DoctorSpuds

I think today I’m going to dial it back a bit; I’ve been fixated for too long on the graphically impressive or highly original. I think I’m just going to talk about an old favorite, I think I’ll talk about Night Driver. Night Driver is not a graphically impressive game, nor is it particularly astounding in the auditory department, but it has the one thing that trumps them all, fun. On a visual level Night Driver is seriously lacking, all you’ll really be seeing is a shit-ton of red-ish pegs whizzing by at incredible speeds, you’ll also see a tree and a house shooting by on the sidelines but you’ll only be seeing them for fractions of a second. There are also large blue cars that will fly by you while honking dramatically; they look quite a bit better than your… thing… I don’t know what that’s supposed to be. When you crash the screen will flash yellow, which is a bit startling when you’ve gotten used to the black background. If you crash into one of the cars (heavens forbid) it will get completely flattened. Sounds are nothing special just the standard fare of engine noises, tires squeaking, horns honking, and cars crashing, nothing special. The real meat and potatoes lie in the gameplay. A brief anecdote before starting though, I just really need to mouth off to AtGames for a moment, when I got into Atari I had a Flashback like many did, when I got to Night Driver though I was astonished at how horrible it was. The game was completely unplayable and I was shocked that the game was on the console or that Atari even released it to begin with. You see I was playing Night Driver with a joystick, this is not advisable. Only after getting this game and a set of working paddle controllers did I realize just how fun this game is. This is your fairly standard racing game, but instead of racing against the computer or other players it’s just you and a time limit. High scores are the name of the game here, and you get a high score by driving as far as possible as fast as possible, your score raises as you progress. For beginners there is game one and five, these tracks are incredibly easy only requiring a minimal amount of steering to get along. Games two and six are the intermediate courses, these are the ones you’ll really want to start off on as they require much faster reflexes and a small amount of course memorization. Games three and seven or the hard tracks, they’ll kick your ass no question about it, these tracks require a large amount of course memorization and you’ll even need to let go of the accelerator a few times the turns are so sharp. If you want a random challenge then I’d recommend games four and eight. The tracks are split up into timed (1-4) and non-timed (5- runs, the non-timed runs are perfect for practice but the real fun lies in finding out how good you are under a time limit. This is an incredibly common game; it’s so common in fact that I won’t even quote you a price on it, it’s an R1 you probably already have multiple copies of it. A bit of advice though, if you see a copy of Night Driver that is the Sears picture label variation for less than 10 dollars you should pick it up immediately, it is an R6 on the AA rarity scale and well worth the price, if only to show it off. No Collector’s Zone today, the game’s good, and cheap, a winning combination.

Personally I prefer the 'Race' Artwork to the Indy 500 artwork. Actually in general I find the Sears boxes to be more pleasing to the eye, I guess I just like the uniformity of them.

Welp, my laptop is dead, it freezes at the password screen and that's just the end of it. I've gotten a new computer that'll hopefully last as long or longer as my laptop. I'm tired and suffering from a mild migraine at the moment so I'm sorry if this particular review is a bit nonsensical as I am both completely exhausted and caffeinated out of my mind. Of the nine games available at the 2600’s launch there are two that I feel still hold up well today. I’ve already discussed Combat and how absolutely timeless it is, but I need to be in a certain mood to play Combat, and I also need a second player. That is the biggest flaw with most of the Launch titles, they’re two player only, Combat, Street Race, Air-Sea Battle, Surround, Video Olympics, and Black Jack are all two player with only Basic Math, Star Ship, and Indy 500 having single player modes to them. I think I’ll talk about Indy 500 today. I love this game; it utilizes my absolute favorite controller on the 2600, and most criminally underutilized, the Driving controller. The Driving controller is basically a Paddle controller that you can spin 360 degrees allowing for the fluidity of a paddle and the maneuverability of a car. Indy 500 won’t win any awards at a beauty contest but that doesn’t matter since you won’t notice the bland graphics after a while. This game relies solely on it’s addictive gameplay, and believe me you won’t be starved for choice. You start off with a basic oval shaped course, just to get you acquainted with the controller, but you’re likely to spend most of your time on the Devil’s Elbow. The Devil’s Elbow looks nothing like an elbow but it is the more entertaining of the two courses on the cartridge, it’s nothing but hairpin corners so you’d better be proficient with your Driving controller if you want to make it around in a timely manner. Each of these tracks has a two player mode and a one player timed mode. The next mode is Crash n’ Score™ where two players will race around arena-like stages and attempt to crash into a flashing square to get points. There are two arenas; one is fairly closed in with two thing dividers in the centers and two small escape ports on the top and bottom of the screen. The second arena is far more open, with six squares in a grid in the center and wide open tops and bottoms you’ll have free reign over much of the screen. There are two versions of Crash n’ Score™, Tag and time trial, they are very similar to the race modes from before where you either race each other to a set amount of points or see who can get the most points in sixty seconds. The third mode is Tag™, I think you get the basic gist of that, same arenas, and same version types as the first two. The only twist to Tag™ is that the car that is NOT flashing is it, as opposed to the more commonly assumed opposite; this may lead to some confusion for first time players. The final mode is for those who have completely mastered the basic race modes; Ice Race will surely pose a challenge for even the most experienced players. Ice Race is just the basic Race modes but with almost no friction which will lead to plenty of sick drifts around the hairpins of The Devil’s Elbow. If not even the Ice Race modes can throw you off then I’d suggest putting the switches in Difficulty A for even more speed. Simply that the programmers managed to fit so much variation onto a tiny 2KB cartridge is absolutely astonishing. Indy 500 is a masterpiece of programming and should be held in the highest regards. Since it requires special controllers Indy 500 isn’t especially cheap. You can buy the game loose cheaply all day long, this is a less than five dollar game for sure, but when it comes to the controllers you’ll be shelling out a pretty penny with the cheapest one on Ebay coming in at 13 dollars for just one and 25 dollars for a pair. If you’re feeling excessive you can buy the complete package in the big box, the cheapest of those I’m seeing is around 50 dollars. I settled for a 1977 gatefold variant CIB for ten bucks, seriously there are way too many ways to buy this game. No Collector’s Zone today this is just a damn good game.

At least I wasn't too far off the mark. I wouldn't have made the connection to the Haynes manuals since I haven't heard of them until they were mentioned here. The power of obscurity?

Due to some unforeseen and extremely annoying computer troubles my upload schedule is probably going to be even more erratic than usual. I think I just need a new laptop. We’re back with Avalon Hill today, and my goodness we have quite a stinker! Death Trap is one of the most lackluster shooters I’ve ever played, and I will savor every minute I spend tearing it apart. In my opinion this is my least favorite of the five games Avalon Hill released on the 2600, actually it may fall on my list of most disliked Atari 2600 games in general. I don’t have anything to pad out the first paragraph with so I’ll just move on to the meat of the review. This game got my hopes up; one look at the title screen makes me think of greater things than what I wound up being presented with. The title screen is quite nice, the title itself is rendered quite nicely in blue and the font really looks very good for the 2600, but it’s soon after that where the flaws begin to show. This game has the worst flickering of any game I’ve seen to date. There are three colored lines separating the player’s ship from the large blue space station, and another line beneath the player’s ship. The lines quickly flicker through several different colors causing a disorienting strobe effect on your TV, and it just looks plain disgusting on an emulator. The player ship also flickers something fierce, seriously this game just looks nasty. You’ll find that the flickering worsens as you get further into the game, as more and more little blocks begin filling up the lines the flickering just get’s horrendous. The overall design for the player’s ship is fine, it would be decently animated if not for the flickering, and the enemy space station is impressively large. In summation… this game get’s an OW out of ten for the looks, how about the sounds? Well… they ain’t good, actually they’re pretty terrible. I can deal with minimalist soundtracks if the sounds are at least implemented well, Death Trap does not do this. All you’ll be hearing while playing this game is the wonderful generic Atari engine sound, nothing but a constant grating noise as you battle the forces of monotony. You’ll also have several annoying beeps as your erstwhile companions but you’ll likely never notice them since they’re drowned out by all the noise, noise, noise! Death Trap is not a very fun game, I’ll admit that the idea that this game puts forth is interesting to say the least, but in no way does it constitute fun. All you have to do is shoot two gun turrets on the bottom of the space station, then one more, and the game is over, but it’s not that simple. Every hit you land on a gun turret will place a little grey block on one of the lines that separates the turret from the ship, these little blocks are impenetrable and will stop your shot dead in its tracks when hit. The turrets will also fire seeking plasma balls that follow you to a tee and can only be evaded by moving quickly to the side as the ball’s horizontal speed isn’t as fast as yours, but it’s close. Speaking of speed, let me tell you about something this game lacks in abundance, speed. Everything apart from the plasma balls seems to move in slow motion, your shots crawl up the screen, and the moving blocks seem to move at a snail’s pace. By the end of the game you will be nodding off from everything that’s not going on, and this is where Death Trap really annoyed me, you can guide your shots by holding down the action button and moving with the joystick, I didn’t know this and therefore beat the game on the easiest difficulty without guiding my shots. I deserve a medal, oh look that’s exactly what you get when you beat the game, a picture of a medal. Ugh… I don’t really like this game, if that hasn’t become quite apparent. It’s slow it’s monotonous, and despite having a good premise it’s just plain boring. Death Trap is easily my least favorite shooter on the 2600 only being trumped by the one and only Skeet Shoot. I got my copy for 25 dollars, and for a game of this rarity that seems a fair enough price, but please… Just don’t. Collector’s Zone for sure, I can think of no better place to put this game.

Have you ever thought about releasing some of your artwork as posters? Not like the small ones you get in the boxes (which I do have hanging on my wall) but like full-sized posters? I'd snap those up in a heartbeat!

Now then if I were to ask you what the most unique boxes were for the 2600 I’d expect to hear answers like Commavid for their amazing box art, Bomb for their unique cutout design and included iron-ons, Tigervision, Mystique, the list goes on. Almost every publisher had a thing that made their boxes stand out on the shelves, but what if the best of these boxes were never actually sold on the shelf, and were instead sold online. What about homebrews? Yes, the homebrew scene on the 2600 is immense. It seems that there are more homebrews released for the system every year than there were in the final five years of its retail run, and as the technology becomes better and cheaper the things these homebrews can do becomes greater and greater. I have two homebrews from AtariAge, them being Mappy and Draconian. I also have an oddity that I will lump in with the homebrews, a while back AA user Brian O noted that an old box design he made for Raiders of the Lost Ark surfaced on Ebay even though he never really distributed the box. I now own this strange one-off box. So let us dive into the fantastically artistic world of AtariAge homebrew boxes! Draconian: The box art for Draconian is incredible, it depicts your space fighter bum rushing a squadron of enemies as several enormous space stations approach from the distance. On the sides of the box both the missiles and spy ships are featured below the title. The art by Nathan Strum is highly detailed and looks almost photorealistic. The artwork takes the Tigervision approach in that it wraps around the entire box making the whole thing extremely eye-catching. One thing that Tigervision didn’t do however was make the art seamlessly wrap around the entirely of the box like Draconian has done. The back of the box has high quality screenshots/artist renditions of the game and details the premise of the game while also tying in to the gameplay, it’s all around good stuff. Mappy: Mappy takes a bit of a 180 and turns from hyperrealism to goofy and cartoony with a hint of abstract. The titular Mappy is throwing open a door waving his billy club as he’s pursued by Goro and one of the Meowky, the orange and purple cats. In the background you can see a television flying through the Void and the Mona Lisa behind another open door situated in the Void. The box art doesn’t completely wrap around the box but it does stretch to both sides of the box giving each a unique side, just like Draconian. The back is simpler than Draconian’s, but not by much. There is some more wonderful artwork from Nathan Strum showing Mappy leaping from a trampoline reaching for a bell which he will then presumably drop on the heads of the three pursuing cats. The blurb is short but details the premise well and the screenshots/artist renditions look just like the in-game graphics, there’s no need for embellishment here. Raiders of the Lost Ark: This design is in stark contrast to the other two which were bright colorful and detailed and goes for a more subdued minimalistic style. The front has only a picture of the in-game Ark of the Covenant and the title with accompanying game information. The box is almost completely black with only the writing, Ark graphics, and two small grew swooshes on the front bottom left and back top right. The back has another Ark but is smaller with the blurb underneath it. The blurb is straight from the manual but it get’s the point across well. There are no pictures of the game itself anywhere on the box, as I said it is pretty minimalistic. Honestly I do rather like it; it has a sort of mystical/mysterious air to it. Construction: The AtariAge boxes are made from standard thickness card stock and have a nice professional smooth and glossy finish to them. Unfortunately finishes like this have a tendency to show any and all damage that happens to the box, even though I’ve kept them in box protectors and they rarely feel the open air they do have several dings and scratches. Raiders on the other hand is constructed from very thick card stock, probably 50% to double the thickness of the AA boxes. It also lacks the shine of the others which leads me to believe this was not professionally printed. Since the box is completely covered in matte black ink it is almost sticky to the touch if you have even a whisper of moisture on your hands. The Raiders box doesn’t show damage as easily as the AA boxes though as the non reflectiveness of the ink hides most small dings and scratches, but this has a small caveat. Since it lacks that shine small smudges and scrapes will never come off, and if even a drop of anything liquid touches the box it will disrupt the ink and create irreparable damage. This thing will have to live inside a box protector until the end of time. Inserts?: All three of these boxes use the same AtariAge style insert, I don’t know where the Raiders box got theirs but it has one. I personally don’t like these things, they hold the cartridge in the center of the box, making it rather difficult to get the cart out without removing the insert as well. I personally prefer the style that most other publishers used, but those had their own issues. Instructions: Both the AtariAge manuals are high quality affairs. Each are printed on high quality thick glossy paper and are filled to bursting with even more custom artwork from Nathan Strum, actually Nathan designed both of these manuals in their entirely. Each manual is themed with their respective game and each is full of pertinent information, as manuals tend to do, Mappy even includes a full color comic detailing the premise of the game and how to play for people who don’t want to read the text. The Draconian manual looks and feels like a military debriefing, like it should have classified stamped on the front. The Raiders manual is just the standard Atari manual, nothing special. Cartridges: The Raiders cartridge is just the standard Atari Silver Label cartridge, there is nothing custom here. The AtariAge cartridges use the standard Atari shells, probably long dead Combats, and simply have a custom glossy top and front label of the box art for the game. They all do the job well. So now what?: Well… Would I recommend that you go out there and buy every single homebrew that you can get your hands on? Well no, even though it supports the site and the creators on it I would recommend that you only get the homebrews that you want, that’s why I only have two. These games aren’t cheap either; they sit at around 50 dollars for boxed copies and 20 dollars for loose cartridges, though some are higher or lower. I will admit though that the moment Wizard of Wor Arcade comes out I’m buying it immediately. As for the Raiders box, well I don’t think you can actually buy it anywhere as this seems to be a one-off printed by somebody in their basement, if you want one I’d recommend talking to Brain O, the designer of this box, and talk it through with him. I paid way too much for this box but I honestly don’t care, it’s a weird one-off that was never really meant to exist in the first place and I love stuff like that.

While reviewing London Blitz I recall mentioning Tunnel Runner several times as a maze game that did it right, so it seems only fitting that I go in depth as to why I think so. Tunnel Runner is the hardest game to find from CBS Electronics but is well worth it. I found something quite touching actually with this game, I got lucky and snagged a cart with the manual and on the back of said manual there are a couple paragraphs about the programmers themselves (probably written by the programmers themselves), it’s very charming so I’m going to type it out for you. [TUNNEL RUNNER is Dick “Bucko” Balaska’s first game for CBS Electronics. Married, with a finite number of children, he makes his home deep in the crustacean layer of Connecticut. DB graciously thanks Cindy and Isis for their countenance while he lived inside “TR”. (It’s rumored that his flat is still somewhere in there.) His hobbies include fast bikes and fast chips. Kudos also go out to Trevor Marshall and Lou Abbagnaro for their support and to Col Stone for his outstanding computer graphics. A round of applause to Andy Frank, the man responsible for the eerie sounds of Tunnel Runner. And a special note of thanks to Rich Eckerstrom and Dan Rappaport for keeping things going when the going got weird.(Can we go now rich?) That’s just downright wholesome and I feel better now after reading it. If any of you guys are around just know that you did good. Let’s get going with the graphics. Tunnel Runner starts out strong with an excellent eye catching title screen that wouldn’t look out of place on a much more powerful system. When you start the game you are treated tone of the most satisfying things ever, watching the computer build the maze for you, I don’t know by what process it does this it’s just really cool to look at, as far as I can tell it generates the same mazes every time you start the game, so it’s not randomized that’s what game two is for. The actual maze screen is okay, it’s quite advanced for the 2600 but it still ends up looking a bit bland, but the game has ways of shaking things up. The floor changes through color gradients as you move through the maze imparting a sense of motion; you also don’t feel as if you’re moving on a grid since everything scales pretty well, it doesn’t feel fluid like in Escape from the Mindmaster but it’s still big a step up from London Blitz or even Crypts of Chaos. Another nice touch that you’ll notice is how the color of the walls changes with the level, the same thing goes with the color of the maze/map screen. You have pretty good visibility so you can see pretty far ahead so you can plan your route as you avoid the dreaded Zots. These things are scary looking; I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Alright, so we have a graphically impressive looking game, usually if the standard formula is followed one of the subsequent categories, sounds and gameplay, will suffer greatly due to it, which will it be? Well it ain’t the sounds! This game uses sounds perfectly. I must refer back to Escape from the Mindmaster again, when in close proximity to an enemy a tune will play otherwise it’s just you with your thoughts and footsteps echoing through the endless mazes. When in close proximity to a Zot a tune will begin to play, this tune is actually quite jovial and bouncy unfortunately it’s attached to a Zot, and when you hear it it’s time to panic and run away as fast as you can! Since the sounds haven’t suffered it seems that the gameplay must now suffer. The gameplay does not suffer! This game is great fun! The premise is simple… escape or be eaten, well actually it’s a bit more complicated than that. You are stuck in a great big maze and you must evade the evil Zots to escape to the next maze, and then the next, and the next, repeat ad nauseam. The key to your success is the key to your success, you must collect the odd triangular key and then find the exit door hidden somewhere in the maze. There are three and a half kinds of doors, there are the up and double up doors which will bring you up a maze or two if you have the key for them, the transport doors that will take you to a random point in the maze, and the down door that takes you to the previous maze (you really don’t want to do that.)Since the 2600 was incapable of displaying doors on the walls whilst you are moving the programmers found a clever workaround, just make the floors go al disco and flash through a rainbow gradient. When you stumble upon one of these disco floors simply turn to the side, or the other if you faced the wrong way the first time, and you’ll be faced with a door, just be careful of which one you pick. As you progress through the game you’ll be faced with new challenges the hardest being the invisible mazes where you cannot see the maze layout from the map screen and can only reveal parts of the maze by running through it. The Zots will also increase in difficulty, you’ll start with mainly grey Zots, which are dumb as bricks and about as fast. You’ll start to get a white Zot or two which are faster and smarter culminating in the red Zot which has the equivalent IQ of an evil Einstein, he’ll kill you dead. Overall Tunnel Runner is a very fun game, a bit repetitive at times but I never found myself getting tired of it like I do with many 2600 games and with the addition of game 2 you get randomized mazes which simply skyrockets the replay value. I did find an issue or two with the maze generation, mainly being started on a dead end with a Zot, though the programmers knew about this and game the player an emergency transport, hold the button and swirl the joystick, you get one per level so use it wisely. I would also recommend mot using a particularly sensitive joystick for this game and getting stuck in a loop of moving forward and backwards trying to stop can get a little annoying, especially with a Zot hot on your heals. This is without a doubt CBS’ most expensive game; you can find loose copies on Ebay for 25-60 dollars and CIB from 50-120 dollars. I got lucky and got my copy loose but with the manual for $17.50. I would consider $15 to be a fair price for Tunnel Runner, no Collector’s Zone today; I feel the game justifies the price (for once.)

It's very fun despite its drawbacks, but good luck finding an NTSC copy, it'd be easier to find a copy of Chase the Chuck Wagon CIB or an unopened copy of Bumper Bash than to find an NTSC Z-Tack loose.

BOING~~~

It’s uncommon in this day and age for there to be zero information on something, it seems that everything has a Wikipedia page or an article explaining it somewhere. Bomb has no Wikipedia page nor does it have any articles, Bomb has nothing but word of mouth, and frankly I haven’t heard any of it so I can’t form a proper opinion of the company. From what I can understand these guys were most active over in Europe, due mainly to the fact that 90% of all Bomb carts are PAL. From looking at the available advertisements on AtariMania it seems these guys were based out of Germany, or at the very least distributed from there, if this is the case that would make Bomb one of the only non-U.S. companies to sell games in the U.S. The game in question today is Z-Tack, and strangely enough we actually know who programmed it, its Robert Esken Jr. the guy who programmed Gamma Attack, probably the rarest game on the 2600. I’m curious though, how did an American programmer wind up programming a game for an assumedly German company, where it was then sold all over Europe, then later it was distributed in the U.S. where it was originally programmed? How confusing. Z-Tack doesn’t look half bad; actually I think there are elements of the game that are quite good in fact. The enemy base designs are quite stellar there are over eight unique base designs which helps stave off the boredom that inevitably follows same-y looking games. There is also a good selection of different level designs/terrains, according to the manual there are six unique designs that will loop as the player progresses. Z-Tack has something that many games of this genre lacked, variety, you’re not going through the same looking stage against the same looking enemies over and over again, the game changes as you progress and I think that’s an excellent touch. That being said there are a few gripes I have with the game, the first being the terrain itself, it is incredibly blocky and is monochrome, though I did notice that the life counter changes color with the terrain so I’m guessing that this was programmed in due to necessity. The saucer doesn’t look too bad, but there is a strange visual issue that causes it to stretch vertically whenever it crosses certain parts of the screen, I don’t know what causes this so if any of you programmers out there can explain this I would be grateful. This game barely has any sounds. All you get are a few squeaks and beeps and a few explosion noises. Sadly I think the explosions are miscast, if the explosion that plays when you are destroyed plays whenever you destroy an enemy I’d find the game to a more fun experience since a good explosion makes everything better. Yeah, there isn’t anything else to talk about let’s just move on to the gameplay. This is a simple shoot ‘em up, but there is a twist (as always), instead of shooting enemies to protect your bases/cities, you are the enemy destroying cites, and they are shooting back to protect themselves. The cites are well protected by the terrain, often appearing at the bottoms of holes or are nestled in caverns with only a small opening to shoot through, making hitting them more challenging. Your saucer is quite nimble, moving quickly and able to go in eight directions, you’re also able to shoot in four directions. There is a caveat to this maneuverability; your saucer suffers from ‘Cruise Missile’-itis, in that you must be moving in the direction you want to shoot to shoot in that direction, which will make the game far more difficult in the long run. As you progress through the game you’ll notice that sometimes a city’s shot will turn into a skull ‘n crossbones and hang around for a little while, these things are death and I would recommend against touching them. Later still those crossbones will turn into heat seeking missiles that will shoot in the horizontal direction of your ship. Soon you’ll be warding off attacks from left right and beneath which makes the game a hectic and fun shooter with the only downside being the ‘Cruise Missile’-itis, but you can get used to it pretty quick especially if you have a fairly sensitive joystick on hand. Z-Tack is fun, which is odd from a no-name company that released four games and then rode off into the metaphorical sunset. As you can probably guess this isn’t an easy game to track down, at least in the NTSC format. You can find PAL copies all day long for around 50 dollars, and a boxed PAL copy sold for over 90 dollars a little while back, but I have no concrete sales info for an NTSC copy. If you’re wondering I bought a reproduction copy for 26 dollars which is good enough for me. This game goes to the Collector’s Zone for just being inaccessible to the general gaming audience, sorry guys unless you have a Harmony Cart or a repro copy you just aren’t playing it.

I get the feeling that this will be the final game I review from Apollo in a very long time, there is only one left for me to review after this and it’s Guardian and I don’t have the 100+ dollars lying around to buy it with. The game I’ll be looking at today is Racquetball, and is the perfect example of a good idea executed poorly. I would also say that Racquetball is also a victim of the 2600 hardware itself, a game this complex simply needed better hardware to power it, probably something around the Colecovision or NES even. Apollo did their best with what they had so let’s take a look at Racquetball (I never thought I’d actually review this one but here we are). This game is quite impressive graphically; it’s second only to Wabbit and the unreleased game Kyphus, this is quite impressive since this was only Apollo’s third game. The game takes place in a very blue room, with most of the graphics simply being colored lines which work together to give the impression of three dimensions. The details are quite numerous, a few highlights are the lights on the ceiling, the players having defined clothing (even if player one looks like he’s naked), and there’s a little opening cutscene when the game starts. When you start the game the two players will emerge from a vertically sliding door (don’t ask) and shake each other’s hand before the game begins, little touches like that go a long way towards making the game a unique and fun experience, though Racquetball probably stops at the unique part of that statement. This game will both overwhelm you with sounds and make you fall asleep from the silence. The game opens with a very loud, very jovial, tune that takes no time at all to be annoying; it plays twice in a row. The noises in game are just a bunch of quick blips as the ball hits the walls and ceiling , occasionally the ball will glitch into the wall and the blip will play many times in rapid succession but otherwise the game is very barren. When either the player or computer win the same annoying jovial tune that plays in the beginning will play twice over again one more time. This game is hard to play, but it’s not for a lack of trying. Apollo added small squares onto the walls ceiling and floors to indicate where the ball is located spatially but it comes off as confusing since the ball moves so darn fast. Hitting the ball will only happen by accident since the player is unlikely to have the needed predictive positioning skills to figure out where the ball is going in a three dimensional space. The lack of any scaling removes any depth from the game and only adds to the confusion. A normal game of Racquetball lasts about thirty seconds, you serve to start with, and the computer opponent being a computer will follow the ball almost perfectly, only faltering if the ball has a large amount of horizontal movement, and knows exactly where to go to hit the ball. The player being confused will not know where to move to hit the ball, and after the computer has scored several points on them the player will turn off the game never to play it again. I got lucky and managed to beat the computer by getting the serve into a sweet spot where the computer could never keep up with the ball (too much horizontal movement) and always lose the serve, I didn’t move an inch and kept mashing the serve button. I will at least credit the game with having very consistent and ‘accurate’ ball physics since hitting the ball in the same place at the same angle made it move on the same trajectory every time. The game is over at 21 points, if anybody can even score that many times without cheating like I did. Racquetball is a shelf warmer plain and simple, you’ll buy it, play it once and never play it again. There is a chance that you might play it with friends over but I’d recommend against that since after playing this game they’d likely not be your friends anymore. If you just NEED this game to round off your collection it’ll cost you around $7 for a loose copy and between 10-40 dollars for boxed copies of differing quality. This game goes to the Collector’s Zone for simply being a confusing mess of a game that I can find zero enjoyment from.

It looks like the guys at Cracked decided to jump on the arcade craze like everybody else. I haven't been able to find any information on this particular issue and it seems to be fairly rare with the only one on Ebay being listed at $100 and with no sold listings. Here are scans of the magazine for all to enjoy. I'll have a download link to higher quality scans HERE