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Popular Games You Are Not Crazy About


sandmountainslim

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Great topic; I have a few "classic" or "popular" games that I personally don't get: Yars Revenge never appealed to me, Donkey Kong just wasn't that good especially when it was released at a time when the Colecovision had theirs (and that has basically stuck with me for 30 years), and Freeway always seemed like the most simplistic concept ever.

 

Yeah, it's pretty subjective I agree.

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Gotta agree about Freeway. I don't understand why that one was so popular. It's about as basic a game as there is. It seems like it has more in common with the old Space Race arcade game from the early '70s than Frogger, yet is somehow less interesting.

Asteroids and Missile Command are lukewarm for me. I've just played too many other versions of Asteroids that blow the 2600 version away (the 7800 version, Rockaroids on Vectrex, even Microbes on the TRS-80 Color), and I'm just indifferent to Missile Command in general. They're still decent enough games in their own ways...I just don't usually feel like playing them.

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Definitely Yars Revenge. I go back to it every couple of years or so, but every time I just end up thinking "Yup, still not the best game ever." It's not a bad game, I just don't get why so many people love it so much.

 

Pitfall II, though I haven't really given much time to it or Raiders or any of the other "deep" quest type games for the 2600. At least those I can get why people love them I guess, it's just not a style of game I particularly love.

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Do you mean every 2600 arcade conversion?

 

I agree there's a certain necessary "dumbing down" (or we can say "simplifying" ) to make an arcade conversion to the 2600 (& I was pretty sure someone was going to say what you did, Bass) but in Mario Bros' case there are gameplay aspects missing that alter the game for the worse, & I'm not talking about colors or what the characters look like or SFX or wafers vs coins.

 

Agreed. What made Arcade Mario Bros. fun and frantic is when the screen starts getting crowded with enemies, but the 2600 version didn't allow more than one critter on one 'floor' at a time, so challenge was minimal to a reasonably skilled played, unless the fireballs were also flying, and/or you were playing with someone else who keeps getting in your way.

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You nailed it Feral. i didnt want to get specific but that's one thing missing that really detracts from gameplay. Others are:

 

The fireballs' behavior/patterns (can you even punch the 2600 fireballs from below for points?)

You cant stand on the 2600 POW switch (it can save your life in the arcade version)

In co-op you cant bounce off the other player, which would lead to crazy, humorous acrobatics & adds a whole new gameplay dynamic

The Slipice behavior, which is related to the "one enemy per level" limitation

IIRC during the bonus phase there's 8 coins instead of 10

 

Ok, enough finger pointing. Carry on.

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I can't stand Cosmic Ark. The collision detection is terrible.

 

Regarding Freeway...I think it'd be a better game if it weren't for Frogger. And from all I can tell, the two games were developed in tandem, so it's probably not accurate to consider Freeway to be a Frogger ripoff.

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Adventure. I never understood the love for it.

 

I actually bought Freeway back in the day and returned it the very same day. I think it was the complete lack of horizontal movement that did it (I was thinking it was a more difficult Frogger). I then picked up Phoenix instead which was fantastic.

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Adventure. I never understood the love for it.

Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" games? Way back when I was just starting out in retrogaming and I got my first Atari 2600 15-some years ago, one of the first games I wanted to get was Adventure because I keep hearing how amazing and epic it was, how it was a proto-Zelda, how it was an all-time classic, etc. etc., and then being disappointed when I saw how small a game it really is. Even on the hardest difficulty it can be blown through in 5-10 minutes depending on item/dragon placement.

 

I've come to appreciate and enjoy it anyway, and in the context of other games that were around in 1980, I can see why it was popular. It offered a relatively open world and a sense of exploration that no other console games really had at the time (except maybe Superman), and it doubtlessly stoked a lot of kids' imaginations. Decades of nostalgia built it up into something bigger than it really is. But, I think it's a good game in its own right.

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Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" games? Way back when I was just starting out in retrogaming and I got my first Atari 2600 15-some years ago, one of the first games I wanted to get was Adventure because I keep hearing how amazing and epic it was, how it was a proto-Zelda, how it was an all-time classic, etc. etc., and then being disappointed when I saw how small a game it really is. Even on the hardest difficulty it can be blown through in 5-10 minutes depending on item/dragon placement.

 

I've come to appreciate and enjoy it anyway, and in the context of other games that were around in 1980, I can see why it was popular. It offered a relatively open world and a sense of exploration that no other console games really had at the time (except maybe Superman), and it doubtlessly stoked a lot of kids' imaginations. Decades of nostalgia built it up into something bigger than it really is. But, I think it's a good game in its own right.

Superman was another one I guess I just never 'got'. Adventure games really don't work well on the 2600 IMHO with the exception of Dragonstomper and possibly Secret Quest (never really played it).

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Adventure. I never understood the love for it.

 

Honestly, Temp, I don't either...and *I* love it! I have no idea why! You're a large pixel being chased by seahorses and can cross walls by walking through two unconnected brackets. I don't know what it was, I really don't, especially because I was NEVER into that whole castles-and-kings stuff...

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Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" games? Way back when I was just starting out in retrogaming and I got my first Atari 2600 15-some years ago, one of the first games I wanted to get was Adventure because I keep hearing how amazing and epic it was, how it was a proto-Zelda, how it was an all-time classic, etc. etc., and then being disappointed when I saw how small a game it really is. Even on the hardest difficulty it can be blown through in 5-10 minutes depending on item/dragon placement.

 

Proto-Zelda?? Only a Zelda evangelist would be that enthusiastic. Adventure was cool in its own little way because it was different from Pong and target shooting games. You kinda had to be there and living in the "lean times" when the VCS library was under 20 cartridges in order to appreciate being able to run from room to room.

 

Once the game was completed it had little replay value. I'd come back and play a game every couple of months, while the likes of Air-Sea Battle, Slot Racers, and Video Pinball were seeing daily usage.

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Proto-Zelda?? Only a Zelda evangelist would be that enthusiastic. Adventure was cool in its own little way because it was different from Pong and target shooting games. You kinda had to be there and living in the "lean times" when the VCS library was under 20 cartridges in order to appreciate being able to run from room to room.

 

Once the game was completed it had little replay value. I'd come back and play a game every couple of months, while the likes of Air-Sea Battle, Slot Racers, and Video Pinball were seeing daily usage.

I guess. I didn't get a 2600 until 84-85ish so by then there were tons of good games available. I do remember seeing Adventure for sale back in the day because I thought the box art looked really cool, but I never saw the game being played until the late 80's.

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Ever play a game from the original days of game design and think "Well, that had never been done before, so I guess they figured it wasn't a good fit for a video game." I'm thinking of titles like 3d Tic Tac Toe, Basic Programming, or Roulette on the Intellivision. It was almost like these releases needed to happen so that the world would know that we didn't really need to experiment in that exact direction.

 

Adventure and Superman were experiments in the same vain. They basically birthed the Action/Adventure genre and kicked off the whole concept of what "home" gaming was going to be on a console. They are almost proto for every console game out there and they deserve credit as the bold experiments that they are.

 

However, all of that does not really make them very much fun to play today. I have had some fun with Adventure (and Superman) as an adult, and I've also enjoyed the homebrew spinoffs, but there isn't really that much there to come back to.

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I can't stand Cosmic Ark. The collision detection is terrible.

 

 

Which collision detection are you talking about exactly? I always thought the collision detection in Cosmic Ark is spot on. Maybe you're thinking about the later meteor shower levels, where your shot sometimes misses the wobbly meteor?

 

I'm relieved to see that there are many others who don't love Yar's Revenge. It shows up on so many top 10 lists that I thought there must be something wrong with me.

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On the subject of poor Frogger clones, always thought Frogger 2 was pretty weak also. Don't care for the look of the graphics or the design of the stages at all. Especially the 3rd stage that has your frog "flying" through the air. WTF? :lol:

It's a video game, remember when Mario started flying, we're all like 'ooooohhhh'

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It's a video game, remember when Mario started flying, we're all like 'ooooohhhh'

Actually I like Frogger II much better than the original. The 2600 version is pretty weak though, try the Atari 8-bit or 5200 version if you want to see how the game was meant to be played.

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