DoctorSpuds

You got very very lucky with this one. It's a pity that they waited until the last minute to start releasing higher quality 'good' games, if they'd scrapped their earlier stuff and started with games like Encounter at L-5, Bermuda Triangle, and Frank's Monster, and also stopped nosediving their company with stupid brand deals they probably could have been a force to be reckoned with.

After a bit of persistence I finally managed to complete the Data Age collection, that’s right, now I have a copy of every single Data Age Title. This is probably one of the easiest and cheapest publisher collections to finish due to the fairly low number of games released and how common most of them are. The only other publishers I can think of that might be easier to complete are Mythicon, and Vidtec/U.S. Games for the same reasons as Data Age. But… almost every publisher has that one game that for some odd reason is rarer than all the rest, or at least more expensive, and in Data Age’s case that game is without question Frankenstein’s Monster. This is likely their final game, which would account for its overall rarity, but what can’t really be explained is how good it is, especially when compared to Data Age’s previous releases. If you haven’t seen the second catalog released by these guys then you’re missing out, mainly because they were advertising games based on Smokey Bear, Mr. Bill, and Mr. T, man screw Secret Agent I wanna see what these guys could have done with Smokey Bear, no wonder these guys self destructed, just the licensing fees alone for big names like Mr. Bill and Mr. T would be exorbitant, and just look at how these guys handled Journey. In fact, I’m surprised that they didn’t try to license this game with Universal so they could make it a tie-in game for a 50(ish) year old movie. Enough chattering about hypothetical games though, let’s take a look at Frankenstein’s Monster. This game looks incredible, not only is the screen covered in color, it’s covered in wonderful gradients. I didn’t know the 2600 was capable of displaying this many colors simultaneously, I counted about 28 different colors, that’s just awesome! I don’t really know where to start first, uh… how about the character and enemy sprites. Your little dude is comprised of five colors clearly distinguishing his clothing from his shoes to his hat. The enemies are far more basic in design being monochrome and in the cases of the spiders low-res. The environment is fairly basic in design, there are two tall brown walls flanking the monster, and some nice gradients representing the floors. At the bottom of the screen you’ll see what appears to be a log floating in a pool of water but don’t be deceived it is actually a pool of acid. There are several nice graphical effects when the lighting flares and the top of the screen flashes white, and the monster slowly turns green. This game also has a game over cutscene but I’ll talk about it in the gameplay section. So… this game has the graphics, but does it have the sounds? This game isn’t sparse on the sound effects, most movements have a designated sound effect from running to jumping to climbing, but the only sound effect really worth mentioning is the thunderclap fallowed by the ominous DUN-DUN. By far though the best sound in the game is what plays in the game over cutscene, the crunchy terror it conveys is truly masterful. This is a basic single screen platformer where you must get from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen whilst avoiding several different obstacles. On the top level you’ll be harried by an adorable ghost who’s incredibly bad at his job of harrying people. On the second level you’ll face off against some large spider creatures that walk from side to side, and pits that can actually be quite handy, or might just send you careening into a pool of acid. On the third level, the basement, you must jump onto platforms floating in the pool of acid whilst avoiding spiders that descend from the ceiling, the pits above can be handy since they sometimes line up with the platforms below saving you time you desperately need. The reason you’re making this dangerous trek to the basement is to gather stones to barricade Frankenstein’s Monster which is slowly being filled with Ecto Cooler after every thunderclap. Every time you get a stone up to the monster you will have to play a short minigame where you are being assailed by an ungodly number of bats. Making contact with a bat will stun you briefly so you must make your way up the screen, avoiding bats, and stand by one of the brown bars on either side of the monster, this will increase the height of the wall. You must make the trip six times before the monster is fully barricaded with every trip becoming more and more difficult. If you run out of time or lose all three of your lives the monster is released to wreak havoc across the countryside, a cutscene will play showing the monster slowly walking toward you until your entire TV screen is flashing green, then it’s back to the beginning to try again. Overall Frankenstein’s Monster is a fun game with a fairly unique premise executed very well. This is by far Data Age’s best game; you can really see the blood sweat and tears that went into making this game great, it’s too bad not all of their games were treated as well as this one. Due to its overall rarity and high quality people see fit to charge quite a bit for this game, copies on Ebay range from 28-35 dollars not counting shipping, but I recommend you check Amazon as well since I managed to snag my copy there for $19.99 free shipping. If you can find it for 20 bucks then I’d say Frankenstein’s Monster is worth the cost.

I'm glad that you could still find a copy. Did you get the version with the blank back? Or the one with text?

Wait a second… Wasn’t I supposed to review Video Life from Commavid? Well I was, but I decided against it because there really wasn’t anything to review, all you do is look at the pretty pictures while your ears explode, so I decided to instead replace it with a game that’s not currently on the R10 list but I’m fairly sure will be on it eventually, Red Sea Crossing. It’s odd, isn’t it, that three of the rarest 2600 games are also the only three religious themed games in the 2600 library? It seems religion just can’t win in the realm of video games.RSC is also one of the few games that we have a definite number on the amount produced, 100, though it’s doubtful that all of them have survived, especially when you consider that the first copy was found at a garage sale, so it’s highly probable that most of them are rotting away in landfill across the country. According to the only piece of advertisement for this game it came with an audio cassette and a coloring book, which if found may become the most valuable coloring book and audio cassette on the planet. RSC is at the very least graphically interesting but in no way groundbreaking. The game has some nice touches, like the clouds and sun at the top of the screen, and the fish swimming by at the bottom of the screen, but otherwise most everything else is fairly standard. Enemies, for how numerous they are, are basic in design almost verging on abstract with the archers looking especially terrible. Every sprite with the exception of Noah is monochrome and chunky, and while it works in some cases like the snakes, clams, and spears, it doesn’t work in others like the aforementioned archers, and whatever the hell those blobby mouth creatures are. I must also mention that taking damage is absolutely seizure inducing since much of the screen will flash through a rainbow of colors for about a second too long when you are hit by just about anything. I’ll admit that RSC has probably the best jumping sound in any game ever; you simply have to hear it to understand. Apart from the jumping noise there are actually very few sound effects in the game, when you start the game you’ll hear a very rushed tune as the sea parts, a rather catchy tune plays when you are killed, when you are hit by a non-lethal enemy you’ll hear the rushed tune from the beginning slowed down, and when it’s game over you hear a bunch of white noise trying to pass itself off as rushing water. The lack of sound effects can make the game feel very barren while playing, and unfortunately the jumping sound does wear a bit thin after a while, but I don’t have any substantial complaints since the sounds aren’t making my ears gush, so let them pass. RSC is your basic Pitfall/Bobby Is Going Home type game; all you do in it is avoid various obstacles and walk, perhaps too slowly, to the right forever and ever. There are several types of enemies on display, first there are the basic ground enemies that will pop up for a few moments and drop back down allowing you to walk or jump over them, they pose very little threat. There are also the arrows and spears which will endlessly loop from left to right around the screen, the archer also falls into this category, except the archer fires at Noah’s level so you have to jump to avoid the arrow. Several enemies will zigzag across the screen going right to left, these are mostly shell creatures and snakes, and they might show up alone or bring a buddy. The final enemy that I care to mention is the randomly moving enemies, these are mainly little sparkly things but occasionally a snake will also behave like this. On their own these enemies pose almost no threat to you, but eventually they start doubling up which in some cases makes traversing the screen a near impossibility, but it does add an element of challenge and problem solving that a game like this needs. Along the way you’ll collect items, I only got to two of them in my playthrough, but one was what looked to be a stone tablet like the ones from the Ten Commandments and the other was a small grey hook, or a ‘J’. All in all Red Sea Crossing is an interesting game, though I wouldn’t catch myself playing it often or indeed at all, and while it is better than Bobby Is Going Home it’s not quite as good as the original Pitfall. Due to the game’s rarity it’s no doubt that it has commanded some pretty impressive prices, with one selling for 10,000 dollars and with another selling for over 14,000 dollars. There is currently a copy on Ebay for 7,300 dollars so you better grab it while it’s this cheap. I do know that there were several reproductions released but I can’t find any concrete sales info on them but I have no doubts that they’ll get quite expensive later on as well. If I had the money to buy this game I most certainly would not, there are better games for exponentially less, and it’s still not as weird as Bobby Is Going Home, so that’s a big pass from me.

Isn't that basically what happened with Motorodeo and many of the Red Box titles? The Music Machine is probably the closest to being deranked to R9, just judging from how many I've seen pop up.

I made an executive decision to skip Pepsi Invaders since it is just Space invaders with the aliens replaced with PEPSI, with infinite lives and a three minute time limit. I've already reviewed Space Invaders, which is basically the same thing, except with those few changes, so I'm just going to skip straight to The Music Machine I actually have surprisingly little to say about Music Machine, it was sold in religious bookstores alongside the record of the same name, it is likely that to shift stock they were sold together at some point because that’s the only way you should have this game in your possession, if somebody gave it to you. This is a ‘Kaboom!’/Eggomania/Lost Luggage/Beat ‘em & Eat ‘em clone, where a series of items will fall from the top of the screen and you have to catch them in some sort of receptacle. The only thing this game has going for it really, is the catchy tune that plays at the beginning of the game because playing the game itself is not at all pleasant. What is the most important thing in a game like this? Control… Music Machine uses paddles so it gets a pass, what’s the second most important thing in a game like this? The items… unlike any of the four games I listed before Music Machines items to not fall smoothly down the screen, they jump down a set vertical amount which gives the game a very stilted and awkward feeling. The only thing this game does that’s original is the introduction of trap items that will cost you a life if you catch them, otherwise it’s as basic as it gets. Overall, the graphics are colorful, and the music is catchy but the game just sucks to play, I would actually play Beat ‘em & Eat ‘em before playing Music Machine, and that says it all, doesn’t it? This is one of the most affordable R10’s out there with loose copies as low as $280, and there’s even a factory sealed copy for $5,500 if you want it to be pristine. But… if I had the money I WOULD buy the least expensive loose copy, if only to say I own an R10, but that’s only because it’s the cheapest of the bunch.

Over here in Madison we have a chain of thrift stores known as St. Vincent DePauls, St. Vinnie’s for short that has a big game sale every six months at one of their locations around the city, I have attended one previously and the one today, and as a collectors you all know how great it is to get good games for cheap. Sadly though, and I hate to admit it, but this St. Vinnie’s game sale was a bit of a bust. I arrived at 8:30, they opened at 9:00, in the freezing cold and wind only to see through the window that they only had a tiny stack of Atari 2600 games and even from a distance I could tell that they were just common Atari’s with a couple of Activision titles. I get over to them and my suspicions are confirmed, they’re all common titles, which I only found out later were priced at $5.50 per cart which is a huge markup from 6 months ago when they were sold indiscriminately for $2.50 apiece, nobody wants to pay $5.50 for Freeway are you crazy? There were no boxed Atari games or even NES games, and it seems a majority of the games were for the Wii, 360, and DS, which is to be expected. I still managed to find a few things though, I got a Light Sixer, power supply (Broken), standard Atari Joystick, and some Paddle controllers (completely fried judging by the smell) for 30 bucks. I didn’t have high hopes for the paddles or the power supply but the system cleaned up nicely and gives a nice clean signal so I might swap out the board on my Sears Heavy, which is getting a bit fuzzy. I met a nice guy there, I didn’t catch his name but is seems he was a fairly serious Atari collector as well since he had two in his cart, we chatted for a bit about how the previous sale was far better and he got a good laugh from my story about putting down a CIB Final Approach for Barnstorming. I just hope that subsequent sales have a bit more in them, or that St. Vinnie’s doesn’t let the employees grab the good stuff before the sale like they have done before, and quite obviously did here.

The mock-up doesn't make my eyes hurt... that's about it.

Spectravision was mostly known for their Quickshot brand of joysticks, but that didn’t prevent them from entering the home game market in early 1982. Spectravision released a grand total of eleven games for the 2600 before abandoning it in late 1982, eleven games in a year is quite impressive. They are also one of the rarer companies on the 2600, in that a majority of their catalog is an R5 or above. You can actually track the rough time when the games were released by their rarity, with the early games being fairly common at an R3, ending with their final game Mangia being an R10. I feel the need to say that they didn’t completely abandon the games market, they simply moved on to home computers like the VIC-20 and C64, as well as one of Atari’s competitors the Colecovision. Spectravision didn’t stop at simply programming games or making controllers however, they went and released an entire home computer the SVI-728 which was basically an American MSX computer, not to mention the 2600 add-on the CompuMate, seriously these guys dipped their fingers into just about everything. The inevitable happened of course, the company went public the shares were selling like hotcakes but a year later stokes were down to 75 cents per share and they had to be bought out, eventually becoming enveloped by a larger company and ceasing to exist in any substantial way. At least it wasn’t murdered by the Crash like so many others were, but we must stop looking at the company and start looking at the particularly weird game it released. I am astonished by the graphical complexity of this game, there is just so much to look at, but the real problem though is that this game is also terrifically ugly. I hope you like turquoise since that is all you’ll really be seeing while playing Mangia, a bright eye piercing shade of turquoise. Apart from that though, everything else is ugly to serviceable to terrific, the mother for example actually resembles a human person, resplendent in a checkered skirt and poofy 1980’s hair. The little boy sat down in the chair taller than he is… frightening, the mother at least had eyebrows and eyes while this poor kid just has a soulless void punched into his face. He’s also wearing the worst outfit ever, I know I’m not one to talk since I just wear sweatpants and T-shirts, but why would he wear a blue shirt, and lime green pants coupled with a bright purple hat? This poor lump of a child would get beaten up if he went to school wearing that. The window-dressing is as well, the light on the ceiling intersecting the score, the boy swinging his legs, the demonic painting, and the curtained window; they’re all nice touches that add to the overall complexity of the game. Unfortunately I cannot get past the eye watering color palette, if they went with a more subdued rosy pink like in the promotional pictures I probably wouldn’t have as much of a problem, but as it stands… OUCH! This is one of the few Spectravision titles to have music, there is a vaguely Italian tune that plays when the game starts and when you begin a new life, it’s not bad but it does get a little annoying after prolonged play. Most of the game consists of your basic Atari beeps and boops with one major exception, an obnoxious jabbering noise whenever an animal appears on screen, at first I mistook it for the mother intermittently blabbing your ears off, but it turns out it was only an indicator for the animals. The jabbering noise, at least to me, is absolutely toe curling, I can only compare it to nails on a chalkboard, I wish I could mute it but I can’t since it’s fairly necessary to play the game. Playing Mangia is simple, all you do is move the joystick, there is no usage of that big red button here. Your main goal is to not eat at all costs, your mother will start loading the table up with your ‘favorite’ pasta dish, and your goal is to not eat any of it, you gotta pick up those plates by pushing right with the joystick and chucking them up to the cat in the window by pushing up or dropping them down to the dog on the floor by pushing down. You can eat the food but if you eat too much your stomach will quite literally explode and you will die. If your mother sees you throwing food to the animals or if you miss you will be served the plates of food instead of one, and if your mother catches you too many times she will simply break the table out of anger. The overall concept is interesting but in the end it just ends up feeling incredibly mundane, there is almost no variation to the game which will lead to stagnation and boredom. Before I wrap all of this up though I have a few rhetorical questions for this game… Where does the mother get all of these plates from? Why does one household have so many identical tables? Will the mother be charged and imprisoned for overfeeding her child to the point of death? Who is the frightening man in the picture? Actually I know the answer to that last one… It’s Mario. This game is a curiosity, plain and simple. And my goodness what a price to pay for such a curiosity, there are currently four copies listed at the moment, one is loose for $700 and the other three are boxed and are priced at $1,420.50, $1,208.39, and $3,385.20, also you’re gonna pay a hefty amount on shipping since these guys are probably sending them wrapped in silk and lodged firmly in a wooden crate. If I had the money to buy this game I most certainly would not, since I don’t feel the need to watch a child explode.

I recently had an idea about what to do on Mondays when I don’t write reviews, I want to fill that day with something but I just didn’t know what, until like four minutes ago. As is fairly well known I am a collector of 2600 games, and for most of the time I’ve been a collector I’ve tried to collect my games complete in box (CIB), mainly because it just adds that extra ‘wow’ factor to the collection, and it just makes me happy. I recently realized that I’ve only been focusing on a tiny part of my actual collection since I’ve rarely ever brought attention to the packaging the games come inside of, the box, the manual, and the cartridge, only the game itself, so every Monday for the foreseeable future I will be looking at and giving my personal opinions on the boxes of a particular publisher. This little series will not be sustainable since I don’t have boxes from a large amount of publishers but I think I can make it go on for at least a little while. Now, which publisher to start things off with… Hmmmm, well how about something a bit special, Commavid! I only have a single box from Commavid, but that single box really is quite a treat to the eyes. The first thing that you’ll notice is how absolutely short the box actually is, this is due to it being an early release, they did release standard sized boxes afterwards, they’re basically the same thing but taller and with a colored strip beneath the title proclaiming it for the Atari VCS. The second thing you’ll notice is how gorgeous the artwork is, from what I found on the forums it was done by a European artist named Noel Berry, preliminary Google searches don’t turn up anything but that’s not surprising. All of the box arts save for two were done by the mysterious Noel Berry, and they all follow the same pattern.Situated around the center of the box there is an angled rectangle with some element of the game jumping out at you, in my Room of Doom box it’s a grey clad fellow who looks straight out of TRON dodging gunfire. It is generally accepted that Mines of Minos is the best of these box arts but personally I’m a fan of Rush Hour’s art. There were two games from Commavid that weren’t drawn by the mysterious Noel Berry, they were Cosmic Swarm and Video Life (as an aside Magicard did not have any artwork) they were done by a local artist and are regarded as being rather crappy, though it seems that Cosmic swarm gets a majority of the criticism, even being called ‘abominable’ by Digitpress in their article about Commavid. I also feel the need to remark about how fantastically sturdy these boxes are, mostly due to the shape of the cartridge and the overall size of the box (for the short ones) coupled with the box insert, which is by far the most complex and solid that I’ve seen in any box thus far. The final thing I want to mention about the box is a particular pet peeve of mine that is avoided… When you open almost any 2600 box the top flap will usually get caught on either the cartridge, or those little cardboard tabs on the sides that are meant to keep it in place, which usually causes it to bend and fold leading to irreparable damage to the flap, which usually leads to more damage since it doesn’t fit properly back down. Due to the unique design of the box insert in the Commavid box, the top flap is held in place more by the insert than the cardboard tabs allowing you to open it without damaging it, which is fantastic since it keeps the box looking nice. Unfortunately I don’t actually have a manual so I’ll just have to jump to the cartridge. These are the tallest cartridges in the 2600 library, excluding Xonox Double Enders, and are by far the most solid as well; there is an audible thump when you put these things down, not a clatter. They are an inch taller than the standard 2600 cart, heck, they’re even taller than an M-Network or Konami cart but still feel solid enough to break windows with. The cartridge is about an inch and a half shorter than the box it comes in and perhaps two and a half inches shorter than a standard sized box. The label is a standard size wraparound label like those found on Activision carts, and it just shows a picture of the box art, and the basic game and company info that is standard on most carts. On the older carts that had the art drawn by the local artist the labels showed an artist rendition of the game much like the Activision carts did. Overall these boxes are just beautiful to look at, and coupled with their odd size make an exotic addition to any collection. The main problem is that that all of these games place very high on the rarity scale, with the most common being a six and the rarest being a ten. You’d be hard pressed to find anything on Ebay priced below $80, this stuff is just that rare, I got lucky with my copy since it didn’t have a manual which lowered the price considerably, but now I have to find a manual for cheaper than 20 bucks, and considering the only one I’ve seen is up for 45 dollars, I may have gotten the short end of the stick on this one.

Where to even start with this one… Well how about the name? Gauntlet, which in retrospect has caused a lot of confusion over the years, yes there was a Gauntlet on Atari but it isn’t Atari’s Gauntlet, same name different game. Even the company is shrouded in mystery, mainly because I can’t find a decent shred of info on them anywhere, all I really know is that they were a mail-order only company, they programmed three games but only released two, and that a majority of their games exist only as loose boards with no cartridge shells, seriously if anybody can direct me to so good info on these guys I’d be really grateful. The only info I can find about the actual number of Gauntlet cartridges is from a 2014 thread where Rick Wies an owner of one of the carts said there were three that he knows of, and I’m willing to take his word for it, unless any more have been found of course. This is actually a very complex game on both a surface and technical level; I’m actually really impressed with what I’m seeing here. The only game I can really compare it to is Journey: Escape, which I have compared to Gauntlet in the past so we’ve come full circle. It is a top-down avoid-it game, where you must navigate your way past obstacles to… uh… keep avoiding obstacles, and my goodness what obstacles we have. Rocks, logs, trees, arrows, flippin’ tomahawks, and even a pillar (?) will harry and hinder on your quest, and honestly they all look pretty good. Of course the more basic items like the trees and rocks are single colored, but the trees and tomahawks are both three and four colors respectively, which is pretty darn impressive when you take into consideration that they’re all whizzing past you at high speeds while not flickering in the slightest. Seriously this game looks good on just about every level I can even think of, actually the only part of the game I think could have been tweaked was the color of the borders, because I really don’t think blue was the best color to have, perhaps a dark green or brown. The sounds are alright, they are a little scarce, which isn’t uncommon for graphically complex game such as this one, especially when you take into consideration that the entire game was squeezed into a tiny 4K chip. Most of what you’ll be hearing are thumping tribal drums to act as a backing track to the sounds of you running, and running into things. Running is just a basic white noise effect but running into something plays the shortest rendition on the Funeral March I’ve ever heard, it’s so fast as to almost be comical. There are a few more basic sounds for when you water and old man or douse a flame, or when you just get thirsty and take a drink, but they’re pretty much the same sound, as well as for skidding to a stop and ducking, but those are just basic beeps. As stated earlier in the graphics section Gauntlet is an avoid-it game, where you must avoid obstacles to get to an overarching goal. Gauntlet actually has a somewhat unique premise, where you are a fearless explorer attempting to gain the respect of some nondescript group of people, so you must therefore run the gauntlet, and douse a bunch of ceremonial fires that have been set up along the way. ”How can you douse these fires without water?” I hear you ask, well it’s simple, you just carry a couple of glasses of water along with you as you run headlong into danger. Each of the cups of water act as lives, but you don’t lose an entire cup if you trip up just once, you actually get seven chances per cup, you can lose water by either running into an obstacle, watering an old man for points, or if you just stand around for a while you’ll take a swig, so you basically have 21 lives. Also your cup will be filled after you douse a flame so really good players could likely keep going for a long while. That’s all just the premise and the lives the real question is how this game actually plays, and honestly it’s a bit of a mixed bag. You have the ability to run, jump, and duck, also this game isn’t an autoscroller so you do have the ability to stop, your maneuverability is fine, if not a bit sluggish, and slowing down is easy enough as long as you have sufficient distance to come to a stop, my main gripe is with the jumping and ducking. There is almost no indication while jumping of whether you’re in the air or on the ground since the guy only raises up one pixel, you also lose all control while jumping and it’s also hard to actually time your jump since sometimes it just doesn’t work. You’ll probably never actually duck in the game since the only obstacles you need to duck for are the arrows tomahawks and thrown stones, which you can pretty easily run past even at the higher speeds. The real problem with the game is the collision detection, not a single pixel of your character sprite can make contact with any part of any obstacle, and later on the game just loves to put trees really close together at the narrowest portions of the stage, but thankfully you get a brief moment of invincibility after you get knocked down so you can disentangle yourself from the tree you just ran into at 25 miles per hour. Overall this is a pretty fair game, that’s fairly low on the bullshit meter, there are a few things that might make you raise an eyebrow, but there’s nothing that’ll make you want to throw the game out the window. AS I said earlier there are three known copies of this game (in 2014), and I don’t have any concrete sales information on them, but I do know that there are double enders that contain both Gauntlet and Answer Software’s other game Malagai for 100bucks on Ebay. If I had the money I would buy the double ender but not the actual cart or even any PCB’s that may be out there.

Thanks for the info!

Gamma-Attack, much like Air Raid, has languished in obscurity and myth for many years until its eventual discovery in 2008. From the get-go this game was set up to have a very limited release, and to truly understand HOW limited we have to briefly take a look at the company that made it, Gammation. Gammation was a one man company out of Ohio that made and sold turbo attachments for the 2600 through mail-order. The only way to get business would be to have ads in the large gaming magazines, and from what is known Gamma-Attack was advertised in a single ad that was in a single issue of Electronics Games magazine in 1982. So the only way to get your hands on this game would be to find an ad for a rather obscure turbo peripheral and then read the fine-print at the bottom of the ad to see that there was a special game on offer, it’s no wonder that this game is as rare as it is, apparently Gammation had their own brochures that I assume were mailed to previous customers, but that’s still a very small number of people. We must not however forget about the fellow who programmed this game all those years ago Robert L. Esken, Jr., since this was not his only game on the 2600, he actually programmed Z-Tack that was later sold by Bomb and bootlegged by whoever manufactured those Taiwan Cooper games, which is a big plus since I actually like Z-Tack. He actually came back and released 100 more Gamma-Attack cartridges with signed certificates of authenticity, verifying their legitimacy, as well as his prototype copy. Currently there is the one known legitimate copy, the repros, and Robert’s own cartridge, though there are likely several more copies floating around in garages or storage lockers, but it’s hard to put a concrete number on it since not even Robert remembers how many he sold, or at least he has not divulged a concrete number. It’s time however to move on from the backstory of the game to the game itself, so how does Gamma-Attack hold up? I would say that Gamma-Attack is visually interesting, but not visually appealing. It has some impressive scrolling mountains in the background, but that’s about it, the rest of the game is pretty basic. The four sprites this game contains are very basic, monochrome blobs that take a bit of imagination to see as anything else. The yellow football is a flying saucer, though it is the most recognizable of the three, the weird black lumps that more so resemble an old-fashioned crane or excavator are actually tanks, there is of course the explosion graphic, and the final sprite is that of Gammy, who appears in place of your ship when you get a game over, I assume that he is the company’s mascot, but I’m not really sure. We can’t forget about the ‘shots’ as well, the enemy tanks spit out a paltry three pixel missile while your saucer spits out a friggin lightning bolt. I can’t help but feel that this game is only held together with bits of string and masking tape since it can behave somewhat weirdly, it often flips between running at 265 and 266 scanlines which leads to the copyright info at the bottom of the screen jumping up and down slightly, and occasionally it will jump very quickly between 265, 266, and 267 scanlines which makes the whole screen vibrate, and can be very distracting. I know I’ve never brought them up before, but what are those black bars on the left side of the screen, I know they have something to do with the placement of the sprites, but why does Gamma-Attack have so many of them? It seems they are located on every horizontal location where a sprite would be present, could any of you 2600 programmers please explain this to me, because I’m just confused… with that, let’s move onto the sounds… yay. This game contains around four sounds, and one of them is just the mixing of two existing sounds together, so I’ll say three sounds. All there is is the sounds of them firing, the sounds of you firing, and the sounds of them getting hit and subsequently exploding, the sound of you getting hit is simply a mashup of the sound of them firing and the exploding noise. I will give the sounds a pass though, despite their overall scarcity they’re not making my ears bleed so I can’t really complain. Despite this being a rather generic shooter style game, it shakes up the formula enough to be unique. You do not have free movement and are in fact stuck in the top right of the screen though you do have free vertical movement. You can only shoot at a 45 degree angle down at the surface, the same goes for the enemies, if you are hit by an enemy you do not lose a life, you only lose altitude, once you touch the planet’s surface its game over. Unfortunately this game appears to be either broken or extremely cryptic, since in the manual it says that there is an underground enemy base and an enemy mothership to destroy but as of yet nobody has found out how to access these other levels, or even know if they exist on the cartridge. Despite all of the issues this game has it’s still rather fun to play, the concept is unique enough to keep it fresh and the difficulty ramps up enough to keep you engaged, so as a game Gamma-Attack actually succeeds. As far as I can tell there is one verified copy in the hands of a collector and since it’s never actually been sold at auction it currently sits on the podium of “Priceless”, though estimates have put it at a maximum of 20,000 dollars, though it could go higher. The reproduction copies that were sold were originally at 60 bucks BIN, but they’ve resurfaced for much higher, I believe I saw one a while back for a thousand bucks BIN (it didn’t sell), but I can see them getting expensive. If I had the money I would buy one of the re-releases, but not the original, I actually wish I could go back in time and order it then, but that is unlikely to happen.

Well... the good thing about these expensive games is that they may cost as much as a college textbook, but they hold their value far better in the long run. You could try to donate your old textbooks, if you have any used book stores in your area you could check them out, you'd probably get a few bucks per book, but they'd be out of your life for good.

As is common with many rare games from the first few generations, they were just one-offs from no-name companies trying to either break into the market, or simply to advertise themselves. I honestly have no idea where Eli’s Ladder falls in the spectrum of one-offs, but as one-offs go this one’s pretty darn good. Eli’s Ladder is a math tutoring game that teaches the player addition, subtraction, and counting, it also came with a console overlay for both six and four switch Atari’s which leads me to believe the company behind this game, Simage, had a good amount of dedication behind it. The game starts off with a basic menu where you can select which game variation you want as well as how fast the timer runs, you can also change between addition and subtraction with the difficulty switches, and when you get into the actual gameplay area you’ll be mildly impressed with the amount of colors on display. There is a large black rectangle where the math problem will be displayed, lower down the screen there are four numbers from which to choose from, if you select the correct number you will be taken briefly to a screen where a strange creature, who I assume is Eli, jumps up a single rung of a giant ladder. If you answer 17-20 of the twenty math problems correctly you will be awarded with a bright blue screen and Eli jumping up and down saying WOW, apparently he will jump 100 times before you’re booted back to the menu screen but I didn’t wait around to find out. Oddly enough the game is mainly controlled by the right controller, which would be the one that the child is using, while the left controller would be used by the adult to start the game, advance to the next question, and activate the counting function, though I’ve never actually managed to get it to work for me. Honestly there isn’t much else to talk about with this one, it’s just a fairly good math game, I can understand why parents would like it but apart from that it has almost no play value. Due to this game’s staggering rarity it doesn’t come up to auction very often, but one actually sold this past December for $1,301.78+7.45 shipping, which is a pretty good deal considering it’s about the same price as a college math textbook. If I had the money I would pass on Eli’s Ladder, since I don’t need to relearn my basic math, maybe.

Quite an impressive game, would you mind if sometime in the future I write a review on it?

I suppose all collectors are guilty of this, we all want to have a game to show off, I know I have several (Chuck Wagon, Bumper Bash, Custer's Revenge, ETC...). I would never, however, spend 100+ dollars on a game, that's my limit, that's why I still find it so confounding that people will shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a game that hasn't even been properly coded. It's actually rather nice to have a price cap when it comes to collecting, just so it doesn't get out of hand.

So you're telling me that one of the most expensive games on the 2600, a game that we all drool over, would not display properly on either a PAL or NTSC television? Unless of course you have a TV that can adjust the vertical hold, but even so, you'd likely cut off the score trying to get the bottom of the screen to fit. I'm sorry but Air Raid is garbage, why do we even like this game?

I manually switched Air Raid from the Autodetected PAL to NTSC and have encountered a different problem. The bottom green bit has been totally cut off, I know this is due to it running in NTSC node and not being able display all 290-ish of the lines, but it is really quite obnoxious since now I can't see how many lives I have. For Air Raid only, I will use Z26 since it gets it right first time every time, otherwise it's Stella all the way.