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Most Unplayable Games on the Atari


snicklin

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I've never been able to get very far in Airball or Into the Eagle's Nest. Didn't stop me from trying, but it gets frustrating after a while.

 

I agree with the tip for Q-bert, turn the joystick 45 degrees. Never had any problem with Congo Bongo either. It IS frustrating trying to play Gyruss, Tempest, etc with just a joystick instead of a fully turning controller like the Indy 500 controller or one of the Sears ones, but I still find Gyruss very playable. (And aside from that game and Stealth, just how many Bach pieces were worked into A8 software? :) )

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Elektraglide - OK, technical masterpiece, but the steering envelopes were ridiculous. the momentum of steering took too long to bleed off on the faster ones and the slower one was useless. Plus the difficulty was a bit too high overall.

Mirax Force, Elektraglide and the original A8 Arkanoid I have to agree with so much!!

I used to think this about Electrglide but if you put the goes in you can complete most of the stages using the uber sensitive movement setting... use the timer as some sort of guide to how well you have done ;)

 

My vote has to go to "Ace of Aces" because the frame rate is so slow, it never fires at what you want to. And also, it was on cassette and had to be reloaded after one game.

For me it was any game with disk swapping.

 

Berzerk isn't unplayable but somebody please tell me how to survive levels with the fast, white robots!

Berzerk - wiggle the joystick fast to scoot along - hug the walls and don't walk into their line of fire - use otto to kill them ;)

Ace of Aces was a real pain on tape... disk swapping spoils the awesome Mail Order Monsters* and Castle Wolfenstein is unplayable for me as you die before you work out what to do and it re-loads from disk :twisted:

*still hoping someone does a 128K or 1050 enh. density version one day [insert beg smiley here]

 

last v8 and domain of the undead is very unplayable Games on the Atari

yes last v8 might win the prize :(

;-)

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Monkey Magic, awful, waste of money, terrible terrible game. It's one of those games where you have to be pixel perfect.

 

Saving up my pocket money for a whole week and then purchasing this game made me rather annoyed.

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I am also not a fan of games that require pixel-perfect precision when walking, jumping, falling, etc. Just a few little tweaks to make these games more "forgiving" would make an enormously positive difference in the gameplay. Spelunker is the worst example I've seen of the "fall one pixel and you die" school of design: the game shouldn't kill me if I walk off the edge of a tiny little hill in the middle of the floor! Jumpman was another unforgiving game when it came to falling:

 

jumpman.png

 

Walking off the edge of that mound at the bottom will kill you, but jumping off of it won't. Why?!?!?!?! Shouldn't these video game characters know how to step down?!

 

(I'm aware that the obvious answer to my question is "like, duhhh ... it's JUMPman!", but that still doesn't excuse it.)

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Most people says that Green Beret is unplayable but I completed this game :)

Was Green Beret even officially released? The whole thing looks and plays like an unfinished prototype.

 

Not sure I lost contact with John Kavanagh after he went to work for Domark and then later to work along side Mr Doom himself.

 

His and his brother first game was Quest for the Maltese Chicken on the 8 bit, a game I got published for them..

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I am also not a fan of games that require pixel-perfect precision when walking, jumping, falling, etc. Just a few little tweaks to make these games more "forgiving" would make an enormously positive difference in the gameplay. Spelunker is the worst example I've seen of the "fall one pixel and you die" school of design: the game shouldn't kill me if I walk off the edge of a tiny little hill in the middle of the floor! Jumpman was another unforgiving game when it came to falling:

 

post-3819-0-40848900-1339872872_thumb.png

 

Walking off the edge of that mound at the bottom will kill you, but jumping off of it won't. Why?!?!?!?! Shouldn't these video game characters know how to step down?!

 

(I'm aware that the obvious answer to my question is "like, duhhh ... it's JUMPman!", but that still doesn't excuse it.)

 

Yes jumpman had its oddities but I never found the game hard to play and completed it on all difficulties. The only annoyance I had was with the levels where you had to make it to the bottom with a rhino type thing coming towards you all the time, one missed spear and you were dead as a dodo..

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Most people says that Green Beret is unplayable but I completed this game :)

Was Green Beret even officially released? The whole thing looks and plays like an unfinished prototype.

I've never been able to get very far in Airball

I think Airball was pretty much unplayable on every system. It's a great concept but it's ungodly hard. The monochrome-ish graphics on the Atari 8-bit don't help matters much.

 

Well,

 

Green Beret had been released commercially for the A8 but only on tape in the UK (first by Imagine, later by The Hit Squad).

Regarding Airball, I also don`t get very far in this game, but a well-known friend of mine made a huge map and he told me that a) the A8 cart.-game has more rooms than the ST version (he already completed the ST version) and b) the cart also comes with an editor to create your own rooms. For me Airball is unplayable, but for him its an easy game...

 

-Andreas Koch.

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Spelunker got the mix right - you got frustrated at times but still kept coming back.

 

I can often get all the way to the Shaft on the first life or two. It's during that level when trying to maximize points that I usually lose lots.

 

Have to agree with that, as tough as it was I always kept coming back ...

 

 

And dying.....

 

 

More

 

 

 

and more

 

 

But I loved it.....

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About Spelunker. It had indeed some weird rules. But, if you accept them, the game is always fair.

 

Fair? ;)

 

I cursed at that game so much, 5 lives went to none in the slip off a ladder...

 

Playing through the game wasn't a real challenge, really. I always liked the game due to the perfect control...

Hm....

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Fight Night?

I believe that it ""streamed"" some moves or animations from disk..

 

I think you mean "Bop'n Wrestle" and yes, this was/is unplayable.

 

I'm not sure about "Whistler's Brother".

I cannot say, that this is not enjoyable, but why the heck tilts the screen and falls the professor, it he scrolls outside of the visible area...

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Regarding Airball, I also don`t get very far in this game, but a well-known friend of mine made a huge map and he told me that a) the A8 cart.-game has more rooms than the ST version (he already completed the ST version) and b) the cart also comes with an editor to create your own rooms.

 

Are you sure Airball has an editor? I never found an editor in my cart.

 

Robert

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