Top 10 Atari BASIC Games - Commercial

[+MrFish]

What are your top 10 favorite, commercial Atari BASIC games? This can include games that use machine language subroutines (but not compiled BASIC games).

 

If you can include the publisher and/or developer, that would be helpful too.

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by MrFish

[zzip]

Questron:

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-questron_4239.html

 

But in general, my attitude back then was that professional games/apps should not be written in BASIC as it was too slow, and the end result was usually lackluster.   Questron is the only one I remember enjoying.

[Fres]

I liked Color Puzzle (Colour Puzzle) from Dell's Games For Your Atari but it looks like it was not well received according to atarimania (3/10).

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-colour-puzzle_33971.html

 

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Fres

[erichenneke]

Telengard by avalon hill.

 

And the Dunjonquest series by epyx, including Temple of Apshai, Hellfire Warrior, Upper Reaches of Apshai. 

 

I played the heck out of those back in the day.  And also Questron as already mentioned by zzip. 

Edited February 2, 2021 by erichenneke

[Fres]

For non-type-ins, I shouldn't forget, "Can't Quit" ... it was pretty well done. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-can-t-quit_873.html

 

I'm also sentimental about Letterman and States and Capitals because I played the hell out of them as a kid.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-letterman_2974.html

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-states-and-capitals_5046.html

 

 

 

 

[+MrFish]

7 minutes ago, Fres said:

I'm also sentimental about Letterman and States and Capitals because I played the hell out of them as a kid.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-states-and-capitals_5046.html

I never saw this back in the day; but I wrote my own States and Capitals program in Atari BASIC, which was quite similar.

 

[+MrFish]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

But in general, my attitude back then was that professional games/apps should not be written in BASIC as it was too slow, and the end result was usually lackluster.   Questron is the only one I remember enjoying.

I'd generally agree too; but there are certain types of games that lend themselves to being written in BASIC: slower-paced games and ones with minimal graphic animation requirements being examples. So, things like card games, puzzle games, board games, and certain types of simulations. I think many of the SSI simulations were written in BASIC; and one Atari release that comes to mind is SCRAM. As long as the game works as you'd expect it, I don't really care what language is used. The fact that many BASIC games for the Atari were also cheap productions (sloppy or simple graphics, etc.) sort of created part of the myth that Atari BASIC games couldn't be that good. And simple or quickly written book and magazine type-in programs often didn't help the impression either.

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by MrFish

[Rybags]

Rear Guard was pretty good.

I'd be pushing it to name 10 Basic games that came on disk or tape that you had to pay for though.

[+MrFish]

4 hours ago, Rybags said:

Rear Guard was pretty good.

 

Get's a "3.6" rating on Atarimania. I can't remember if I've ever tried it before or not. I'll have to give it a go tomorrow.

  

4 hours ago, Rybags said:

I'd be pushing it to name 10 Basic games that came on disk or tape that you had to pay for though.

 

For sure they exist. Atarimania lists 2,551 "games" (which is somewhat loosely defined by them) on their site that are both commercial and programmed in Atari BASIC.

 

I just went through SSI's titles. They have 57 total on Atarimania, of which 12 are Atari BASIC programs.

 

01. Battle for Normandy
02. Battle of Shiloh
03. Carrier Force
04. Computer Baseball
05. Eagles
06. Fifty Mission Crush
07. Fortress
08. Knights of the Desert
09. Questron
10. Rails West!
11. Shattered Alliance
12. Tigers in the Snow
 

They also released 5 that were compiled Atari BASIC; so just a step away from making the cut here.

 

01. Battle of Antietam
02. Computer Quarterback
03. Imperium Galactum
04. Objective: Kursk
05. Sons of Liberty
 

The rest of SSI's catalogue is composed a machine language games.

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by MrFish

[invisible kid]

Floyd of the Jungle

Telenguard(already mentioned)

Edited February 3, 2021 by invisible kid

[Mclaneinc]

Easy for me, Chopper Rescue, still love it to this day...

[Goochman]

Mars Tesero

Datestones of Ryn

 

[Mclaneinc]

Abuse made me chuckle at the time..

[devwebcl]

Giant slalom 

Memory match (apx)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Goochman]

No love for the Marc Benoiff series

 

Escape from Vulcan Island

Nightmare 

 

I played these alot when I first got my 800

[Mclaneinc]

I would not say no love for his stuff, its just not my style of game, I'm almost certainly in a minority there but it is what it is..Horses for courses..

[zzip]

14 hours ago, MrFish said:

I'd generally agree too; but there are certain types of games that lend themselves to being written in BASIC: slower-paced games and ones with minimal graphic animation requirements being examples. So, things like card games, puzzle games, board games, and certain types of simulations. I think many of the SSI simulations were written in BASIC; and one Atari release that comes to mind is SCRAM. As long as the game works as you'd expect it, I don't really care what language is used. The fact that many BASIC games for the Atari were also cheap productions (sloppy or simple graphics, etc.) sort of created part of the myth that Atari BASIC games couldn't be that good. And simple or quickly written book and magazine type-in programs often didn't help the impression either.

 

Yeah it seems like a lot of commercial games written before 82 or 83 were BASIC,  the early SSI stuff, the early Epyx/Automated Simulations stuff.  I think Ultima I was as well.   After that it was rare to see commercial games use BASIC.

 

I was doing a lot of my own game programming in BASIC and was quickly learning the limitations - speed mainly..  if you wanted to do anything really cool you really needed to include machine language subroutines.   I actually did write some card games in Basic though, and it did work fine for that.

 

But when Turbo Basic came out, it was a game changer it was fast enough to make more action-oriented games possible, and had a compiler available for even more performance.

[Dinadan67]

the german classics "Globetrotter" and "Kaiser" are both written in Basic, i still play them from time to time with friends. i also liked Questron a lot.

[+MrFish]

6 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

Easy for me, Chopper Rescue, still love it to this day...

Yeah, that's a good example. I've played it before too.

 

A lot of the Sid Meier games on the Atari were written in BASIC.

 

I suppose with some commercial BASIC programs, it has to be said that they would often utilize BASIC as, more or less, a manager for machine language subroutines. I encountered this when hacking a program called Fury (thread on AA somewhere) -- mainly used for graphic-related routines. So, not really strictly BASIC games. But I don't really care about that; it's more an issue of "what can be done in the BASIC language?", regardless of whether extensions are used to do some of the heavy graphical lifting. Many other languages are programmed the same way (C-language, Pascal, etc.). As long as it's supported directly by the language.

 

[+MrFish]

8 hours ago, zzip said:

Yeah it seems like a lot of commercial games written before 82 or 83 were BASIC,  the early SSI stuff, the early Epyx/Automated Simulations stuff.  I think Ultima I was as well.

Epyx did take that path and SSI to a certain extent too.

 

  

8 hours ago, zzip said:

After that it was rare to see commercial games use BASIC.

Actually it wasn't the case at all. If you look on Atarimania, you can see there is an even distribution of commercial Atari BASIC games released throughout the platform's lifetime. 

 

  

8 hours ago, zzip said:

I was doing a lot of my own game programming in BASIC and was quickly learning the limitations - speed mainly..  if you wanted to do anything really cool you really needed to include machine language subroutines.   I actually did write some card games in Basic though, and it did work fine for that.

Yes, same here; but machine language subroutine usage is essentially part of the language, and there for obvious reasons. There really were many such routines available too -- from various magazines and other sources.

 

  

8 hours ago, zzip said:

But when Turbo Basic came out, it was a game changer it was fast enough to make more action-oriented games possible, and had a compiler available for even more performance.

Big improvement with TBXL; but you were still bound to need machine language subroutines for various graphics operations.

 

 

[+skr]

8 hours ago, Dinadan67 said:

the german classics "Globetrotter" and "Kaiser" are both written in Basic, i still play them from time to time with friends. i also liked Questron a lot.

I´ve played Kaiser even more than M.U.L.E.

Would love to see a Fujinet-Version, where the other players can´t see how I set taxes and that I spent all money on mitlitary.

[lbaeza]

Strip Poker

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, lbaeza said:

Strip Poker

Was that really a BASIC game?

[lbaeza]

5 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Was that really a BASIC game?

Yes sir.

 

Regards, Luis.

[Mclaneinc]

16 hours ago, MrFish said:

Yeah, that's a good example. I've played it before too.

 

A lot of the Sid Meier games on the Atari were written in BASIC.

 

I suppose with some commercial BASIC programs, it has to be said that they would often utilize BASIC as, more or less, a manager for machine language subroutines. I encountered this when hacking a program called Fury (thread on AA somewhere) -- mainly used for graphic-related routines. So, not really strictly BASIC games. But I don't really care about that; it's more an issue of "what can be done in the BASIC language?", regardless of whether extensions are used to do some of the heavy graphical lifting. Many other languages are programmed the same way (C-language, Pascal, etc.). As long as it's supported directly by the language.

 

As you say I imagine if looked at properly then its a mix of BASIC and machine language pumped in via data statements for some of the more intensive stuff. Not a bad mix, do the routine stuff in easy to code basic and then a few ML routines for the fancy stuff.