DoctorSpuds

I think we’ll start out pretty mellow with Good Luck, Charlie Brown. This game was slated to be released in the summer of 1983, but as you can guess, that never happened. Many licensed games were claimed by the Video Game Crash and this one is no different. Due to how simple the game is I’ll condense the review a bit, there is no soundtrack so I’ll just omit that paragraph entirely (get used to that). Graphically speaking GLCB looks fantastic, the screen is colorful and there is plenty of movement to keep your eyes occupied. The sprite for Charlie Brown is rendered in four colors, and actually looks like him, with the exception of his face, since he doesn’t have one, so I just drew one on. The one thing that will really draw your attention is the fluid movement of the kite string; it’s eerily realistic and is on par with the lightning in Mr. Postman for fluidity of movement. There are several objects whizzing past at high speeds trying to down your kite, you’ll have to contend with ducks, arrows, balloons, and according to the manual rockets. The sprite scaling for the kite itself is quite good as well; it does wonders for imparting the illusion of distance. All around the graphics are top notch, so let’s move onto the gameplay itself since, as mentioned earlier, there are no sounds. Unfortunately this game was abandoned before the gameplay could be fully completed, or at least I hope that’s what happened since this game is super easy to cheese. The goal of the game is to fly your kite as long as possible without hitting any of the obstacles, it seems fairly standard but then I was s little but surprised. I never noticed that the trees had faces and colliding with them will play a little animation where ‘ol Chucks kite gets eaten and he gets strung upside down by his kite string, that is cool and I like it. Unfortunately the game has almost no point to it since it runs off of a timing system which doesn’t quite impart the satisfaction of a point system. There is a wind gauge at the bottom of the screen that tells you where the wind is blowing so you can correct the kite’s movement to keep it from hitting oncoming obstacles. Here’s where the game falls flat though, it is entirely possible to hold the kite at the bottom of the screen and run the time out without ever actually playing the game. You can also just move the kite to the top of the screen and just hold up forever, there are no obstacles at either the very top or the very bottom of the screen so you can just hold the kite there indefinitely and win the game. I like the concept for this game its creative and I think kids in the 80’s probably would have had a good time with it, if it was finished of course. I have a few ideas for finishing/improving the game, I know that they won’t happen but it’s just food for thought. • Have the timer stop when the kite is at the very bottom of the screen. • Make the clouds at the top of the screen obstacles that will either end the game if you touch them, or force the kite downwards into the more obstacle heavy part of the screen. • Add power-ups that make the kite briefly invincible, perhaps collecting Snoopy flying his dog house at the top of the screen, or something along those lines. • Lives or extra kites. • For the love of god, give Chuck a face. • Sounds of some sort would be appreciated. Food for thought. I don't expect anybody to actually go back and add/fix anything, it's just cool to imagine what the game would have been like if it was actually finished

Well this answers who Zumwalt is, but the final two questions remain unanswered: Who are SnailSoft, and who actually programmed, halfway and gave up on, Comitoid. The world may never know...

Alright guys this is the final non-game I’m looking at for a while I promise but this one is just so strange. I won’t actually be talking about the game all too much since there is almost nothing to talk about in the first place. Comitoid is absolutely mind boggling, it is the textbook definition of confusing. All you do is fly a little spaceship around as it automatically shoots at large flashing objects. There are so sounds, there are no points, and most importantly you cannot be destroyed, so therefore this is moreso a glorified screensaver than an Atari game. Okay now that the game is out of the way I really have to talk about its creator, or lack of one. Whoever compiled my ROM pack attributed this game to SnailSoft, I cannot find anything on the internet about SnailSoft other than they created the Greeting Carts, and Meteor Smasher the only NTSC version of Astro War. What was odd is that when I grabbed a screenshot for the review the publisher/programmer in the file extension listed a guy named Greg Zumwalt as the creator not SnailSoft. After searching for ‘Greg Zumwalt Comitoid’ on Google I found a page on Github that listed him as the creator of several hacks of popular games, he is listed as the creator of Jungle Jane a Pitfall! hack, WacMan as Ms. Pac-Man hack, and Fish Revenge a Space Invaders hack. On the same page Meteor Smasher is listed under SnailSoft which leads me to believe that these two are actually separate entities, though they could be one and the same. I seriously cannot find a single scrap of information about these guys, they are phantoms. If anyone has any information about either SnailSoft or Greg Zumwalt please feel free to share, but when you’re this deep down the rabbit hole it’s unlikely that your questions will ever be answered.

I'm not sure. According to the few documents that exist about the Ultravision game console it was going to be called the UIltravision Video Arcade System or VAS, but there was another version that was going to be called the Computer Video System, it looks fairly similar but it wasn't an all-in-one and you'd have to bring your own screen and it was supposedly capable of playing games from every major machine of the time. According to this they had a large lineup of games planned, and I assume since they're using what looks to be a Karate cart in the advertisement that it was compatible with, and likely used 2600, hardware among others, unless they had somehow managed to emulate all of those modern cutting edge machines. I also have seen no mention of Sabotage on any piece of Ulteravision marketing material which leads be to believe that the game wasn't actually made by Ultravision and just had that slapped on by whoever compiled my set of ROMS. It's just another one of those cases where the answer to the whole thing can be summed up with a shrug because it pretty likely that no one will ever find out. Funnily enough almost all of the competing publisher games released on the 2600 were the better versions, at least with Mattel and Coleco because of the controllers. Or at the very least they were much more playable, though there are a few exceptions. Honestly the whole Ultravision console is just a confusing mess and it seems that Ultravision themselves had no idea what they were doing as well.

I have for you all today another oddity that I found in my ROM folder, actually its two oddities but they’re strangely related. When doing my Shootin’ Gallery/Carnival review I found a game called Carnival Shooter, it is a strange seizure inducing non-game where you just shoot a bunch of strange objects that are whizzing around the screen. There is no end to the game there are no lives and there are no points, giving the game no discernable play value. The graphics are horrendous and I would seriously qualify them as an epilepsy hazard. A large amount of big chunky sprites are dancing around the screen, this normally wouldn’t be an issue but I wouldn’t be talking about this if it wasn’t. This is going to be very difficult to explain, each row of sprites have horizontal lines stretching to either end of the screen, I’m pretty sure that these lines are sprites of some sort since they will flicker when overlapping, there are five objects on the screen at once generating a lot of flicker. The flickering mess isn’t over yet though as the background beneath each color is changed depending on if the object are above it (that’s the best way I can describe it) so if you have a few objects near the top of the screen everything beneath them will flicker, at times up to 75% of the screen is strobing between colors, and yes the colors are very vibrant. There are no sounds, this suffering takes place in complete silence, also there is no know publisher or programmer, the closest thing I have is (PD) at the end of the ROM name which I’m sure stands for something but I’m not sure what. Oddly enough this might actually be a hack of another game that doesn’t seem to exist. Sabotage is a game that according to AtariAge and AtariMania doesn’t exist much like Carnival Shooter. Sabotage is actually a game; it has a goal, points, and actual gameplay. This is a complete and total Commando Raid rip-off. You control a central gun to shoot down paratroopers, helicopters, and planes. When a paratrooper reaches the ground he will go to one of three pre-dug holes, if a fourth reaches the ground a little cutscene will play of the four of them creating a human ladder to blow up your gun (it sounds way cooler than it looks). Several of the sprites that were in Carnival Shooter are here, but instead of just being solid black they’re actually pretty colorful. This is not a good game for one glaring reason, if you look at all of the games of this style, Commando Raid, Missile Command, Atlantis, and M.A.D., you’ll notice one commonality, everything is zoomed out so the payer has a chance to hit the falling enemies, not so with Sabotage. As mentioned in the Carnival segment the sprites are pretty large, so is your gun, and it doesn’t help that the helicopters drop the paratroopers from halfway down the screen. The paratroopers drop at a fairly leisurely pace but due to the sheer number of them, up to four at a time (not seen in the screenshots due to flicker), and the fact that your gun swivels at a fairly slow pace means that games will be short. Also if you hit a paratrooper that is fairly close to the ground he will land and scurry into one of the holes, so you have a very small amount of screen where you can hit these guys and actually kill them (about one fifth of the screen is my best estimate.) Also this game has no sounds, so you’re still suffering in silence. I don’t know the developers of either of these games, one ends with (PD), and the other I simply refuse to believe since it ends with (Ultravision), if this is the lost third Ultravision game I’m glad these guys vanished so quickly since the game is utter garbage (yes, even worse than Karate). If anyone knows any information about these games feel free to share. Since neither of these games are available in cartridge form there is no way I can send them to the Collector’s Zone, but that doesn’t mean they don’t belong there. If you really want to play these games then I'll include downloads at the bottom of the review, just so you can experience the suffering for yourselves. Carnival Shooter (PD).a26 Sabotage (Ultravison).a26

Alright so I have another non-game for you all today. I’ve run into this game way too many times while skimming through my collection of ROM files it’s starting to get silly. As far as I can tell AstroWar was only ever released in Europe, and it never actually found its way over to the U.S. or even South America (Citation Needed). I would classify AstroWar as a non-game, but it’s just on the bleeding edge so it could go either way. In the simplest terms AstroWar is Astroblast on its side, except even more basic, if that was even possible. You just move your little ship around the left half of the screen and shoot objects that move towards you. There are two types of object, one is a basic asteroid (I think) that will kill you when touched but will otherwise do nothing. The second type of object will kill you when touched but will also kill you if it reaches the far side of the screen incentivizing you to destroy them as soon as possible. The graphics are incredibly bland; you shoot the same four things over and over again until you eventually keel over from either sensory deprivation or death. The sounds are almost good, the shooting sound very nice to listen to unfortunately the explosion noise is not quite as nice, it’s just a short *CHK*. Whenever the second object type is on screen you’ll hear a high pitched tone slowly or quickly depending on the objects speed lower in pitch, if there are two then the tones will play intermittently which is actually a cool effect. Now the game does ramp up in difficulty, unlike with walker, but despite that you still won’t have much trouble playing for extended periods of time. All that happens is the background changes color and the objects start to move faster, but apart from a second object moving way faster than could one could react to you’ll be able to play forever. I got bored and shut the game off at around 15,000 points with nine extra lives. I don’t know which European company actually programmed this game, it could have been SpaceVision or Fantastic Game/ Marpes, there was a Taiwan Cooper version as well. Even though this game is Europe exclusive it doesn’t mean there isn’t an NTSC version floating around out there, as far as I know Meteor Smasher from SnailSoft is the only NTSC version of this game out there, but it exists so that’s good enough for me. If you’re interested in playing Astrowar then you’re going to have to import one from Europe, and it isn’t going to be cheap, around 55 Euro for a loose copy. If you actually want to play it on an NTSC system and TV then your best bet is to just get an UNO cart or a Harmony cart and get the Snailsoft ROM. I would recommend that you stay away from this particular game. It’s Collector’s Zone for this bad boy, and considering the price needed to play it, it seemed a foregone conclusion from the beginning.

OW! my eyes, they burn! Why did you do this to me!?!

The ever important umlaut, ya gotta love it!

I prefer the crazy color pallet since it at least distracts you from the absolutely boring gameplay for at least a little while. Otherwise the game would just be criminally boring. My condolences to any kids who owned this game back in the day.

I figured it out. When using the Stella autodetect the colors are all out of whack, even though it detects that the game is PAL it still forces the NTSC color pallet, which is what we're seeing in the review. If you manually select PAL then you'll get a much more normal, and actually kind of laid back and chill, color pallet. It still doesn't change the fact that this game is all sorts of crazy. Her'es what the game would look like on a PAL system on a PAL TV in PAL-land.

What the hell is this!?! This game causes me great distress. This will not be a full review; it will just be me reacting to what has been put before me. Walker by Suntek is one of the weirdest and most nonsensical things I’ve ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on. This is an incredibly basic platforming game where you are an extremely tall clown that jumps over Bobbies, British slang for police, while meandering through some of the strangest scenery I’ve ever seen. Screen one: This screen is fairly standard. You’re in a city, you can see several lanes of traffic going past, and beyond that is a strangely yellow metropolis on the bank of a river. The detail is nice and there is plenty of movement on the screen, there’s even a little yellow biplane flying around at the top of the screen. This would be a nice screen if your creepy clown demon wasn’t on it though. Screen two: This is where things take a turn for the worse. You are now somewhere in the Midwest United States, the grass is pink, the trees are blue and the native giraffe are frolicking through the purple meadows. I’ll admit that despite some of the inclusions being downright bizarre the overall layout is quite nice, there are several houses in the distance and the sun setting behind a scenic mountain range is very well done. I’m sure they’re supposed to be cows but those running creatures look extremely like short necked giraffes, but at least the gees at the top of the screen are done well. You’ll encounter your first obstacle on this screen, a single stationary Bobby, you simply jump over him, and it seems the programmers took a page from Lady in Wading specifically the one pertaining to jumping. Screen three: Thank goodness, we’re back to normalcy. You are now walking along the coastline; there are islands, sailboats, and whales in the distance. This is another well done screen; I especially like the hot-air balloon. There’s nothing much to say apart from the appearance of another stationary Bobby. Screen four: Oh god we’re back in the purple meadows. The grass is pink, the threes are distressing shades or red and blue and giant scorpions are on their annual pilgrimage to watch The Scorpion King at the only movie theatre that still shows it (the scorpions won’t let them stop). I’m running out of words to describe just how confusing this is all getting. This shit’s weird dude. Screen five: We’ve now come to a weird screen that is desperately attempting to be normal but is failing dramatically. There is a large snow capped peak that seems to have been cut in half by a turquoise line, there also appear to be gazelle or perhaps deer running about in the background as well. Finally the difficulty has been ramped up for the player, the Bobby now moves. It’s almost like we’re starting to get a real game on our hands, not a collection of random sprites the programmers had left over from previous games. Screen six: Instead of confusing the player with strange imagery the programmers have opted to use flashing lights instead. What appears to be a large red curtain rises up, very much like at the theatre, when you get to this screen. The top flashes between an assortment of colors which the player will find extremely distracting. This is the pinnacle of difficulty as there are now two Bobbies moving slowly toward you, you can avoid them easily. Once you get past screen six the game repeats all over again, there doesn’t seem to be any difficulty curve, it stays constant the whole time. You will eventually lose as there seems to be a time limit of some sort as well as a set of lives that you don’t see. A song plays as you move across the screens, I don’t know what it’s called if it even has a name but I’d classify it more as a dirge than a piece of music. I wish I could say that this game was never released, but it was. If you can find a copy of Schussel, der Polizistenschreck, roughly translated to either Schussel the Police Scare or Bowl, the Police Fright, it is the same game. If you want to go throught the hassle of getting one there are currently four copies of Schussel, der Polizistenschreck on ebay.de they are all around 10 Euro so this won’t be a cheap one. I would classify this as purely a novelty cartridge, only get it if you want to have a laugh with friends, otherwise this game goes straight to the Collector’s Zone, I don’t even know if this could be classified as a game…

The year is 1986, you are a kid who just got his weekly allowance and you’re going to your local Kaybee Toys or Radio Shack to pick up a new game for your Atari 2600. The store is running a sale, 90% off all Atari 2600 games, the NES is taking the country by storm and stores want to dump their old stock, what a bargain! You walk up to a huge dump bin full of games; they’re all there, Imagic, U.S. Games, Parker Brothers, and a bunch of Atari. You start to dig around and at the bottom of the bin is a weird game, the box art is strange, it shows a bunch of people swimming down a river being picked up by a boat, and there are alligators! “Nah, that just looks stupid I’ll just buy Haunted House and Raiders of the Lost Ark instead”, you forever regretted the day you put down River Patrol because now you still have your Haunted House and Raiders nice and shiny in their boxes, but you now imagine what could have been. You sit in your chair, sigh, and regret. I’m sure we’ve all had experiences like that, whether it be for an obscure Atari game or something a bit more recent like with Earthbound or that stupid N64 bowling game, we’ve all passed on that one game. I’m sure very few people actually encountered River Patrol in the wild and I’m sure even fewer actually bought the game. For some reason Tigervision thought it was a good idea to release River Patrol in 1984, well after the crash, which would explain the extreme rarity. I assume it was a similar situation to Apollo’s where they just had to get the game out the door so they could finally shut down. Now believe it or not this is actually an arcade port of a little known game of the same name that was produced by Kersten in 1981, I’ve never heard of this game. I know that Tigervision can really knock these obscure arcade ports out of the park, just look at what they did with Polaris, so how do they treat River Patrol? Let’s start with the graphics. Holy crap, my eyes are bleeding, this game is covered in rainbows. This is not a pretty game, if anything I would classify it as butt ugly. All of the character and enemy sprites are monochrome and chunky, and in some cases don’t actually look like what they’re supposed to represent, especially the drowning people. As you scoot up the river you’ll encounter logs, whirlpools, alligators, other boats, and TNT, they all vaguely look like what they’re supposed to be but there aren’t any boundaries being pushed here. Seriously, what’s with the rainbows? If they’d stuck to greens and browns I wouldn’t have any major problems with how this game looks, but ugh. I need something to drive the afterimage of the graphics from my head, let’s move onto the sounds. OH GOD it’s even worse! A constant, annoying, agonizing, jolly tune plays the whole time! It’s not a bad composition it just that the pitch and instrumentation used causes the tune to harmonize in awful ways and it really becomes agony to listen to. The problem is that it plays almost constantly throughout the game and it gets more and more annoying as it plays again and again. You need to press that mute button; otherwise you’ll slowly go insane as the music burrows its way deep into your soul. So we’ve got eye watering graphics and soul breaking music, can the gameplay be any worse? Well no, but that really isn’t saying much when compared to the rest of the game. The premise is simple but the execution is highly flawed. You must boat up the river collecting drowning swimmers while avoiding obstacles; unfortunately it isn’t as simple as that. Moving is weird, I never thought I’d have to type that but here we are. You must hold down the button to accelerate, there is no automatically moving forward or sideways, ostensibly you have both all of the control and none of it at the same time, you really have to play the game to get the feel of it, and then you’ll probably understand better. Moving horizontally is an absolute pain as you move so slowly, you have to hold the button to move over a little bit then let go to drift backwards, then you hold the button again to move over a little bit more, this get’s quite repetitive and for an obstacle avoidance game such a control scheme is simply unacceptable. If they’d implemented a similar movement style like the one in Polaris then the game would be so much better as you’d actually be able to move around the screen with a semblance of control. The vertical scrolling feels choppy and jerky, which is odd since Polaris (again) managed to do this right the year prior. I suppose if you had complete control then the game would get too easy, but that doesn’t excuse the gaps that are sometimes the exact width of the boat that you have to get through while wrestling with the controls. I guess the game actually feels like you’re controlling a large leaky unresponsive barge going upstream. This game is a mess, an absolute mess. It feels like it was rushed out the door at the last minute before the programmer could actually fine tune and polish the game. If the river banks were green and brown and not rainbow, the game would look acceptable. If the music was lowered in pitch and changed instrumentation it would sound acceptable. If the boat controlled like either Polaris or something like River Raid, the game would be acceptable to play. If those major and minor things were changed the game would be acceptable, in its current state it is not. This game is expensive, loose copies have sold for a minimum of 250 dollars for a loose cartridge, and 230 for a manual. This game has sold for over 1000 dollars CIB, to my knowledge there hasn’t been a single copy found still factory sealed. Never buy this game, it is simply a novelty, something to display proudly on your shelf, or kept locked away in a safe. You all know where this one is going, straight to the Collector’s Zone for being too goddamn expensive.

Well, this is it, this is the final Apollo game I have any interest in covering. Apart from Lost Luggage I have one final game from the Apollo catalog that I have yet to review, it is their final and rarest game, Guardian. Guardian was shipped in incredibly limited numbers, mainly due to the fact that the moment the game made it into production the company was shut down by its creditors, there was only one batch made before the company was dissolved. It wasn’t a bad run, eleven games over the course of a year or so, that’s a step above Telesys and about on par with Spectravision. So what was Apollo’s final crowning jewel, their magnum opus? Their smooch to a middle finger to the gaming community at large? This is Guardian. It’s a generic space shooter… … Ugh, really? Well my expectations were low but holy crap I wasn’t expecting that. This game looks incredibly simple, but it has glimmers of excellence. The saucer at the top of the screen looks alright, the gradient is nice and it is animated. The little enemy things that the saucer spits out are simple in design but are very well animated, with two to three frames per enemy, and there are 5+ enemy designs which keep things from getting too monotonous looking. At the bottom of the screen you’ll see your little ship, it’s brown and basic looking and not worth talking about. Below your ship you’ll he a light brown line, which is the planetary shield a la GORF. Below the planetary shield are three detailed Earth-like planets, they look good no complaints here. Despite all of these little things having a good amount of detail thrown in there is one major complaint I have, this game looks boring, there is nothing that will really draw your gaze, the background is completely black and yes I really think this game could have used a starfield or just something to make the game more interesting. Well, the graphics are rather boring, do the sounds follow suit? Well, not really. There are elements here that I like, but most of it is either forgettable or, again, boring. The one noise that will be constantly playing is a soft white noise engine sound that we’ve all heard several hundred times in every other Atari game. Each enemy projectile has a unique sound; unfortunately you won’t be hearing them all too much since the 2600 has only two sound channels and since one is always playing the engine sound the other one is going to be filled with… The sound of you rapidly firing and explosion noises, neither of these are too bad to listen to, they’re adequately chunky and satisfying. Eventually the whole thing starts to melt into an indescribable blob of nothing punctuated only by the sounds of explosions. Nothing has really been grabbing my attention so far will the gameplay change that? No, it won’t. This is a basic bottom of the barrel move-around-the-bottom-of-the-screen-and-shoot-at-things game with elements of Kaboom! and GORF. The large blue saucer drops enemies and you have to destroy them before they reach the planetary shield, when the shield is hit a small hole will appear which the enemies will then try to get through so they can destroy the three planets. You move around using the Paddle controller which gives you good fluid movement, it would be nice though if the game would utilize that fluid movement. Unlike in Solar Storm where you could move back and forth firing at will in Guardian you are fixed in place when firing so moving the Paddle will only have you teleport when you let go of the firing button, this is annoying. You’ll often have to shimmy around an enemy firing on both sides before you can finally get the dial in just the right place, you can adjust to this but it will still happen and you’ll still be infuriated when it does. Even though the fluid movement of the Paddle is eradicated by the firing the game will still try to act like Kaboom! By the time you get to level six it will be a constant stream of tiny enemies flowing from the ship and since you can’t move while firing the game is basically over then and there. I almost forgot to mention that the shield is replenished every 10,000 points, so you’re not completely helpless. All in all I think this is one of the most lackluster and boring shooters on the 2600, I’d rather play Spacechase or Solar Storm. It does nothing new, it’s not original in any capacity, and it just borrows from better games. Here’s the real kicker though, you’re not likely to get this game for under 70 dollars. All of the current listings are 130$+. You’re only buying this game to round off your collection, not to play it only to show it off. Collector’s Zone for sure, the game simply doesn’t justify the price attatched.

Well, with the advent of my UNO Cart I know have the entire NTSC Atari 2600 library at my disposal. What game should I review/play first? Hmmm, there are so many to choose from… How about Tooth Protectors from Johnson & Johnson programmed by DSD Camelot. TP is not as well known as Chase the Chuck Wagon, perhaps it’s due to it not being tied in with a particular product or it just doesn’t have as flashy of a name, I honestly don’t know. Despite it not being as notorious as its counterpart is certainly is more sought after, often being the crown jewel of people’s collections. I’ll just say right now that I think this is a far better game than Chuck Wagon but there is a reason for that. Mike Schwartz, the guy who programmed Chuck Wagon for Spectravision had only a single weekend to make a final product. Considering the final product was apparently finished in three days I’m surprised we got what we did, but enough about Chuck Wagon, we want to hear about Tooth Protectors! The graphics are an odd mix of fantastic and mediocre. This game actually has a title screen and it looks excellent, it has a unique font and the J&J logo looks correct, it even does a little roll call of all the essentials you need for a healthy mouth. The three essentials, toothbrush, floss, and mouthwash, look decent, though you’d be forgiven for not knowing what they are meant to be. The game screen is where the quality drops a bit, those teeth give me anxiety. If the bottoms of the teeth were rounded I wouldn’t have a problem but imagining a mouthful of perfectly square teeth makes me shiver a bit for some reason. The titular Tooth Protector is pure nightmare fuel, he wears the smile of a serial killer, and the Snack Attacker isn’t much better, he looks like a death mask. Both the TP and SA are monochrome, but the SA does change color as the game progresses so things don’t get too stale. The things that I would classify as truly lacking are the snacks themselves, they are just colored cubes, which I think is a real missed opportunity, imagine the food from Fast Food in place of the cubes, that would be awesome! During the title screen a jaunty tune will play after a short while, this is the only piece of music in the game. All of the other sounds are a standard affair of beeps and chirps, nothing to really mention. That tune is REALLY catchy though. This could probably be classed as a Kaboom! clone. All you have to do is bounce back the snacks that the Snack Attacker is dropping on you, it seems fairly standard but there is a twist. You can aim the snacks depending on where you bounce them from and whether or not you’re moving so that you can hit the Snack Attacker with the very snacks he’s attacking you with, hitting him will get you bonus points. Occasionally you’ll hear a threatening alarm noise, this will alert you that the Snack Attacker is about to lunge at you, if he grabs you you’ll lose a life, you only get three so watch out. If a snack hits a tooth it’s no big deal, if a tooth is hit three times though you’ll have to use one of your emergency cleanings. By pressing the action button you’ll initiate an emergency cleaning, a cutscene will play showing the teeth getting brushed flossed and washed with mouthwash while the jaunty tune plays once more. You get three cleanings to start off with and will earn another one every 50,000 points, once a tooth is gone it cannot be brought back by a cleaning so you’d better get on things quick when a tooth starts flashing. This game works on a timer, once it depletes you get some bonus points and move onto the next level. It will be smooth sailing up until you get to level four where you get multiple balls moving diagonally, if your predictive positioning skills are a bit rusty now would be the time to brush up on them because things get challenging. Tooth Protectors is not a bad game, it’s simple and fun, which is something that Chase the Chuck Wagon failed at. It’s rare for a game this… uh… rare to actually be a good time, so I’m honestly surprised. Unfortunately even though this is a good, fun game it still doesn’t account for the cost involved in getting a copy. The only copy currently on Ebay is sitting at 110 dollars free shipping, though I have seen plenty that were more expensive so you’d better grab it now while it’s cheap-er. Obviously this game goes to the Collector’s Zone, but let it be known that Tooth Protectors is NOT a bad game, actually it’s kind of good.

I’m very excited; I finally have an SD cartridge for my 2600! This has been a long time coming since all of the games I’d like to review are the weird and rare games that never show up on Ebay, and are incredibly expensive when they do. I don’t want to shell out $200 just to review Halloween so I think an UNO Cart will do just fine. My rule has always been “if I can play it on actual hardware then I can review it”, so the UNO Cart exploits that intentional loophole perfectly. There are two minor issues, one has to do with the UNO Cart itself, and the other is an issue on my end. The cartridge slot on my 2600 is extremely tight, to the point where Activision and CBS carts are getting scratches on the left side bumps. Matters aren’t helped when the left side screw is poking out a tiny, tiny, bit making it so the cartridge doesn’t fit properly in my 2600. The issue is easily fixed by removing the screw, and the cartridge is solid enough that it will hold together fine without one of the screws. My issue is a bit more serious but just as easily remedied. I don’t have an SD card slot on my new computer, so I am unable to load ROMs onto the cartridge apart from a few that were already on there for use on a Flashback Portable. You may think that the ROMs for the flashback portable would be just fine but the UNO Cart will only show 100 files per folder so the list gets cut off in the mid D’s. I’ve ordered a cheap SD card reader off of Ebay so I’ll be able to get that issued squared away all in good time. Prepare yourselves for a torrent of strange, weird, and obscure games because things are about to get fun! Also I tested it and Air Raid DOES roll on my TV, what a garbage game.

Well, maybe, I still don't think the 5200 is quite worth it, especially when for the same price as a working 5200 with controllers and games you can get a maxed 800 and an SD drive. That's just my personal opinion of course, though you'd probably want to go for an XE if you're going to play the 8-Bit games.

Berzerk is an undeniable classic; everybody likes Berzerk it seems, apart from me. I’m not a fan of Berzerk but I can’t deny its legacy. Berzerk was one of the earliest top-down shooters and also one of the earliest games to have voice sampling. Inevitably the game was ported onto the 2600 where it maintained its success, and it was later ported to the 5200 and 8-Bit line as well. The 2600 port is very faithful to its source material, since the arcade wasn’t a very complex game to begin with. The goal is simple, shoot shit and get points. There is no end point; all you do is increase your score until you inevitably die. I feel that this gameplay type has been done better, even on the 2600, I find Marauder from Tigervision to be a very good Berzerk-like top-down shooter, hell I even find Venture to be more enjoyable. For me it all comes down to the gameplay, it just feels so mundane. You’ll wind up running through handful of screens over and over again shooting the same dumb as bricks robots. I know the robot AI was a big selling point back in the day, they made mistakes and acted ‘human’, but these guys have nothing but rust housed in their craniums as they will spare no time in running into the nearest wall. The only time you’ll find yourself outmatched by a robot is if you appear in the center of a pack of them, then you’re toast since you have to be moving in the direction you want to shoot to shoot in that direction, and the robots can be quite trigger happy when they feel like it. Depending on the gameplay mode you choose you may encounter Evil Otto, he is a large smiley face that will quickly chase you around a screen if you take too long to clear it. Depending on which game variation you select Evil Otto is either invincible or can be rebounded by shooting him, basically you shoot him and he vanishes for a few seconds before showing back up again. Otto can be quite annoying when he’s invincible since he moves pretty darn quickly while you move pretty darn slowly, this is not a particularly quick game. So, sometimes when Otto appears you will be too far away from one of the exits and you are guaranteed to lose a life since there is no way to outrun him. I also need to mention that shooting diagonally is absolutely useless and is kinda screwed up. I don’t hate this game; I just find it incredibly boring after a while. The game modes I usually play on are games 5 and 8 just so I can shoot that bastard Otto, but it’s very rare that I would play this game in the first place. So, should you buy this game? Well… I can’t say no, this is a universal game for the 2600, and everybody has at least one copy. I won’t tell you the buying info since if you can’t find one in the wild then something is seriously wrong and boxed copies are also plentiful as well. If you had the option however I’d recommend that you play the Atari 8-Bit version since it has the voice clips and a greater variety of maze screens and, I know it’s a prototype but if you have an SD drive it shouldn’t be a problem. Berzerk may not be my favorite game but I can’t justify sending such a common and beloved game to the Collector’s Zone.

I'm full of surprises. I'm hoping I'll get to meet some of you guys at MGC this year.