Foxsolo2000

I must have played Raiders of the Lost Ark to death for two reasons. The first was to try and solve it, the second was to attempt to unlock all of its secrets and after years of play a couple of bugs still elude me. In sheer playability stakes it had to be Solaris and H.E.R.O. which were two of the best games ever created for the 2600.

Back in the late 80's there was a game called Ship of Doom I believe for the ZX Spectrum which was banned for the object of the game (amongst other things) was to strangle a female child before raping an android until it moaned and blew a fuse. In the UK there was a big uproar about these so called X rated games which were being churned out in their thousands on cheap tapes. I only heard in passing about adult games for the 2600 and it wasn't until the internet that I knew their names. Was the Atari 2600 the first games system that introduced such adult games or was there another?

My biggest problem with Smurf was trying to reach the Smurfette in the castle for it needed precision jumps to get onto the chair and then the ledge above where she awaited you. A nice game graphically though.

Didn't the makers get wind of the so called pattern dance (as my friends called it at the time) and release a new game that the old trick would no longer work on? I never got the hang off learning the pattern and could only make it to the key stage by sheer luck and hard work on my part.

Back in the day of release Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were seen as being violent but are tame by todays standards. I agree with the liveinabin though for Custer's Revenge is still pretty disturbing even today for it made the idea of rape to be fun. I'd like to know what the programmer was smoking when he convinced himself that the idea would make a good game?

In the Uk they were rare for most arcades only had one or two with the majority being uprights. The majority of cocktail cabinets were in pubs (bars in America) or social clubs such as flying schools and leisure centres. I always thought that they were a great idea for you could sit in comfort and play a friend without having to get up to change over. Pity the idea seemed to fade out.

Makes you feel real old to realise that so much time has passed. 25 years and it is still a popular classic.

How can anyone claim to be a collector if they dont collect everything from the good, the bad and downright ugly and believe me, the 2600 boasted its own great number of the truly ugly!

I didn't know about the crash until 99 when I first got on the internet. In 1985 the shops in the Uk, once so plentiful with 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision consoles and games were suddenly devoid of anything but computers. I remember the Vectrex being sold off cheaply in my local Woolworths department store in the summer of 84 and couldn't understand why and for a long time I had no idea why the Atari and the other consoles had vanished. It wasn't until 88 that I noticed a new wave of game system interest in the form of the NES, Maser system and Mega Drive. It seems that the Great Crash went largely unexplained in the UK, either that or we just accepted that computers were the next logical step.

I loved Combat in two player mode. It was the first Atari game that I ever played and once the frustration over the control of the tank had been settled it provided hours of fun. My one gripe was that without a second player it was kind of pointless. Back in the 80's this game was universally slated and yet by the late 90's people were raving about it again. Despite its age it still has to rank as one of the best two player games Atari released.

After reading the forums on the death of arcades in the US I began to question whether part of the decline was truly down to people prefering to buy a game system to play their favourite arcade title? I admit that most home conversions are just as good as their arcade but in my opinion they lack the intensive feel that you get from playing them within an arcade. A couple of my favourite titles were the Time Crisis series and Urban Crisis and the buzz came from being good enough to not only complete the game or achieve a million points but also in gaining a large crowd round you admiring your skill. How many others feel that the home conversions are just as good as their arcade counterparts? I don't know about the US but in the UK new games in the arcades still attract attention but there is a slow down noticeable but that is probably for the reason that too many new games simply resemble earlier titles.

Interesting idea. Would you say then that that theory would lend weight to the claim that the game was indeed finished if Atari was looking to add it to their own title list? If it was finished why has it never be seen again? Do you think someone is deliberately hiding it or it was simply lost?

So Tempest, was that Atari planned release of Turbo meant to be what a direct conversion of what CBS created or was there still work to done to it which would explain why Atari never released under their red label?

Long ago I heard the rumour of an easter egg that if found gave you a maze with no walls and two evil Otto's bouncing around inside of it but it was never confirmed, as was the rumour of a maze with only one door which all the robots crowded around trying to prevent your man from escaping. Anyone else heard of this?

So do you think that Atari themselves faked the picture just to sell more games? I remember reading something like that for another game some years ago, about a secret room that was suppossed to exist when in reality it didn't and sales was suppossed to have gone up from people buying it to try and find the room. Wish I could remember which game it was.

Defender II has to be one of the best arcade ports of all time for the 2600. Berzerk was a very fine conversion as was Battlezone and Missile Command wasn't far behind them.

That is a question that has been bothering me. Are the pictures real? It seems strange that they cannot be replicated. I talked to Tempest the other night who confirmed that so far none of the protos have been different from the released verson so the question remains how was it done? Thanks for the info Nukey. Tried to find out for myself the other night only to discover my power pack had rolled over and died. Thought I had worked it out last night but seems that it still eludes me I agree with the others though, all the eggs, bugs etc should be released in one volume including any and all rumours for it would be interesting to see them all. It could finally answer what all the dots are for in the game for standing on the rock and dropping two bags of coins gives you a dot that if you attempt to drop crashes the game. Added to this there is a dot in the Mesa field that you could make move up and down the mesa field and a third dot when you manage to raise the dirt in the mesa itself. Are these dots just glitches in the game or are they actually part of the game?

** In the film, Indy and Marcus allow the Ark to be "lost" again rather than let it be experimented with...does this have any significance? Do you go all that way and NOT dig it up, but reach an ending some other way? Nukey, read your earlier thread on Raiders (which is above) and it got me thinking. You may have hit on something here for perhaps that is what you have to do, not dig it up. I may be way off base here but as I stated earlier you can make the earth rise up within a mesa to make a hole appear. I have never done this in a mesa where the ark was hidden and will have to dig out my 2600 and see if anything happens. Do you think that this might be something? Also what purpose was the rock for in the entrance room? The crack looks as if it was made to accept the snake but for what other purpose was it for?

Space Invaders was the first game that I ever became hooked on but my all time favourite had to be the original Mr Do!

I had no idea that it was so bad in the States. In the UK there are two types of arcades, city and seaside. The city arcades are dark, dank, unpleasant places that you have to be 18 to enter while those at the coastal resorts are open, airy, pleasant and family orientated. In the mid to late 80's the UK faced an arcade crisis for what new games came out were usually in recycled cabinets and were few in number yet in 92 Street Fighter 2 made arcading popular again. In the arcades I frequent fighting and shooting games are king and a decent player can still attract a large crowd to watch the action so I am surprised to hear that arcading is declining over the water. Seems strange to me here in the UK arcades have found a new lease of life while in the States it has been killed off.

So what about the rumoured Yar in the Black Market? Was that just a rumour or was there a shred of truth to it?

Funny how you never think about these things until someone points it out to you. I had forgotten about the spiders at the very start of the film. The same is true of the valley of the poison for that too was not in the film. Thanks for the information.

Rom, you said you had played Raiders hundreds of times. Perhaps you can provide the answer to the purpose of the Spider Room? Just what was its purpose for it seems to have none except being pointless. You dont even have to enter it and nothing is gained by doing so basically why was it added or am I missing something altogether?

Also there were at least four, possibly five different dots in the game. What were they for? Were they just glitches or something more? One dot as already mentioned made the game crash so was this intentional or just a glitch? Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Thanks Nukey for the advice. There is a key bug, not sure if it is the one you heard of though. If you gather 6 items and then headed to the treasure room and stood in a certain way on the Chai you could create the image of a key by using the chai and the head and body of Indy. I once read on the Atari news letters in the UK that Atari said that this was a clue. Rom, out of the five questions the one with the hole appearing under the dirt by using a rapid fire joystick was the only one that I could uncover. It worked in any mesa and once the grappling hook had been discarded Indy could disappear into the hole for reasons unknown. Howard Scott Warsaw himself was reputed to have said that even he wasn't sure how many things to find that he had left in the game.