7800Lover

The Legend of Zelda (NES) Pinball Hall of Fame: Gottlieb Collection (Wii) Ninja Gaiden (NES) That second quest of Zelda is indeed quite a challenge. Enemies are tougher, everything's in a different location and the dungeons are tricky.

Of course I played Mr. Do! I played it at that same flea market in Eden, North Carolina that I played Mappy and Loco-Motion. I also played it at an arcade elsewhere in the state - it was a beachfront resort's game room. Mr. Do reminded me a lot of Dig Dug (minus the pumping of course).

Anyone remember this one? TRACK & FIELD from Konami, 1983 - outside of the USA, this was called "Hyper Olympics". Exactly what it says on the tin - you competed against the computer or a live opponent in a number of events. There were six events in all: 100 meter dash, long jump, javelin, 110 meter hurdles, hammer throw, and the high jump. You had to qualify for each event (read: win each event) before moving onto the next one. Early versions of the game had run buttons and an action button for jumping/throwing. Later versions of the game replaced the run buttons with a trackball. I remember this one for sure. I actually ran across the early version (minus the trackball) at a bar in Italy. The later one with trackball I played at an arcade in Eden, North Carolina at a local mall arcade. Anyone else play this?

I'm for seeing Paperboy and Marble Madness on the Atari 7800. While we're on the topic of isometric perspective games, how about a port of Up'N Down?

Food Fight is definitely a mandatory for your 7800 collection. To be honest, I think that should have been the pack-in game instead of Pole Position II.

I know of Baby Pacman but never spotted it in the wild.

I got one: Up'N Down from Sega. Up'N Down was a racing game from Sega made in 1983. Using a somewhat isometric perspective, you drove a purple VW Beetle around a bunch of roads. Your mission to was collect all these colored flags. You also had the ability to jump as well. This could be done to avoid enemy cars or to land on top of them, thus destroying them. If you crashed into an enemy car or if you jumped off the road, you lost a life. I played this in Italy and at least once saw this in an American arcade. Some versions of this were ported to the home consoles like the Atari 2600. Again, that console is not a good choice for duplicating a 3D/isometric view. Anyone else play this one?

Yes, the sound is weak. That's the only real flaw of the system. Desert Falcon is another fun game worth picking up. Try getting Summer Games and Winter Games from Epyx too.

For me, it has to be the Atari 7800 port of Double Dragon. Over ten years ago, I actually had to slug it out with bidders on Ebay to get that game (metaphorically speaking of course). It was worth it. The game is impressive for a system intended to play simple arcade ports like Asteroids, Donkey Kong, and Ms. Pacman. Did I also mention it's closer to the arcade game than the NES port?

Congratulations. The 7800 is my fav system (as if you couldn't tell by my handle). I bought mine off Ebay over 12 years ago and it still works like a charm. The arcade ports are fun, but try a few more of the more original games for the system like Scrapyard Dog and Midnight Mutants. They're unique but fun.

I was reading up on the Atari XE Game System, basically a repackaged Atari XE65 computer. I vividly remember the old commercials for it on TV where they pitched it as being superior to the Nintendo Entertainment System (!) because it played both cartridge and disk-based games plus functioned as a computer. It did have a light gun (something the Atari 2600 and 7800 lacked on their own at least). From what I understand, its games were mainly repackaged Atari 8-bit computer games, sometimes even having the almost exact same packaging. I'm sufficiently intrigued. If anyone of you owns/owned a XEGS or know enough about the system, I want your input. Is it a worthy console to have in your collection? Are the games fun? Or is it just something best left in the junk heap?

All I know about the TRS-80 was the one I got from my uncle. All he had for it was one cartridge (Chess) and two manuals, Getting Started with Color Basic and Going Ahead with Extended Color Basic. I'm assuming that based on the fact that he had only 1 cartridge was that games for the system were uncommon.

The only Tehkan game I know of other than Bomb Jack was Phoenix. I never did play Pleiads.

My, my...you've been quite busy. I appreciate you doing all this coverage on these unreleased games.

So Tehkan eventually became Tecmo. Wow, who would have thought that the makers of Bomb Jack went on to do Tecmo Bowl for the NES? And speaking of Tehkan... Who here remembers Bomb Jack, the 1984 release by Tehkan? You were a superhero named Bomb Jack (as previous implied) and you had to collect bombs that were placed at major tourist spots (doncha just hate when that happens?) such as Egypt, Greece, a German castle, and two cityscapes. While you could collect the bombs in any order, if you collected the lit bombs in a sequence, you can eventually earn a bonus. Bomb Jack can run and jump high but has only one real defense against the enemies onscreen - turning them into coins! Collecting bombs boosts the bonus meter at the top of the screen (collecting lit bombs increases it more). When the meter is completely filled up, a circular bouncing "P" appears, and when collected, it will turn all the enemies into bonus coins for a short period during which Jack can grab them. I played this game in Italy (again) and spotted it at least once at arcades here in the USA. Some of you may know this game more for its sequel, Mighty Bomb Jack and to a lesser extent, its later sequel Bomb Jack Twin.

I played that at the Classic Gaming Expo 2001 over ten years ago. That was quite a fun game from what I recall.

Legends of the Mystical Ninja (SNES) Ninja Gaiden (NES) New Adventure Island (TG-16)

Has anyone played that homebrew/hack enhancement called Adventure Plus? I own a copy (bought from the Atari Age store) and it's quite fun. Though I miss the dragons actually looking like dragons instead of ducks.

Kaboom on the faster settings - talk about a twitch game.

Jesus, if you're going to keep quoting from my review you can at least give me some credit. http://www.atariprot.../congobongo.htm Cool! You're the guy from the Atari Protos page? I love that page. Can't wait for more updates.

I guess your mileage varies with this game - as I've seen the opinions and reactions thereto (my own included). I stand by what I said before that I don't like the Atari 2600 port. Only two screens? It should have just been called "Bongo" because you were getting half the game. In fact, most of the ports of this game were criticized as being weak.

It's a combination of both nostalgia and yearning for youth. To be honest, the newer consoles like Playstation 4 and Wii U don't really interest me. I prefer my older games as well as classics collections I have for PSX, PS2, and the Wii. I don't know what it is - maybe it's the fact that I'm older (I'm 32) or maybe it's because the video game industry has changed so much.

Of course, I wonder if it's possible to rig a reasonable fascimile of Gauntlet by hacking Dark Chambers.

Are you crazy? The Atari 2600 port stinks like unwashed underwear on a hot and humid summer day. The Atari 2600 is not good at doing a 3/4 isometric view. Why did anyone get the bright idea to program the game for this console? It's proof that complex games SHOULD NOT be attempted on inferior hardware. And the game only had two levels instead of the arcade's four levels. You were only getting half the game...I prefer the arcade version.

I used to grab the bat and trap it in the golden/yellow castle. That was at best a short term solution for me as the bat eventually got out somehow (maybe one of the dragons let it out when I wasn't looking). On that second or third game setting, I ran into complete bad luck when one of the dragons appeared on the starting screen at the golden castle and ate me on the spot. That was nearly as bad as them showing up after 30-60 second later after starting a game and having them eating you. Talk about cheap.