DoctorSpuds

We are going to start with the defacto ‘rare’ game in the 2600 library, Air Raid. Very little is known about this cartridge, and it seems that every step taken towards finally knowing who created this oddity leads further down a rabbit hole of craziness, and red herrings. I have browsed through several Air Raid centric threads and it has been suggested that the creators were drug smuggling members of the Cuban cartel, or even participated in slavery. But it seems that the only promising lead has turned up cold since the only guy who seemed to be going any earnest research into the game has not divulged any further information, which would lead one to assume that there was nothing at the end of that particular tunnel. It is generally assumed that all 25 known copies are pre-production promotional copies that would have been sent out to stores to drum up interest in the game, this would also explain the bright blue coloration of the cartridges since they likely used any plastic they could come up with. It seems however that nobody wanted this game since no orders were placed and the company likely folded shortly afterwards. I remember reading somewhere (so you know it’s true) that employees were trying to give these away for free, so you know it’s gotta be a good game. Then again Men-A-Vision did pick a horrible time to try to break into the games market, as I recall 1982 was a bit of a company killer. Sadly the story of this game overshadows the game itself since there is really very little to talk about when it comes to playing the actual game itself. I’ve heard it said that Air Raid is a highly modified version of Space Jockey, but I honestly don’t think so. There is very little to look at with this game, and for some reason Stella is acting a fool when it comes to this game in particular, since it flickers between B&W and color except the background is a vibrant magenta when it’s in color, so I was forced to use Z26 to play this game properly. There are several different enemies you will be fighting against in this game, first are the upside-down rocket propelled houses, then there are the stick figure airplanes, the generic flying saucers, and the propeller propelled jumbo jets. Most of the sprites are fairly colorful, but all are chucky beyond compare, and then there is you, an attack jet of some sort, that has its wings constantly fall of and reconnect themselves, it truly is a baffling animation. At the bottom of the screen you have a life counter and some large brown buildings smoothly scrolling left to right, believe it or not these four buildings are supposed to be the city of Manhattan, these buildings are essential to the gameplay so I’ll talk more about them there, but so far this is looking pretty grim. Thankfully the sounds are absolutely blissful. Air Raid has some of the chunkiest firing and explosion noises I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing, there aren’t many sounds, but the few this game has are fantastic. This is a shoot ‘em up, simple as it gets, but Air Raid somehow get’s it very wrong. The goal of the game is extremely simple; shoot all the enemies before they fall to earth, if several enemies get past you the buildings will slowly crumble more and more before exploding in a blaze of glory. There are a maximum of three enemies on screen at once, some will fall faster than others, the houses and the saucers tend to fall slower than the planes. Enemies will also fire on you to make your life more difficult, occasionally an enemy will have a vertical white line flash through it, and I have no idea what that means, but it frightens me. The one thing though that kills this game for me is the hit detection, it’s completely random, and for the propeller planes I’m pretty sure you have to hit the direct center pixel for it to register. You will see plenty of shots pass right through the enemies, though it seems that your hit chance is increased if you keep your ship directly beneath the falling enemies when your shot makes contact, at least, that’s what it looked like to me. Air Raid is a simple game that is broken by a simple issue, the inability to actually hit your targets, couple that with repetitive gameplay that doesn’t really escalate in difficulty and you have a prime recipe for disaster. Thankfully the game does have some replay value with the game variations, but since I can’t find a single manual scan I have no clue what they change. Normally such a game would be seen as worthless by the collecting community at large, but rarity has a tendency to inflate the perceived value of a game, and it truly has here since a CIB copy of Air Raid sold for over $30,000 at auction, and loose copies have sold for at least a tenth of that which would still place them in the thousands of dollars. If I had the funds to buy this game, I would not, since I would also need a safe to keep it in, and what’s the point of a game that can never be played? Just buy a reproduction copy off of Etsy or something… Also are all the copies in PAL? I’ve seen that it runs at 290 scanlines, while a standard North American game runs around 260, and a PAL game runs at 300+, I’m askin’ for a friend here. Useful threads http://atariage.com/forums/topic/204931-the-secret-of-men-a-vision-revealed/page-1?hl=%20men http://atariage.com/forums/topic/204249-10-17-2012-found-air-raid-with-original-box/page-1

Sadly I don't have a flash cart or a Harmony Cart so I'm going to have to emulate them, any tips for getting the best experience?

I’ve had a little idea… How about I do another week of, but instead of reviewing games that I own, I review games that I will NEVER own, ever. And what games would these be? How about some R10 games! Due to the fact I’d have to pawn off my kidneys to even afford a single one of these cartridges I’ll have to forgo the “Own It to Review It” rule I’ve been working under. Unfortunately many of these R10 games are there simply to them having a rare cartridge shell, I’m looking at you Xante, or being actual pieces of developmental software like Magicard... or being Atlantis II. So here’s a list of the game’s I’m going to review. Air Raid Eli’s Ladder Gamma-Attack Gauntlet Mangia Pepsi Invaders The Music Machine Video Life Why not everything? I will exclude everything from Xante, since they’re all fairly common games inside of extremely rare cartridges (yes I do know the backstory behind them), this also covers the ECPC Cartridge from Romox since It’s the same basic Idea. As well as Asterix since it’s just Taz except it’s the European version that was converted to NTSC. Birthday Mania will be ignored since it is not a game. BMX Airmaster since you can just buy the TNT version. I will skip Atlantis II since it is just a slightly modified version of Atlantis, and I just don’t like Atlantis. The Copy Cart from VidCo is not a game, and would likely be classified under ‘utility’. Karate get’s a big ‘ol skip, for the same reason as the Xante games, common game in a rare shell, and besides, I've already reviewed it. And I cannot feasibly review Magicard since it is programming software and I don’t have the time to read the 100 page manual. This is gonna be fun!

I actually have an Amiga Powerstick that I use for rapidfire games like this. Simply hold it horizontally between your fingers and thumb, and start vigorously jerking your arm up and down so that you hit the buttons on either side with your fingers and thumb. It will damage your pride beyond repair, but is an effective way to play the game, it's also an excellent workout for your upper back and arm muscles, kinda like a shake-weight.

UHHHG! Where to start with this one… Well let’s start with a basic trigger warning, 35 years on and this game is still highly offensive, so if you have strong opinions I would recommend that you avoid this one, even though I’m going to lambast this one as much as possible, it does actually have one or two positives. Let’s begin with the company itself, Mystique, it was founded by the Caballero Control Corporation, who originally, and still do, produce pornographic films. With the emergence of the video game craze CCC jumped on the bandwagon peddling their games under the ‘Mystique’ brand. If I have to give the company credit for anything it’s that they packaged their games in striking and unique boxes. The boxes are a little taller than the average box and a centimeter wider and thicker, inside the gatefold box would be the warranty card fastened to the inside cover, while the instructions and game itself is housed in a plastic and leather case, I’m not sure if the leather is real, but I wouldn’t doubt it. It all gives the impression that this is meant for the adults, it’s time to put the kiddies to bed since this is strictly for adults. And, of course, since these were meant to be sold in reputable establishments there were no pictures on the back of the box, or even in the manual, all you had to go on was innuendo of the lowest caliber, I just gotta say… Hoo boy this is some shit right here, this is Custer’s Revenge. I really hate to say it, but on a technical level the graphics in Custer’s revenge are actually pretty impressive, I don’t like what is being displayed, in fact I feel dirty just knowing I have to write it down. The two sprites that will draw your attention are Custer and ‘Revenge’ who is standing next to a cactus, both of them are large and ‘detailed’, with Custer himself boasting a whopping four colors, blue for his hat, red for his ascot, brown for his boots, and pink for everything else. It seems however that the programmers decided to make Custer an ugly bastard, since with his large hooked nose and shit-eating grin he looks more like Gonzo from the Muppets than an actual human being, he also has one hell of a beer belly. Revenge is vaguely human shaped, she is bald, her head is shaped like Pac-Man, and she has anti-grav boobs. She is boasting three colors, but they’re relegated to her skin color and her headband and feather. Honestly the best part of the graphics are the background elements, there is a large rock formation reminiscent of a Road Runner cartoon, and the little teepee sending smoke signals is actually rather cute, if this background was used in any other game it would great, but this is what we’re saddled with. Custer’s Revenge is a very musically inclined game, using mostly military tunes, like Charge when you score, and Taps when you lose a life, there is also a song that plays when you start the game but I don’t know the name. When you’re playing the game there is a driving beat, perhaps trying to emulate tribal drums, but it simply comes off as the console rhythmically farting. The only other sound I can think of is the sound made when you either run into a cactus or are hit by a spear, it’s a fairly chunky explosion noise that makes running into spears all the more rewarding, since by the end of the experience that’s all you will be doing. The main goal of the game is to get Custer from one side of the screen to the other while avoiding falling spears and in games three and four a randomly materializing cactus. When he gets to the other side all you have to do is mash the button while avoiding the occasional spear. When you get to 50 points you gain an extra life and are moved back to the far side of the screen, now you move faster and the spears fall faster. This game already annoys me just with the set up, since if you want the spears to fall slower initially you have to put the difficulty switches to the “A” position, which is usually used for the higher difficulty modes in almost any other game, Hell, the Sears systems even labeled that as “Expert”. Conceptually the basic premise is actually rather solid, avoid obstacles while moving towards a goal on the other side of the screen, when you score the allotted amount of points you start back at the beginning but you and the obstacles move faster, this was done to a certain extent in ‘Lady in Wading’ and ‘Night on the Town’, problem is that those are also Pornographic games, and therefore are automatically shit. Also the means by which you avoid the spears is somewhat stupid, they won’t fall all the way to the ground, actually they will barely make contact since they vanish on the same line as Custer’s hat, so as long as the bottom pixel of the spear doesn’t make contact with the top pixel of the hat you’ll be fine, even though most of those spears would have impaled the bastard, and I wish they would. I don’t need to explain to you why people find/found this game is highly offensive and in poor taste. Custer is a very controversial figure in American history, and he represents a side of America best relegated to the past, but here he is doing one of the worst things that can be done to a woman. This game is worse than bad, it’s offensive, I know it was released as a joke, but my goodness it was in poor taste. I know I sent X-Man to the boiler room of the Collector’s Zone, so I’m gonna send Custer’s Revenge to the boiler of the Collector’s Zone. Watch it burn!

You're welcome...

This review is rated M for Mature… Well, I never thought I’d be coming back here again, the Land of Pornography. But I’m here and I feel the uncontrollable urge to review something, I will of course stick to my preferred console, the 2600, but what to play? Many of the Playaround original titles haven’t seen a lot of coverage, but then again there’s a game even rarer than those, how about X-Man. This game has languished in relative obscurity for a long time remaining mostly within the Atari collector sphere, but was recently brought back into the limelight by James Rolfe the Angry Video Game Nerd in his series on the worst video game box arts as his number one worst pick. I was still a fledgling collector when I saw the video so I naturally had no idea that there were more porn games on the 2600 apart from what Mystique and Playaround shoveled out, it was even later that I found out about Harem, but that’s a whole other box of rocks. For the longest time nobody really knew who made X-Man, and since the company, Universal Gamex, made only this one game before vanishing only deepened the mystery. With some delving from the AtariAge community we’ve learned who the three programmers were, and that Gamex was likely just a shell company used by the programmer to more easily get the game out while hiding their connection to it, that’s just speculation but it sounds better. A second mystery arose when it was found that Spectravision carts and PCBs were used for X-Man, thought the only serious link found is that the two companies used the same manufacturers for their parts, and as far as we know there was no collusion between the two companies. I don’t actually own an original X-Man cartridge but I do have the next best thing, a repro copy that I found on Etsy of all places, you can find repros all over Etsy, actually there’s a repro X-Man on Etsy right now if you want to get it. But it’s time we delve crotch deep into this stinker, let’s take a good long look at X-Man. If I can credit the developers with one thing it’s that they worked very hard on the graphics, well you kinda have to when you’re working with the 2600. The game starts with an attract mode that shows the cast of characters running from doorway to doorway, the buxom blonde followed by the macho stud, followed by the crab, clamps, and teeth, the main commonality between the three enemies is their ability to cut, crush, and separate things, and the thing in question is the X-Man’s thing. When starting up the game you’ll see just how dismally basic it is, it’s a maze game, and quite a lackluster one at that. Each of the three mazes is constructed out of yellow squares, and honestly I wouldn’t really call them mazes, more like linear corridors with small offshoots, there is seriously no getting lost in these mazes. Patrolling the mazes are the three enemies that we saw in the attract mode except smaller, they look fine. My real problem with this stage is the X-Man himself, why does his third leg have a leg growing out of it? Any way you look at him, if you are so inclined, he just looks wrong, otherwise he is as tall as his schlong is long, which I doubt. The final screens in the game are the ‘reward’ screens where you finally consummate your love in three different positions, I will include screenshots because I really don’t want to describe them, they’re not sexy, they’re not arousing, if anything they just make me sad. As is common with games with complex graphics the sounds usually suffer due to lack of space, is that so with this one? Well, if anybody is suffering it’s the player not the game, these sounds are just… dirty! There’s no other way I can accurately describe how the sounds make me feel, pretty much all of the sounds are sickeningly high pitched, to the point of bleeding ears, it’s only something that people who’ve played the game can understand. In the reward screens I’m pretty sure the constant trembling noise is meant to be sensual moaning of some sort, but it just comes off as a cry for help, it seems the game itself is begging for oblivion. I’m going to move swiftly, and sensually, to the gameplay since sticking around here is making my skin crawl. This game is a simple maze game, but without the maze or game. You must guide the X-Man from the beginning of the linear corridor to the colored squares in the center of the screen; there is always an enemy present of the screen, and despite the corridor being very linear you can easily avoid the enemies. The enemies behave in very predictable ways, they will always go into certain offshoots depending on the direction they are moving in, all you have to do is go into a particular offshoot and wait there until the enemy passes you by and then it’s a straight shot to so sexy time. Somehow the programmers butchered the movement, you can move smoothly from side to side, but when you move up and down you jump along on the same grid pattern as the ‘maze’ which makes vertical movement far faster than horizontal movement, the same problem goes for enemies but they just move faster so it’s less noticeable. The reward screens are a simple affair, you simply move the joystick quickly from side to side, the fellow on screen will move with your joystick as he does lewd things to that poor mannequin, I am going to quote the manual verbatim because there is no way I can say it better, and I just refuse to actually type this. “BONUS POINTS You can score additional bonus points during the SEXY SURPRISE MODE. At the bottom of the screen you will see a letter "L" (which stands for Low) and a letter "H" (which stands for High). This is your SEXUAL EXCITEMENT METER. As you move the JOYSTICK back and forth in a constant and ever-increasing movement you will build the sexual excitement of "X-Man" and the "Sexy Blonde". For every increment on the Low to High SEXUAL EXCITEMENT METER you reach, you will score an additional 20 BONUS POINTS. You will see the color bar grow and hear a sound effect increasing in pitch for each higher increment you achieve.” ‘Sexual Excitement Meter’… I really don’t need to say this, but I’m gonna say it anyway, STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM THIS FUCKING THING AS POSSIBLE! In fact the same can be said about any and all of the porn games on the 2600, with the exception of Philly Flasher, it’s just a masterpiece. If you are hell bent on getting a copy to round off your collection expect to pay dearly for it, the repro copy I have cost me $30, the current boxed repro copy on Etsy is sitting at $90, and there is currently a minty boxed copy on Ebay sitting at $650 buy it now. Just don’t buy it; it’ll cost you an arm and a third leg that you just can’t spare. Collector’s Zone right to the boiler room of the Collector’s Zone.

I still need time to figure out gingerbread man.

As I said yesterday we’ve returned, albeit briefly, to the hallowed land of Xonox, but if you take a moment to tear your eyes away from the pristine graphics, and the unique gameplay you’ll see that there’s shit in them there hills. Many people from the infomercial era know the name of K-Tel, y’know those guys who peddled everything from ‘greatest hits’ record to the Veg-O-Matic, and The feather touch knife. Here’s the thing, they never really went away, they’re still in business, usually selling music on digital platforms like Amazon and iTunes, but they also license for commercial use, big companies and I mean BIG companies use K-Tel’s music, like, Coke-A-Cola big. K-Tel will be a somewhat familiar name if you’re into collecting the weird and expensive on the 2600 library since K-Tel released their own line of 2600 cartridges under the name of K-Tel Vision, they released two cartridges under this name, Spider Maze, which is a modified version of Inca Gold, and Vulture Attack, which is Ultravision’s Condor Attack with slightly modified graphics. But here’s the thing on the K-Tel Wikipedia page it says nothing about Xonox, in fact the only way you’re going to know that Xonox was owned by K-Tel is by looking at Xonox’ own Wikipedia page. Information is quite sparse on the company itself but word through the grapevine is that every game in the Xonox library was developed and programmed separate from all the others by different teams across the U.S. which is why all of the games are so eclectic in their style, graphics, and gameplay, this is unsubstantiated so if anybody could refer me to an article or wiki page that confirms or denies this I would be very appreciative, but that is enough about Xonox and its parent company, let’s look at the game in question today, Robin Hood. Robin Hood looks incredible, it is by far and away one of the most advanced looking games on the 2600, the amount of detail packed into the tiny 8K cartridge is astonishing. Robin hood is a game in three screens, the game starts with Robin Hood deep in Sherwood forest, sure there are only 11 trees but the fact that you can walk behind the trees instead of just walking in front of them conveys an excellent feeling of depth, and the fact that the trees are huge and complex is an added bonus as well. In the background you’ll find a snow capped mountain with rolling foothills at its base with a brilliant orange sunset lighting the sky on fire, and let us not forget the big puffy clouds. If we take a moment to ignore the fact that there are no snow capped mountains in Britain then we have an amazing opening screen, and we haven’t even gotten to the sprites yet. The sprites are large and multicolored, but at the same time, there are very few of them, and if I’m being honest they look really goofy, it’s really hard to even describe what Robin and the soldiers look like, so I’m not even going to try and will just let the screenshots do the talking. Screen two is outside the castle gates, and I have to say that IS the best castle on the 2600, it has a moat, portcullis, battlements, and even a couple of towers. The details even extend to having reflections in the moat, and even having the moat change colors to indicate depth, it just looks stellar. The landscaping is also well done on screen two, there are rolling green hills in the background, two lumps of green in front of the castle that either are small hills or impassable thicket, and a sunset that setting the sky alight with a crimson glow, and don’t forget those clouds. The third screen is inside the castle, and once again the detail on display is amazing. The towers and roof portion of the castle are recycled from screen two but that’s all that has been recycled. The thing that will strike you first is the checker tiled floors that actually change in height to indicate distance, and the second thing to hit you is the amount of doors, seven in total, the designs are alright, they look like doors and they even have iron banding to indicate hinges. The little details spread all the way to having kickboards at the base of the walls; the background is new as well with different hills in the background, and different clouds in the sky. This game just looks astonishing and I hope the good vibes can keep going right through to the end so let’s move on to sounds and hope the game is as much a treat on the ears as it is on the eyes. When you start the game up you are treated to a very adventure(y) sounding piece of music, it’s very short but still manages to get the point across. Most of what you’ll be hearing is the dulcet sounds of walking, and the musical twang of bows. The walking sound is just soft high pitched white noise, which manages to fit with the rest of the game, the bow makes an odd sort of ringing noise, perhaps it was meant to emulate the twang of a bow but it doesn’t quite work, a similar noise plays when you hit a soldier, or are hit yourself, with an arrow. An odd thing that I picked up on though is that the game makes an odd quiet ticking noise when thinking of where to place a new enemy, probably a small programming bug or the game just couldn’t function without it, stuff like that is known to happen. The only other sounds I managed to hear were the three beep jingle when you progress to the next screen, a sound for the crossbow bolt on the front gate, and a different jingle when you collect the Sherriff’s Treasure or Save Maid Marian. Sure the sounds are a bit sparse, but there is nothing offensive about them they seem to fit just fine within the game and add to amplify the experience, so I’d say they do their job well enough. Usually the gameplay is the meat of the review, but not so with Robin Hood. This is a very simple game, both in premise and in execution; we’ll go screen by screen and detail what you have to do to move on. On screen one you have to shoot 11 of the Sherriff’s soldiers, they will appear from behind trees anf from offscreen on either side so watch your back ‘cause they’ll stab you in the back if you aren’t careful, you start off every screen, and every new life with 16 arrows to shoot the baddies with, if you run out you lose one of your five lives. Once you shoot 11 guys the arrow meter will start flashing, now you must simply walk off the right side of the screen and you’re at screen two. Screen two is much of the same but in smaller quantities, you must shoot six of the Sherriff’s men to open the front gate, you can climb the walls too but it’s harder and I currently haven’t been able to pull it off, caution is advised since there is a crossbow bolt being shot horizontal across the wall, and you know what happens when somebody if hit by a crossbow bolt, yep you guessed it, death. Screen three is where the gameplay style shifts to a game of hide-and-seek and of avoidance, you must find the correct door on the ground floor to progress up to the second floor, be careful though there are henchmen behind some of the doors with knives ready to stab you, if you aren’t fast enough a soldier will appear and chase you around, he is impossible to get around and if he appears on the ground floor it’s game over. When you get to the second and third floors, you’ll be presented by four more doors, one has Maid Marian behind it; one has the Sherriff’s Treasure behind it, and the other two hide knife wielding henchmen, a soldier will appear on the second and third floors but to avoid him simply climb up the stairs and he won’t be able to follow you, same goes for the third floor but in reverse. All you have to do is find the right door, collect either the booty or the booty and its back to screen one all over again except the enemies move faster. This is an incredible game and behind Motocross Racer is my favorite Xonox game, if you’re wondering Sir Lancelot and Ghost Manor tie for third. The problem is though that this is a rare game no matter which version you buy, either Double Ender or standalone cartridge, you’re still paying a pretty penny for the game. The only standalone cart on Ebay right now is sitting at $59.99+free shipping, while the Double Ender is sitting at $69.99+free shipping, if you want to get a standalone Sir Lancelot cart the you’ll be shelling out $55+$3.75 shipping. Honestly the best value for money is getting the double ender since you’re getting both games, or if your TV can play PAL games decently you can get the European or Australian version for much cheaper, I’m pretty sure there’s a Taiwan Copper version of Robin Hood actually in PAL format so that is an option. Sadly both Robin Hood and Sir Lancelot have to go to the Collector’s Zone, paying that much for an Atari game, even if it is an amazing one is just too much, but if you can find a copy for less than 30 dollars it might just be worth your while.

That's nothing, try working with a gaggle of high school and college students and you'll learn words that you never knew existed.

Well... Show off.

Well now if this isn’t a sight to behold, we’re back in the land of Xonox. These guys produced some of the most advanced, and beautiful games on the 2600, and they packaged them in a very unique way. When it comes to exotic cartridges Xonox has the competition beat with their Double Ender cartridges, each side has a different game and the things are massive. Playaround also did double ended cartridges but we don’t like to talk about them, since Xonox did it first and they did it best. I have only reviewed one Xonox game so far, that being Ghost Manor, I do have the Ghost Manor/Spike’s Peak Double Ender but seeing as Spike’s Peak is an unplayable lump of frustration I’ll have to postpone that review indefinitely. I was recently contacted by a fellow you may know on the forum, CaptainBreakout, with an offer “I have this cart, could you review these games?” (It was worded far more politely, this is just the highly abridged version) to which I responded “HELL YEAH!” (Again highly abridged), I had always wanted to review these games I had just never been lucky enough to find one for a low enough price, which CaptainBreakout was willing to offer. So know I have the games and am ready to review them, I’m going to start with the smallest of the two, Sir Lancelot, since I’m going to need quite a bit of time to review the giant that is Robin Hood. The graphics of Sir Lancelot are quite advanced for the 2600 but on the spectrum of Xonox titles it may actually have the simplest graphics overall. You start the game and you’ll immediately have your eyes drawn to that fantastic looking sunset, the rolling hills and the castle in between, it may not look as good as the Ghost Manor in Ghost Manor it still gets the job done, actually I wonder if it’s possible to transplant the Ghost Manor into Sir Lancelot. The sprite for the titular Lancelot is tiny, 8X8 pixels, but at the same time fantastically detailed, it has four colors, white for his flying horse, black for the lance, red for the armor, and a salmon-pink for his plume. The enemies you fight on your quest are quite varied, on the first ‘play action’ screen you fight the Flying Snakes, which look really good, the second are the Monster Bees, the third are the Killer Dragonflies, and the fourth are the invisible invincible which are basically a flying hitbox with no sprite attached since they’re, y’know invisible. All of these creatures have a unique sprite that fits the name quite well despite the tiny sprite size. The second screen is the interior of the castle where you will showdown with hands down the best dragon of the console ever, sure it may look vaguely like a Pterodactyl but that simply adds to its uniqueness. Lancelot’s sprite does change when he enters the castle, the horse turns from white to grey and his armor and lance turn a very crispy brown. The lava pit has a very hypnotic raster bar effect that despite not looking remotely like lava still feels just as threatening, if not more so. The sprite for the maiden could look better; it’s the same brown as Lancelot’s armor and looks more like a chair than a person. Overall this game looks pretty darn good, but as we all know a game can’t just be supported by its looks it has to have the gameplay and the sounds to back it up. Sir Lancelot doesn’t have any music to speak of but it has beeps galore. Most of this game’s sounds are just beeps of different pitches and frequencies, but at the same time none of it seems phoned in, all of the sounds, despite being beeps, are very complex. Almost every action has a corresponding beep, from you hitting the top of the screen right down to you touching down and hearing a little skidding noise as your horse comes to a stop. It’s the sort of soundtrack that you don’t notice, since it fits in with everything so well, but when you do listen in your reaction is probably “eh that’s not so bad.” Gameplay, this is where a game either succeeds or fails, you can have the best looking game on the planet but if it isn’t fun to play then it doesn’t matter how good it looks. Sir Lancelot thankfully is a fun game to play, it seems very much like the illicit love child of Joust and Dragonfire. When you begin in the play action screens you will face off against four enemies, in screen one it’s the Flying Snakes how simply fly in a single direction without variation, all you have to do is mash that fire button and build up momentum and skewer the things with your lance. Hitting things with your lance is a bit difficult since there are some reles you may not be aware of if you don’t have the manual. The destroy and enemy you must make contact with your lance, if you hit them from behind you automatically kill them, if they are facing you the one who is higher is the winner, but you can’t be too high otherwise you’ll hit them with the horse and you’ll die, sometimes you’ll bounce off of an enemy, be grateful when it happens because you were a pixel away from losing a life. Enemy behavior changes from screen to screen, the snakes won’t pose much of a challenge but the Monster Bees will turn around on occasion making back attacks difficult, and the Killer Dragonflies not only move back and forth but they also will change altitude, the Invisible Invinsibles are like the Killer Dragonflies except they’re faster and they’re invisible, so good luck there. Inside the castle where you face off against the Pteranadragon you don’t face off against it directly, you must actually skewer it from beneath since it is hiding behind an energy shield like a coward dropping fireballs on your head. If you are hit by a fireball you will not die but you will lose control, if you land in the pit you lose a life, but if you land on solid ground you can get back up and try again without losing a life. Each new dragon gets faster and harder to hit as their hitbox gets smaller and their fireballs get more numerous, from what I can tell the final dragon Hanek the Horrible is basically impossible. All in all Sir Lancelot is a fun game, if you enjoyed Joust that you’re likely to get a kick out of this one, the controls may be a bit floatier but that was something that annoyed me about joust in the first place so that just makes me like the Sir Lancelot all the more. I will forego purchasing information today since I’m reviewing its companion game tomorrow and will put purchasing info at the end of that review, considering that this is an R8 you know that it’s gonna make your toes curl.

Another Spiceware classic Draconian, I need to get it out of the way before somebody else thinks of it is that 67 or so? I can't count good. 19052D is that good?

Sorry for missing the review yesterday, but for reasons way within my control I just simply couldn’t (I.E. I was just lazy). I had a friend over yesterday to play some games, and even though the big winner of the night was Pachinko! On Odyssey 2, because he was winning by a country mile the whole time, followed by Survivor by Synapse, since it’s just a damn fun game, the third most played game was Capture the Flag by Sirius on Atari 800 and that’s the game we’re looking at today. Sirius Software is already in my good books since the programmed one of my favorite 2600 games, Worm War I, but I was unaware of how prolific this company was and even though they published mainly on the Apple II they also programmed and sold games for the 2600, 800, and even the VIC-20, so these guys were cultured in the ways of computing. But with every success there is inevitable failure which came in the form of 20th Century Fox basically starving the company to death with a reported 18 million dollars of unpaid royalties, that’s what you get, you program pretty much the entire Fox library on 2600 and then they turn around and stab you in the back intentionally or otherwise. Graphically this game is astounding. Capture the Flag renders out a huge 3D maze your you to explore and get lost in, sure the walls are all grey with black outlines to differentiate position, but the simple fact that the programmer managed to get a 3D maze that you can explore in 360 degrees on the 800 without the computer exploding or the framerate shitting the bed is amazing. Yeah I said 360 degree movement, you’re not stuck on a grid for this game, you can spin around to your heart’s content. I don’t know how they managed to do this, did they use fractals like what Lucasfilms did with Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus, or did they use some other method? Well they managed to get this game almost one to one on the VIC-20 so I don’t really know. There isn’t really much to look at once you get past the 3D, the only other thing you’ll see is the map at the bottom of the screen that shows your position as well as the other player and the flags they are defending, this can be toggled off though if you want to run blind. This game has a pretty good soundtrack, and as an added bonus it actually changes the closer the two players are to each other. It starts out as a rather ominous tune that quickly turns into a jazzy toe tapper as you get closer to each other; the music is excellently layered and really gets you into the game. Otherwise there aren’t any sound effects since all of those sound channels are taken up with that wonderful music, very much like Gyruss on 2600. Since there’s nothing else to listen to we’ll just mosey on down to the gameplay and wrap this sucker up. The premise is simple, get the flag on the other side of the maze while a human, or computer, opponent tries to stop you, if you get tagged by the Defender they get a point, if you, the Invader, get to one of the flags (there are usually two) you get a point. When the Invader gets tagged or gets the flag the maze will reset to another random configuration, yep just like Maze Craze it’s a new one every time. Unfortunately this is where a few cracks begin to show up in the foundation of the game, the maze generation; it’s usually highly biased against the Invader, but can at the same time make the Defender’s job impossible as well. There is usually only one path to the flag, and as you can see from my screenshot sometimes that path is pretty direct, which leaves over half of the maze to act as dead ends, I could have gone for the other flag that is a little further up but if I had the computer play as the Defender then I would be unable to get there since the computer will always take the direct route to the Invader which doesn’t allow the player to slip past the computer or dodge the computer since any route that doesn’t lead to the flag is a dead end, just look at the map and tell me where I can lose the computer. But sometimes the maze is completely biased against the computer since they will appear far away from any of the flags which basically allows the Invader a free point, perhaps the mazes are too random which breaks the flow of the game. I also have to mention the controls, a three legged rhinoceros wading through three feet of cold molasses is more maneuverable than the controls in Capture the Flag, when you’re playing against another person this is fine since you both can’t yourselves, but against a computer you have no chance since the thing can navigate the maze flawlessly and already knows where to find you, and since most of the maze consists of dead ends you will find your time playing this game short and perhaps infuriating. As a two player game Capture the Flag is pretty fun, though you’ll likely spend most of the time looking at the map at the bottom of the screen instead of the 3D portion of the game, unless you turn it off of course. As a single player game it’s either impossible or too easy, there is no in between, occasionally you’ll get a good maze with multiple paths, but most of the time it’s dead-end city population two, and one knows where everything is, and guess what it ain’t you. At the moment there is only one copy for sale on Ebay it’s $34.99+$2.99 shipping BIN, it’s factory sealed which may explain the somewhat high price, there are no sold listings so I can’t really quote you any historic prices so this is all you have to go on. I’m ignoring the copy from Germany that’s $169.45+$10.73 shipping because that’s just stupid. Unless the prices go down and you have another player I’m gonna give this one to the Collector’s Zone, you just have to have a second player to enjoy this game.