Great Games that do not get much attention

[MaxSpeed]

My Top 3 Great, but ignored, games:

 

1) Spider Fighter - Great game - like Kaboom meets Megamania !

2) Fast Food - Fastpaced and humorous !

3) Circus Atari - Fun ! Breakout meets easily injured circus perfomers.

[oesii]

my nominee would be BMX Airmaster, seldom gets mentioned when talking about late great 2600 games like Solaris or Jr. Pac-Man but its got awesome music, great gameplay, and had all those Tony Hawk/BMX Games beat by 8 or so years.

[Rob Mitchell]

My Top 3 Great' date=' but ignored, games:

 

Ugh .. Circus Atari is not ignored! One of the best!

 

I really like Brain Games and Codebreaker! Call me a keyboard freak!

 

I love Gravitar .. almost as good as Thrust!

 

And that depth charge game at the end of Canyon Bomber is awesome!

 

Plus Laser Blast is not that bad ...

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[Witchfynde]

I really don't feel Circus Atari was overlooked either.

 

My Top 3 Great, but ignored, games:

 

2) Fast Food - Fastpaced and humorous !

 

Good choice, pretty much everything Telesys made was overlooked. But as a booklet I got from them once said they didn't spend millions on tv advertising so they could keep their prices low. Too bad the video game crash happened, they said there were going to expand into computer software and all (they never did), it would've been interesting to see what they would've come up with.

 

My vote would go for Tunnel Runner, an awesome 3D game, which, according to aa.com, is the hardest to find of all of the games that CBS Electronics made.

[ubersaurus]

Nobody shows much love for Turmoil, but that game is great...fast paced game, and one of the best of its kind on the atari (which is saying quite a bit).

[Paul Slocum]

Good topic. Mine would be:

 

Fireball - Excellent breakout clone for the Supercharger. I love playing with 6 balls at once and that score sound is really hypnotic.

 

Escape from the Mindmaster - Great looking 3D maze game for the Supercharger. Has 7 big levels that are challenging and fun, and even includes cool minigames.

 

Oystron - Great homebrew shooter. Just make sure you read the instructions because it's more complex than you think.

 

Mondo Pong - Homebrew pong game but with two balls and where the ball has a mind of its own. The balls change speed, spin in circles, etc. Hilarious and really fun.

 

-Paul

[inextremis staple]

ghost manor

i love that game but dont ever hear much about it

only game i ever got off of ebay

 

is

[mos6507]

People don't give Radar Lock any credit because they think it's a cheap knockoff of Solaris but it's actually very different gameplay. In solaris the ship slid back and forth at the bottom of the screen like in River Raid. It was more of a slanted 2D perspective like Juno First without the perspective lines. With Radar Lock the ship is stationary so it's more of a true 3D feel, more of an attempt to port Sega's Afterburner. A pretty ballsy thing to do.

 

Okay, so it doesn't have colorful stars and planets wizzing by, but it does have a great attention to detail nonetheless. If you look at the shots you'll see how Doug very carefully scales the bullets and compensates for inertia. Wherever possible he's using single-scanline res and lots of color gradients, and his flicker algorithm is very smart so objects stay relatively solid even with a lot of action on the screen. Plus the enemies get very tough in the higher waves!

 

The only goofy thing is the way he did the clouds and how there is a slight delay when you bank and the clouds shift.

[NE146]

Spacemaster X-7

Moonsweeper

[Marco(2)]

At EuroCon'99 we held an Entombed competition, 2-player mode. And, simply put: it ruled!

 

Cheers,

Marco

[MattG/Snyper2099]

Ok, here's my most underated/underapreciated 2600 games:

 

Stargunner- Try this game on level 5 or 7 (use select swith)... It's the craziest shootout ever! Some of the other levels are interesting too. Try them out!

 

Miner 2049'er- This is one of the only platform games for the 2600 that is fun to me. Never seems to get much praise.

 

Boing!- One of my all time favorite 2600 games. Very addictive. However, no one ever talks about how good it is, only how rare it is.

 

Miniature Golf- This one is so fun. I've played nearly 20 rounds in a row before to try and keep lowering my score. It's quite a challenge and usually doesn't get enough recognition.

 

Starpath Frogger- This one is way better than the Parker Brothers version (which itself, isn't that bad). The music for this game, along with the graphics, make it one of the absolute best arcade ports to the 2600. Not talked aout nearly enough IMHO.

 

Gremlins- Another favorite of mine. Has some very interesteing gameplay, great sound, and is quite a unique game. Never seems to be mentioned as one of the greatest games but I love it.

 

MattG.

[Osmeroid]

Activision's Grand Prix & Sky Jinks. Some of the 'thinking' games are great too - Checkers/Video Checkers/Chess, a big mention for Othello!

[moycon]

Godda be Tunnel Runner. That game is AWESOME!!

[AtariLeaf]

I don't think Circus Atari is underrated. Why?

Because

 

I_LOVE_CIRCUS_ATARI!

 

Ahem, now then, I would think that Barnstorming is underrated. Pretty challenging even though its a "unique" concept for a game. I don't hear too much about Pele's Soccer either. Another of my top 3 favorite sports games for the 2600 (the other two being RS Volleyball and Ice Hockey)

[joeybastard]

Underrated but kickass?

 

Marauder

Circus

Fast Food

Jawbreaker - I love this game and nobody ever mentions it!

Frankenstein

[raindog]

I vote for Mountain King. I don't think I ever spent so long trying to win a 2600 game, not because it was so difficult but because it was SO BIG (for a 2600 game.) It took me longer than Pitfall. I played it on other systems (C64, maybe Colecovision?) and it was just never as good as on the 2600, somehow.... maybe the controls responded differently or something.

 

I agree that Starpath Frogger is great. I think it's possibly the best arcade conversion on the 2600 (well, aside from the arcade games that predated the 2600 where the 2600 versions were better ) I think Starpath Frogger is better than Colecovision Frogger, even.

 

Rob

[joeybastard]

Yeah I forgot Mountain King. I was the only one of my friends to have it when I was a kid but everybody got it after playing it at my house.

[Inky]

I love M Network's Space Attack

Not on the level of Starmaster, but it's a great shoot-em-up.

[sku_u]

I have to agree that Turmoil is the best underrated game. Other candidates are Fast Eddie and Dark Cavern.

[Garak]

Yeah I forgot Mountain King.  I was the only one of my friends to have it when I was a kid but everybody got it after playing it at my house.

 

Mountain King isn't too bad now that I think about it. I once had it then got frustrated with it so I, um, traded it for Joust...

 

Garak

[Keir]

Mountain King is great, but is it really underrated? I know I've seen it on lots of 2600 top ten lists (including mine!)

 

How about Laser Gates? I think a lot of people probably pass it off as just another side-scrolling shooter, but I think it rocks.

[joeybastard]

Lasar Gates is really good and pretty damn hard too. I like Subterranea and Planet Patrol too. Especially the change from day into night on Planet Patrol.

[Inky]

Lasar Gates is really good and pretty damn hard too.  I like Subterranea and Planet Patrol too.  Especially the change from day into night on Planet Patrol.

 

Laser Gates is very cool. I love it on an EMU. Now I gotsta find acart..

[MegaManFan]

Lasar Gates is really good and pretty damn hard too.  I like Subterranea and Planet Patrol too.  Especially the change from day into night on Planet Patrol.

 

Laser Gates is very cool. I love it on an EMU. Now I gotsta find acart..

 

I do have a spare I'd be willing to trade.

[Inky]

Lasar Gates is really good and pretty damn hard too.  I like Subterranea and Planet Patrol too.  Especially the change from day into night on Planet Patrol.

 

Laser Gates is very cool. I love it on an EMU. Now I gotsta find acart..

 

I do have a spare I'd be willing to trade.

 

What ya need? I don't have much but I may be able to find it now...