AtariWarlord

Nice! Are you playing Donkey Kong in the Atari 2600 HSC this week? Quite different from the real thing of course but it has its own unique challenges.

Amidar 44,620. Chameleon 25,800. Didn't improve my PB as much as I thought. Chameleon has what I call an "unnecessary extra factor of difficulty" that can make playing it a chore. In this case, it's the baseballs -- it's really hard to keep an eye on them while eating the eggs, battling the chickens and avoiding glowing eggs. For Lasso it was the fact that you could die by running into . . . a sheep. Really? By contrast, Amidar is practically the perfect arcade game for me -- but then again I love maze games. I can't believe I've never played any version except for the very slow 2600 translation before.

Does anyone have any advice on identifying "doubling-back" fireballs on the rivet screen? I could be imagining this, but it seems like only one or two fireballs do this on any given screen. Has anyone else noticed this or am I imagining things?

Canyon Bomber Game 1: 664. I'm done.

37,100.

25,200.

Canyon Bomber Game 1: 657. Not a huge improvement over my previous score but I'll take it.

Chameleon 23,000.

Canyon Bomber Game 1: 652.

Amidar 31,780. Chameleon 12,800.

Amidar 27,720. Not really getting Chameleon -- may have to search online for the game's instruction sheet.

But just like pop music, pop video games are sometimes more sophisticated and clever than they initially seem.

I thought all video games -- ultimately -- have patterns.

Lasso 62,940.

Canyon Bomber Game 1: 526.