look a whole lot like rocks at you. Huh, I wonder where they got that idea from... heh. And like Asteroids you do have a momentum system, though here you can turn it off with the press of a keypad button, if you prefer the much simpler default game. It's probably a better game with momentum on, as I found the game too simple otherwise. I've never loved Asteroids' momentum system, but it is better than the alternative, as this shows. Unfortunately, what this game also shows is that it's hard to make a good Asteroids game, and they didn't quite manage it here. The rocks that the Space Hawk is shooting get in the way between you and them, so you will need to choose between shooting the rocks and thus protecting yourself, or trying to fly around to get a shot a the Hawk itself. It's a decent mechanic, but sadly you will only ever face one Space Hawk at a time. This makes for a very simplistic game. It does get harder as you survive longer, but you're only ever fighting the same Space Hawks, shooting the same things at you, throughout. Once you shoot a Space Hawk enough to kill it, another one will come at you, in an endless loop until you eventually die. That may sound simple, but the game has tricky and somewhat original controls, for good and ill. You move with the disc, and aim and fire with the keypad, essentially, to fire in any direction. The Intellivision doesn't support pressing a button while you are also pressing on the disc, though, so control is a bit clumsy. Between that and the very slow, one-enemy-at-a-time design, Space Hawk looked cool at first glance and I was looking forward to trying it, but I got tired of it very quickly and don't find it very fun. This is another average-at-best Intellivision game with flawed, and somewhat slow, gameplay that is okay, but does not hold up to the better shooting games on other consoles. Space Hawk is not bad, but is not good either. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Space Spartans - One player. IntelliVoice Required. Space Spartans is essentially Mattel's take on Star Raiders, or, also, a more complex version of Space Battle. As in Space Battle and Star Raiders, your goal here is to defend starbases on a single-screen map. When you begin a game you place three starbases, and choose a difficulty to start from in this endless game. In each level, you need to defeat all enemy fleets without losing your starbases. Like in Space Battle but with a grid, the enemy fleets will move around the map screen, heading towards your starbases. Using a keypad combination -- the overlay is highly recommended here -- you can warp, and once you warp onto a square with enemies in it, and then hit a button to switch to battle view, you'll start that fight. Battles work like all of the first-person space shooter battles I've seen on pre-crash systems, so again just like Space Battle this is a target-shooting game. Unlike Star Raiders on the 5200, you can't actually fly anywhere within each sector, either; once warped in, instead you just sit there, rotating around and firing at the enemies coming at you. Controlling your aim is slow and somewhat frustrating in this game, though; I started to get used to it with time, but faster, more precise controls would do wonders here, aiming accurately is harder than it should be. Oddly, in this game the cursor stands for your ship, because if enemy shots hit the cursor you take damage. Some other games do this, but it is a little strange; I'd expect shots in the center of the screen or such to hit me, but no, the cursor sight is their target. I find this game pretty hard. Where some other space shooting games of the time are easy enough to hit enemies in, this one's a lot tougher; the enemies move quickly, and zoom into and out of the screen as they go. You will learn their patterns with time, but this game is a lot harder than Space Battle, that's for sure! That's a good thing overall though, a harder and more complex game like that was a good idea. Also like Space Battle though, the rest of the game is progressing while you're in a battle, so you may want to warp to a different sector before defeating the enemies in one sector in order to protect a more threatened starbase. Enemy fleets will regenerate over time though, so battles can drag on if you're not good enough at hitting the enemies, as they respawn as fast as you hit them. Interestingly, as you take damage you don't just fill up a damage meter, but will lose systems on your ship. The IntelliVoice will tell you what damage you've taken and what you are repairing. Hits will eventually take out your targeting computer, warp drive, movement thrusters, and more, leaving you a motionless lump in space once all of them pile up. I don't know that letting your ship movement get even WORSE was a good idea in a game that's as hard to control from the beginning as this one is, but it does that. Oh well. If you do manage to warp to a starbase that isn't under attack, though, you can fully heal all damage on the map screen. This requires keypad buttons, to select Repair and then the systems, followed by some time for the repairs, but is invaluable. So, protect those starbases! You're done if they are all destroyed. If you blow up all enemy ships in a level, you'll move on to a new, harder one, until eventually you lose. The game claims to be re-creating the Battle of Thermopylae in space, which makes absolutely no sense in any way other than that it's an endless hopeless fight, but... okay. Oh, as for the voice component, it's useful but not as central here as it is in B-17 Bomber or Bomb Squad. Voices will say things to you such as how many ships are left in enemy fleets, describe ship damage, and such, so it adds some nice flavor to the game, but this game would work without voice I'd think. Overall, Space Spartans is a fun game, but the frustrating controls really hold it back. Space Spartans is no competition for Solaris on the 2600, but it's is an okay game. Get it if you have an IntelliVoice, but it's probably only a bit above average overall. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Star Strike - One player. Star Strike is a simple, early rail shooter. More than just a little inspired by the original Star Wars movie, this game is essentially a game based around the Death Star trench run scene from that great classic. You fly a spaceship, flying down a trench on some artificial planet. The trench graphics are pretty cool and are this games' main selling point. You need to bomb five ships before they take off, while avoiding fire from enemy fighters which look very much like TIE Fighters and which come up behind you and shoot at you. Separate buttons shoot and bomb. The game is extremely short and simple. Two enemy fighters come up from behind you, fire three or four times, and then zoom ahead. You can shoot them if you want more points, or let them go. Either way, pairs of fighters will keep coming at you. When an audio chime sounds, the next enemy ship is coming up, and you need to hit the bomb button... from the exact right altitude to hit it. There is no in-game indication of this, so you'll just need to memorize how high off the ground you should be to hit it. At about the center of the screen you pretty much need to hit the bomb button right when the sound plays, which is before the port comes on screen, to hit. The timing is a lot tighter than that in the Atari Star Wars game. As you go, your planet slowly comes into view on the top of the screen. Once it's reached the center, if any of the ships are still alive and get past you once more it will take off and destroy your planet in the distance. That's Game Over. If you do bomb them all, a short audio bit plays with a little animation and the game ends. So yes, this is another one of those very short 2nd-gen games that is over in minutes, either successfully or otherwise. The scoring system is simple too, the score slowly decreases over time and hitting enemy fighters increases it a bit. So, there is a maximum score. The game present some challenge, since you need to learn the height to be at when bombing, and there are five difficulty levels to make the game harder than the pretty easy default setting, but it's a very simple game with no variety and only okay controls and gameplay. This game is average stuff; Atari's take on it in the Star Wars arcade game, or the Parker Bros. home ports of that game on the 2600, 5200, and Colecovision, are better than this. That game has more variety, more stages than just one, and better controls and gameplay. Still, Mattel's take on the Death Star trench run is okay enough to be worth playing a few times, before the repetition sets in. Also available on Atari 2600, with worse graphics there of course. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Tennis (for Intellivision) - Two Player Simultaneous. Two Players Required. This game is a good, but sadly two player only, take on tennis. Tennis has nice visuals with a side-view perspective, good controls, and a reasonably accurate take on Tennis for the time. Going far beyond Pong, in this game you'll need to serve accurately and hit a button to hit the ball, it won't automatically hit balls near your player. If you have two people who learn the game, I'm sure it would make for some exciting games, but the absence of a computer opponent means I'll almost never be touching it, unfortunately. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Triple Action - One player (the racing game) and two player only (the tank and plane games). This three-in-one cart contains three small games, two two player only and one one player only. First, there's another Combat knockoff, which like Armor Battle is two player only and plays a lot like Combat but once again not as good as the Atari original. The graphics are better than Combat, but it can't match it in options, and it is still two player only. Next, there's a pretty decent little vertically-scrolling straight-road racing game where you try to get as far as you can, scoring a point for each car you pass successfully. You move left or right to dodge oncoming cars on a two-lane road. This kind of game was popular and games like this appear on many formats, though the one I've played the most is probably Speedway! on Odyssey 2. I like that game more, but this is also fun. And last, there is a two player only biplane flight combat game, where you get a point for each time you shoot down the other plane or they crash. For some reason in the flying game, up on the disc makes you fly upwards and down flies you downwards, so the game doesn't use flight controls unfortunately. I'm used to flying games having flight controls so this is confusing. You can shoot and change your speed, and have to be careful because stalling and crashing is very easy. This mode seems like it'd be fun with two people, for a few minutes here and there. On the whole this cart is not great for one player, but the one single player game, the racing one, is kind of fun so it's alright I guess if you get it for a really low price like I did. The other two also look decent, particularly the flying one, if you have two players. This feels like a game that should have been a pack-in with the system, but it wasn't, and indeed it didn't release until several years into the systems' life. I'm not sure what the point of this was, then. There already was a Combat knockoff on the system, and the other two are pretty simple little games which are amusingly fun but hardly essential. This is another average Intellivision release. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Tron: Deadly Discs - One player. Tron Deadly Discs is one of three, yes three, Tron games that Mattel released on their console. This is the only one of the three I have, though I would like to get the other two. Tron: Solar Sailer, particularly, is interesting as it's the fourth of the IntelliVoice games. As for Deadly Discs, though, it is inspired by the disc arena section from the film. You play as Tron, and defend free programs by defeating an endless succession of evil programs coming at you in this single-screen arena, or something like that. Or in gameplay terms, you move around the screen, which looks a bit like an arena, and try to hit the enemy programs with your disc while not taking too many hits from theirs. The concept of an action game based on the disc battle is a good one, but this game has some issues and is, unfortunately, kind of boring, particularly on lower difficulty settings. The character graphics are nice enough and the Recognizers that come on screen every so often look like they should, but I find the game boring. The game does some interesting things for the time, though -- it's another early twin-stick game, as you move with the stick and fire with the keypad -- but these controls are far from Robotron. Because, again, the Intellivision only supports one input from a controller at a time, you have to stop to fire, and then can only shoot one disc at a time, in eight directions, and have to wait quite a while for it to return to you. You can call back your disc, but Microsurgeon's two-controller free firing feels better. Regardless though, this game is too slow to be fun for long. And not only that, but the disc will only hurt enemies on the way out, but always goes all the way to the other edge of the screen! So, after every shot, hit or miss, you've got to wait a long time for the disc to hit a wall or stop once you let go of the button and get all the way back to you before you can finally try to hit them again. Also, this is another Intellivision game which runs slowly. At least as far as I've gotten so far, everything about this game is a bit slow-moving. I'm sure it eventually gets hard, but aiming shots with the keypad is kind of frustrating because of how long you have to wait if you miss. The slow pace of the combat isn't great. This game was also released on the Atari 2600. That version is similar but a bit worse, as shot aiming is better here and the Recognizer boss isn't in that version. I have the 2600 version and thought it was pretty average, and unfortunately the improvements here don't make it much better. That's too bad, Tron is a great movie. Also relesed on Atari 2600. Vectron - One or two player alternating. Vectron has a really cool name and look, but also has a reputation for inscrutably confusing controls and gameplay. And indeed, yes, well, the controls are very confusing. In this action-strategy game, you move an indicator left and right along a curving path through the screen with the lower side buttons on each side of the controller, and place things on squares you so highlight with a button on the keypad. Yes, you move the cursor with the side buttons, not the circle. Instead, pressing directions on the circle will fire in the direction you press from a cannon in the top center, to take out enemies. Your goal in the game is to build up a base and defend it, but it's pretty hard to do and the controls are difficult. Even once I started to get a handle on them, having to press buttons on both sides is bad even by Intellivision controller standards; in most games you only need to use the buttons on one side of the controller and they are duplicated on both sides for left or right handed players, but not this one, you've got to use both sides, and quickly too. It's not good. Anyway, in Vectron, once again you move that cursor, which the game manual calls the "energy block", building energy base sections, or orb things, in the four spaces within by shooting at the cursor and hitting it, while also shooting at enemies trying to destroy the buildings. One enemy type is invincible, so you need to shoot around it to hit the other ones trying to destroy your cursor. If you let too many base sections get destroyed or if too many enemies hit the cursor and you run out of energy, you lose a life, and three deaths and it's Game Over. You'll get Game Over quickly, because the game is very hard, and I often lose lives without knowing why. There aren't any difficulty options, either, only the one too-hard one. The game seems to probably be endless, but I haven't managed to beat a single level of the game yet so I doubt I'll know. From what I read online, getting to level five or ten is quite an accomplishment, and I believe it. Vectron has a really cool look and interestingly original gameplay, and despite the weird controls and insane difficulty I still want to like this game. I probably will play it more, but it's too flawed to be great, unfortunately; this is a decent game with issues. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Venture - One player. Venture is an arcade game from the early '80s, originally by Exidy. The home console ports were made by Coleco, this one included. Coleco's Intellivision games are often poor, but this is one of the better ones, as it contains all the content from the arcade and Colecovision versions of the game. Venture is a top-down action-adventure game, perhaps an early step towards action-adventure games like Zelda. You control a red smilie face with a bow, and go around finding treasures. Each of the three levels has an overworld screen, where you control a dot moving around between rooms while avoiding giant enemies, and four rooms, where you control the smilie face closer up, shooting at enemies before they can kill you and grabbing those treasures. Watch out though, touching a dead enemy will kill you, so stay away until after they finally dissolve fully! That's a weird quirk in this game. The enemies dissolve one pixel at a time in this version, which is cool; on Colecovision they just have a 'death' sprite that vanishes after a while, so there is one way that this is the better version. The game plays well, though the controls feel a bit less precise here than on the 2600 or Colecovision because of the Intellivision circle, I find myself walking into walls or miss enemies sometimes because of the disc. I'm sure you get used to it eventually though. This is a fun game for a while, as you go around each level, killing baddies and getting treasures. There are 36 treasures to collect, as between levels the game shows your treasures through the first three loops through the game. After that the game infinitely loops stage nine, which is kind of disappointing; it means you only see one of the three levels, over and over, if you're good enough to finish the nine stages. Some classic games do things like that, but it is odd. On a related note, Venture controls well enough and plays great, but like with other games like Berzerk, it makes me wish for a goal beyond just points; I like this kind of game better when you can actually win. Unfortunately, that last level loops forever. So, Venture is fun but isn't something I'll be likely to play a lot of. Visually, Venture is simple looking but the look works well. It looks like the other versions, just with a bit of a visual downgrade compared to the Colecovision, as, as is expected. It does still have music though, which is pretty cool. It is very simple, but not many Intellivision games have background music. I like that it contains all of the levels too, the Atari 2600 version doesn't and Coleco usually just ported their 2600 games over to Intellivision for their games on this system. Fortunately they did better here. Arcade port, also on Colecovision and (with only two levels) on Atari 2600. The Colecovision version is best, but this is also good. Zaxxon - One player. From Coleco, this game is a worse port of the bad Atari 2600 version of Zaxxon. Sega's arcade version of Zaxxon was a big hit and helped popularize the isometric shooter. This Atari 2600/Intellivision version of the game isn't isometric like the arcade game or its more accurate ports, but instead is a behind-the-ship rail shooter with poor graphics and worse gameplay. The perspective has some advantages, in theory, though. The behind-the-ship view should give you a much better ability to see where the other ships are so you can hit them more accurately, and indeed it does. It's a lot easier to hit your target here than it is in regular Zaxxon. Unfortunately, it's not much of an improvement and everything else about this version of the game is a lot worse than the original. The graphics are poor, with extremely blocky visuals straight out of the Atari 2600. The gameplay is slow, even slower than the Atari version. The game is also extremely simplistic. Zaxxon is a simple game, but this one's even simpler -- you just fly through the bases, avoiding walls while shooting turret enemies on the ground, and then fly through space, shooting space fighters. Rinse and repeat once you get to the next base. The game seriously lacks challenge too, as enemies are easy to avoid or shoot. Coleco has a reputation for making shoddy Atari 2600 and Intellivision games that are far worse than their Colecovision games, and this one backs that up, that's for sure. While the Intellivision may not be able to match Colecovision Zaxxon, I'm sure it can do a lot better than this boring, ugly, slow, not fun game. Skip this one. The original Zaxxon arcade game has been released on a great many platforms, but this particular behind-the-ship version is only on the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. They are both bad, but the 2600 version is probably slightly better thanks to it playing a little more quickly. Play almost any version of real Zaxxon instead of this. And that is all the games I have so far. Games I have seen for Intellivision but not purchased: Several more of the two player only sports games (Football, Basketball, Soccer), and two more Coleco games (Donkey Kong, Carnival). I got everything at all interesting.

Sorry for the late reply. Personal preferences will always be a major element of any opinion, but I try to look at things in the context of the time. I mean, yes, I did not play an actual Intellivision before a few months ago, but I had heard about it and played some in emulation here and there. However, I will admit I did got it with probably somewhat negative expectations because the people I've known who had one when they were young didn't have much good to say about it and the controller is infamous for being one of the worst ever... but you never know until you try something yourself. Most people like to hate on the Atari 5200 for example, but I like that one. I like plenty of pre-crash games, even though the NES is the first console I remember using, so I was hoping to find some good things here and I have. Some of the criticisms you see about this system do have merit though, I think, particularly complaints about the controllers. I don't think criticisms about the controller to the extent I have are unfair, I've seen much worse said about them online... The only time I mention the NES is BurgerTime, and ignoring all other ports of this popular title that's probably on several dozen platforms by now really wouldn't make much sense. I agree with the idea of considering a game in the context of the platform it was released on, criticizing a game for "bad graphics" or something merely because it's on a console not able to do better is rarely helpful, but the NES is not that much newer than the Colecovision -- it released under four years later if you consider the original Japanese release date, after all. It's one generation better, probably (since the Intellivision is best put in the second generation, I think; it's two years ater the 2600 but three before the Colecovision and 5200, so it's kind of in between... but it's closer to the former than the latter.), and you can tell, but it's a platform available while the Intellivision as being sold, and it has a version of the game with better graphics. I'd mention this same point in a summary of the Colecovision versions of Donkey Kong an DK Junior for sure. (Maybe I should compare it to the BurgerTime arcade machine as well, but I don't think I've ever played it.) Yes, I use it with my thumb, and when my thumb hits that plastic ridge it doesn't feel great. Newer systems don't put a plastic ridge around their d-pad for a reason, I think... As for Auto Racing, thanks, that's helpful advice. I don't have Auto Racing's manual so I idn't realize the cars were different, so I was just using the green one because that's my favorite color. I just tried the white one some, and maybe it's slightly easier to turn? I still often go off on the sharper turns, but I guess you're supposed to slow to a stop for those or something? The game needs some challenge, so okay, i guess I can deal with that, if "learn when to start stopping" is the challenge. Even if I did still go off the track a bunch I think I did better than before. The game is still slow, choppy, and extremely repetitious, though. Being able to choose your number of laps and race against an AI opponent would be good, yeah. Oh, to say one good thing about Auto Racing, it gets the controls right. That is, it controls car-relative, and not camera-relative. In top-down racing games, I've always found it extremely confusing when a racing game has you press up to drive up on the screen, and down to go down, and such! It makes much more sense when left turns your car left relative to its current orientation, and right turns you right. And that's what Auto Racing does. Maybe I should add this bit into the summary, it is worth mentioning. As for Motocross, I like that it adds control options, though car-relative is the better one for sure. It also adds an AI opponent. The game runs agonizingly slowly though, probably even worse than Auto Racing, which is a bit much to take... is it trying to do too much for the hardware to handle or something? It's hard to resist pressing the disc harder in the hopes it'll respond faster, but I'll try not to. As for those games, I have Space Battle, it's okay. Short games, but they are fun while they last, sure, once I managed to figure out the controls. Worm Whomper sounds like a good one, but I don't have it. The Dreadnaught Factor I have on 5200. It's a pretty good game there, and from what I've seen the Intellivision version looks good but probably a little less good -- lower resolution, and such. I know it's side-scrolling instead of vertical, though that doesn't make a game better or worse.

Thanks for the comments. Making a controller that's identical for left or right handed people isn't worth the horrible ergonomics of all of the vertical controllers, I would say. As for the rounded edges around the disc, though, yeah, the outside edge of the rim around the disc is indeed rounded. Is it not on other models of the console? That'd be even worse... though it's not as useful as it could be here, because what I was talking about was the inside edge of the rim, which goes straight up. My fingers like to get caught in the edge between the disc and that lip around it, and it's not comfortable. As for keypads, sure you get used to a game after playing it for a while, but when games use the keypad as much as Intellivision games do, overlays are pretty essential, every game puts things in different places! At least with the 5200 and Colecovision you can count on the buttons doing the same things game to game in most cases. Not here. That's okay if you have all the overlays, and I do have some thankfully, but it's an issue. Overlay storage on the carts, like the 5200 and Coleco have, would have helped a lot more here than for either of those systems because of how many more Intellivision games need overlays. ... 20fps? That's not thought through well! As for Auto Racing, I have the regular one (button to continue), but it's hard to control, you turn incredibly slowly. Even with braking, some corners seem impossible to get around unless you turn, like, before it even comes up on screen. I like arcadey racing games, more so than simulations... The courses go on a long time, too. For the time it's not too bad, I guess, and with time I'm sure you eventually get good at it, but I don't know that I will. ... On a related note though, Motocross fixes some problems from Auto Racing but introduces new ones in the process, so I'm not sure which one is better. I got the Colecovision and Atari 5200 trackballs last year, and the 5200 one is really amazing! Sadly only a few games work with it as it doesn't have joystick emulation (I wish it did), but the games it improves are great with the thing. The Coleco one isn't nearly as good as a trackball, but it is nice as a controller extension with some nice, solid buttons that mean you don't need to use the mushy side buttons in games. Anyway, sure, most games on a system don't use optional addons, but still sometimes they are worthwhile because they improve games. There is a line though, sure. Like, I'm sure the Colecovision racing wheel makes Turbo better than a gamepad would, but I kind of wish I could just buy the game and not also an expensive, required addon controller... so yeah, supporting both the basic controller and an addon one is nice, like all of the 5200 trackball games do. If you're going to have only one kind of controller on a system though, you'd better get it right. The Odyssey 2, with its durable and surprisingly comfortable controllers, does that. I will say that Intellivision durability is, for me, so far, quite good, though -- I mean, my system and both of the controllers work great, while I've got faulty systems and/or controllers for the 2500, 5200, and Colecovision lying around. That's good, if the systems in general are this durable. On the 5200 and Coleco, the side fire buttons are a frequent point of failure. I have multiple controllers for each of those systems with busted side buttons. Is this true on the Intellivision as well? I don't know, except that the ones I have have no problems. As for AD&D, I'm sure that it has plenty of replay value thanks to the random generation, sure. Sears Super Video Arcade. I was lucky and got one locally, complete in box, for $60 a few months ago. ... Well, the cartridge for Las Vegas Poker and Blackjack was missing, but I got a replacement, and that was no big loss anyway... Amusingly, the round gold sticker on the quite large reset button wasn't quite applied properly on this system -- it's slightly off of center. It's a little thing I notice when turning the system on or off, nothing major. That does sound like some nice features in the speech synthesizer, though. They should have used it in more games, as an optional supported thing like the O2 does.

... So I just realized that I somehow wrote that whole thing without ever mentioning overlays. I really should, and I'd prefer to edit it into the first post, but apparently can't do that... bah. Overlays - Overlays are something that I think the Intellivision did first. These plastic sheets go over the 12-button keypad part of the controller, and tell you what the buttons do. As with many other things about the controller, this questionable idea would go on to also appear in the Atari 5200 and Colecovision controllers, as well as the Atari Jaguar later on. The concept is good, and for some games these overlays are helpful. Games did not have large enough memory sizes yet to be able to have on-screen button indicators for everything like a modern game might, so having something physical, attached to the controller, is a good idea. Some of the overlays have nice artwork on them as well. I don't have overlays for all of the games I have, not even close, but I do have some overlays and they're helpful, because a lot of Intellivision games pretty much require them. However, if you don't have the overlay, some games are pretty much unplayable unless you look one up online or buy one, because the buttons are not at all intuitive, they could be anywhere. Those other systems with overlays make far less use of them than the Intellivision. Indeed, most 5200 and Colecoivsion games either don't come with an overlay, or they have one but it serves no purpose because all that's on it is like 'press numbers for difficulty or number of players', and those are in consistent places on the number pads so you won't need to always look at the overlay like you to on Intellivision. And on top of that, despite their overlays usually being less necessary, both of those systems have overlay storage built right into their cartridges, which is great. With the Intellivision you just need to try to not lose them, or only buy complete in box games and store them in the boxes. That's inconvenient. My biggest issue with overlays isn't any of those things, though, it's that the concept of having a keypad on a game controller didn't prove to be a good one. A modern controller has a lot of buttons, but they are all in different places on the pad, so you can remember, through memorization and such, which are which. On a keypad, however, good luck with that! With 12 buttons so close together, that overlay is pretty much your only hope of knowing which button is which, a lot of the time. There's a good reason why only two systems released since 1983 have had keypads on them, and both failed -- the Jaguar and N-Gage. It just isn't a very good idea. I can understand what they were going for, it gives you a bunch of buttons for settings and such, but the alternate directions the industry would go in later, towards on-screen menus instead of lots of buttons and controllers with buttons in more notably different places, is, I think, overall better than this. I have an N-Gage, and trying to play a game like Tomb Raider or Tony Hawk with 15 buttons all right next to eachother is FAR more difficult than it is on a Playstation controller! It's kind of a nightmare really... the Intellivision isn't as bad as that, because of how its keypad is used and because it supports only pressing one button at a time, but it is still an issue. And of course, that's not even getting into the ergonomics of the thing, which are poor. There's no way to make a 12+ button keypad ergonomically friendly, I don't think. So, overlays are an interesting idea and I like having them, and they definitely make playing games a lot easier than regular numbered buttons in these same games would -- see Gateway to Apshai (Colecovision) for an example of that, they didn't make an overlay for it so instead you need to reference the manual all the time to remember what each of the nine numbers does, it's not great -- but I do think that the keypad is one of several decisions, along with the vertically-oriented controller, painful ridge around the disc, total absence of ergonomics, and side-mounted, mushy fire buttons, that are why Intellivision are so disliked. That the Colecovision, and Atari 5200 controllers do many of the same things wrong is a lot of why their reputation is very nearly as bad. And plus, since some models of Intellivision have hardwired controllers, they couldn't even do something to give it a better controller, like the trackballs do for the 5200 and Colecovision. Oh well. I know there are stick-replacement options out there, and some modern controller options as well, but controller ports would have made that a lot easier. Oh well. I really do need to do that, yeah. It's kind of surprising that boxed Intellivoices are so cheap, though! The Odyssey 2 The Voice has more games that support it, but clearly sold much worse because those things are sadly expensive... I guess Mattel must have really over-produced them. It's too bad that none of the later titles have optional voice support, that'd have been nice.

I got this console a couple of months ago... and quickly decided I wanted to make a Game Opinion Summaries list for it, because why not? And since it's for a pre-crash system I want to post it here, as I did with my Atari 2600/7800 and 5200 threads several years back. I have not done a list like this yet for the Colecovision, which I got last year, or for Atari 2600 or 5200 games I've gotten since the lists I did years ago. I am thinking about writing all of those. Anyway, after some long delays, here it finally is, part one of this two-part series! In this article I cover 19 of the 40 games I have for the Intellivision. Yes, 19; game 20 is Microsurgeon, and I haven't played it enough yet. I'm sorry in advance if fans of this system don't like some of what i have to say here, but if I make any mistakes please mention them. Feedback would be appreciated. This article is also available on my website here: http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=1235 Table of Contents Introduction and System Overview My Favorite Intellivision Games So Far The Summaries ABPA Backgammon Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cartridge (aka AD&D Cloudy Mountain Adventure) Armor Battle Astrosmash Atlantis Auto Racing B-17 Bomber [intelliVoice required, I don't have one yet] Beauty & The Beast Bomb Squad [intelliVoice required, I don't have one yet] Bowling (aka PBA Bowling) BurgerTime Demon Attack Dragonfire Frog Bog Golf (Tele-Games ver. of PGA Golf) Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack (Tele-Games ver.) Lock 'n Chase Loco-Motion Major League Baseball (1980) The Mattel Intellivision released in 1979 as a test market product, then 1980 in full nationwide release in the US. This console was heavily marketed, and ended up selling a bit over three million systems, which is the second most of any console that generation. That's good but somewhat less impressive as it sounds, as the Atari 2600 sold tens of millions of systems while the next top four -- the Intellivision, Colecovision, Odyssey 2, and Atari 5200 -- sold one to three million each, but it's something. I'd never played an Intellivision before this year, however. I have known people who owned them though, and they never had much of anything positive to say about the system. I've heard that the controller is horrible, that the games aren't as good as Atari games, and more. So, I went into this not expecting the best... and unfortunately it lives down to expectations. There are some things to like about the Intellivision, but my first impression is that it's my least favorite of the five pre-crash consoles that I have, the ones listed in this paragraph. It's probably better than most of the other, lesser-known platforms that generation, though, I just don't have those. Anyway, the Mattel Intellivision is an interesting system. It uses a 16-bit CPU, which was a first for the industry. However, while it's got a wider bus, the CPU has a slow clock speed when compared to the 2600. Indeed, many 2600-to-Intellivision ports end up running more slowly on this system than they do on the Atari, which is not great for a newer system. Graphics are almost always improved, but game speed is not. What is the Intellivision good at, then? Well, graphics for one; the Intellivision can draw much more complex and detailed visuals than prior consoles. In terms of overall graphics, the system sits right where its release date suggests, a bit above the 2600 but well behind the newer Atari 5200 and Colecovision, which released 2 1/2 to three years after this system to effectively start a new console generation. I wasn't expecting Colecovision-caliber graphics from this system, and it doesn't have them, but games often have nicely detailed sprites and environments that you'd certainly never see on Atari 2600. Audio is decent as well, for the time. The standard audio is fairly typical stuff, but like the Odyssey 2, the Intellivision has a speech synthesizer addon. This addon is fairly cheap, but while I have three of the four games that support it, I don't have one yet, unfortunately. Once I get one I will report on how the three games play, though I mention them below with little placeholder articles for now. So, the Intellivision has some good and bad points in its graphics. In terms of controls, though, the system is infamously awful, and unfortunately I have to agree with the critics here. I may like the Atari 5200 controller, and I really do apart from a few things (durability, the side buttons), but this thing is awful! The Intellivision controller is terrible for several reasons, but the ergonomics are the biggest. The controller has two buttons on each side, a 12-key keypad set down behind little plastic dividers, and at the bottom a round disc that controls movement. The disc, which has a full 16 directions it can identify versus the average stick's four or maybe eight with diagonals, was an important innovation that presaged the creation of the d-pad. It is also, however, horribly uncomfortable. Perhaps the biggest problem is this plastic ridge around the disc. It's hard to not get your finger painfully rubbing against the hard edge of the ridge! The side buttons are uncomfortable to use as well, the idea of putting the main action buttons on the side of a controller was a bad one. I'll never understand why Atari and Coleco both copied this controller, of all things, in their next consoles! This vertically-oriented controller with side fire buttons concept was not a good one, and all three of the resulting controllers show why that is. Of the three, though, this is the most painfully uncomfortable to hold and use, it's not close. The controllers do look nice when set in the console, though. As with many consoles of the day, there are indentations in the console itself to store the controllers in, and when in there the flat top of the console has a pretty nice look to it. To fit with this flat, sleek look, the Intellivision, uniquely, has its cartridge port on the side of the console. This is good for aesthetics, but bad for everyday use, because you need to press fairly hard to get a game to lock in to the system! I find that I need to hold the console with one hand on the left side while pressing the cart in on the right in order to insert a game, so don't put this console somewhere where you don't have access to both sides of the system, it won't end up well. Of course, with how short Intellivision controllers are you won't be putting it far from your chair, anyway. All the pre-crash consoles have very short controller cords, and this is no exception. Some models do have controller ports, though. The model 1 and 3 Intellivision have hard-wired controllers, while the Sears Super Video Arcade and model 2 have controller ports. I have perhaps the best overall model of Intellivision according to some Atari Age threads I read, the Sears Super Video Arcade. It's a nice looking console with controller ports, and I'm glad to have this one. It still works perfectly, even after almost fourty years. As far as its game library went, the Intellivision's main life lasted from 1979 to 1983. Most of the games are from Mattel, and they are mostly original titles, not ports of arcade games. Atari had most of the best arcade games themselves, after all, and Mattel, like Magnavox, decided to mostly make their own games. Mattel did get one companies' arcade game rights, though: Data East. This led to one of the system's best games. Once they entered Coleco would be much more aggressive at getting arcade game rights, and between Coleco and Atari, Mattel and the others didn't get many arcade ports. The quality of Mattel's own games is uneven. In late 1983, with the great videogame crash of '83 destroying the console industry, Mattel gave up on videogames and discontinued the system. Others, including the Magnavox Odyssey 2, were also discontinued around the same time. However, some people at Mattel thought that the system had a future as a low-cost system, and bought the rights to the Intellivision sometime later. In 1985, the first two new games released in Europe. Those two games, plus some other new ones, released in the US as well in 1986, and the new Intv Corporation kept the system alive with new game releases until 1989. This is a fairly similar story to the Atari 2600, which was effectively discontinued in 1984, only to be resurrected in 1986, so it saw releases from 1977-1984 and 1986-1990 ('92 in Europe thanks to one or two late third-party releases there). However, at least around here, I regularly see some of those late Atari 2600 games. I have not seen any post-1983 Intellivision games locally yet, only these 40 games from '83 or earlier, so clearly the Intellivision wasn't as popular a post-crash console as the Atari. That makes sense, but it's still interesting that it was brought back, and there are some good-looking games among those later releases that I would like to get eventually. Overall though, my first impression of the Intellivision is that it's okay. This system isn't awful or anything, but I don't really like it either. I can understand how people who played it as a kid would still like the system, but as someone who didn't play any pre-crash console games until decades later, as I said earlier it probably does rank fifth of the five pre-crash systems I have. (For the record, based purely on 'how much I like them' and not their overall game library quality or such, right now that ranking would be: 1. Odyssey 2; 2. Atari 5200;3. Atari 2600; 4. Colecovision; 5. Intellivision.) The poor controller is definitely a part of that, though the games are also a part; they're alright, but I haven't found many I really love. Right now I don't know if I have yet played an Intellivision game that I'd give an A rating to. Some of the games are good, though, certainly. That said, though, here are the first 20 Intellivision Game Opinion Summaries. The second 20 shouldn't take as long as these did to finish. My favorite Intellivision games so far: 1. Snafu 2. BurgerTime 3. Demon Attack 4. Microsurgeon 5. Loco-Motion 6. Atlantis I like these six more than the rest for sure, so far. The Summaries Formatting: As usual for my Game Opinion Summary lists, the title is first. Following that is the number of players, and any accessories supported or required. Next is the summary. At the end I list any other platforms the game has been released on as of this posting, as far as I know. ABPA Backgammon - One or two players. Backgammon is a typical Intellivision game in some ways. The Intellivision sold itself on being more complex than the Atari 2600, and indeed this game is more complex than Atari Backgammon. The graphics are better, game much more accurate to the boardgame it is a conversion of, and controls more complex as well thanks to the systems' 12-key keypad. Getting used to the controls takes a little while, as it uses the keypad heavily, but this is a solid Backgammon game, if you actually want to play such a thing on an old console; I don't really. On a positive note though, there is an AI opponent here, a somewhat uncommon thing for a boardgame console game from 1978! However, I've never cared much for backgammon as a board game. I have played it before, and it's alright, but it has been a very long time since I last played the game, and while I don't remember a lot of the rules, and doubt I'll play it anytime soon either; far better games are available now. Backgammon has dice, so it has a random component not present in the timeless classic that is chess. Random elements in board games are common, and can work great, but I do think that the best games are probably less random. So, while this game definitely looks the part, with a clearly drawn backgammon board and dice, if I really wanted to play backgammon today I'm sure far better games are available on newer systems than this one. I don't play old consoles for games like this, for the most part. But if you want a solid 2nd-gen backgammon game, well, here it is. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections under the title Backgammon. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cartridge (aka AD&D Cloudy Mountain Adventure or Crown of Kings) - One player. This game has the D&D license, but it isn't really an RPG. Instead, this is a maze exploration action-adventure game, building off of games like Adventure (Atari 2600), Hunt the Wumpus (TI-99/4A), and Quest for the Rings (Odyssey 2). Your goal here is to reach the Cloudy Mountain across the main world map and find the treasures within. You start on the let side of the screen, and at certain points enter dungeons. Each of these dungeons is a randomly laid out maze you will need to explore. Now, sort of like Hunt the Wumpus, your character here is an archer, so you'll be shooting enemies from a distance if you want to stay alive. In each maze, you need to collect arrows, kill or run away from monsters, and look for both exits and key items that you will need to progress. You'll want to avoid enemies some of the time because ammo is very limited, and you can't just go pick up used arrows. This definitely serves to increase the tension as you explore. Unfortunately, I find the game quite frustrating, as these random mazes, while not huge, are just large enough to get lost in. You need to find those exits and key items, but wandering around, looking for things while often not being certain if I've been through this area five times already because it all looks pretty similar, isn't much fun. Now, some people like this kind of game design, and I recommend you play this game! I, however, don't really. There is a run button for faster movement, and that's great. Even, but still, this game aimed high for a game from 1982, and for the time is a quite advanced game despite not being what we would today call an RPG of any kind since there is no experience points system present, but I think I'd prefer something either simpler or more complex than this. AD&D is a good game, but while I probably do like it more than Adventure on the Atari 2600, I'd rather play Quest for the Rings or Hunt the Wumpus than this, their simplicity is a positive for games from this time. Still, AD&D is a solid evolution of the still-early action-adventure genre, as it headed towards better things. The Intellivision sold itself as a more complex console with better-looking and more complicated games than other consoles, and you see that here. That doesn't make the game better, but still it is an interesting game worth playing. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections under the title " Crown of Kings". Armor Battle - Two player only. The Intellivision does Combat! Yes, this is one of several Combat knockoffs on the Intellivision. Like Combat it, unfortunately, requires two players, so I haven't really been able to play it. Most people agree it's not as good as Combat, though. It's got better graphics but apparently lesser gameplay, though I haven't really played much Combat either so I can't really compare. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Astrosmash - One or two player alternating. Astrosmash is a very simple single-screen shooting game that kind of crosses Astroids and Space Invaders, though without the greatness of either. This popular game is also on Atari 2600 and it's very simple: move left and right and shoot the asteroids as they descend. That's about it. Move left, move right, shoot as many rocks as you can. There are also a few ships to shoot, but it's mostly falling rocks. This game was made for overlong play sessions, by second gen standards -- you start with quite a few lives, and will not lose them easily for a long time. And on top of that, the game gives you extra lives so quickly that games will go on and on. You get lives faster than you lose them for probably at least a half hour or more. I find the game gets boring long before that, unfortunately; the core concept is solid and the game plays well enough, apart from the usual issues with how uncomfortable this controller is, but the difficulty balance and challenge are way off. The game looks alright, with some decently nice asteroids and an alright backdrop, but is very repetitive and simplistic. So, overall, this game is another average to below average Intellivision game. This system is definitely living down to its mostly not-great reputation, I think... too bad. There is something here, later in the game, but is it worth the tedium to get there? Also on Atari 2600 under the title Astroblast. That version is quite similar, apart from a graphical downgrade of course. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Atlantis - One player. Atlantis is a Missile Command-inspired defense game from Imagic, a third party who released a lot of games on the Intellivision in 1982-1983. Taking control of gun turrets, you try to protect the city of Atlantis from an endless horde of enemy spacecraft. It's a doomed effort of course, but try to survive as long as you can anyway! The Intellivision version of Atlantis has a reputation for being the best version of the game and one of the better games on this console, and after playing it I can see why. Now, in Missile Command, you control a cursor. In the original Atari versiion of this game, however, instead you just controlled three gun cannons which each shot across the screen at a different angle. On the Intellivision, however, Imagic went for a much more directly Missile Command-inspired game, as you move a cursor around the screen and fire from your two guns with the two buttons on each side of the controller. So yes, it's pretty much straight Missile Command, but with Atlantis graphics. And indeed, the game looks pretty good, with a detailed cityscape, a day and night cycle with a tougher challenge at night in the dark, and good enemy sprites. The game adds one significant control feature that separates it from Missile Command, though: by hitting one of the keypad buttons, you can take off in a little plane usually kept docked in the center tower on the screen and, controlling it directly, shoot the enemies down, Defender style! This is a single-screen game, but flying the little ship around, shooting in both directions to take out the enemies, is pretty fun. When flying around you can only use the ship, you can't fire from the turrets again unless the ship is destroyed or you land back on the central base. It's a system which works pretty well. Indeed, both the cursor and flying elements of this game are fun. The game does take a while to get challenging on the default setting so games are not short, however; yes, this is another game with difficulty balance that may not be ideal. However, it's more than fun enough to be worth playing anyway, every once in a while at least. Atlantis is, like most games of the era, very repetitive and does not match Missile Command's genius, but it is a good game for sure, and this is a great version. It may not be worth getting an Intellivision just for this game, but if you have one definitely get the game, it's one of the best ones here. Also on Atari 2600 and Odyssey 2, though each version is quite different. Auto Racing - One or two player simultaneous. This is an overhead racing game. It has decently nice graphics with some nice looking roads and houses. It scrolls decently too, it's not single screen. There are even a bunch of different tracks to race! They are all made up of a set of components, but still it is impressive. Graphically, it's pretty good for the time -- the Atari doesn't have any top-down racing games that look anywhere near as good. However, gameplay is a problem. The controls are hard to get used to, it takes practice and perhaps also a look at the manual before you will figure out how to actually make the turns and not just go off the side at every corner. Looking at impressions people have of this game online, this seems to be a common complaint about this game: the controls are confusing and not that good. With some practice I did eventually manage to start making turns, but even then this is a slow-paced game with limited gameplay. The turns feel hard because of the bad handling, not because they really should be. Additionally, as with many Intellivision games, this one is mostly designed for two players -- all you can do in this game is play a two player versus mode race, or play solo in a time-trial mode, that's it. There isn't an AI opponent car, unfortunately. For 1980 this is probably a good effort at a more realistic racing game, but the controls, with the Intellivision disc, are a problem. I didn't find Auto Racing very fun, but it isn't a bad game, just a flawed one. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. B-17 Bomber - One player, IntelliVoice addon required. B-17 Bomber is a flight simulator, a fairly impressive thing for an early '80s game. With complex controls, where you can switch between different stations on your World War II bomber to change between shooting enemy planes, bombing, choosing where you're going, and such, it's an advanced game for the time. Unfortunately, it requires the IntelliVoice speech synthesizer addon. The game will run without it, but it has voice lines telling you vital info, so the game isn't very playable without one, and I don't have an IntelliVoice yet. However, even if I had one, I can't see myself getting into this game much at all; it may be impressive for the time, but in retrospect this kind of game quickly becomes horribly dated, and I'm not a flight sim fan regardless. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Beauty & The Beast - One player. One of Imagic's more popular Intellivision games, this game is Intellivision exclusive and not a port from another system. Imagic supported the Intellivision pretty well for a couple of years. However, I don't like it nearly as much as I was hoping. The game looks nice, but the gameplay is lacking, I think. Anyway, Beauty & The Beast is one of the many games heavily inspired by Nintendo's hit Donkey Kong. Thanks to Coleco the Intellivision version of Donkey Kong is no good, but this somewhat similar game is probably better. Unfortunately, I think it has problems as well. The game is no match for arcade Donkey Kong. My biggest problem with this game is its jumping controls. So, in the game, your goal is to get to the top of each screen. Each screen is a couple of floors tall, and you want to get to the top of each screen, which helps you climb the building to try to save the girl (the beauty) from the beast (an ape as expected). Unfortunately you're facing an endless series of buildings here, so you can never really win. You can climb from one floor to the next by hitting Up on the circle when one of the windows on each floor is open. If you're still climbing when the window closes, you'll fall and die, so be careful. I don't know why you can climb up when windows are open but not when they are closed, but that's how it works here. Your movement controls feel fast, as you zip around the screen, trying to avoid obstacles and go up open windows. However, when you need to jump over something, as I said the controls are very stiff and bad. I really don't like the jumping controls here, and they don't feel good at all; when I have to jump I often die. The jumping here feels somewhat like it does in Dragonfire, except here it's even more central to the game. The simplistic and repetitious gameplay is expected from this time, but that's fine if a game is good. Sadly, only part of Beauty & The Beast is fun. I know this game has fans, but I'm not one; this is below average, and I can only really recommend it for the graphics, which are admittedly pretty nice and detailed. Bomb Squad - One player, IntelliVoice required. Another one of the four games requiring the IntelliVoice speech synthesizer, this one is a bomb-defusing puzzle game where you follow voice commands as you try to defuse each bomb by cutting the correct wires and installing the correct parts in places on the circuit. Naturally, without an IntelliVoice it's quite impossible, though it looks very difficult on the higher difficulty settings even with one. The game has a good concept though, so when I get an IntelliVoice I'll definitely want to give it a try. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Bowling (aka PBA Bowling) - One to four players alternating. Bowling is a pretty good bowling game for the early '80s. Showing off all of those buttons that the Intellivision controller has, Bowling has more commands than the simplistic Atari 2600 Bowling game. You can move up and down, aim and curve your shot, and adjust power. You even can select your ball weight at the start, and that does affect the game. Visually, this is a fairly standard effort, with okay but not amazing visuals of the lane and pins. It's an okay-looking game with a lot more depth than bowling on the 2600, so it fits in with the general 'more complex games' theme the Intellivision went for, and it does seem to be good. Of course there is no AI so if you're playing by yourself it's a solo affair, but oh well. Bowling plays well and is fun, so it is a good game. Once you get used to the controls it's a simple little game, and much better bowling games are out there on newer systems, but this one's fun enough to play once in a while. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. BurgerTime - One player. BurgerTime was an arcade hit in the early '80s. Mattel wasn't able to get the rights to many popular arcade games, as Atari had the best ones and Coleco got the rights to most of the better remaining arcade games of note, but Mattel did get the rights to one arcade company's arcade games, Data East. The somewhat strange single-screen platformer BurgerTime was probably their biggest hit, so it was ported to the Intellivision. This game is highly regarded on Intellivision, but I wasn't sure how worth it this would be since I do have the even better NES version. Well, it was worth getting, because yes this is a pretty good version of this game. The somewhat slow Intellivision CPU isn't known for being great at fast action games, but this somewhat unique platformer runs very well. For anyone who dosn't know it, in BurgerTime you play as chef Peter Pepper, and try to make giant hamburgers before living ingredients get you! Yeah, it's weird. So, you go around, dodging enemies on the maze of platforms, while trying to walk over all burger parts. When you walk over a part, it'll fall down to the next floor below, dropping other parts below it if there is another one on the next level. Each burger has several parts to drop, including the top bun, lettuce, and burger. Once you make all burgers on a stage you go on to the next one. You also have pepper spray, which will temporarily stun an enemy. The only other way to defeat enemies is that when you drop a burger part, any enemies also standing on that part when you drop it will die. They respawn elsewhere on screen quickly, though, so you can't get rid of enemies for good, you just need to learn to avoid them. BurgerTime is a fun and challenging game, and it's easy to see why it was so successful. BurgerTime is, indeed, one of the best games I've played on Intellivision. There are better versions of the game so don't get an Intellivision for this game, but if you have one, get it. Arcade port, also on the NES and many newer platforms, though none are ports of this specific version. Demon Attack - One player. Demon Attack is another game from Imagic, and it's one of their most popular games. This single-screen shmup sees you moving left and right on a screen, shooting up at enemies moving around above. It was inspired by the arcade game Phoenix which Atari had the rights to, enough so that Atari sued Imagic over this game and Imagic settled out of court, so they probably paid Atari something. I think that Demon Attack isn't quite as great as the arcade or Atari 2600 versions of Phoenix, but it is also good and is on a lot more platforms. Demon Attack for the Intellivision has the same basic gameplay as the original Atari 2600 version of the game, but it has enhanced graphics and more gameplay, much like the TI 99/4A version but, by all accounts, better. Like that version, the game has two screens, one on a planet or moon where you do most of the shooting, and a boss stage in space against a giant ship. The planet is nicely detailed, so the background looks a lot better than the very simple Atari version. The core gameplay is the same, though, apart from that added boss screen. Demon Attack plays well, as you move left and right and try to time your shots to hit the quickly-moving demons. It presents a good challenge, and there is nice variety as there are quite a few different types of demons on the regular screen. The boss stage mixes things up as well; here you need to hit a single point to destroy the giant demon ship, but hitting that point will be hard, as it's protected by a moving shield and lots of small demons that are sent at you. This game is well paced and fun, and keeps you coming back. Of course the Intellivision circle disc thing makes playing the game a little harder than it should be, but you kind of get used to it eventually. I don't know if it's the best version of this game, but it is good. However, whenever I play this game, I can't help but think that I'd probably rather be playing Phoenix, because that game is a bit better. Still, Demon Attack is a good game well worth playing on any format it was released for. Also on Atari 2600, Magnavox Odyssey 2, TI 99/4A, Atari 8-bit computers, PC, Commodore 64, and TRS-80 Color Computer. Each version is different, but this is one of the best. Dragonfire - One player. Dragonfire is another Imagic game. This one's much less impressive, though, as it is pretty much just a straight, only graphically enhanced port of the Atari 2600 game of the same name. Dragonfire is a good Atari game, though, so that could work well. In this two-screen game, you first run across a bridge as a little guy, dodging fireballs as you go platformer-style, and then run around a large overhead-view space, collecting treasures while avoiding more fireballs that the dragon, now on screen, shoots at you. It's a fast-paced game, all about dodging and jumping and then avoiding and collecting, and it's okay to good on the 2600. Here, however, it feels worse. The graphics are improved, as the drawbridge and castle towers on the sidescroller stage look nicer and the dragon and its treasures are drawn with more detail, but the difference isn't enough to matter much. Much more important are the controls, and they're not good. Yes, the controls are a whole lot worse because you need to try to make these tricky, timing-sensitive jumps with the Intellivision disc! This controller is hard to deal with even in ideal circumstances, and this games' jumping is, like Beauty & The Beast above, far from ideal. So, while I do find this game fun on the 2600 as the avoid-and-collect gameplay is somewhat addictive and fun, I'd recommend sticking to that version. It's the same thing, but better. The Intellivision version is too hard thanks to its controller to be worth the hassle, and has no additions to counteract that, unlike the better Imagic Intellivision games. Also on Atari 2600, Colecovision, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, Apple II, and TRS-80 Color Computer. The 2600 version is the original. This is nowhere near that level. Frog Bog - One or two player simultaneous. Also known as Frogs and Flies on 2600, Frog Bog is one of Mattel's more popular games, and Mattel did release it on Atari 2600 as well as Intellivision under the name Frogs and Flies. This is an extremely simple arcade-style game where you play as a frog, jumping between two lily pads to eat flies as they go by. You cannot move around on the ground; for some reason, these frogs can only move in the air, not on the ground. So, you press on the disc to jump in the direction you press. The disc gives you better control than the Atari 2600 version of the game. You can control your jump, so try to aim and time it so that you're in the air while flies are passing by. While in the air, hit a side button to extend your tongue, hopefully catching flies in the process. That's all there is to it. There is even an automatic tongue option, for somewhat easier play. You just jump back and forth, eating flies, for a while. As the game progresses time passes, from morning to afternoon to night, and once full night falls the game ends. So, Frog Bog games are time-limited and might last ten minutes at most. That's good, though, because by the time a game ends I'm ready to play something else, there isn't much to this one. Even so, the time progression is a nice touch you only infrequently saw at the time. The background graphics are pretty nice as well, with a detailed pond environment. The game also does have an AI opponent, so it's not two player only, and there are two difficulty settings. On the default setting the AI is extremely easy, but the harder setting presents a slightly higher challenge. The AI really is a very weak opponent though, so if you want to lose this game much at all you'll need to play it against another human. I like that they included a computer opponent, but I wish it was a bit tougher. In comparison to the Atari 2600 version, the graphics are much more detailed on Intellivision, as expected. The Atari version looks okay for the console, but everything is a lot blockier. The core gameplay is identical, and the controls are good on Atari too -- it compensates for the loss of a 16-direction stick by having you hold the stick to change your angle. This control scheme is simple and works well. It's probably easier to control your frog on Atari than Intellivision as a result, so despite the better graphics in this verison, Mattel might actually have made a better game on the competing console. On either platform, though, overall Frog Bog is an average game. It's probably worth getting on one system or another because it is quite cheap and can be fun, particularly for two players, but don't expect too much from this one. Also on Atari 2600 under the name Frogs and Flies. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Golf (Tele-Games ver. of PGA Golf) - One or two player alternating. This golf game is a bit like Golf for the Atari 2600, but with a lot more simmish elements. Where the 2600 or Odyssey 2's golf games are pretty much minigolf games by another name, Intellivision Golf plays more like the real thing, with different clubs to switch between, a more complex meter for hitting your ball, and such. The graphical look is similar to those games but a better, as just like them each hole is shown in a single-screen overhead view. The graphics are definitely better than those games, as trees are identifiable and there are angled greens and everything, but it's still a single-screen game. The animating ball, which gets larger at the height of its flight, does look nice though. The more simmish controls make this game much more challenging than those golf games, however, and for someone like me who does not like golf, that's not really a good thing. This is probably a better game objectively than Atari or O2 Golf, but I find myself getting bored extremely quickly here and would probably rather play either of those games. I much prefer mini-golf to regular golf, myself. Golf fans might want to try this game out though, as it's quite possibly the first semi-realistic take on the sport. You will need to choose the correct club for each hit and such. It's a challenging game for sure. There is only one 18-hole course here, as usual for the time, but each hole is unique. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack (Tele-Games ver.) - Two players only (Poker); One or two players (Blackjack). For some reason I do not understand, this card game was the pack-in title with the Intellivision for its first few years. It's not a game I have much of any interest in playing, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that, so it's a somewhat strange choice for a pack-in. The games are fairly complex for the time, with three different poker variants and blackjack all on the cart, playable in 1 or 2 player for blackjack and 2 player only for poker, but I don't like this kind of game at all and don't want to play enough of this to learn how to play it, so even though I do have a complete copy with its detailed instruction book I don't know that I will ever play this again. It's fine, and probably even impressive, for the genre for the time, but I do not know how to play or want to learn poker. Plus, poker here requires two players, so even if I did want to try, I can't really. While I do know blackjack, and this is a totally acceptible blackjack game, it's not that much better than similar games on the Atari 2600 or Odyssey 2, and today there are a great many far better ways to play electronic blackjack than here, not that I want to do that almost ever. Overall this has to be one of the weakest and least interesting pack-in games ever to come with a console. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Lock 'n Chase - One player. Most Intellivision games are exclusive to the console. However, Mattel did get the rights to one companies' arcade games, Data East, and made several home ports of their games. The good Pac-Man clone Lock 'n Chase is one of those games, so it is one of the few arcade to Intellivision conversions. Most of the others are also Data East games. In this game you are a thief, trying to steal as much as you can before the police catch you. So, Lock 'n Chase is like Pac-Man, but with the new component of doors that you can close. At certain choke points in the maze, if you hit a button a door will close off that path for a set amount of time. You'll need to strategicly use this ability to try to get all of the dots in each stage. As usual on the Intellivision, the graphics are low-rez, so everything is near eachother, and keeping away from your enemies is hard. Like the original Pac-Man, the maze is always the same, but unlike that game the difficulty here is steep from the beginning! Indeed, getting far into Lock 'n Chase will take practice, this game is tough. This is probably a good port of the arcade game, but while it is good enough, this game is no Pac-Man, and I don't think I like it as much as K.C. Munchkin or Turtles on the Odyssey 2, either. This is a quality game worth playing if you like maze games, but between the high difficulty, mediocre graphics, and sometimes tricky controls for using the locks, I doubt I'll be playing a huge amount of it. Still, it is a decently good game I guess. Arcade port, also on the Atari 2600. The Atari version has much worse graphics as you would expect, but plays similarly. I like the later Game Boy sequel, also called Lock 'n Chase, a lot more; that game is pretty good. I covered it in my Game Boy Game Opinion Summaries article. Loco-Motion - One player. Loco-Motion is a puzzle game with gameplay inspired by ssliding tile puzzles. The game screen is simple, a 5 by 5 grid of tiles with various train track layouts on them fills most of the screen, and curving loop pieces go off of the sides of the grid around the edges. You move pieces into the blank space in the grid, so you effectively move a black square around with reversed controls. On this grid, a single train car is always moving around. Your goal on each stage is to get it to go around all of the loops on the edges of the screen, beyond the bounds of the 5x5 grid you have control over. In order to do this, you need to move the tiles around so that the car goes around all of the edges. That's not all, though, that alone would be far too simple! No, you also have a time limit. If you take too long to go around some loops, they will lock off and send an enemy train at you. This removes the loop from the stage without you getting points for it, while also adding a major obstacle to avoid, another train moving around the stage that you'll need to keep away from the main one! Yes, Loco-Motion has a simple concept, but it quickly gets very difficult. This game has a great concept and it's mostly well executed; Loco-Motion is one of the best games I have for Intellivision. It does have some issues, however. First and foremost, the game is very slow paced. The train you're leading around moves slowly, and the only speed-adjustment button isn't very useful. You will spend a lot of time in this game waiting, as you watch the train slowly move along its route. Additionally, those reversed controls take getting used to. I get the idea, instead of moving the black square around you are moving the tiles into or out of it, but the game almost makes more sense if you hold your controller upside down, which is a little weird. I kind of wish they let you choose between regular and reversed control options. Still, despite the very slow gameplay, with challenging puzzles and a unique concept, Loco-Motion is a pretty good game and definitely is a game that any Intellivision owner should get. It's one of the better Intellivision exclusives, the system does this kind of slower, more strategic game well. Major League Baseball (1979) - Two Player Simultaneous. Major League Baseball is one of the early Intellivision games, and it is a title that Mattel adertised heavily as a part of their campaign to convince people to buy an Intellivision instead of an Atari. Like all baseball games at the time, it is a single-screen game which fits a downsized version of a baseball field onto one screen, and is two player only, there is no AI opponent. Later Intellivision baseball titles would add AI opponents, but this first one, which is by far the most common, doesn't have one. That's too bad, because as a result I won't have many chances to play this game. I like baseball, but don't have many opportunities for local multiplayer anymore. This is a simple game, but it has more depth than 2600 Baseball for sure. There are actually nine players on screen, for one. You can also switch which player you are controlling with the keypad, which is nice. Additionally, while pitching you can try to pick off runners. When fielding it can be hard to tell where a ball is going to land though, there is no ball shadow or arc, it just moves in a straight line until it stops somewhere, hopefully with your fielder nearby. There is a sound giving you a hint at when it's stopping, but good luck. When pitching you pretty much can just aim it left or right, so batting isn't anywhere near as hard as in a newer baseball game. You do have multiple pitches, but still batting isn't too hard. Overall, I can't really say much about what I think about this game because I haven't played it much, but sure, for a 1979 release this is somewhat impressive. Looking back flaws like the absence of fly balls and single player are pretty significant, though. This isn't a game I'll play much but I am glad to have it. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback Special Edition unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections. Part two will be next time, once I finish it.

I only have one R-Zone game, and yeah, for a handheld LCD game it is somewhat ambitious. Batman & Robin is one part beat 'em up and one part driving game. Yes, it's an R-Zone game with multiple types of gameplay, how many of those are there? Both are really, REALLY simplistic, though, as expected from a Tiger LCD handheld -- the beat 'em up levels are extremely simple and repetitive, and the driving stages are just 'drive forwards and avoid stuff until it ends', that's it. It's a kind of okay but really pretty poor game, compared to games on systems which actually can change the graphics and not just light up different parts of the screen. I got the system with the one game a couple of years ago, and haven't bought any more yet though I have thought about it. I never did like most Tiger handheld games much, and what I've played of R-Zone definitely hasn't changed my mind on that, but while I do think the R-Zone isn't very good, yes, it could be worse. This game I have is far from the worst Tiger LCD handheld game around, certainly. As for models, I have the XPG. The Head Gear is the one I remember from the '90s, and it did look cool in ads, but this is probably the one to have if you want to actually play the game... On that note though, one reason why I haven't bought more games is that every time I look on ebay, I notice how R-Zone game sales are somewhat uncommon. A lot of the time, you've got to buy a bundle with a few games and a console in order to get more games, and that's definitely not an economical way of building your library for what is one of the worst consoles of the last few decades... like every system there are definitely reasons to have an R-Zone, but I only want one, not like ten!

Thanks to its good analog controls and dramatically better audio, 7800 Pole Position II may have more tracks, but I'd probably rather play the 5200 one. The graphics are blocky and maybe the system could do better, but it looks nice enough and the gameplay shines through. This is one of those games that really shows off the advantage of an analog joystick! I wish the 5200 had more racing games (and with analog), it's too bad that this is the only one.

Need help (repair) for several non-working Atari consoles So, I've amassed quite a bit of nonworking or semi-functional Atari stuff over the several years that I've had some of their systems. In fact, for over a year now the 5200 (I did a thread here about my thoughts about it some time back) is the only working Atari system, and even that has a few problems, with controllers (of course) and the 2600 adapter that I have. But at least I do have one 5200 controller that usually works fine, and the system itself works great when I stick to 5200 games. But it's my 7800 that I most wish worked, so I decided to put this all here, and not in all three forums or something. So... So, I've got three Atari things with problems, two of them consoles and one a controller. They are the only two Atari consoles I own, unfortunately, so right now I can't play 2600/7800 games, which is quite annoying -- I'd like to be able to play the games I have! - First and most importantly, the power switch on my 7800 stopped working. I've heard of this problem before and read some Atari-Age threads where people fix or replace it, but I don't know if I could do that myself, while I have thought about learning how to solder, I still have not only never tried, but I don't own a soldering iron... and with how things seem to go when I do try taking consoles apart things probably would not go too well regularly. Heh. Still, I have taken apart the 7800, but there's no visible damage. At first the 7800 would turn on sometimes, but for quite some time now it won't turn on at all. I presume that if the power switch was replaced it'd still work, but by this point who knows... I just know I really want a working 7800, so I can finally play all those games again. I buy 2600 games every once in a while even though I don't have a working system, but don't want to spend a bunch of a console again, since I have one already and the systems seem more expensive than ever... and besides, the problem may well just happen again! That'd be a waste of money. At least with this I have a clue of what COULD fix this thing, if I had the replacement part and some way of installing it, but I have neither so the thing just sits there. - So some time later, I got another Atari system, that 5200 I did a thread for. Then some time after that I got a 2600 adapter... but it doesn't work at all, in the weirdest ways! I presume that the main chips in the thing have gone really bad and the thing is unsalvageable, but some input would be much appreciated. So, the thing turns on and displays a picture and sound, but the colors are all wrong all the time, and worse the screen display is all messed up -- it's doubled with copies of the picture on the left and right in some games, the sprites appear in duplicate or triplicate in others, and more. It's crazy stuff, but games are unplayable because in many games the controls are also iffy, the fire button particularly -- it often seems to just make the sound but not create shots. And such. So yeah, this thing's had it, or at least the chips on it have I presume? Is this fixable, or should I just buy another one and hope it works correctly, if I want to have a working one of these things... - And third, but sort of first, the first Atari system I got was a 4-switch 2600 that I got in about 2013, but it doesn't work and never did. When I turn it on it's just a black screen with some static, no picture or sound appears. I presume there's a dead chip or something? I THINK the power supply is okay (I tried to test it on a multimeter I have and did get a reading), and I know the RF box works... I don't know if this is worth fixing (cost-wise), but I guess it'd be nice; I certainly have no use for a system I can't use. So that's the Atari system hardware problems I have. Three of the four Atari systems I have, counting that 2600 adapter as a system, don't work... I've had great luck here, huh. (Meanwhile my Odyssey 2 still works just fine...) Beyond that, I'd like to mention the controller issues I have. This doesn't apply to the 7800, the two 7800 controllers I have work as well as ever. - First, Atari trackballs. I have an Atari Trak-Ball controller, the model CX22 type. I got it for pretty cheap, locally, which was great... until I tested it (fortunately I got it shortly before the 7800's power switch gave out), and found that it doesn't work right -- up, particularly, rarely registers. I tried to take it apart to clean it out, but that's much easier said than done due to the bizarre way that it disassembles. I mean, you have four screws to remove, but then have to stick a screwdriver in those holes and try to pop apart the snaps... I managed several of them, but just can't get the center-bottom one apart no matter how hard I try (the one by the text, on the opposite end from the cable exit), so I can't take it apart for cleaning. Argh. Of course now I wouldn't be able to test it even if I did get it apart, but anyway. Later I found the other type of Atari (2600/8-bit) trackball, the black one, which I got given to me for next to nothing. This one seems to work, which is nice. Of course it's hard to test given the state of my 2600s, but it seemed to function? If it does I'm not so concerned about that other one, but it is still sitting around somewhere sort of broken, which isn't great. - And as for those 5200 controllers... well, I have three. As I mentioned in that 5200 thread, I put two controllers together to make one fully working controller, using the flex-circuit from one and the stick from another to make one that works. And most of the time this controller does work just fine, but occasionally the fire buttons stop responding completely. Most of the time they respond every time, but once in a while, they stop responding, or I turn the game on and they won't work. When that happens I have to just turn the system off, they won't start working again otherwise. Then, if I turn the system off, put some new game in, and turn it on again, they may or may not start working again. Usually after trying several more games in short succession they'll respond again, after which point they then work as usual in all games. This is really weird stuff; I've heard of 5200 controller buttons failing to respond, but is this normal? I'd think "failing to respond" would mean "sometimes when you press the buttons they don't work and other times they do". not this. As for the other two controllers, one has a stick which drifts to the right all the time. I tried adjusting the trim pots but they did nothing, so something inside it must be messed up. It also has a busted flex circuit, but there;'d be no point in replacing that when the stick itself is bad. The third controller's stick seems to work, but it has no rubber thing around the stick to keep it in place, has no working buttons (so it'd also need a flex circuit), and someone taped the 5200 Frogger overlay to the keypad of the controller. Yeah. I was thinking of getting a replacement gold flex circuit and using the shell from that better-looking broken controller and the stick from the third one; that's the kind of repair I could do, since no soldering or such is required. So yeah, those are my problems. I hope someone can help.

As for Axelay, while I usually think of myself as liking horizontal shmups a bit more than Vertical (Gradius is my favorite shmup series, and such), I actually have more fun with Axelay's vertical levels than the horizontal ones, probably mostly because of the graphics; in gameplay both are good, but not the best. The game in general is pretty good, but probably a bit over-rated because while it looks amazing the gameplay isn't quite as great as the graphics are. And the graphics are better in the vertical levels thanks to that awesome warping effect. In comparison the horizontal levels don't really do anything special besides have reasonably nice visuals. They're fine, but other shmups do that kind of thing better, while nothing that gen looks like the vertical levels in the game. Oh, and it's also a little disappointing that the game has only 6 levels, 3 of each style. That's not many; Konami's other SNES shmups have more stages, and none split them into two play styles. Axelay is a very good game with solid mechanics, but it's not the best. The multiplayer mode in SNES Space Invaders is worth showing, at least, since it's something new. "Fun" is not the only important factor in a videogame, but it definitely is an important one, even if it's very subjective. Of course, that's a major part of why lists differ so much. while R-Type is a great game, those games are just so hard and frustrating that they stop being fun. R-Type is so mechanical that way, it goes a bit too far perhaps -- I love Gradius, but R-Type goes a bit overboard. Great game and good series, but I don't love the games, they're just a bit too frustrating to play to be the best. The first R-Type game I got is R-Type DX for the GB/C, which does have level select, but even with that the game was frustrating and unlike Gradius games, after beating it once I was pretty much done with R-Type for a long time... In case you're wondering, BlaZeon isn't boring because the action parts are well designed and well thought through, and because with music as fantastic as it has, I don't mind the sometimes 10 or 20 second long pauses with nothing going on. The enemy-takeover mechanic is good, the game has a nice amount of variety, plenty of challenge (the last level is hard!), that awesome soundtrack... it's quite good. I don't see how you can love MUSHA but not their other shmups... MUSHA plays a lot like most of their other 4th-gen shmups -- Blazing Lazers, Space Megaforce, Spriggan, and Robo Aleste all are a lot like MUSHA in gameplay. I like Blazing Lazers the most of those, followed by Robo Aleste, then the other three in some order, but all are great games with a lot of similarities. It's definitely a very different style of gameplay from R-Type, that's for sure, but I like the best Compile shmups more than R-Type, myself.

I disagree about not counting Space Invaders (a static-screen shooter) and Choplifter III (a free-roaming shooter) in that 16, those are definitely shmups, Space Invaders particularly! It's not not a shmup just because it's static screen... Besides that though, counting those two I have 16 shmups for the SNES, only missing R-Type III, Imperium, Strike Gunner STG, BioMetal, or Aero Fighters (or Hunt for Red October).. I also have two of the Japan-only shmups, one static screen and one scrolling. Of the ones I do have, though... worst to best: D-Force - Below average game and the weakest shooter on the system, but some amusement can be had with this if you play the mode that only plays the zoomed-in stages and not the others. Darius Twin - This game should be good, and has two player co-op unlike the other 4th-gen Darius games, but... it's just so boring! I've never gotten far in this one wihtout turning it off. Super E.D.F. -- Earth Defense Force - Average game with constant slowdown and some annoying difficulty spikes. Galaxy Wars (J) - Weird Japan-only static-screen shooter where you manually fly missiles up the screen, trying to take out enemies without getting your missile shot. It's sort of a static shmup. Space Invaders - Good port of Space Invaders, but it's too bad it has nothing new here other than the two player mode. Phalanx - An average shooter with issues -- the bullets can be too hard to see sometimes. Raiden Trad - Raiden is a classic, and this is a decent version of the game. I know other versions are harder and more faithful, but still, I like this version despite its limitations, and it is at last the only 4th-gen version of Raiden with two player co-op! Super R-Type - Not as good as arcade R-Type II, but still Super R-Type is a great classic shmup, only held back by an absence of checkpoints before bosses, the slowdown, and that it's so similar to the first R-Type but isn't quite as great.. Thunder Spirits - Indeed this isn't as good as Thunder Force III, but it is still a fun shooter, slowdown aside. Pop'n TwinBee (J) - I don't love Twinbee as much as I do Gradius, but this is a fun, above-average game. Choplifter III - Pretty good game, and the last game in this classic series for quite some time. Super Nova [Darius Force] - One of the better Darius games. This game is really fun. Super Darius II (Turbo CD) is even better, but this game is good. Axelay - Its no Gradius, but Axelay is a very good shooter regardless. U.N. Squadron - Great classic shmup with unique game design. BlaZeon - A fantastic game! With an incredible soundtrack, decent graphics, and good, somewhat original gameplay, I like this game a lot. Space Megaforce - Another great classic from Compile. They made a lot of great 8 and 16-bit shmups. This game isn't their best of the generation, I like Robo Aleste and Blazing Lazers more, but it's really great. Firepower 2000 - This might be my favorite European shmup ever. Amazing game! Euro-shmups usually aren't the best, but this game is really good. Gradius III - I am a huge Gradius series fan, and this game is one of the best ever, slowdown or no. Of the ones I don't have, I'm sure I'd love Aero Fighters because I like the sequels and the Strikers 1945 series a lot. I'd also probably like R-Type III. Not sure about the others. So yeah, compared to the video I disagree most strongly about BlaZeon. I know most people consider it slow and boring, but I love the game. It's an A-grade game for sure on my list! Second on that list would be Space Megaforce, which deserves every bit of its high reputation. It is interesting to see you rank Super R-Type over R-Type III... you don't usually see that. I haven't played much of R-Type III, myself. The first R-Type is my favorite of the R-Type games I've played.

I've tried to beat the first level a decent number of times, but it's just impossible. I always get lost in the games horrible maze of passages. With a map it'd be easy enough, but the game has no map and everything looks the same... it's crazy-hard. They could at least have put markers on the screen telling you where you should turn! It's a decent game with nice graphics and an amusing intro video, but that gameplay... argh.

Pac-Man is a good game, and fun to play once in a while for a few minutes, but I just don't find it engaging enough to want to keep playing and playing it to get better. Sure, I'm not quite old enough to remember when it was new, but it's a super-popular game which never really went away, so that doesn't mean too much... On the other hand, I've always loved Defender. Awesome game. For your first point, sure, it's technically a single-screen platformer, I guess, though I wasn't sure if I should use the word "platformer" because that to me implies jumping and you can't jump in Popeye. So it's a single-screen side-view game, or something? As for colors, that looks like 5200 Popeye to me... what do you mean, missing colors? Right, of course. It does make sense that Coleco wouldn't support their top competition, the 5200, and only the older 2600 and Intellivision instead. Huh, I didn't know that. Extra lives would definitely be helpful, though it doesn't fix the games' biggest problems. Arkanoid is the standard that I judge all games in this genre by, not Breakout, and Breakout is very archaic in comparison in game mechanics, particularly in the one-block-at-a-time thing.

Do any of the A8 conversions support analog controls? Because the joystick is great for games with analog, but more of a mixed bag for digital-control games, which I'd presume most of the A8 originals would be...

Two mistakes in the Dig-Dug summary -- the game has ingame music of course, and you only need to drop 2 rocks for the bonus, not 3. I watched a video of the 7800 version to compare, the 5200 version has way better sound and music, but slightly worse graphics -- the 7800 has multiple colors in each sprite, instead of only one. Still, I definitely prefer the 5200 version, the better audio really is a big plus. Yeah, the sound is good, 7800 audio is so disappointing... and yeah, at some point I'll need a trackball and flash cart, there are a lot of unreleased games and Atari 8-bit ports I'd like to play on the actual system.

I somehow forgot about Dig-Dug, so here's the missing summary below. I'd like to edit it in to the first post, but I guess it won't let me? Bah. Also can't fix the number of summaries then, it should be 18 now and not 17. Dig-Dug - 2 player alternating. Dig-Dug is one of several Atari ports of popular Namco arcade games that Atari ported to the 5200; others I have include Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Pole Position. The game is a sort of top-down and sort of side-scrolling action game. The game is set underground, and you dig tunnels as you move. You play as a guy with a pump, and inflate monsters until they pop as a way of killing them. You have to kill all the monsters on each screen to progress, though when they're down to only one left it will try to run away. There are also rocks scattered around which you can try to get to fall on enemies. If you drop 3 rocks on a stage, a bonus item will appear for extra points, so get them. You can chase it down for more points, or let it go. It's a simple but well-made game. I don't have great memories of Dig-Dug, but I bought it anyway because it's a 5200 game and the price was reasonable. Previously I thought the game was okay, but not as good as its clone (of sorts) Mr. Do. Mr. Do is like Dig-Dug, but with improved gameplay variety; it's a pretty fun game. Dig-Dug, though, doesn't have anything to it beyond just doing the same thing over and over. You go around the screen, kill the monsters, and repeat. However, I found myself having fun this time! I'm sure the 7800 version that I also have is just as good, so I'm not sure why I like this more than when I last played that version a year or so ago, but I do. Dig-Dug was one of the bigger surprises here, I wasn't expecting too much but I actually find it pretty fun. Visually, Dig-Dug looks a lot like the later 7800 version. The game has good graphics which look like the arcade game, though as always they are lower resolution and don't quite match the arcade games' sprite detail. Still, the game looks good, and is a bit more colorful than many 5200 games seem to be, which is nice. The sound is very accurate to the arcade machine, both in the little theme tune that plays at the start and in the ingame sound effects. The gameplay is as good as any version of this game, too. The game controls well, and you can move around and fire easily. I had no issues controlling Dig-Dug. This game requires a bit of strategy, because as you move around the screen digging those tunnels you have to think about where you want the tunnels to connect. Monsters can travel through the rock, but only can walk normally along their starter tunnel areas or in the tunnels you dig. You also move faster while in a dug tunnel than while digging, sort of like Pac-Man while he's eating dots versus when moving faster in a cleared corridor. Still, this is for the most part a fairly simple arcade shooter. The pump mechanic is weird, as few other videogame characters use such a weapon and you have to repeatedly tap the button in order to kill an enemy, but it does work. The gameplay is simple, repetitive, and fun, and I've played this game more than I thought I would as I try to get farther in the game. There are only two enemy types in this game, but there are at least some new dirt colors as you progress to mix things up a bit, that's nice. Overall, Dig-Dug is a pretty good game that I definitely like. I do still like Mr. Do and its added variety more, but Dig-Dug is a good, simple arcade shooter wit ha little bit of a thinking side, and it's good fun stuff. Arcade port, other versions of Dig-Dug are on probably dozens of platforms. I also improved the last paragraph of the system-history article: There is one exception to that short lifespan issue, though -- Jack Tramiel discovered that they had warehouses full of Atari 5200 games and software when he bought the company, including three completed and packaged but not-released titles. He decided to sell it off at a discount, and it sold fairly well. The three new games, Gremlins (1986) and two Lucasarts titles, Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer (1986 or 1987, it's not clear), were nice additions to the system's library. I definitely want Fractalus, that looks like a pretty interesting game. I think that the good sales the 5200 had at this point help show that Atari made a mistake by deciding to abandon the system so quickly in 1984. Yes, the games industry was collapsing, but giving up on their console only helped it go down even faster. I always say that game companies need to either not release a system at all, or support it for a full life. If Atari was going to release the 5200, they needed to stick with it. Release a better controller and smaller system model, for example, and actual exclusive games. It's really too bad it got dumped so fast; if it wasn't a good idea they should have released something better instead. The hardware is a bit dated so that might have been a good option, but it's not too bad and does allow for some pretty good games. At least homebrew developers have helped fill in the gaps in the system's library by porting dozens of Atari 8-bit computer games over to the 5200, though! They have at least doubled the size of the 5200's library over the past decade-plus. I'll definitely need to get a flash cart at some point so I can play them all. That's the current state of the system -- mostly ignored, but occasionally a new Atari 8-bit port releases. There are also three original homebrew titles for the system that I know of that have been released on carts; this is far, far fewer homebrew games than other classic systems have, but at least there are all those 8-bit ports to give it a good volume of homebrew content even if almost none of it is new.

Background & My Thoughts on Getting the System -- The Atari 5200 is really interesting and kind of good. I grew up playing PC and Nintendo games, not Atari, so the 5200 isn't a console I knew much about as a kid. Once I did hear about it, it interested me because of its short lifespan, small library, and poor reputation; this made me want to try it to see if it was better than people said, as such things often are in this industry. So, in the '00s I played a lot of emulated games, and one thing I tried were the 5200 and 7800. I probably played 5200 games more than 7800 games, intrestingly enough. I liked the games, I just wasn't sure what I'd think of the very-unpopular controller. That's the big thing most people dislike about this system, after all. So, the first Atari system I got was a 7800, which I got in early 2013. At the time I kind of wanted the 5200, but that wasn't available locally then while the 7800 was, so I got one. It's a good system and playing 2600 and 7800 games was interesting and often fun, but sadly that console mostly stopped working in early to mid 2014 -- its power button died. I really, really need to get it fixed, but haven't. Instead, in early August this year, I got a 5200... and I like it for sure. One thing I've noticed about the 5200 is that while the library is small, it's really high quality! Most of the 17 games I own are good, only a few are only average, and none are bad. All of the games are fun to play to some degree. Of course, almost all of the games I have are conversions of popular arcade games, so that does make sense -- they are working from quality source material. And that is one issue with this system, its library mostly consists of ports. There aren't many 5200-exclusive games, in fact there are very, very few. That is too bad, but at least the games it did get are mostly good, and often have some differences versus other versions of the games. The 5200 isn't powerful enough to do perfect ports of early '80s arcade games, so 5200 games are at least somewhat unique, and no 5200 game is available on any modern platform -- while Atari and Activision have done collections and re-releases of many of their 2600 and 7800 games, 5200 games have not been re-released, unfortunately. This is a pretty nice system which I love to have. I have played the 5200 at least some every day since I bought it in early August, and am still having a lot of fun with the system. Even though it has some flaws, overall I definitely like the 5200 and it's great I finally have one. System History -- The Atari 5200 released in November 1982. It was a part of a new wave of consoles that released that year, which I consider to be the beginning of the third generation though most disagree. See my article on that issue for more on my thoughts on the issue of the 'missing' console generation of 1982-1984. This new wave of systems came two and a half years after the Mattel Intellivision's release in late 1979. It is, essentially, consolized Atari 400 or 800-line 8-bit computer. Instead of designing an all-new console for their second home system, Atari decided to instead base it off of their already-existing computer line released in 1979. This meant that the hardware wasn't entirely up-to-date. Computers are more powerful than consoles, in general, so the system is competitive with other consoles of the day, but it could have been a lot more powerful than it is. This can really be highlighted by pointing out that the much more powerful NES released in Japan in June 1983, only eight months after the 5200 did in the US. While the 5200 is within the same generation as the NES power-wise, it's far behind it within that generation. The 5200's main competition was the Colecovision, released in August 1982. The Colecovision sold much better than the 5200 and has about twice as many games released officially in the '80s, 120-plus on Coleco versus only 60-something for the 5200. Nintendo took notice of the Colecovision, and supposedly designed the NES to be better than that console. This paid off when Sega decided to put the hardware behind the Colecovision in their first console, the Sega SG-1000; it released the same day as the Famicom (the NES's Japaense name), but is far less powerful because the Colecovision and 5200 were probably a bit dated by the time of their release. Versus the Colecovision, SG-1000, or NES, the 5200 has very different looking graphics. All three of those systems have sprite-based displays, with mostly tile-based screens with sprites on them. On the 5200, though, graphics are much more pixelated and blocky, in that signature Atari style you see on the 2600, 5200, and 7800. The 7800 does have better sprites than the 5200, but it still mostly lags behind the NES in such things. It's not a bad look, just different. You get used to it. Design-wise, the Atari 5200 is a very large system. The system has a large space on the back that lets you store two controllers in the system itself, an unnecessary feature that makes the box larger than it needs to be. Atari was thinking of releasing a "5100" system which would have been smaller and removed the controller storage space, but it was not released. Design-wise, the 5200 is clearly the system that the Atari 2600 Jr. and the Atari 7800 both copied, because the 5200 and 7800 have nearly identical design stylings, apart from the 5200's somewhat larger size. There are two 5200 models. The first has four controller ports and an external box with both power and automatic RF-switch components; the second model, only two controller ports and standard power and manual-RF switch ports. I have a model two; they are more reliable, but I do wish I had four controller ports. There is also an Atari 2600 adapter for the 5200, which works on all 2-port models but only certain 4-port ones. I tried to get one of these, but sadly it doesn't work right -- it's got the CRAZIEST graphical glitching on screen. Too bad, I really would like to play 2600 games again. The cartridges are similarly a bit bigger, and like Western NES carts are mostly filled with air, with only a small circuit board in a larger case. They do look nice, though, so I don't mind the large size. As with all consoles before the NES, you cannot save in 5200 games, and instead will just have to film the screen or write down your high scores on paper, if you want any record of your accomplishments. As almost all games are score-based games, keeping a high-score book is a good idea for classic console gaming, and I do do that. Of course, no discussion of the 5200 is complete without discussing the great videogame crash of 1983-1984. In spring 1983, not long after the 5200's release, videogame sales began to drop. There were many causes of this, but one major one was that the licensing model of console gaming did not exist yet, so third-party games made the first party absolutely nothing, and they had no control over them. In 1982 a huge number of third-party studios started up, and they flooded the market with mediocre and derivitive games. Many failed to sell. The first parties helped fill shelves too, by making games for their competition; if you can't make money off of third-party games for your system, at least make money off of people who bought the other machines, the thinking was. So, there are Coleco games on the 2600 and Intellivision, Atari games on the TI-99/4A, Intellivision, and Colecovision, and Mattel games on the 2600. Interestingly, few arcade developers made their own home ports at this point, so numerous arcade games by a wide variety of developers were converted over to consoles by Atari, Parker Bros., Coleco, and some others. Some arcade companies did eventually make their own games, Sega did start releasing their own 2600 and 5200 games after initially licensing some out to Coleco, but most were not done by the original developers. So, in the list below I always list the original developer of arcade games not made by their publisher. This hurt Atari later on though, as on the Jaguar for instance they couldn't just release new Pac-Man or Berzerk games -- those games were not originally Atari properties. Another problem that helped cause the crash was that Warner Bros., Atari's corporate parent since the late '70s, didn't understand that new consoles would be needed, so even after the 5200 released, they continued to focus as much or more on the 2600 than they did their new system. The 5200 versions of games also on the 2600 are generally much better, but they didn't get nearly the attention they needed, and the system badly needed exclusives, which it has almost none of. These issues confused gamers and delayed a transition to new hardware that needed to happen. Also, the industry was still quite young, so stores were not as used to videogames as they would later become and many thought that they were a fad which was starting to pass, so they ditched them at bargain-basement prices; consumers either stuck with their old systems or moved over to computers as the console industry faded; and sales began to crash. As the panic spread, record profits quickly turned into record losses for many companies. A lot of those studios founded in 1982 didn't last two years before being shut down by their owners or corporate parents -- CBS Video Games, Fox Games of the Century, US Games (a division of Quaker Oats), Parker Bros., and more stopped making games for years after 1984. Activision, the first third-party studio, did survive, but they were one of the few. Parker Bros. and Activision were the Atari 5200's two strongest third-party supporters, I should add -- Activision released 13 5200 games, and Parker Bros. eight. Most are ports, but they include some pretty good games. Atari's first-party 5200 games are often pretty good too, as I have found out. But just having good games wasn't enough, and as sales dropped, Atari's clueless owner, Warner Bros., decided to get out. After supporting the system well from release in Nov. '82 until the end of 1983, Atari drastically cut back on 5200 support the next year. Almost all 5200 games planned for 1984 were cancelled. Some have leaked to the fans and been released as free downloads for those with flash carts or homebrew cartridges of the games, but others just vanished. The only 5200 game released by Atari in 1984 was Choplifter. Third parties did rlease games that year, so the 1984 release list isn't too bad thanks mostly to Activision and Parker Bros., but the system was killed off far too early. Even worse, Atari bought up the rights to a new system designed by GCC (the designers of the massive hit game Ms. Pac-Man), which they dubbed the Atari 7800, and decided to release it in 1984, not even two years after they had just released a console! That's just insane stuff, as bad a move as the worst of '90s Sega mistakes. Killing a console that quickly and replacing it with a new one is NOT the way to get consumers to want to stick with your company, they will instead start to mistrust you! But after a test market of the system, it was put off because instead WB sold the console and computer side of Atari to Jack Tramiel. WB did keep the arcade side of Atari, though, which was dubbed Atari Games. Atari Games would become a semi-independent company partially or fully under WB's control until being bought by Midway in 1996. Most of Atari's game developers stayed with the arcade division, though, and Jack Tramiel didn't hire on many of Atari Consumer's employees, so when he finally did release the 7800 in 1986 it had an incredibly thin game library. In its four-year-plus lifespan, the 7800 only managed about as many game releases as there are on the 5200 even though its lifespan was, for the most part, twice as long. There is one exception to that, though -- Jack Tramiel discovered that they had warehouses full of Atari 5200 games and software when he bought the company, including three completed and packaged but not-released titles. He decided to sell it off at a discount, and it sold fairly well. The three new games, Gremlins (1986) and two Lucasarts titles, Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer (1986 or 1987, it's not clear), were nice additions to the system's library. I definitely want Fractalus, that looks like a pretty interesting game. I think that the good sales the 5200 had at this point help show that Atari made a mistake by deciding to abandone the system so quickly in 1984. Yes, the games industry was collapsing, but giving up on their console only helped it go down even faster. It's really too bad. At least homebrew developers have helped fill in the gaps in the system's library by porting dozens of Atari 8-bit computer games over to the 5200, though! They have at least doubled the size of the 5200's library over the past decade-plus. I'll definitely need to get a flash cart at some point so I can play them all. That's the current state of the system -- mostly ignored, but occasionally a new Atari 8-bit port releases. There are also three original homebrew titles for the system that I know of that have been released on carts; this is far, far fewer homebrew games than other classic systems have, but at least there are all those 8-bit ports to give it a good volume of homebrew content even if almost none of it is new. The Controller -- So, yes, I do think that the controller is decent; once I put together a working controller I was pretty happy with it. It isn't the most comfortable controller, admittedly, but it works well. The controllers are fragile, I had to buy two of them to have the parts to put together one good one, but if you get a good controller they're fine. The 5200 controller is very innovative in some ways. It was the first controller with a pause button, as far as I know, and that's a FANTASTIC addition! None of the other classic consoles let you pause your game, so that you can on the 5200 is really great. The system also has an analog joystick, two buttons (doubled on each side, but that's just for left or right handed play, they aren't different buttons on each side), and a 12-key keypad. The Intellivision popularized keypads on console controllers, and the Colecovision and Atari 5200 both copied the concept of a vertically-oriented controller with the stick/pad on top, keypad below, and buttons on the sides. The problem is that this design is not comfortable or good for your hands over long play sessions. And that is an issue with the 5200, after an hour or two of play it does get uncomfortable. Still, 5200 games are short, so I don't mind this too much. The side buttons are often accused of being mushy, and this is true, but I think they're fine, so long as they work well as mine do. And as for the stick, it's analog and doesn't entirely auto-center. It's fantastic for analog games which make use of the analog nature of the stick, as some games do, but games which just use it as a big digital stick can have some response issues, I do admit. Perhaps the biggest complaint about the controller, though, is that the stick doesn't auto-center. I didn't entirely understand what this means until I used the controller; I thought that maybe the stick would just stay where you left it, but that isn't entirely true. Really, the stick partially autocenters, but not entirely. So, the issue is that the only centering this stick has is a rubber thing around the stick. This moves the stick back towards the center, but won't spring it back to center when you let go of the stick as a good joystick should do. Atari really cheaped out with the stick design, and that's really unfortunate because it hurt the console. The 5200 would have done better with a better controller, I think; it has other problems of course, but this is one of them. Still, I do think that the criticism the controller receives is overdone. The controller isn't that bad, really! Games which do use analog really benefit from the stick, and some games play better with this controller than they would with any of the digital-only controllers which almost all consoles over the decade after this would use. I think that the 5200 controller was a good idea, and love the Start, Pause, and even Reset buttons that are right on the controller -- it really is a huge improvement over other systems which either don't have those buttons or, like the later Atari 7800 or Sega SG-1000 and Master System, put them on the system itself. The 5200 did it first and better. Even the NES doesn't have a reset button on the controller! It's quite handy, particularly for classic arcade games like these. I don't like the keypad nearly as much, but you don't need to use it much in games; most games use only the stick and side buttons. It works okay in the few games that do require you to use the keypad. Favorite games -- 5. Popeye 4. Super Cobra 3. Pole Position 2. Galaxian 1. Defender Honorable Mentions: Dig-Dug, Astro Chase, Centipede, Missile Command, Star Raiders Notes for the List Below -- -analog control required means that the game actually makes use of the Atari 5200's analog joystick, so you have proportional control in some way. I thought this was worth mentioning for anyone who hates the controller and wants to use some adapter instead; these games won't work well with non-5200 controllers. -two buttons required mark games that actually use both of the side buttons on the 5200 controller. Most games only need one button, but some use two. Non-5200 controllers will only have one button on them that you can use. -Keypad required means that the game actually uses the keypad ingame during play, and not only to select options. Almost all 5200 games use some keypad keys to switch game modes, select the number of players, and the like, but only a few actually have you using the keys during play. -Trackball supported marks games that advertise support for the Atari 5200 trackball controller. I don't have one yet, but I'd really like to get a 5200 trackball, it sounds great. -When I talk about the other platforms these games are available on, excepting the Atari 8-bit (400/800) computer line, the other versions of the games here are not the same as these versions. No Atari 5200 game is available for legal digital download on any modern system, so if you want to play real 5200 games you need to either emulate or buy the real system. Game Opinion Summaries - 17 total -- Astro Chase - 1 player. Astro Chase is a pretty interesting space shooter game. This game is interesting for several reasons -- it's one of only two computer conversions I have for 5200; the other 15 games I have are all arcade ports. Parker Brothers released this port of an Atari 8-bit game by First Star Software in 1983. Astro Chase has good presentation, with nice graphics, an actual musical soundtrack, and little cutscenes after every four waves or so. The gameplay is good, but could be a bit better, though. The main drawbacks are repetition, control issues, and a low difficulty level for too long. In the game, you play as a flying saucer protecting the earth from waves of missiles. If even one missile reaches the planet, it blows up, game over. You can't actually win, so Earth's demise is inevitable; very few games of this era have endings, unless the game is very short. That's too bad, but the gameplay is fun once you get used to it, even if it could be better. The play area has the earth in the center and a field of asteroids and planets around it. You have maybe a nine-screen area to fly around in, approximately; there are some barriers preventing you from flying any further into space. The play area doesn't expand as you get farther, what you see is what you get. The planet and asteroid obstacles are probably randomly are-located for every level, though, so there is variety to the level designs. The gameplay is just basic shooting, though. As you fly around there are two types of targets, missiles and enemy ships. Missiles can't hurt you, but you must shoot them all down before they hit the Earth. They are small, and can be hard to hit because of the controls -- you have only eight-direction movement and firing in this game, not full analog control, unfortunately. Full analog aiming and movement would have really helped this game. The second enemy type are various kinds of enemy ships which are trying to kill you; these can't hurt the Earth, but will shoot or ram you if they can. Each wave in the game works the same way. You start near the Earth, and fly around looking for missiles to shoot at while avoiding or shooting down the endless waves of enemy shops that attack you while you do so. It's fun for a while but gets repetitive. Still, I do like the game. Visually, the game looks nice for the time, but as with a lot of games on this system there is only limited color variety. All planets, asteroids, and such are purple; your ship is one color; and each enemy type is a single color as well. I do like the soundtrack, it's one of the better ones in a 5200 game I have; few of Atari's 5200 games have full soundtracks. The controls are the thing that holds this game back, though. You move with the stick, in only eight directions, and while holding the lower button can fire. While holding the button you will autofire, and the stick will now aim your shots, while your ship continues moving in whichever direction it was moving before you hit the button. So, it's a limited sort of twinstick mode, but it doesn't work nearly as well as a real one because you can't actually control your movements while aiming, you just fly along in a straight line. It is amusing to see your ship bounce off of everything as it does, though. When you hit things you lose energy, but you have so much of it that it won't run out anytime soon. You won't be getting game over soon either, because Astro Chase gives you a lot of extra lives! If you're decent at the game a game can last a good while. The game does let you choose your starting wave at the beginning, though, which is a nice option. I would like to see all of the little cutscenes, I haven't gotten them all yet. Overall, Astro Chase is a good but not great game. It's perhaps not quite as good as I was hoping after seeing the nice visuals, but it is a decently fun game, if you luck into finding a cheap copy as I did. Still, it is great to see a 5200 game that clearly is "next-gen" compared to the system's numerous enhanced Atari 2600 ports, and isn't available on that older platform. The sound and graphics are good as well, and the gameplay decent. Analog aiming, a better difficulty curve, and an ending would be great features to add to this game, but it's fairly good as it is. Despite my criticisms, this is a pretty good game for sure. Atari 8-bit computer port not available on any other console. Berzerk - 2 player alternating. Berzerk, from Atari, released in 1982 and is a port of an arcade top-down shooting action game by Stern, much better known now for its pinball tables. I covered the Atari 2600 version of this game previously, in my 2600/7800 thread, but now I have the 5200 version as well. Berzerk on the 5200 is a lot like the 2600 version, but with better graphics, some voice samples, and gameplay more accurate to the arcade game. As with the 2600 version, though, while I do like this game, I don't love it; in games like this the limitations of this kind of very basic design really stand out to me. Berzerk appears to be a maze game, but it really isn't. This game is made up of an infinite number of randomly-designed static screens. You play as the one human, trying futilely to escape from a robot army. You move with the stick, and fire by hitting the button while pointing the stick in the direction you want to shoot. 8-direction firing (with two sticks or something) would be awesome in this kind of game, as it is the controls feel a bit limiting. The controls are a bit slow thanks to the 5200's joystick, but do work. The walls are electrified and kill any human or robot who touches them, and enemies will all shoot at you as well, and move towards your position. The game has a top-down perspective, and each room has a different wall layout. The grid isn't too small, though, so you don't have any complex mazes to navigate, just a couple of walls here and there. There are also exits on all four sides of the screen, unless one has been locked as they sometimes are; then you need to use a different exit. Your goal is to get as many points as you can before you die, and you get points from killing robots (or luring them to their doom by getting them to bump into walls) and from point bonuses you get after leaving a screen. If you take too long on a screen, the killer smilie face Evil Otto will appear and start chasing you. He is pretty much invincible, so get off the screen when the voice sample announcing his presence plays. This game can't play voice samples during gameplay, so the game will always pause when one plays, or play them between stages. Still, this is the only 5200 game I have with voices, and it's great that it has them at all. I wish more 5200 games used voices, but I imagine it took up a lot of cart space for the tiny amounts they had for these games. And that latter issue is my other, main issue with this game -- it feels like there is no point to this game! You can't escape the robots; there is no real maze, only an endless number of always-new random rooms (so if you go back through a door you just go to a new random room, not the last place you were); and your only real goal is to play for points. I do enjoy score-attack play sometimes, it's fun enough in Galaxian for instance, but in Berzerk I'm left wanting more. At a minimum, actual mazes to work through that then loop endlessly once completed would have been a huge improvement over the endless succession of random rooms you have here. Still, Berzerk is a classic for a reason, and the game does play well. This version of the game is not was good as the arcade original thanks to not-quite-as-good graphics and slower controls, but it is still a solid game that's fun for a while and shows off the system's voice capabilities nicely. Arcade port also on the Atari 2600 and Vectrex. There is also a sequel, Frenzy, released exclusively on Colecovision and arcades. Centipede - 2 player alternating, analog control required, Trackball supported. 1982's Centipede is a port of one of Atari's most popular arcade hits. It is yet another shooter, this time a static-screen shooter. You can move around a box on the bottom of the screen, and shoot up at centipedes, spiders, mushrooms, and more. Centipede has been released on innumerable platforms over the years, so there is no particular reason to get this version, but if you do it is a good version, particularly if you have the trackball; sadly, I don't have one yet, though I do want one. Comparing this version to the Atari 7800 version of Centipede, the main question is, do you want minutely better graphics and some neat simultaneous multiplayer modes (the 7800 version, since it has those while the 5200 is alternating only), or do you want better controls (the 5200 version, since the 7800 is digital only)? Or just get both as I have, and have both options available when you want them, that works too. For single player modes the two versions are the same -- both are Centipede, with four difficulty settings and graphics that aren't quite up to the arcade games' standard. Visually the two versions look very similar, but spiders look slightly better on the 7800, as they use two colors instead of one, so I guess it has a tiny visual edge. Your ship, the centipede segments, and the mushrooms look slightly different on each system, but are about equivalent artistically. The 5200 version stretches the game to fullscreen while the 7800 runs in a border to maintain a more arcadelike look I guess, but really they're about the same visually. In terms of sound, as usual the 5200 sounds better, thanks to its superior sound chip. This game doesn't have music, only sound effects and such, but they do sound nice. Gameplay is fast and frenetic. The analog stick gives good analog control over your ship, and you have analog speed control as well -- you move at several speeds depending on how far you push the stick. The centipedes are your main target, but watch out for the spiders, they get tough to avoid very quickly! Some centipede segments drop new mushrooms when they die, filling up the screen. You need to keep shooting to clear out those mushrooms, they can't hurt you but will redirect the centipedes, hastening their trip down the screen. Each time you kill all parts of a centipede the screen's colors change. In addition to centipede parts and spiders, there are also a couple of other enemies that appear once in a while, including one type which drop down the screen and another that move across the upper part of the screen, giving you a point bonus if you can hit them. Centipede is a difficult game, and games are often short, but definitely has a strong "just one more game" factor that can keep you playing for a lot longer than you initially meant to. It's a great classic and I definitely like it, this version of Centipede is pretty good! Sure, Centipede is on dozens of platforms, but I think this one was worth getting. It's surely even better with the trackball. Arcade port, also available (in slightly different forms) on dozens of platforms. Defender - 2 player alternating, two buttons plus keypad required, Trackball supported. Defender for the 5200 is Atari's version of the Williams arcade side-scrolling shmup of the same name. An absolute work of genius, the original arcade version of Defender released in 1980 and is one of the greatest games ever made. Eugene Jarvis's first game might be his best! Robotron 2084 and Smash T.V. are also fantastic, but I like Defender even more. And fortunately, Atari did a fantastic job with this port of the game. Light-years better and more accurate than the mediocre 2600 "Defender" game, Defender for the 5200 is fantastic and one of the best games on the system. The graphics and sound are very close to the arcade game, the controls are great, and gameplay is about as good as it gets. Really the only flaw with 5200 Defender is that it's easier than the arcade game. This game is challenging, but it's not quite the crushing challenge of the arcade game, particularly on lower difficulty settings. I have always loved Defender, with its simple but very stylish graphics, droning sound effects, and monumental challenge. So, it didn't take long to fall in love with this version! The game may be easier to control and play than the arcade game, but it's still amazing. In Defender, you try to save humans from an alien armada. Of course, as in most games of this era the game is an endless game you can't win, and are instead just playing for score. I prefer being able to beat games, but good endless score games can be lots of fun too, and this is one of the best. This is a scrolling spaceship shooter, or shmup. Each level is a horizontal looping stage, so if you keep going in either direction you will go endlessly through the stage. There is a map of most of the level on the top of the screen, and the play window below. The map shows nearby enemy Lander and human locations, and where you are, so it's vital. You move up and down with the Y-axis on the stick, move with the X-axis (but remember that the ship will have to reverse directions before you can go the other way, so you can't just shoot at things on both sides of you without a delay), fire with the lower button, bomb with the upper one, and warp by hitting any keypad button. The arcade game had only buttons with no stick for movement, so control here is a bit easier I think. Gameplay is fast and furious, and at times the screen is filled with enemies. I have always liked the very cool white line graphic that Defender uses for your shots, and it looks great here. 5200 Defender is lower-resolution and blockier than the arcade game, but otherwise looks fantastic and is a great representation of the game. All of the enemies are here, from the landers trying to capture the humans, to the tougher enemies that home in on you if a lander captures a human, to the small UFOs, block things, and more that try to kill you. You do get extra lives, but between the many enemies and their bullets, you'll die eventually. If all humans are killed, the ground blows up and you have to fight some tough battles in space before continuing on a new land area, as in the arcade game. Defender is a frenetic game where you fly back and forth, blasting away at enemies as you try to save the humans from the landers. The engine, shot, and droning intro sounds are just like the arcade game, and gameplay is as close as you could get on hardware of this era. Overall, Atari 5200 Defender is one of the better versions I have played of one of the best space shooters of all time. It is easier than the arcade game even on the hardest setting, but it is still a hard game that will take a long time to master, and sometimes it's nice to play a slightly easier version of Defender. An arcade port, versions of Defender are available on many platforms old and new. Galaxian - 2 player alternating, analog control required, Trackball supported. Galaxian, another 1982 release from Atari, is a port of Namco's arcade single-screen shmup that is probably more famous as the predecessor to the all-time classic Galaga. I have always liked Galaga a lot, as I said in my Atari 7800 list, but Galaxian is a game I have mostly overlooked in favor of its more famous sequel. Well, playing this version of the game now, Galaxian is a pretty great game too! And this 5200 version of the game is fantastic, as well. 5200 Galaxian has great graphics, very good controls, eleven difficulty levels to choose from, and great, classic static-screen-shooter gameplay. As in most games of this kind, gameplay is simple: you move left and right with the stick, and fire up with the lower button. Only one of your shots can be on the screen at a time, so try to get used to the aiming, it is important. You will autofire by holding the button down, but with only one shot at once on screen I find it often better to press the button to shoot, so you can aim better. In Galaxian there is a formation of enemies at the top of the screen, and some regularly dive down at you from their places above. The key to scoring points in Galaxian is that you get more points for hitting diving enemies than enemies in formation at the top. In this version, unlike the arcade game, there is actually a different sound effect for hitting diving enemies than ones in formation, which helps encourage you to try your best to shoot at the diving enemies, not just to wipe out the barely-moving formations. I really like this. The sound effects as enemies dive down at you are also great stuff and add to the game. Like most 5200 games this game doesn't have music, but it does have great sounds. The other major addition to this 5200 version of Galaga is pretty nice: analog movement controls! Unlike the digital arcade game, here you have two movement speeds, so you will move faster if you press the stick harder, and slower if you don't move it as far. It's a great feature that helps you dodge through the forests of fire that can fill the screen in this game. Maybe digital controls would be better, but I think 5200 Galaxian controls pretty well, this game is great fun to play. Galaxian is a nice-looking game, with a great starfield background and enemies of several colors. The yellow enemies are the boss enemies, brown are their guards, and the others are the normal enemy ships. You get more points for killing yellow enemies if they dive down with guards and you take out the guards first and then the boss enemy -- you get only 150 points for a solo diving yellow boss, but a full 800 for if you kill two guards and then the boss enemy they dove at you with, all in one pass. Figuring out the timing to hit enemies is tricky, but this game rewards practice. The numerous difficulty levels are nice as well, as they scale up from tough to crazy-walls-of-bullets hard. On that one though, 5200 Galaxian does have one flaw: lots of slowdown! When a lot is going on on screen, Galaxian will slow down significantly. I don't know if the hardware really can't do better than this or if this is just a symptom of an early title for the system, but it is unfortunate. Otherwise though, this is a great static-screen shmup. I had never really played much Galaxian before getting this game, but I sure will be in the future! It's too bad that the 5200 didn't get a version of Galaga, to see what it could do compared to the great 7800 version of the game, but this is also a pretty good game. It's more traditional and Space Invaders-styled than Galaga is, but it's also a fantastic game. The 5200 version of the game looks, sounds, and plays great, and is one of the bigger surprises here for me. Arcade port; the arcade version is available on numerous platforms, but this version is 5200-only. Joust - 2 player simultaneous. Joust, from Atari, is a conversion of the Williams arcade game. I have never loved Joust all that much, so I got this expecting to not like it that much, and unfortunately, that is accurate. Joust has an awesome story, but the gameplay is a bit frustrating. Joust is a side-view arcade action game. You are a jousting knight riding a flying ostrich, and have to defeat other jousting knights. So yeah, the story is awesome, but that gameplay... I don't know, it's a good game, but ever since I first played Joust as a kid I haven't liked it that much. Nintendo's Joust clone Balloon Fight might be slightly better. Still, Joust is at least an okay game, but that's about it. The stick moves you left and right, and the lower button flaps your bird's wings, making you 'jump' higher into the air. The 5200 version of this game is good, but not the best version of Joust; I don't mind the 5200 controller, but it's not ideal for this game. Flap control is essential in this game, and the fire button, while decent, isn't the best. A bigger issue than the controller is the game itself, though -- Joust is an INCREDIBLY floaty game. It's very hard to go where you want to in the air because you're floating all over. That's not just this version, that's Joust in general and it's always been one of my biggest problems with the game. Balloon Fight has tighter, better controls. Joust is a combat game. You defeat an enemy by hitting them from a higher altitude, so the higher lance wins when two sprites collide. Good luck, you'll need it. This is a single-screen arcade game, so on each screen you need to defeat all the enemy knights. Defeated enemies turn into eggs, which then fall down to earth. If they land in lava they burn up, but if they land on the ground you'll need to walk over them to defeat them and get points or the enemy will respawn. There is only one basic stage, but as you progress sometimes some platforms will vanish, giving the game some variety. There are also several different enemy types. Still, Joust has little variety, every stage is similar. Of course that is how most games of this era work, but I don't have quite as much fun playing this game as I do many of the other 5200 games I have. Every attempt I make at playing Joust ends with me frustrated at the controls, and I never have been able to stick with it long enough to get good; I'd rather play a game I like more instead. Still, this is a fine port of the game and looks and plays well. The graphics look a lot like the arcade game, the sound is good, and it controls like Joust, for people who like how this game controls. Arcade port, also available on dozens of other consoles. Kangaroo - 2 player alternating. Kangaroo is another arcade port by Atari, this time of a game they published themselves in the arcades, though Atari may not have developed the arcade version. Kangaroo is a Donkey Kong clone single-screen platformer. It's a decent game with badly flawed controls. You play as a mother kangaroo, and have to reach your joey (your kidnapped baby kangaroo) in order to beat each screen. As in Donkey Kong, there are four screens in the game, each harder than the last. Your enemies in this game are a legion of monkeys who are dead-set on stopping you. They climb up and down the sides of the screen and sometimes come onto the platforms, and throw things at the kangaroo that you'll have to duck under or jump over. You can attack them with your punch attack, used with the lower button. There are pickups along the way for points, and if you hit the bell more will appear that you can go back for if you wish for a higher score but some added risk. You need to be perfect with your jumps between platforms here too, because falling even a single pixel means immediate death, which is kind of annoying. Kangaroo is a hard game, and I haven't yet beaten all four screens though I have reached screen four. Kangaroo is also on the Atari 2600, and I have that version. I like that this version has four screens, that one only has three. Visually Kangaroo looks okay, but certainly doesn't push the 5200. This version is a step over the 2600 version and everything looks much clearer, but it's still only an average-looking game. As fopr sound, there is a song that plays before you start, but as with most 5200 games, there isn't ingame music most of the time. A little tune does play when you hit the bell, though. The audio is decent, but seriously, more 5200 games should have had soundtracks, the audio chip can handle it! The biggest issue with this game, though, are the controls. The controls have not been improved over the 2600, and thanks to this joystick might be even worse here. On the 2600, up for jump was a sad necessity, you punch with the button and there is no second button to jump with on that controller. The 5200 does have two buttons, though... but you still must use up to jump! It's horrible, and kind of ruins the game. Getting used to the jumping in this game will take some serious practice. You need to push the stick in the direction you need to go in, then diagonal forward in that direction, then back down or you'll keep jumping and maybe jump into some hole up ahead. It's clumsy and doesn't work well. Why in the world couldn't they have let you use one of the buttons to jump with, the game would be pretty good if they had done that! As it is though, Kangaroo is an okay game with a big learning curve. Because you need to recenter this stick after each move, you really need to pay attention to every move in this game, and make sure to move the stick back to center after each jump or duck. It does work, but better controls, that is a jump button, would have helped a lot. I have started to get more used to the game with some practice, though, so it is playable. The stages have some nice variety; I like the stage with the tower of monkeys you can knock down if you wish, that's fun stuff. Still, overall, Kangaroo is only average thanks to average visuals and the awful jumping controls. Still, as one of the few officially-released platformers on the 5200, it's worth getting if you have the system. As flawed as it is, as a platformer fan I do like that I have this game, it can be a fun challenge. Arcade port, also on Atari 2600. Missile Command - 2 player alternating, analog control required, Trackball supported. Missile Command was one of Atari's biggest arcade hits of the early '80s, so they made sure to port the game over to the 5200. This is an endless missile-defense game with a side-view single-screen view. You have six cities to protect from missiles, planes, little homing triangles of doom, and more. You move a cursor around the screen, and each press of the lower button fires off a missile from your centrally-located silo. The arcade version had three silos, each with a button, but this version has only one, like the 2600 version. It'd have been nice to see two, at least, one for each main button on the controller. Fired missiles explode once they hit the point you targeted, and your goal is to destroy the falling enemy warheads in those explosions. These missiles will also blow up in the air, maybe causing chain reactions. The missiles come in waves, and after each wave your score is tallied. You have a limited number of missiles per wave, and get a replacement city each 10,000 points, which the game will remember if you have all six intact. Missile Command is a simple game, but extremely difficult! This is one of those brilliant classics, perfectly designed to be fun for a minute but to take many hours to master. This 5200 version of the game may have worse graphics and simpler gameplay than the arcade original, but thanks to the analog stick in the controller it does have pretty good controls. The 5200 joystick makes a pretty solid trackball or spinner replacement, as this game, Centipede, and Super Breakout all show. I imagine the controls are even better with the 5200 trackball, but they work pretty well with the standard controller too! This game controls great and is a lot of fun to play. Sure, the graphics definitely could be better; 5200 Missile Command looks better than the 2600 game, but this system can do a lot more than this. And while the sound is decent, it's nothing great. But with great controls and constant action, 5200 Missile Command is a very good game despite its simplified design and lacking presentation. Missile Command is one of Atari's great classics, and even without the trackball this is a fantastic version of the game. Missile Command does get very hard very quickly, but it's supposed to be that way. This is a game about a nuclear war. You are doomed and can't win, just like it would be in a real nuclear war, something which felt much more likely when this game was released during the Cold War than it does today. Each game ends with a pretty nice THE END screen, on a red background, which then starts blowing up. With gameplay this great, though, you'll want to try again right away for sure! Missile Command is great, one of the upper tier of 5200 games I have in terms of fun factor. Arcade conversion; the arcade version has been ported to innumerable consoles, though this specific version is 5200-exclusive. Pac-Man - 2 player alternating. Another Atari port of a Namco classic, Pac-Man for the 5200 is a pretty good port of one of the most popular arcade games of all time. While I don't hate the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man as much as many people do, this version is worlds better as it actually looks and plays a lot like the real thing, something that cannot be said for that game. Pac-Man, the most popular maze game, is a pretty good game but has never been one of my favorite classic arcade games; it's a great game, but while I do like it and think it's a fun game, I've never gotten hooked by Pac-Man enough to want to get good at it; it's something I'll have some fun with for a few minutes here and there, but don't love enough to take too seriously. So, while this version of Pac-Man is great technically, and plays fairly well though it does have some control issues, it's not one of my most-played 5200 games because I don't love this game as much as some of the others I have for the system. Still, I can't deny Pac-Man's greatness, or its importance. I guess I just prefer a bit more complexity in a game like this, either through more complex game systems and more variety, as you see in Turtles for the Odyssey 2 (and arcades); that game is very obscure, but fantastic. Pac-Man is a simpler game. You are a yellow circle with a mouth and eyeball, and have to eat all of the dots in each level's single-screen maze. Four enemies called ghosts chase you around the maze, trying to kill you. Near the four corners are power pills, time-limited super-dots which let you eat the ghosts instead. Everything works here just like it does in the arcade game. The stage is identical every time, but as you get farther the enemies get faster and bonus item types change. There are also several in-between-level skits to see. It's nice that they kept those in this version of the game. Visually, the game looks like a slightly downgraded version of the arcade game. Everything looks similar to the original, but as with most 5200 games, the resolution is lower, objects blockier, and colors duller than in the arcade game. Still, for a 1982 console game this looks fairly good. It doesn't quite match up to the NES version of Pac-Man visually, but it's close and plays just as well. Other than the screen resolution and detail, the biggest difference between the two is that the NES version attempts to replicate the arcade games' vertical monitor and has a sidebar, while the lower-rez 5200 version is full-screen. This makes the maze a bit different looking, but it's still clearly the Pac-Man maze, and the gameplay is the same. For sound, it's a decent approximation of arcade Pac-Man's sound effects. There is one issue with 5200 Pac-Man, though, and that is the controls. Games with analog controls work great on this controller, but digital games are more hit-or-miss. Some control well, like Defender, but in Pac-Man, the stick definitely takes some getting used to. Because the stick is loose and has a lot of throw, you need to move the stick a good ways to make each move. You'll need to get used to moving the stick to the direction you want before the turn in order to make corners. I still sometimes miss a turn I wanted to do. Also be sure to move the stick back to center, to avoid unwanted extra turns. I may mostly like the 5200 controller, but it isn't as good for Pac-Man as it is for many other games. Still, the game is entirely playable, and once you get used to the stick the game plays fine. Overall, Pac-Man is a very good game, but probably isn't one of the best 5200 games. Still, this game probably should have been the original 5200 pack-in game, not Super Breakout -- it's a good port of one of the most popular games of the time. Arcade port; other ports of the arcade game are available on many, many platforms. Pengo - 2 player alternating, Trackball supported. Pengo, a 1983 Atari release, is a port of the arcade game by Sega. Pengo is the game that Hopper on the TI-99/4A is a clone of, for anyone who read my TI list. Versus Hopper, 5200 Pengo has more variety but perhaps slightly worse graphics. Pengo is an okay top-down arcade action game with some strategic, or perhaps puzzle, elements. You are a penguin, and have to crush your enemies by shoving blocks at them. This is a tile-based game, so you move from space to space with each push of the stick. Each level has a random assortment of blocks scattered around the screen, and you can push them by walking into them. If the block runs into some enemies before hitting a wall, you'll kill the enemy. A level ends after a certain amount of time or if you kill all, or all but one, of the enemies. As in Dig-Dug, when only one enemy is left it'll try to run off. Catching them is harder here than in that game, though, because you have to rely on boxes being positioned in the right places in order to kill enemies, so they often escape on me. That's okay. You get a point bonus after each level based on how fast you finished the stage and how many enemies you took out. There are a few more gameplay elements, such as a bonus if you line up the three special-looking indestructible blocks in a row, but those are the essentials. It may sound simple, but Pengo is a decent game which requires more strategy than most arcade action games do. If you just randomly push blocks around you will quickly run out of usable blocks and the enemies will get you, so think carefully before pushing blocks! Enemies will destroy blocks as they run into them, so if both sides are wiping out blocks too soon you'll be left with nothing. Also some blocks will turn into enemies; these flash with an enemy at the start, so if you can remember which they are, you'[ll get a point bonus for destroying those blocks before the enemy comes out of it. While definitely not one of Sega's best early arcade games, Pengo has some nice strategy and is a fun game. I like games which make you think, and this game does do that. Visually, Pengo looks okay. The game has decent graphics, though it's not great looking. Your penguin looks like a penguin, and the enemies like other creatures. As with most all 5200 games the game is low-rez and pixelated; 5200 graphics really look different from the sharp-sprites look of the Colecovision or NES. I don't mind, that's just how it is. The game could use more color, a common problem in 5200 games; most everything is monochromatic. Still, the blocks and enemies look different. The sounds are fairly basic stuff, just sound effects here with no ingame music, as usual on this system, or for arcade games of the day. The game does control well; I've never had an issue with the controls, the stick works fine here. As with many 5200 games, this game is light on options; there are some difficulty settings, and the usual two player alternating mode, and that's it. Still, Pengo is above average at least, for sure. This somewhat puzzley strategy of thinking about which blocks to push, and when, is fun, and it's always satisfying when you crush multiple enemies with a single shove. The playfield isn't too large, so even with only a few enemies danger is always nearby. Catching that last enemy when it runs is difficult, but you move on either way. I like the time bonus for finishing a stage fast, it rewards better play. However, Pengo does get repetitive and a bit boring after a while; as with most games of this era the game does only one thing, and it can get old eventually. Overall, Pengo is above average but not great. Because of somewhat more complex gameplay this is probably better than Hopper on the TI, but the game is a bit slow for an action game, and isn't as great as the great puzzle games, either. Still, Pengo's worth a play, at least. Arcade port, Pengo is also available on the Atari 2600, and, in Japan and Europe only, the Game Gear. I have the Japanese Game Gear version, it's the same basic game but has better graphics than on the 5200. There are also various old computer ports of the game. Pengo has few sequels, but there is a Japan-only Genesis game and a modern widescreen remake that only released in Japan (arcade/Xbox 360). Pole Position - 1 player, analog control and two buttons required, Trackball supported. Pole Position for the 5200, from Atari, is a racing game, and a port of the Namco arcade game of the same name. This is a 'linescroll' style racing game that gives you a sense of motion by moving objects towards the screen. Pole Position for the 5200 has very blocky graphics, only one track, the game ends after a single race, and teh game is five minutes long, beginning to end, on the default setting. It's only maybe twice that long on the hardest mode, if you can beat it. However, despite the seriously lacking amount of content here, Pole Position for the 5200 is a great game! Sure, it badly needs more, but thanks to fantastic controls and smooth gameplay, 5200 Pole Position plays so well that the flaws are somewhat mitigated. Indeed, the key to 5200 Pole Position's greatness are those controls. This game shows off the 5200 controller better than almost any other I have! The analog joystick gives you extremely smooth control of your car; the not-entirely-autocentering stick works great in a driving game, you don't want the wheel to immediately spring back to center the moment you let go of it; and the two buttons give you independent controls for gas and brake. The controls work great, and with a little practice I was weaving between cars with only a few crashes. The analog controls here really show how unfortunate it is that there aren't any racing games with analog controls on the NES, SMS, TG16, SNES, Genesis, and such -- digital controls cannot match analog precision in a driving game! However, the great controls do help make this game even shorter, as they help you move through traffic more easily than you probably could with a digital stick. How much durability does a game that is this easy to finish really have? Sure it's really fun, and you can make it harder with the higher difficulties and longer races, but that only adds so much. Pole Position has four difficulty settings, but all that really affects is the number of cars that will be on the track and how much time you start with. You can also change the number of laps of the race from one to eight. An eight-lap race on the highest setting is a challenge, you'll need to never hit anyone to finish it. Still, the track itself is too easy; this game really needs more challenging courses! Also, you aren't racing against the other cars here, really; this is a score-based game. As fun as it is, in a racing game I want more than just to play for score. Visually the game is smooth, but all objects are super blocky. Cars look like lumpy blocks of pixels, and roadside signs have no text, they are just rectangles on a pole. The actual car sprites of 7800 Pole Position II look better, but you do get used to this game, and the simple look has a certain charm to it for sure. I kind of like the look of these lumps of pixels. The sound is good, with a nice rendition of the opening theme first, and well-done engine sounds for your and the other cars during the race. It'd have been nice to have a full ingame soundtrack, but the engine sounds do give you a good idea of where the other cars are. In Pole Position, you start out with a qualifying lap. You have plenty of time for this lap, so just try to finish fast enough to place in the top eight. If you don't finish in the top eight you will keep going, but the timer won't refill and you don't have time for a second lap, so just reset the game and try again. To reset, hit Pause, then hit Reset. Some 5200 games reset by just hitting Reset, while others require you to pause first; this is in the latter camp. If you finish in the top eight, it's on to the main race, a one to eight lap race lap race on the games' only track, Fuji. This is a somewhat easy circuit with only one tight turn. Apart from that one turn, the main challenge in this game are the other cars, not the course itself. Later linescroll racing games like this do a much better job of actually having challenging courses, but this game doesn't have it. The four difficulties each have a name, and oddly the default one, difficulty 2, is called the "Malibu Grand Prix" for some silly reason, though this is obviously in Japan thanks to the mountains in the background. The higher settings are the Namco and Atari Grand Prix, and the lower one Practice mode. In the main race, your time is quite limited. If you want to finish all four laps, even on the default difficulty you'll need to crash one time at most, maybe two if you otherwise race really well. On the top setting, anything more than a one-lap race really will require no crashes. Any more than that and it's over, you'll run out of time, game over. After each completed lap you get more time, just barely enough to get around the track again if you don't make any mistakes. So, skill is required to finish the game, but it's not too hard to do thanks to the smooth controls. At the end, whether you finished the race or not, your score is tallied. Remember, there are no real other racers in this game, they are just obstacles. You get points for how many cars you passed, how much time was left on the clock when you finished, and such. Overall, Pole Position is a pretty good game that is a lot of fun to play. This is the only racing game released for the 5200 during its active life, but at least it's a great one! I do find it quite unfortunate that the game has only one track, but at least there are a few difficulty settings to add a little more life to the game. Still, this is a very short game. Even so, Pole Position for the 5200 is one of the best 5200 games I've played yet! The TV ad for this 5200 version of the game, the one with the Pole Position song in it, is also absolutely incredible, one of the best videogame TV ads ever! Look it up. Pole Position is available on numerous consoles both old and new, on its own on older systems or in Namco collections on newer ones. This version is a bit different from the arcade game, though, and is only found on the 5200. The game also has a sequel, Pole Position II, which has four tracks instead of just one, a needed improvement. The Atari 7800 version of that game has better graphics than this game, and more content, but the superior controls of the 5200 version are a big point in its favor; the 7800, of course, has only a digital control stick, not analog. The 5200 game has better sound as well, of course. Popeye - 1 player. Popeye, a 1983 Parker Bros. release, is a port of a Nintendo arcade game. Of Nintendo's arcade sidescrollers of the time, for some reason the 5200 got Popeye and Mario Bros., but not either Donkey Kong game. I haven't played Popeye much at all before, so I was interested to try this game. As with those other games, Popeye is a side-scrolling game, but in Popeye you cannot jump, which makes this game play quite differently from Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. I definitely prefer to be able to jump, so I don't think this game is quite as good as DK is, but it is a good game that has been mostly forgotten, and hasn't seen re-release since the NES version probably because of licensing, since this is a licensed game. The story is that Shigeru Miyamoto liked Popeye and wanted to make a Popeye game, but couldn't get the license so he made Donkey Kong. Well, after its success, they got the license, and this game is the result. Popeye is a classic cartoon, so it's interesting to see Nintendo make a game based on it. So, considering that this is sort of a followup to Donkey Kong, why does it play so differently? I was hoping for a game that played like Donkey Kong, but this game isn't that. Instead, your goal is to pick up items which slowly fall down the screen. You play as Popeye, of course, and have to collect the various things Olive Oyl is dropping from the top, while avoiding Bluto, who runs around chasing you, and objects the Sea Hag throws from the sides of the screen. The lower button punches, and the stick moves. If you punch the things the Sea Hag throws they won't hurt you, but don't bother trying to punch Bluto, it won't work. There are flat horizontal platforms to walk on, and ladders and staircases that connect the platforms. There are some gaps in platforms in some stages which Bluto can get over but you can't, but you can walk around one edge of the screen to go to the other side (unless the Sea Hag is in the way) while Bluto can't do that. There's also a bounce pad in one stage (helped out by Wimpy) and a moving platform on the third stage, but the level designs are mostly fairly simple. For offense, if you get a rare spinach can you can knock out Bluto for a bit, and on the first screen if you punch the thing in the top level you can knock him out for a moment if the falling object hits him, but mostly you just have to avoid Bluto. The game has four single-screen stages, like DK and DK Jr., and loops endlessly after you finish all four screens. Levels in this game take quite a while to finish -- you need to collect between 18 and 24 items per stage, and they only slowly drop down the screen one to three at a time. The slow pace is one of this game's bigger problems, while Popeye is fun it can get boring because of how long the levels take. Bluto isn't too hard to stay away from, but sometime he'll get you, and avoiding him while also hitting the things the Sea Hag throws at you can be tricky. It's often easier to try to get to another floor, instead of timing punches to take out lines of thrown stuff. Visually, Popeye looks decent. This version does not look as good as the arcade or NES versions of the game, but it does look better than some other ports, and most of the sprites are recognizable as who they are supposed to be, though they're a lot more pixelated than in the arcade or NES versions. All three screens from the arcade game are present, but the arcade version's little intro and ending sequences sadly have been removed. The NES version doesn't have the full intro or ending either, but does have a bit more than this version does. It would have been nice to see them, they add a bit to the game. The soundtrack did make it though, thankfully, and it's a good rendition of the soundtrack from the arcade game. Overall, I like Popeye. It's a classic Nintendo sidescroller that I hadn't played much before, and it's fun to play it now. This 5200 version of the game is pretty good and plays great, with solid controls and reasonably good graphics. The gameplay is a bit too slow-paced, and the absence of jumping is missed, so this game definitely isn't a classic on par with Donkey Kong, but still Popeye is a good game well worth playing. Arcade port, also on a bunch of classic platforms of the early '80s. There hasn't been a new release of the game since the NES version, though. Qix - 1 player, two buttons required. Qix is another 1983 Atari port of a popular arcade game, this one originally by Taito. Qix was a very unique game at the time, but because it was quite popular the game inspired a genre of similar titles that have released over the years. That's really my issue with Qix; sort of like Tempest, as good as the original game is, I think that later games in the genre are better than the original. Still though, this is a pretty good game. So, in Qix you play as a little indicator mark, which moves around the edge of a square screen. If you hold down a button you will be able to move into the middle of the field, and if you then get back to the edge you will section off that part of the field, making your line into the new border of the screen. Your goal is to cover at least 65% of each screen in order to move on. Three enemies are trying to stop you: the Qix, a buzzing line which bounces around in the middle of the screen; little Sparx which move around the edge of the screen and will kill you if they touch you; and other sparx which start chasing you if you move out on a line into the screen and then stop moving -- this requires you to not just stop in the middle of the screen while on a line, though the Qix itself also encourages you to keep moving, because if the Qix crosses your line before it you have connected again to the side, you lose a life. One button moves you quickly, and the other button moves you slowly. You get more points for a box made moving slowly the whole time than a box where you moved faster at any point. You get five lives per game. It's a great concept, and the game plays very well and is a lot of fun to play. However, the genre did improve after the original Qix. Later Qix-style games took the sectioning-off-the-screen concept to reveal a picture as you fill in boxes of the screen; this was particularly popular for '90s Japanese arcade games with scantily clad women in them, but other games have less risque images to reveal. In this one, though, you just color in boxes. This genre is a bit better with pictures, not just colored boxes and a flat black background. Qix's official followup Ultimate Qix (aka Volfied, for arcade, TG16, Genesis, and PS1) is better than this game, for example. Another issue with this game is that the screen resolution is pretty low, so the area you're filling in is smaller than the arcade game or many later similar titles. The Qix is also a super-pixelated line, or two lines, once you have to face two at once. This game looks fine for a 1983 console game, but definitely isn't one of the better-looking Qix-style games. The game also has few options, basically you just play the game. Still though, the core gameplay is good, so this is an above-average, high-quality game for sure. This isn't one of my favorite 5200 games, but it is a good one. Arcade port also available on lots of platforms, though this specific version is as always 5200-exclusive. Space Invaders - 2 player alternating. Released some time after the very popular 2600 version of the popular Taito classic arcade static-screen shooter, Atari's 5200 version of Space Invaders is good, but not as good as the arcade or maybe even 2600 versions of the game. The main issue is, perhaps in order to make the game clearly distinct from the 2600 version, Atari made some significant changes to this version of Space Invaders which, overall, make it not quite as good as the original game. It does make it clearly a different game -- 5200 Space Invaders is an original game, not an arcade port -- but it's not a better game. Versus the 2600 version, the graphics are better, but there are far fewer gameplay modes and the game is not as well balanced, and compared to other 5200 shooters like Galaxians or Astro Chase, Space Invaders looks very dated in both graphics and gameplay. As with the arcade game, in Space Invaders for the 5200 you control a ship on the bottom of the screen and have to shoot all of the aliens in each wave before they reach the ground. This is an endless game, so you can't win, but instead play to see how high a score you can get. The game has 12 different modes, but it's just a difficulty setting with 12 options; unlike the 70+ varied modes of 2600 Space Invaders, there is only one basic game here, no crazier variations like the ones in 2600 Space Invaders with invisible aliens and such. That's really too bad, this game shouldn't have fewer features than its last-gen predecessor! Visually, Space Invaders looks only okay. Enemies are the usual 5200 somewhat monochromatic two-similar-colors-each designs color-wise, but do animate nicely as they move. The initial waves make sounds as they descend down the screen, but starting from wave 7 or so the next enemy type makes no sound other than a noise when they descend to the next layer closer to you; this makes these levels very quiet, apart from your shots. More sound would have been good, so many silent levels is unfortunate. Particularly in these waves, which there are a lot of, this game is too quiet. I do like the animating enemies, and some of them are nice bright colors, but overall the game looks and sounds somewhat primitive. The huge sprites don't exactly show much of what the 5200 can do, and the background is just a flat black hue with nothing interesting going on, unlike, say, Galaxian. It's kind of amazing that both this game and that one released within months of eachother, because otherwise I'd guess that that one is a much newer game because of its better graphics. Space Invaders does have a lot less slowdown than Galaxian, but that doesn't nearly make up for the deficit. Fortunately, the game is fun even if it's not the best looking game, but it is flawed. The basic concept of Space Invaders is the same as usual, shoot the waves of enemies which move back and forth in formation, trying to kill all of them before one reaches the ground. If enemy shots hit you you lose a life, or if an enemy reaches the ground it's an instant game over. Unlike other Space Invaders games, though, enemies in this game are huge, and take up much more of the screen than they would in other Space Invaders games. They also do not start in a screen-filling formation, but instead they fly in from the left side of the screen, one row at a time. They always enter from the left, never any other direction; that's a missed opportunity to add at least a little more variety to this game. Because of this design, every wave starts with you on the left side of the screen, shooting up at the entering enemies. This makes the game easier, but the large size of the sprites somewhat compensates -- enemies will move down the screen quite quickly once they are fully on screen because of how big those sprites are. Taking out the side columns of enemies is key. Also, the shields work differently from other Space Invaders games. This time bullets only do a one-pixel block of damage exactly where the shot it, and nothing more. This makes the shield last a lot longer than before. However, the shield doesn't get repaired between waves. Instead, only every seven waves or so will you get new shields. Again this is different from the original game, but not as good -- I much prefer the nicer-looking damage seen in the arcade games' shields. Still, the basic gameplay is great, and the game does control well. You move left and right with the stick, and fire with the button. Holding the button down will autofire, but only one shot can be on screen at once. The controls work very well, and the game is quite fun to play. But as a Space Invaders game, it's a bit disappointing. There definitely are worse Space Invaders games out there, but there are better as well, including the 2600 version. That version is more impressive for its system, and the huge selection of modes adds something to that game that this version doesn't have. Still, if you have a 5200, pick up Space Invaders because it's cheap and fun. Don't search out the console just for this game, though. 5200 exclusive, but other versions of Space Invaders are on many platforms, both arcade and console. Star Raiders - 1 player, analog control plus keypad required. Atari's 1983 Star Raiders is a port of an Atari 8-bit computer game by Atari. Yes, a computer port from Atari, not an arcade port. And as you might expect from a computer game, Star Raiders is much more complex than most games on this system. This game is a 3d space flight combat game. You explore a section of the galaxy, destroying enemies, docking with starbases, and traveling around from place to place, until you have destroyed all the baddies and saved the day. If you play this game make sure to get the manual! You'll need it, there is a lot to learn. I like that you can actually beat this game and that it's not endless, it makes it feel a bit different from most 5200 games. This is a free-roaming game -- you can go to any point on the map at any time, it's not on a railed path. This game uses every keypad key, and has two functions on every key in fact, with the star and pound keys as modifiers to select speed mode or functions mode. In speed mode the 0 to 9 speeds change your speed. In the other mode, you have keypad keys to turn on and off the shields, targeting computer, and such; to look behind you; to use the map, which you must do before a warp or to see where the enemies are gathering; and to hyperwarp. Select a space on the map then warp to go there, or just warp randomly if you are in trouble. Ship control is nice and is analog, but the game only uses one of the side buttons, to fire your missiles. There are multiple difficulty levels available that add more and tougher enemies each time. In higher settings warping is tougher too, as you will have to keep on course with the stick while warping. You also have to pay much more attention to your ship's energy meter in higher difficulties. Combat controls are much simpler than the relatively complex flight controls, though. Star Raiders is a pretty interesting game, but it does have some issues. First, the graphics aren't great and this game has the worst slowdown I have seen on the system. You have a first-person view in your cockpit, and never see your own ship. As usual on this system, the graphics are very pixelated, but do have a nice style to them. I like the starfield you fly through in this game, and it really is full 3d space even if everything is conveniently mostly in a 2d grid, but the enemy ships look very basic and simple, and your starbases don't look much better. And when you kill an enemy they explode into a cloud of pixels, and the framerate nearly stops! It's kind of crazy how slow the game gets during explosions. I really hope it's a misguided intentional effect, because the 5200 has to be able to manage better than that... it's kind of painful, and makes hitting other enemies during battle difficult at times. Aurally the game is fairly basic, with the usual engine and explosion noises. It sounds good enough, but a soundtrack would have been great; there are few of those in games from Atari on this system, I have noticed. My other issues with the game are in the gameplay. Star Raiders is a good game for its time, but space combat in this game is a bit too simplistic. There seems to be no benefit to flying around during combat, it makes the most sense to just warp to a space with enemies in it, shoot at them while sitting there with your shield on, and then move on. Of course, things get harder in the higher settings where you can't just use the shield all the time, but I had some issues getting the keypad controls to respond during combat -- sometimes my ship wouldn't start moving while fighting, I don't know. I don't think it's the controller. Regardless, even if you are moving, you don't dogfight in this game. The enemies just fly around, you try to center the targeting reticule in the lower right-hand corner on the enemy, and then fire when it's lined up. For a game with as complex a universe to fly around as this game has, I was expecting a much better combat system, not something that's basically the same as 2600 games like Star Raiders or Solaris. Solaris has more graphical variety than this game, too. I know that is a newer game than this one, but it is running on the 2600. 2600 Star Raiders does at least have a better starfield, as Solaris just has static white does in the background while 5200 Star Raiders has moving 'stars' that give you a better sense of flying through space. I just wish that the combat had more to it than lining up a reticule and firing a few times. Still, even if combat is too simple, the game is fun to play, and the difficulty curve from easier difficulties to harder goes up nicely. Flying around is fun, and I like that you have full control over your speed, where you're going, camera views, ship systems, and more. The map is great and very helpful. Overall Star Raiders is a good game and does a nice job of showing off some of the things the 5200 can do, but the horrible slowdown when enemies explode and the simplistic combat hold it back somewhat. I do like it though. Atari 8-bit computer port; there is also an Atari 2600 version, but it is much more simplistic and stripped-down. Solaris for the 2600 is the better 2600 game in this style. Super Breakout - 1-4 player alternating, analog control required, Trackball supported. Super Breakout is a port of Atari's second version of Breakout, the classic bounce-the-ball-off-the-blocks game. Breakout is an incredibly influential game which helped great a popular genre that I like, but as I said in my 2600/7800 thread, the original Breakout has aged badly in several ways. Unfortunately, this game is basically the same as the 2600 game I discussed there, just with better graphics. Super Breakout was the original pack-in game with the Atari 5200, and while it does do a good job of showing off the advantages of an analog controller as the analog controls with the stick work great, in terms of graphics and gameplay this is very definitely last-gen. As for sound, there are sound effects when the ball hits something and that's about it; very basic audio here too. It's not exactly the great show of the new system's power that you would want from a pack-in game. This version does look a bit better than the 2600 version, but it's still a very basic-looking game, with just a wall of blocks, a paddle or two, and a ball or three. The game has about five modes, each slightly different but all the same in concept: destroy a wall of bricks. One has a normal classic wall, one has one that slowly moves towards you, one gives you two paddles and two balls, and the last has two balls inside the wall that you can break out and use once they escape. The concept may be simple, but Super Breakout is a crushingly difficult game. I haven't yet finished one screen of Breakout in any of the modes, it's that hard. Two things make this game hard, but the worst one is the same major flaw that ruins the 2600 games -- you can only destroy one block each time the ball hits the wall of bricks. If the ball touches another brick after destroying the one it first hit, it'll just pass through it unaffected. This atrocious design decision makes the game nightmarishly hard and ruins the fun factor! I love later, better Breakout-style games like Warlords or the great Arkanoid, but this game is a pain due to the one-block-per-time rule. At least Blockout!/Brickdown! on the Odyssey 2 lets the ball destroy bricks it goes through on the way back down, even if it doesn't bounce off of them. This game needed to at least do that, but no, it doesn't. The other thing that makes Breakout so difficult is that while at first the game is quite playable and fun, once you get a ways into the wall the ball will speed up, and then once the ball hits the top of the screen the paddle size gets cut in half. Keeping up with the fast ball with a half-sized paddle is quite hard even with controls as good as this game has! You do get five balls per game, but I always lose them quickly once the wall gets broken down a bit. This game is fun to play despite the high frustration factor, and I do like the controls and gameplay before your paddle gets shrunken down and I'm sure I will continue trying to get through a screen of 5200 Super Breakout, but overall I'd rather play a later, better Breakout-style game. Oh -- the 3 or 4 player alternating mode requires a 4-port system. Only this game and some homebrew titles support more than two players, I believe. Breakout is too slow-paced and difficult to be one of the greats in the genre it created; it's a classic that later titles improved on. Arcade port, other ports of the arcade game are on lots of systems over the years. Super Cobra - 1 player. Super Cobra is another 1983 Parker Bros. release, this time a port of a Konami arcade game. Super Cobra is effectively the sequel to Konami's first scrolling shmup, Scramble. Today Scramble is probably better known, but in the early '80s it was Super Cobra that was ported to many platforms, while for some reason Scramble's only '80s home port was to the sadly unpopular Vectrex. I hadn't really played Super Cobra before getting this game, but I was hoping it would be good because Konami's Gradius series is my favorite shmup series, I love those games! Super Cobra is very different from Gradius, but it is also a horizontal shmup, and a good one. Super Cobra looks fairly nice, with well-designed areas, plenty of content for a game of this time, and several different enemies to face. Your ship definitely looks like a helicopter, too. The game doesn't have a great variety of enemies or background art objects, but what it does have is well designed. I like the look of the game, it's simple but works. For sound there is no music, unlike the other two 5200 Parker Bros. games I have, but it does have nice sound effects for your weapons and helicopter. In Super Cobra you fly a helicopter on a mission to destroy the enemies and pick up a crate at the end. When you fire you fire both bombs and bullets. only a few bullets, and only two bombs, can be on screen at once, so while the game has autofire you often don't want to use it. Learning the angle the bombs drop at, so you can hit ground targets, is tricky and takes some practice. The game is broken up into eleven levels per loop, each made up of two parts. When you die you start from the last beginning or midpoint of the level you're in. There are no difficulty settings in this game, but it is more than challenging enough to challenge just about anyone, particularly if you want to try to play well -- you get infinite continues in this game, so just finishing the game is only moderately challenging, but if you want a good score it'll be a SERIOUS challenge. This is a hard game loaded with lots of enemies, missiles, and very narrow tunnels to make your way through. Fortunately the controls are as responsive as you'll get from this controller -- when you die, it was your fault. Sure, the game is cheap and can be borderline unfair, but if you've learned the game, when you die you messed up somehow. For enemies, the missiles from Scramble return, and are a danger, but this time the enemy turrets are the toughest foes. They only fire at a single angle, but it is the same exact angle that your bombs drop at so they can be tough to kill without being killed yourself. There are also several types of flying enemies that you face on occasion. The game has no bosses, unfortunately, but what's here is good. As a sort of final boss replacement, there is that final, and super-difficult, challenge where you have to try to pick up that red box in order to beat the final stage, that took me many, MANY tries to succeed at. You need to be perfect to get it out of there without you, or it, dying. At least it lets you keep trying from the start of that section until you get it right. On that note, there are several things that make Super Cobra's controls unique, and challenging. First, you can only move up to about halfway forwards on the screen, and second, you cannot move backwards on the screen, only move forwards or hold in place. Also, upwards or downwards movements are somewhat diagonally angled because of the screen scrolling, not straight up or down. This means that when you move forward you need to be sure that you should be moving forwards -- if you move forward in some places you will die if this doesn't leave you enough room to move up or down to avoid some obstacle just in front of you. Learning the stages is key -- when can you go up or down, when should you just hold the fire button and when should you carefully target certain enemies, etc. I had fun learning each level, even if I died a whole lot along the way. If you wanted to beat this game without using continues it would be a very difficult challenge! I don't know if I'll manage that, but I certainly will be playing this game more. Super Cobra is a great game and I like it a lot, it's one of my favorite 5200 games so far for sure. Arcade port, also available on the Odyssey 2 (Europe only), Colecovision, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Adventurevision, MSX, Atari 8-bit computer, and Sord M5. It's probably in some Konami collections as well.

Sound cutting out? Could be the CD adjustment pots, I presume the Duo has them like the regular Turbo CD. After getting my Turbo CD laser replaced they were messed up, it took a long time to find settings where the audio didn't keep failing... kind of frustrating, but I did finally manage it (with advice from the guy [from PC Engine FX] who had replaced the laser).

I should note that the only systems I owned up to 2005 were Nintendo ones, everything else I've gotten since 2006. In the '90s I only had a GB, GBC, and N64, for consoles. (Played a lot more games on PC than consoles back then.) Systems I own. Note that all systems are American region unless noted. Atari 2600 (4-switch woody) - The system doesn't work. Hitting power just results in static. I got this system several years ago and it's never worked. One controller doesn't work (cable damage), but the other does. I think the power supply works fine. Odyssey 2 (black controllers, hardwired) - Works fine, no issues other than a failed RF box, which I recently replaced with one of those plug adapter things. That fixed the issue, it works great again. Atari 5200 (model 2, 2-port) - I just got this system this month, but it's working so far. I did have to buy two controllers and take them apart in order to put together one working controller, but that one controller seems to be working perfectly (all buttons and stick work) so that's not so bad. (The other controller has an analog stick that's off-center so it thinks center is about halfway to the right of the screen and some games don't let you move right at all, and has a few dead buttons inc. Start and 7. I combined the flex-circuit and buttons from one controller and the stick from the other to make the working controller.) -NES - Original model NES - Blinking light problem. I tried several things to fix it, including a new pin connector and disabling the lockout chip, but it didn't work. Recently I got the Blinking \Light Win replacement pin thing from a kickstarter. It's got a bit of a death grip on carts, but works well, the regular NES is actually usable now. -NES 2 - Works fine. I hate those vertical lines in the picture, but that's a design flaw not something which failed... Atari 7800 - The power button stopped working a year ago, so it won't turn on. Otherwise it works though. As I have never soldered and don't own any soldering equipment, it's kind of useless now. I really need to find someone who can fix this, I'd like to play it again. Sega Master System - Works fine. Turbografx-16 - Works fine. I actually have two TG16 base systems (though only one power supply), both have no issues. Once one TG16 controller's cable plug (that goes into the system/multitap) did come off, though. I got that repaired along with the TCD below, but don't use it, I got a TG16-to-Japan/Duo controller plug adapter and use Japanese 3 and 6 button controllers now, mostly. Turbo CD - I got a TCD with a dead laser (I knew it was dead, it was cheaper that way), so this system didn't work until I had someone replace the laser and repair it. At the same time I got a region mod put in my TG16. So, it's working now, after repairs. -Genesis 1 - Doesn't work. The power button lights up but nothing happens. It was like this when I got it attached to my Sega CD. -Genesis 2 - Works fine. This is the Genesis I use, and the first Genesis I got. Game Boy (original) - Screen has several dead lines and the screen cover came off, the glue lost its stickiness. Otherwise it works fine. Super Nintendo - Works, but the power connection is a bit touchy so occasionally I need to rotate the plug to get the power to work. Fortunately that is uncommon. I do also have one broken third-party controller, but that's not really a problem, I didn't use it much anyway. Sega CD - works fine, no issues. I have been quite fortunate with this one, I got it for $5 used and it's worked perfectly, despite coming with that broken Genesis 1. 32X - The system itself works fine, but the Genesis-to-32X cable (or maybe the Genesis AV cable I have, I'm not sure which, I never detach the 32X) has an odd issue, it adds annoying wiggly lines to the picture, and also static to the audio if I use the AV cable and not the Sega CD's red and white audio-out jacks. That audio buzz was REALLY annoying, until I finally thought to plug cables into the SCD... Saturn - Works fine. -Playstation - model 1 grey (w/ red/white/yellow jacks) - Laser has issues sometimes, as usual for these. -PSone - Works fine. Virtual Boy - The system works, but has some lines in the picture, the video connectors are starting to come apart. It's a known and fixable issue, but I don't want to go through that as long as the system is usable. Also my first controller cable failed and was randomly disconnecting during play, so I replaced it with a new controller a few years ago. Otherwise the system works. -N64 - system 1 (standard black, the first one I got) - Works fine. All five of my N64 controllers do have fading analog sticks, but the system is fine and controllers otherwise are good. N64 analog sticks are easy to replace, anyway, or you can fix them with some more technical knowledge. -N64 - system 2, also standard black, got a bit after the first) - This system has a weird, weird issue -- it deletes all save files on the cartridge when you put some game carts in the system. Game with batteries onboard (and not save chips without a battery) seem to be worst affected -- Zelda OoT, Smash Bros, and such. Needless to say I don't use this system. -Game Boy Color - I have three GBCs. System 1, solid green - Works fine. I did have to take it apart once to clean out the buttons though, the Start button wasn't responding well. That did fix the issue, and unlike my first GBA I didn't find any torn button pads. -System 2, Atomic Purple (transparent purple) - Broken. This was my original GBC I got in '98. It died in 2004 with a dead screen (big black mark on it, no picture). -System 3, also atomic purple - Works, but the speaker died, so it has no audio unless you use headphones. Otherwise it works fine though. Dreamcast (white Model 0 system) - Works fine, other than that the clock battery barely lasts at all anymore so if I haven't turned it on in more than, like, a day I have to set the clock again. A new clock battery would probably be nice, but, well, that requires soldering... bah. My cousins went through two DCs back in 2000-2002, but mine has been reliable. Game Gear (~2000 Majesco model) - Works fine. Neo Geo Pocket Color - works fine. -PS2 (fat) - works fine, though the end cover of the CD tray has come off. It doesn't affect anything other than looks. -PS2 (slim black model, Japanese import model) - Works fine. My cousins did have a PS2 slim die on them, but this one works for me so far. -Gamecube - Have two. System 1, black original model (got in Nov. '01) - The laser on my launch system died in summer 2006. I still have the unfixed system. -System 2, also a black original model - Works fine. Xbox - Works, though I had to buy a second Xbox to swap in a new disc drive when the disc drive in my first Xbox died. Oddly the dead DVD drive is from the "better" manufacturer, while the working one now in the system is the "bad" kind... heh. The other system also has a very noisy fan, as well as the bad DVD drive I put in it. Both are standard black. -Game Boy Advance (original) - Have two systems. Smoky purple - My original GBA. The d-pad and shoulder buttons have issues and don't always work right (I took it apart, the pad under the d-pad is damaged), and the screen is badly scratched. It IS usable though. -system 2 - solid purple - Works fine. Game Boy Advance SP (original, not 101, model, blue) - Works fine. -Nintendo DS (original model) - I have three of these. First one - original silver color - Both hinges are broken so the top screen isn't attached well, the shoulder buttons rarely respond, the upper screen cable has pulled out inside so the upper screen is just white, and the lower touchscreen is badly scratched. It does turn on though! -Second - teal color - Works fine, but one of the side hinges (attached to the top screen) and the center hinge are broken. This is the best-working DS I have. -Third slate-grey (Japan-only color, though I got it locally) - Also works, but it has both of the side hinges are broken off (I taped it together with duct tape, but it's looser than the teal one), and the battery in this system doesn't last as long as the one in the teal DS. Also for a while the microphone on this system wasn't working, but it is now... odd. PSP - My first PSP (a PSP 3000, black)'s disc drive laser died several years back, so I exchanged it at a store for a green PSP 3000 that is still working fine. Xbox 360 Slim - works fine. Wii - Works fine.

40 minute interview (by a guy on Youtube) with Mike Kennedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL-YQbf3NTE I know it's far too expensive, but it's too bad masked roms aren't an option anymore; if you're looking for durability in game preservation, there's few better options. 100-year flash or hard drives can't compare. Even 100-year flash probably isn't going to last as long as a masked ROM will, and hard drives are much less durable than that (if they get used, that is). There's nothing really that can be done about this, though, other than use the best thing you've got... too bad. Beyond that, a few more thoughts: Yeah, it's a good interview well worth watching for anyone interested in the system. I definitely agree that price is going to be a big factor here, I hope he can keep it down. He says that he's hoping for a lot of people to back the kickstarter, tens of thousands at the 'buying one' level, so that he can go to publishers and have a better case for getting them to support the console; he mentions the issue that you need games to get buyers, but buyers to get developers. The system has a few retro-system homebrew publishers, but no other announced ones so far... and he's probably right that getting bigger names will require sales. I have no idea if what he's hoping for will happen or not, kickstarter can be hard to predict. I would be surprised if the system gets much at all in the way of "AAA exclusives" (major titles from big publishers in popular franchises exclusive to the system), though. I know they want them, and it'd be great if it happens, but with the way publishers are, it seems unlikely. Also, this thing will really rely on good FPGA cores being made for more systems. That's apparently difficult, but it'll have to happen. And last, his dislike for digital-download games is very apparent in the interview; it comes across more strongly in a video than it would in text, I think. I imagine some people would call that attitude dated, but I like both sides here... physical games for their durability and not being killable when a developer wants to shut the game down, digital ones for making it possible for small teams to distribute and sell games and for making games cheaper, particularly on PC, if you wait for sales. Overall physical there probably has the edge, because the transience of downloadable games is a HUGE concern. However, on the other hand, no online connection at all has drawbacks; as a longtime PC gamer I also do like things like online play and online leaderboards, even if I play online multiplayer games less than I used to (in favor of often older console games instead...).

Populous doesn't have a battery. It has a RAM chip on the card, because it needs more RAM than the system has, but it uses the system's internal memory to save, not a battery. Beyond that, I did a list of games for the system I know of with saving. It's very incomplete for Japanese CD games, but otherwise lists most of them. http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=190

North & South - This game was my first thought. North & South is great, and is far better with two players than one. Archon - has nobody mentioned this classic, really? Archon's good! It's a really unique game, part strategy and part action, and I love it. Micro Machines - The first Micro Machines games is such a great, great game! On any platform, this game is one of the best topdown racers ever. Super Off-Road -- I guess it's sort of co-op, in that if any player wins you go on, but it's also competitive of course. The arcade game is one of my favorites, and the NES port is pretty good and the only version with 4 player support. For a fifth game... hmm. Tengen Tetris, if you count it, probably.

The Tennokoe Bank is just a backup card, you can't save to it directly. It lets you copy memory banks from the system to the Tennokoe Bank. It also uses a battery instead of a capacitor, and probably has a different chip -- the internal memory save in CD or Duo units is 2KB, while the Tennokoe Bank is 8KB. There's also the external Memory Base 128 unit, but only a handful of games can save directly to it; for other games you've got to use it like a Tennokoe Bank and transfer files back and forth, but you need a compatible game with an MB128 manager built in to do that, and all such games are CD titles, so it'd be useless on a TurboExpress/PC Engine GT, unfortunately... the MB128 is pretty cool though, it's 128KB and can hold 64 blocks! (It uses 4 AA batteries to store the data. Last maybe 7 months with good batteries. It's also got a large capacitor to hold the saves for a little while (like, an hour or something) while you change the batteries.) I don't know if hacking a save chip into a TurboExpress is possible, but it'd be pretty interesting if it was... Also refer to my TG16/CD/PCE save backup unit types and games supported list here (this thread inspired me to update the list a bit!): http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=190 Edit - ugh, finally got the link fixed.

The N64 is my favorite console, I love it! You can find my thoughts on a lot of the N64 games I have here: http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=75 Some of the N64 games I like a lot include Zelda: OoT, Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64, San Francisco Rush 2049, F-Zero X, Wipeout 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Doom 64, San Francisco Rush, Beetle Adventure Racing, Wave Race 64, Turok 3, Big Mountain 2000, Mace: The Dark Age, Super Smash Bros., Goemon's Great Adventure, Mystical Ninja starring Goemon, Blast Corps, Jet Force Gemini, Bomberman 64, Bust-A-Move '99, Pokemon Puzzle League, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, California Speed, Excitebike 64, Fighter's Destiny, Gauntlet Legends, Battle for Naboo, Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Mario's Tennis, Ogre Battle 64, Paper Mario, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Shadowgate 64, Hydro Thunder, Snowboard Kids 2, Star Fox 64, Tetrisphere, Top Gear Rally, Top Gear Overdrive, and Top Gear Hyper-Bike. The Japanese import games Sin & Punishment, Custom Robo, and Susume! Taisen Puzzledama are great as well.

Of the Wario 2d platformers: 1. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 2. Virtual Boy Wario Land 3. Wario Land: Shake It! 4. Wario Land 2 5. Wario Land 3 6. Wario Land 4 7. Wario: Master of Disguise (not "Wario Land", but it's a Wario platformer, so close enough) Wario Land 1 is one of my favorite Game Boy games. It's an amazing game with variety, lots of secrets, good graphics and sound, etc. I like WL1 more than either Mario Land game. VBWL is just as great and the 3d is cool, but it's too short; that's the main reason it's in second, it has far fewer levels. After that came WL2 and WL3, two games with invincible Wario. They're good, but frustrating; I've beaten WL2 100% twice, but I don't know if I actually like the game. WL4 is a kind of hybrid with the powers of invinicible Wario but without the invincibility. It's okay, but I found it too short, and I don't know if it knows what it wants to be, is it a WL2/3 game or something else? It's good, but not nearly as good as WL1 or VBWL. As for Master of Disguise, though... it's touch-controlled, and just doesn't play great. It's not awful, but it isn't above average either, unlike the rest of the series. Last (so far) is Wario Land: Shake It!, which was a great return to form and my favorite WL game since the first two! It looks and plays great, beautiful 2d platformer with plenty to do. It's got some inspiration from WL2-3 and 4 in it, but it's its own game, and I think it's more fun than those games. Wario only has one 3d game, Wario World. It's kind of a 3d platformer-beat 'em up. It's fun, but short.

Very cool. Looks like a decent port, though it's too bad that the waterfall is missing from the background in those comparison shots; otherwise good for the system though, sure. It's always fantastic to see stuff like this appear! Very interesting... but why in the world were they still working on Atari 7800 game development over 2 1/4 years after releasing their last game for the system (Sentinel, in early 1991) and effectively discontinuing it? That makes no sense... but this is Atari, so I'll believe it anyway. Were Plutos and Sirius in development after the early '91 death of the system too? But really, the one question I have with the 1993 games thing is, if Atari was working on games in early '93, what about games from '91 (after Sentinel early in the year) and '92? Were there no games in development then? Were the '93 games long-delayed? That seems unlikely. It's quite strange. The SMS sold about 2 million in North America going by the best-known estimates, while the 7800 sold 3.8 million or so. Atari sold almost twice what Sega did, it wasn't close. As for Europe, I have to imagine that it was selling there somewhere, considering that Europe got a game release in early '91 while the US didn't, and also only Europe got the gamepad-style controller. But consider, even had the 7800 sold as well in Europe as it did in the US, it'd still have sold far below the ~6.8 million that the Master System did there, and sure, it likely didn't sell as well as that.