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Worst/Most Annoying Atari 8 bit game!


Atari8guy

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For me it was way back in the early 80's when my father told me if I could save 5 weeks allowance he would pitch in the rest and I could get Galaxian. So I did, I sacraficed all my trips to the candy store, didn't buy any hockey cards or stickers (when Gretzky was in his prime!!!!) for five whole weeks only to get Galaxian and realize it wasn't Galaga....No ship came down and conviently captured my ship so I could double up on the attack. Galaga was (and is) one of my all time fav. arcade games. Galaxian sucks!!! lol. Did anyone ever port Galaga over to the Atari?

 

I don't think Galaxian "sucks". I can think of plenty of games that are worse. It sounds like your "annoyance" is based more on the fact that you thought you were getting Galaga. Isn't that your own fault? Galaxian is a decent port of the game that it is supposed to be, Galaxian.

 

 

Well I'll answer exactly as I would have at age 8....no Galaxian sucks!!. Of course as an 8 year old I had made a mistake....but Galaxian in any incarnation is a poor mans Galaga, it's like American Beer*....it resembles something familiar, but its just not quite right. A little weak in the delivery.

 

*Wisconsin residents excluded...I spent some time in Milwaukee this summer and had some great Microbrews. Even at Miller Park.

I always preferred Galaxian in the arcades to Galaga. Probably because it was an easier game. As a result, I rarely look for Galaga on a computer or console. I'm a Galaxian Guy all the way. ;)

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Mark, any other cartridge conversions? I have your Gauntlet one already. These are really nice to have. Thanks.

The LucasFilm titles I never actually housed over on the AtariMax site :(. I should rectify that.

 

So far, I think this list covers the titles done:

Mysterious Adventures

Scott Adams Adventures

World Karate Championship

BMX Simulator, Grand Prix Simulator & Red Max

Head Over Heels

Gauntlet

 

After this work, floating around is a test image with the 3 Zork's on. I've been very lazy in not extending the load/save code of these games to store the save points to the flash memory. One day I will though :)

 

A couple of other title that I progressed and left hanging and need completing are these:

1) Winter Olympiad 88 - the fun with this game is that the load chaining is done with a series of soft-resets! However this would be a 'do-able' port which wouldn't ask for disk swaps and again could benefit from a high-score save to cart.

2) Seven Cities of Gold - never played this myself until it was requested as a good game to port to cart. However due to the way it works, generating the 'world' data to disk, means that map data has to be saved to cart instead. Different from when a disk re-writes a sector, the flash memory needs re-setting first, but on the cart a flash bank is large (e.g. 8K) and so this needs more analysis to check how the writing is done.

 

Perhaps a multi-disk adventure like Dallas Quest or Dark Crystal would be nice too, e.g. dropping the disk swapping messages.

 

Thanks for the remark,

Mark

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Mark, any other cartridge conversions? I have your Gauntlet one already. These are really nice to have. Thanks.

The LucasFilm titles I never actually housed over on the AtariMax site :(. I should rectify that.

 

So far, I think this list covers the titles done:

Mysterious Adventures

Scott Adams Adventures

World Karate Championship

BMX Simulator, Grand Prix Simulator & Red Max

Head Over Heels

Gauntlet

 

After this work, floating around is a test image with the 3 Zork's on. I've been very lazy in not extending the load/save code of these games to store the save points to the flash memory. One day I will though :)

 

A couple of other title that I progressed and left hanging and need completing are these:

1) Winter Olympiad 88 - the fun with this game is that the load chaining is done with a series of soft-resets! However this would be a 'do-able' port which wouldn't ask for disk swaps and again could benefit from a high-score save to cart.

2) Seven Cities of Gold - never played this myself until it was requested as a good game to port to cart. However due to the way it works, generating the 'world' data to disk, means that map data has to be saved to cart instead. Different from when a disk re-writes a sector, the flash memory needs re-setting first, but on the cart a flash bank is large (e.g. 8K) and so this needs more analysis to check how the writing is done.

 

Perhaps a multi-disk adventure like Dallas Quest or Dark Crystal would be nice too, e.g. dropping the disk swapping messages.

 

Thanks for the remark,

Mark

 

Thanks Mark. I noticed some of the projects have a disk for flashing and an emulator rom, and some have only the disk for flashing. I don't actually have an atarimax flashcart. Is it possible to create an emulator rom using the disk only?

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Wha...? No entries from "Mystique"? Their "erotic" games with "anatomically correct" 8-bit graphics were awful. The nadir, of course, being "Custer's Revenge". I suppose the games are good for a laugh but that's it. If you paid one penny for any of their games you got ripped off.

 

And I recognize one blogger has an avatar from "Beat 'em And Eat 'em". Nice.. :ponder:

 

Oh, and of course, ET was awful too.

 

And Activision's Laser Attack was pretty damn boring and linear.

 

I think the original intent was to identify Atari 8-bit computer games. I suspect the 2600 has had this subject covered quite a few times. :)

Sorry, was not aware.

I guess we're talking about the 400/800 systems then. Barely ever played them. I was still happy enough with Atari 2600 at the time.

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I always thought the games that had soundtracks, but no sound effects were pretty annoying. There were lots of these in the late 80s early 90s. I'd have to do some research to find them. However a couple come to mind: Jaffar, Jurassic Park, Misja, etc. The graphics were decent in those games, but the lack of sound effects, the questionable playability, and the fact that the soundtracks had nothing to do with the action made them a little annoying to me.

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Everyone is always listing there fav's.....I'm curious to know what people's worst, most annoying or most disappointing game was.

 

For me it was way back in the early 80's when my father told me if I could save 5 weeks allowance he would pitch in the rest and I could get Galaxian. So I did, I sacraficed all my trips to the candy store, didn't buy any hockey cards or stickers (when Gretzky was in his prime!!!!) for five whole weeks only to get Galaxian and realize it wasn't Galaga....No ship came down and conviently captured my ship so I could double up on the attack. Galaga was (and is) one of my all time fav. arcade games. Galaxian sucks!!! lol. Did anyone ever port Galaga over to the Atari?

 

Anyway, I'm curious to know what others' worst games are?

 

Reading your reasoning for why you put Galaxian as a "worst game" made me remember one of mine, and for the same reason. (Perhaps more a disappointment than a terrible game.)

 

Keeping in mind that I am an original Atari boy... after convincing my parents to buy me (techincally, go halfsies on) an Atari 400 with the 410 cassette drive, I needed my first game. I had to save all my lawn mowing/car washing/allowance money (30 cents a week allowance, for gawd's sake) for quite some time to afford the cassette version of what I assumed was a Crazy Climber clone.

 

After loading it for 15 minutes, I was confronted with... Canyon Climber. Not necessarily a horrible game, but I was so bummed it wasn't Crazy Climber. But really, it only has three static screens, and once you beat all three screens, you start over again. Not much to it. Not much in the way of sound effects, either. Very simple game.

 

After that, I read reviews before buying a game. :D

 

In response to Galaga/Galaxian... Galaga is one of the best games ever, and I have always been bummed the A8 never got a version... not even a crappy version.

 

But Galaxian... well, I'll tell ya, I always liked the Galaxian clone Galactic Chase better. Starts out a lot slower, slowly builds up intensity over several levels. Getting to level 10 isn't all that tough, whereas Galaxian is a bit too hard, in my opinion. (Got used to Galactic Chase, most likely.) But I could die without getting through the first level, if not careful.

 

Anyway, that's mine. I think buying games back in the day gave bad/annoying/disappointing games more power. Once pirating hit the scene, or using today's emulators, you boot a game, "it sucks" and you're on to the next one. Back then, we scrimped and saved money for a while, and it was the only game we had! I played the hell outta Canyon Climber... beat it over and over... I did get my money's worth! :D

 

Cheers,

Smeg

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I always thought the games that had soundtracks, but no sound effects were pretty annoying. There were lots of these in the late 80s early 90s. I'd have to do some research to find them. However a couple come to mind: Jaffar, Jurassic Park, Misja, etc. The graphics were decent in those games, but the lack of sound effects, the questionable playability, and the fact that the soundtracks had nothing to do with the action made them a little annoying to me.

Actually, in case of Misja (and most other LK Avalon games) the soundtrack could be switched to sound effects and back with use of a console key. Misja actually has pretty good sound effects, the game is not silent the whole time (however some other Avalon games had that flaw - sound effects were too much sporadical).

 

If I remember correctly, one of Avalon's quality standard was that games must have music - they would not release a product without a soundtrack.

 

I agree on Jaffar, I was disappointed when I bought that game.

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The only thing that annoyed me about Galaxian was the sounds. The high pitched notes that were played when the Galaxians swooped down were annoying and it HOLDS them when they hang in the air for a bit. Even as a kid I detested those sounds. The game was fun though, but I thought it was a bit too easy due to the slowdown. I used to see how far I could get by just destroying enemies using the missile on the end of my ship as a sword instead of firing it. Fun times...

 

Tempest

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Koronis Rift - a beautiful game written by the talented programmers of LucasArts. Great graphics, great sound. Exploring and finding better shields and weapons make a good game. But those damn saucers that patrol the planet and attack you. Drove me nuts trying to destroy them. Also, disk access gets old after a while and the copy protection can create issues with an old disk.

 

There is some strategy to that and if you don't pay attention to your shield/laser colors then that is indeed very frustrating. It isn't so bad once you acquire a good battery and generator. My way of getting through sections heavy on saucers was to have a couple of shields with opposing colors and change out my laser at the mothership if I wasn't destroying saucers quickly enough. Getting a handle on "chromodynamics" is essential to finishing this game which brings me to my own irritation with Koronis Rift. After finally winning through the final rift there is no payoff. The game just ends.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
The only thing that annoyed me about Galaxian was the sounds. The high pitched notes that were played when the Galaxians swooped down were annoying and it HOLDS them when they hang in the air for a bit. Even as a kid I detested those sounds. The game was fun though, but I thought it was a bit too easy due to the slowdown. I used to see how far I could get by just destroying enemies using the missile on the end of my ship as a sword instead of firing it. Fun times...

 

Tempest

Yes,, that was annoying. I always view 8-bit Galaxian as a different game just called Galaxian. It looked like it but the game play mechanics were very different. If you were great at the Arcade version it did not mean you would be great at the Atari 8-bit version. Still fun just different.

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For me "Universal Hero" was very annoying, because it was unsolvable. I tried over and over, but always stuck at the same place. Later on I somewhere read that there was a bug in the game which made it impossible to play it to the end. Grmpf. :x

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For me "Universal Hero" was very annoying, because it was unsolvable. I tried over and over, but always stuck at the same place. Later on I somewhere read that there was a bug in the game which made it impossible to play it to the end. Grmpf. :x

 

That's really annoying that any company would release a game that they didn't test to see if it can be completed... should be a way to sue for damages, or something, for that... damn rip-off artists! :x

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