what are the best (and worst) adventure like games on 2600?

[lucifershalo]

in Adventure games I put

ADVENTURE

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

DRAGONSTOMPER

RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

ET

SUPERMAN

any other ones?

 

according to you, what are the pros and cons of each game?

[kennybrooks]

Superman

[Gray Defender]

Mountain king?

[hizzy]

Ature

[zzip]

Best:

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Adventure

 

 

Worst:

Swordquest Fireworld

Swordquest Earthworld

Probably Swordquest Waterworld too, but I've never tried it, I already learned my lesson from the first two

[+save2600]

Haunted House

Haunted Adventure Trilogy

Dark Mage (okay, so it's a text adventure)

Pitfall!

Pitfall! II

Private Eye

[gauauu]

Montezuma's Revenge is an action side-scroller, but still an adventure game at heart.

Dark Chambers

Crypts of Chaos?

<shameless-self-promotion>Anguna</shameless-self-promotion>

 

 

Worst:
Swordquest Fireworld
Swordquest Earthworld

 

I can't even bring myself to count those as adventure games, they were so bad.

[+TwentySixHundred]

Worst

1) Swordquest Fireworld - I feel all the Swordquest games were rushed
2) Swordquest Earthworld - ^^

3) Swordquest Waterworld - ^^

4) Superman - The gameplay - Good concept - bad level design and horrible sounds.

5) Smurfs - Impressive graphics and colour pallet - but i can never get into it - just so boring.

 

Best

1) E.T - Was one my favorite games as a kid - involuntary falling in pits was a pain

2) The Pitfalls - Overrated? Yeah but there is a reason why - what a solid series

3) H.E.R.O - Another all-round fun solid game - can't pick a fault.

4) Adventure - Another childhood favorite, simplistic yet always fun - ducks...

5) Montezuma's Revenge - Underrated! Brilliant game that id say a contender of the Pitfalls - unforgiving

 

My opinion anyway

Edited May 4, 2017 by Tony The 2600

[4ever2600]

UMMMM homebrew... Dungeon! And Skeleton+ Best ones imho.

Edited May 4, 2017 by 4ever2600

[accousticguitar]

Homebrew: Duck Attack

[Mr SQL]

Adventure, Dark Chambers, Mind Master, that other 3D one that looks like Mind Master, Dragon Stomper, Super Cobra and Pitfall II are all fantastic adventures.

 

Enjoyed playing Aguna, a recent homebrew along with Skeleton Plus and the Rouge like adventure, also like the Ulitma RPG Papa has under development

 

Agree about the waterworld series probably being the worst along with ET.

[sloth-machine]

Quest for Quintana Roo is a fun adventure game (manual required), despite it's shortcomings.

[DaveD]

I recently discovered Tunnel Runner. I was surprised how addictive this simple, maze adventure can be.

[hizzy]

Cave In?

[sloth-machine]

Secret Quest! It's Zelda with a lightsaber. Everyone always forgets that little gem.

 

I would even consider Solaris to have adventure elements.

[dark-aleph]

Fathom and Wing War are two great Adventure-likes. Along with Riddle of the Sphinx, Imagic made three of my favourite Adventures on the VCS.

 

Anguna looks good enough that I'll wait for the cartridge release to play it. Could it compete with Ature for the Zelda-like crown? And did anyone ever put Ature on a cart, and if so could they please send it directly to my console?

[gauauu]

Anguna looks good enough that I'll wait for the cartridge release to play it. Could it compete with Ature for the Zelda-like crown?

I hope so -- my goal was a reasonable zelda-like game. I'm biased as the creator, but I think Ature has a nicer looking world map, and Anguna has better combat/enemies, and more interesting character building (with multiple inventory items, subscreen showing a map and experience, etc) I'm too closely attached to the game to have any idea about whether or not it compares in terms of actual fun, though.

 

And did anyone ever put Ature on a cart, and if so could they please send it directly to my console?

 

Pretty sure they did. I remember seeing a cool cloth map that got distributed with the game.

[Ranthulfr]

Secret Quest! It's Zelda with a lightsaber. Everyone always forgets that little gem.

Secret Quest is a good one! There are new elements in each space station to keep it fresh. You need some kind of map to find your way on the higher levels.

[ZylonBane]

Apparently anything with multiple screens and item collection is considered an adventure game now.

 

So I nominate Ms. Pac-Man.

[G-type]

Item fetching Adventure Games:

 

Superman - Repurposed some of the code from Adventure to incorporate the Superman property which Warner Brothers had in the rights to. Fly around the city taking bad guys to jail and rebuilding the blown up bridge. The hardest part about this game is figuring out how the screens are layed out in relation to each other. (It is far from intuitive). When I had this game as a kid, I used to just fly around aimlessly, with no clue where to go or what to do. Some of the helicopter sounds are kind of irritating, but flying around as superman and picking up bad guys is fun.

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark - This game is has some really obtuse puzzles that require you to guess what the programmer was thinking. It’s an almost impossible task to solve this game without getting some hints from the manual. Even when you know what to do, some tasks are still quite challenge, (such as parachuting into the opening under the mesa.) It does give the flavor of the movie fairly well, incorporating a few of the story beats (snakes, whips, guns, map room) Some of the graphics are hard to identify what its supposed to be. The two joystick implementation was a creative (but slightly clunky) way to deal with inventory management. (Riddle of the Sphinx used this control method too.)

 

E.T. This game became infamous in the early 2000s, earning a reputation far worse than it ever had originally (or deserved). The world is rather on the small side, and the falling into pits mechanic was poorly implemented, but the overall concept of the game is pretty good. The relentless FBI agent and scientist provide just enough challenge to keep you on your toes and the randomization of the item and zone placements makes the game far more replayable than it would have been otherwise.

 

Adventure - The original item fetching adventure game. Loosely inspired by the Adventure text based game. Its also famous for the easter egg, its creator inserted in the form of a secret room with his name. Find the key to open the corresponding castle, use the bridge to cross gaps, or the sword to fight the duck looking dragons.

 

Private Eye - This is a pretty wacky but neat game. Drive around a sprawling city, looking for the pieces of evidence and bringing the crook back the police station. The way you leap out of your car when you jump is odd, but the gameplay is interesting and in the later cases it gets pretty tough as there is zero room for error. You will need to consult a paper map to plot out your route ahead of time, as there is no time to explore mid-game. Even looking at the map might be too much of a distraction, when every second matters and knives and falling flower pots abound. You might be better off enlisting a friend to help navigate.

 

Riddle of the Sphinx - If you are one of those people who blindly jumps into a game and then forms an opinion of it from the impression that first minute of game play makes, then you might make the same mistake I did and write this game off as a sub-par shoot’em up. While this game IS a sub-par shoot’em up, that only accounts for 1/3 of the gameplay. The other 2/3 is an item fetching adventure game more akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Reading the manual is a must to accurately identify the various temples and figure out what corresponding objects must be delivered to them. The clues in the manual are helpful, if a little on-the-nose. The way the game scrolls down disappearing behind a band that your character is on is very off-putting, but at least the graphics are sharp and flicker-free.

Edited May 6, 2017 by G-type

[beoran]

I haven't tried Anguna yet, but from what I see in the gameplay video, it does seem like the backgrounds are less interesting (although, the animated water is nice) than those of my game, Euta. But that the combat and character building seems indeed to be a bit better. Also, your player sprite is better than mine. I would like to add that I think that the puzzles in my game *seem* to be more complex than those of the ones in Anguna, but I will have to take some time to play the game to see if that really is true.

 

I guess Anguna oesn't use Batari basic, so it doesn't suffer from the limits of it, and neither does it benefit from it's playfield?

 

Anyway, great to see people are still making games of Atari 2600, pushing the possibilities.

 

As for a release on cart of Ature, the first release was one many years ago, but it was oversold and the producer of the cart run ran for the hills. The second release was for TooManyGames, which saw 3 reprints. There was some talk of a PAL release but that fell through. But Ature is free and open source so if you are willing to put in the effort and money, then you can put it on a cart yourself. Probably some more people would be interested as well.

Edited July 24, 2017 by beoran

[gauauu]

 

I guess Anguna oesn't use Batari basic, so it doesn't suffer from the limits of it, and neither does it benefit from it's playfield?

 

 

That's right. Building a custom kernel let me prioritize some other things (multi-color player sprite and the multiple enemies that selectively flicker), but I lost out on the asymmetrical playfield.

[beoran]

I see. When I made Eruta, I felt that an assymetric playfield was essential to an interesting screen and world design, so I wouldn't want to make such a trade off. But I can see where you are coming from.

[gauauu]

Yeah, that's something I struggled with for awhile. Because to make interesting dungeons and world design, the doors/exits of a room had to be asymmetrical even if most of the room was symmetrical. I eventually settled on using the ball to add the walls on the left or right.

 

And there's 2 rooms that ARE asymmetrical, which was a bit of a hack. If you find them, you would notice they have no enemies

[+Cafeman]

 

 

Anguna is fun and I'm impressed by it. I havent had time to get back and finish the whole game yet, but I did escape the dungeon and explored the outdoors sections so far.