Atari's first game console was also its greatest success, thanks to a massive software library and dozens of arcade ports.

I asked the readers of Atari Age what I could do to improve this page... I received a variety of different responses, but the one thing they agreed on was that the 26 Hunter needed an opener.  So, I'll start this introduction by describing my own introduction to Atari's most popular game system.

I've been a fan of video games ever since the late 70's, when I was a very young child, but surprisingly, the 2600 was not the first game system I'd owned.  My mother was convinced by a Magnovox salesman that the Odyssey2, with its more futuristic look and built-in keyboard, was the way to go, so my brother and I were stuck playing games like War of Nerves! and Spin-Out! for a couple of years.  Every once in a while, though, we'd go over to our neighbors' house, or visit a cousin, or one of my mother's friends, and they'd have a 2600 which I'd spend a lot of time playing.

As much as I liked the system and its games, I didn't get a 2600 until my mother met my stepfather... in 1984, believe it or not.  Most people consider this to be the year that video games nearly died, but the hobby couldn't have been more alive for me when I found a 2600 and a small handful of games in my stepfather's basement.  I must have spent hours just reading the instruction booklets and comics that came with each of the games, and when I finally hooked up the system... wow.  A black hole couldn't have pulled me away from the television set, even when I was playing the 2600 version of Pac-Man.  Sure, the game was a lousy translation, but you've got to admit, it's still an improvement over what I had been playing on the Odyssey2.

I started collecting 2600 games on the day my mom and stepdad married.  I remember this pretty well because my stepdad let me buy a copy of Pressure Cooker at the local Meijer's (yes, I remember the marriage too.  Geez...).  Pressure Cooker isn't one of Activision's best remembered games, but it should be... I loved the game's peppy soundtrack, detailed artwork, and fast action.  Unlike its closest relative Tapper, Pressure Cooker had a little more flame-broiled meat on its bones... it took both careful thought and reflexes to put those burgers together properly.

My next big purchase was Star Raiders, which I got a lot of mileage (light years?) out of despite the complicated controls.  The fact that it included a small comic book starring the Atari Force added to its appeal as well... for about a year my first concern when I bought a new Atari game was not the game itself, but the Atari Force adventure inside.  After all, there was a half hour seperating the department store from our house, and I needed something to keep myself entertained for that trip.  Even if it was too dark to read the comic, I'd just wait until I got home, then dig through the box to find it. That conversion of Galaxian could wait... I had to know what happened to Martin Champion and his crew now, now, now!

Those adventures just stopped around 1987, when the Tramiels ran out of their five year old backstock of Atari games.  Fortunately, there was a new demand for video games thanks to the Nintendo Entertainment System, prompting Atari to reprint their best old games as well as make great new ones.  It bothered me a little that the Atari Force comics disappeared, and that the new instruction booklets were printed in black and white and folded out like maps (geez, Jack, an industrial stapling machine can't be THAT expensive...), but once I started playing games like Ms. Pac-Man and Joust, it didn't matter that much.  Champion took a back seat to the actual games, as well he should... now all I was interested in was getting as many 2600 cartridges as possible. 

Some of my friends felt the same way, because even though the Nintendo Entertainment System was getting more and more popular, none of us could afford it.  One of the best things about the resurrection of the 2600 in the late 80's was that it allowed everybody to get back into video games even if they didn't have hundreds of dollars to spend on a new system... chances are, they could find a 2600 in their basement just like I did, and play great new games with it that were every bit as fun as more expensive releases on the NES.  I remember one Christmas when my parents were in a financial crunch... they could only afford to buy me a few 2600 games, but I was just as happy with Crystal Castles and Ms. Pac-Man as I would have been with a Nintendo Entertainment System.

Eventually, I was able to buy an NES, and I loved it... but I didn't stop collecting games for my 2600.  Some were new titles like the terrific Winter Games (which buried the lousy NES version in an avalanche of addictive gameplay and more events), and others were ancient releases like Worm War I that I'd borrowed from friends or picked up at yard sales.  I did start losing interest in the 2600 when I sold my NES and purchased a Genesis in 1991... but when the dollar stores in malls started stocking Atari games like Jr. Pac-Man, Midnight Magic, and Solaris, I just had to buy a few.  When I returned home, it was like I'd driven through a time warp that led me right back to 1984... even with the Genesis around, I was still playing my 2600.  Who could blame me?  The spectacular Solaris at one dollar was a much better deal than Ecco the Dolphin was at fifty.

Even after the dollar stores were tapped of supplies, I still bought and played 2600 games from time to time... partially because the fanzine Digital Press had kept my interest in the system alive, but also because I was curious about the games I hadn't yet played.  Was Bermuda Triangle by Data Age really that bad?  What's Donkey Kong doing in this game about a biplane?  How did CBS's translations of Omega Race and Wizard of Wor compare to the arcade versions?  And finally, what the heck kind of game could you get from sending in the UPC symbols from three bags of dog food?  I had search through a variety of pawn shops to find the answers to these questions, but I eventually did benefit from this hard work.  Not only did I learn a lot more about the 2600, I wound up with dozens of games that were fun and, in the case of Chase the Chuckwagon, very profitable.

This also led to the creation of The 26 Hunter.  Back in 1996, the Internet didn't have the amount of information about older systems that it does now, and I thought that I could help fill that gap by reviewing a handful of my best finds, answering some of the questions less experienced 2600 fans had about the games.  These days, information about these games, as well as many others, is easy to find on sites like Atari Age and Digital Press' online counterpart, so The 26 Hunter isn't the valuable reference it may have been several years ago.  Nevertheless, I still want to keep it around, if only as a tribute to a system that's held strong for two decades in a fickle industry that's swept away dozens of competitors and successors.

LATEST REVIEWS

DIG DUG
Atari
Action
    

The 5200 version of Dig Dug hit rock with the first swing of its shovel, but its 2600 counterpart is something any fan of Namco's arcade hit can dig.  Admittedly, it doesn't make a flattering first impression with its primitive visuals... the layers of dirt are reduced to flat, multi-colored lines, and in keeping with that time-honored 2600 tradition, the dragons bear an uncanny resemblance to ducks.  However, the whimsical soundtrack never misses a beat, and the gameplay strikes gold with tight control and massive throngs of enemies in the later stages.  There can be up to a dozen Pookas and Fygars on the screen at once, with only moderate flicker and no skimping on the artificial intelligence.  Loosen a rock and the foes beneath you will scatter; clear the stage of pests and the lucky survivor will make a beeline for the exit at the top of the screen.

The one thing holding Dig Dug back is its difficulty.  Taizo makes short work of enemies with his air hose, unlike the arcade game, where mad taps of the fire button were necessary to pop his pursuers.  Also, it's entirely too easy to squish large crowds of Pookas and Fygars with rocks in the later stages, earning you insane scores that never would have been possible in the original.  The 2600 version of Dig Dug is still an incredible game, mind you... just don't expect it to put up much of a fight.

LADYBUG
Champ Games
Maze/Action
   

Coleco planned a 2600 port of Ladybug, but its development was derailed thanks to the video game crash of 1984.  However, considering the company's track record, it was probably for the best.  Invariably, Coleco's 2600 titles were scaled down and comically abstracted... Donkey Kong became Fyvush Finkel's two stage struggle against giant cheese wheels, and Zaxxon swapped the sharp isometric graphics of the arcade game with a blocky behind-the-ship view that made players wonder if someone had replaced the cartridge while they weren't looking.  There's no telling what kind of twisted monstrocity Coleco would have pawned off as Ladybug if they had been given a chance!

Fortunately, John Champeau (previously known for a rainbow of DOS arcade ports) rolled up his sleeves and took a whack at a Ladybug port twenty years later.  The results are spectacular... this conversion is not only better than anything Coleco could have mustered on the 2600, but superior to the lion's share of maze games on the system.  The similarities to the coin-op start with a ROM check and only end once you've collected the SPECIAL bonus.  Giving the player a free credit wouldn't make a lot of sense on a home console, so Champeau replaced it with the supremely satisfying vegetable harvest from the ColecoVision game.  It's a loving touch that actually gives the game an edge over its arcade counterpart, and makes minor quibbles like the mirrored doors and prominent flicker easy to forgive.

MOON PATROL
Atari
Action/Shooter
  

I love the Atari 5200, but the crummy thing about owning the system is that it makes arcade conversions for its little brother seem downright trifling by comparison.  There's no question that it took serious effort to squeeze Moon Patrol into the tight confines of the 2600 hardware, but it's hard to appreciate all that hard work when the 5200 game is just a hair from arcade perfection.  After all, why bother for second best when first best is within reach?

Judging this game on its own merits is incredibly difficult once you've tasted the sweet fruits of its 5200 counterpart, but I'll give it my best shot.  What's most impressive about the 2600 version of Moon Patrol are the swarms of enemy ships that swirl overhead, raining bombs down on you like so many malevolent clouds.  Watching the 2600 handle this much chaos is an unlikely moment of pride for the retro gamer, like coming home to discover that your toddler has not only learned to read, but spent the last eight hours arranging your book collection in alphabetical order.

What's most frustrating is the speed of your lunar buggy, which is stuck in three gears.  In first gear, you crawl along at a glacial pace, and can muster all the airtime of an elephant stranded on Jupiter.  In third gear, you'll race across the moon at ludicrous speeds, only to have that joyride stopped cold by a stray rock you had no chance of dodging.  Second gear is your best bet, but even then you won't have enough control over your jumps to cleanly land between the densely packed craters and mines in the later stages.  Playing this game without the precision afforded by the 5200's analog control is like trying to perform open heart surgery with oven mitts.

ARCHIVE

ACID DROP
Salu
Puzzle
 

Remember those inmates from Guantanemo Bay, who were stripped naked, stacked on top of each other like anatomically correct Legos, then locked into interrogation rooms and waterboarded dozens of times? Well, after you play this game and listen to its shrill, halting rendition of the Beethoven classic Für Elise, you'll envy their quality treatment. It's not just the hideous, hideous music in this knockoff of the Sega puzzle game Columns that will leave you begging for less. There's also the fact that you can't match gems diagonally, or in the gravest omission of all, make screen-clearing chain combos. You can try, but the pieces will just fall into place, making complete matches that won't vanish until you add a gem to the pile in the next turn. After seeing what the Atari 2600 could do with Klax, there's just no excuse for something like this, especially when you consider that this was the system's last official release.  Thank heavens for homebrew, eh?

AIR RAID
Men-A-Vision
Shooter
   

Man's innate need to collect has made him spend obscene amounts of money on frivolous items that do nothing to justify the expense.  Jackson Pollock paintings, pet rocks, those little red dolls that giggle uncontrollably... all of these needless things have emptied wallets while offering nothing in return but the hollow satisfaction of their possession.  Air Raid is another of these silly indulgences, an obscure Atari 2600 release that's currently being auctioned on eBay for a bank-breaking ten thousand dollars.  Yes, that's five figures, ten grand, "I could have had a V8 and the rest of the damned car for that price!" territory.  What will the "winner" of this auction receive for his life's savings?  A lackluster hybrid of Space Invaders and Missile Command, along with a cardboard box to keep this digital dog turd in pristine condition.

If you'd like to experience Air Raid for yourself while saving $9999, here's what I'd suggest.  Get a copy of U.S. Games' dirt-cheap Space Jockey, tip your television on its side, and pretend that the swarms of ships are dropping bombs on a badly drawn city.  Air Raid is so similar to Space Jockey, you'd swear that Men-A-Vision was guilty of code theft.  It's got the same grating, repetitive sound effects, the same lousy collision detection, and the same brainless enemies... it would be a carbon copy if the developers hadn't given the action a 90 degree turn and grafted on buildings, which crumble under enemy fire but shrug off kamikaze attacks like gnats.  Space Jockey was already a hard sell at a dollar... if you're willing to drop ten thousand of them on a watered-down clone, you'd be better off spending it on a more worthy cause.  You know, like having your head examined.

ALIEN
20th Century Fox
Action/Maze
    

This game leaves me incredibly torn. On one hand, it's a huge disservice to a film as brilliant as Alien to turn it into a futuristic Pac-Man clone. Even in the technological stone age known as the early 1980s, game developers could have found better ways to capture the low-key tension of Ridley Scott's science-fiction epic... Haunted House is proof enough of that. On the other hand, this is a really, really good Pac-Man clone; much closer to the real thing than Atari's official conversion. It's got the twisting, turning corridors, it's got the howling sirens, and it's even got an assortment of bonus prizes, each more valuable than the last. Yes, there are some minor alterations to keep Atari's lawyers at bay, but they're surprisingly inconsequential. It doesn't matter that there are forgettable, Frogger-esque bonus stages after every round, or that there's only one energizer on the screen at a time, or that Ripley is armed with a flamethrower that may (but usually doesn't) scare off her pursuers... this is Pac-Man with the Alien license stapled to it. If you desperately want an alternative to Atari's own Pac-Man, that's a good thing, but if you were insulted that the Alien series took a turn for the dumber with James Cameron's testosterone-soaked sequel, maybe not so much.

ASSAULT
Bomb
Shooter
 

Whoa, whoa, whoa... what the hell is this crap?  Who made this, anyway?  Was it you?  It was you, wasn't it?  Get over here, you little prick... you and I are going to have a little talk!  First, if you're going to perch a gigantic UFO at the top of the screen, you damn well better make sure the player can actually destroy it.  You can't just dangle a target like that over a gamer's head like some carrot on a stick, only to constantly deny them the chance to blow it to bits!  Next order of business... don't stick the player with an overheat meter if they can't fire more than one missile at a time.  That's a play mechanic designed to keep players from spamming chain guns and other rapid-fire weapons.  It's got no place in a shooter as sedate as this one.  One more thing.  If you're going to steal so many ideas from Demon Attack, would it kill you to at least TRY to make some improvements?  When you've got a system as choked with shooters as the Atari 2600, you've got to make yours stand out from all the others, not use one of the most popular ones as a crutch.  No, those stupid side-mounted cannons don't help!  You only use them once every four rounds!  Now get back in your cubicle and do this right, damn it!

BEAMRIDER
Activision, David Rolfe (hopefully not related to that angry game nerd guy)
Shooter
  

You don't usually think of 2600 games as being intense, but this one... oh, man.  Give it a few rounds and you'll be sweating bullets, desperately fighting to stay alive against an endless assault of aliens, bullets, and meteors.  Beamrider plays a little like Tempest, but the enemies are a whole lot smarter, dancing around your shots and pelting you with their own before quickly retreating back to the horizon.  Don't take that breath just yet, though.  There are plenty of other obstacles raining down on you which block your fire and restrict your movement, making a tough game even more demanding.  Beamrider on the 2600 may not look as polished as the other versions of the game, but that's to be expected... they were all released for more powerful systems.  What's important is that the gameplay is just as good- and intense!- on the 2600 as it is anywhere else.

BLUEPRINT
CBS
Puzzle/Action
 

Don't get me wrong; I like weird games, but this may be taking things a little too far. In Blueprint, you're what appears to be a Vaudevillian performer who must assemble a robot from pieces scattered throughout your suburban neighborhood in an attempt to destroy what appears to be a disgruntled California Raisin who's chasing after your girlfriend. Well, actually, the 5200 version has characters like that... on the 2600, you're a badly animated stick figure, the robot is a cannon, and the disgruntled California Raisin looks more like a plum. Either way, I had a hell of a time trying to figure out why your character has an eighty year old fashion sense, why he's allowed to break into everyone else's homes to find the pieces of his cannon, why he sometimes finds bombs in these homes, and most importantly, what your girlfriend did to incense the plum who relentlessly chases her (perhaps she's Barbara Mandrell?). Plot aside, the game is pretty easy to understand... it's a little like Pac-Man but more cerebral, since you have to remember the location of each cannon piece to successfully complete rounds. It'd be a lot of fun too if not for the lackluster graphics, grating sound effects, and frustrating game play (you're barely given enough time to mentally store the locations of the cannon pieces, and if you forget them, you're as good as dead). It's still not bad by 2600 standards, but the 5200 and Atari computer Blueprints were far better executed. Buy them instead if you have the choice.

BURGERTIME
M Network
Action
 

You'd heard of the low-fat margarine I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, right? Well, just one taste of this predictably lackluster M Network release and you'll exclaim, "I Can't Believe It IS Burgertime!" At least it's got all the basics covered... the familiar theme music still drones in the background (although it loses a lot of its charm when piped through the 2600 sound processor...) and you're still chased by all the renegade food items from the arcade game, including Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Yellow Stick, and... uh, Mr. Red Wafer. Wait, colorful wafers? This isn't Burgertime... it's Soylent Green, the video game! It becomes clear after a few rounds of getting stuck on ladders and stepping on burger toppings disguised as rectangles that this game is made of very disgruntled people. Like the rest of M Network's cavalcade of crap, the sense of resentment in its design is palpable. You can almost see the designers at Mattel huddled around a table, complaining, "Aw crap, didn't we just design this for the Intellivision? All right Ronny, bang out some code in a couple of hours so we can get the marketing team off our backs. Wait, is that thing supposed to be Peter Pepper? Whatever. When you're done, we'll clock out early and head down to the local nudie bar."

CAKEWALK
Commavid
Action
 

If there's one thing this game isn't, it's a cakewalk!  As a lanky pastry chef, you've got to catch freshly baked desserts rolling down a series of conveyor belts.  These range from ornate three layer wedding cakes to animated gingerbread men who aren't too thrilled with the prospect of being shipped off to hungry kids.  Things get pretty frantic when the belts are switched to Lucy speed, but you've got one ace up your sleeve... one of the belts can be temporarily stopped, giving you a chance to catch cakes that would otherwise find their way to the floor.  Even with this advantage, you're going to find yourself making a lot of messes... unlike Pressure Cooker or Tapper, which always gave you a way out of a desperate situation, Cakewalk tends to keep the treats at such a distance from each other that you can't possibly rescue them all.  Luckily, the excellent graphics (including a tiny janitor who sweeps away your mistakes) make it tough to complain when the game starts playing dirty.

CHASE THE CHUCKWAGON
Spectravision
Action/Maze
 

It can only be called ironic when the game that everyone in this hobby desperately wants is considered to be one of the worst 2600 titles ever released. Maybe it's because I purchased my copy for a buck at a local pawn shop (when the current asking rate among collectors is $200 or more! >:), but I don't consider the game to be terrible. It's better than Todd Fry's miserable translation of Pac-Man, with less flickery characters and more attractive colors, although the graphics are far from the best you'll find on the system. The orange checkers on the chuckwagon flicker like mad (which is especially strange since it's a stationary object), and although the title character is easily recognizable as a dog (it looks more like Spuds MacKenzie than the mutt in the Chuckwagon dog food ads, though), the persuing dog catcher has all the detail of your average stick figure, and the bouncing objects in the maze won't win any awards, either. And oh, the gameplay is pretty simplistic, too... you just navigate mazes, avoid anything that moves, reach the chuckwagon, and stop psychadelic dishes of food next to your dog's feet in a cheesy bonus round that kinda sorta breaks up the extreme monotony of the other rounds. So, Chase the Chuckwagon is nothing special, but it's worth picking up anyways... for obvious reasons.

CONGO BONGO
Sega
Platform
    

Another terrific arcade translation, this time by the folks at Sega. There's only two rounds, but both of them are so well done that you probably won't miss Rhino Ridge (which was incredibly frustrating on the ColecoVision anyways). And oh, the second round's been changed to accommodate the 2600's limitations (it's not isometric like the first round and plays a little more like Frogger), but the programmers made up for this by making it breathtakingly colorful. And did I mention the solid control and cute end-of-level intermission that were both missing from the ColecoVision version? Well, I did now. In any case, this is worth having.

CRACK'ED
Atari
Shooter
 

If you're tired of blasting birds in those other gun games, give this one a shot.  Crack'ed lets you play mother hen to several nests filled with rare eggs.  Those nests won't stay full for long, though... the rare eggs also happen to be quite delicious, and all different kinds of animals will do whatever it takes to feast on them.  You're better off blasting the critters before they reach the nests, but if one sneaks past you and carries away an egg, you can get it back by picking off the thief and catching their cargo before it falls to the ground.  Crack'ed may not look as pretty as most NES light gun games (and you can't even play it with a light gun!), but it does have the advantage of being more complex, and the graphics are pretty detailed by 2600 standards.

CRASH DIVE
20th Century Fox
Shooter
  

It may say "Fox" on the box, but it certainly doesn't look like one of their games!  The gorgeous sunset in the background and the silky smooth animation of the sealife are on par with Activision's best work.  However, the gameplay of Crash Dive is less surprising... it's just your typical side-scrolling shooter, using the promise of sunken treasure as its hook.  Every prize you collect reveals another glittering golden artifact more valuable than the last, the same incentive that kept Pac-Man players dropping in quarters to get a peek at the fruit targets in the later stages.  The treasures make Crash Dive more addictive than it otherwise would have been, and make its flaws (including predictable enemies and a dive animation that briefly hides the player's ship) easier to swallow.

CRYPTS OF CHAOS
20th Century Fox
Role-Playing
 

It's an RPG... on the 2600!? Really. There's hit points, magic, and sword-fighting all rolled into one little package, but the problem is that it's anything but a neat little package... in fact, it rarely makes any sense at all. You just walk down a blocky 3-D corridor, fight off strange creatures, and switch from one menu option to the other until you reach a wall or the corridor you're in changes colors. Stranger still, there are never any doors at the sides of the screen as is the case with every other game of its kind, and you can only turn 180 degrees as a result of this. True, there's only so much a 2600 can do, but let's face it, an RPG without the all-important aspect of exploration is like a refrigerator without freon coils. If you've gotta have a relatively complex 2600 game with a Doom-like perspective, buy a SuperCharger and Escape from the Mindmaster instead.

CRYSTAL CASTLES
Atari
Action/Maze
   

You couldn't expect an arcade-perfect translation of this complex isometric maze game on the 2600, but you've got to give the designers credit for trying... This certainly feels like the coin-op, and the title character (who scores high on the cute meter, a big plus for me) scurries around almost as if you're controlling him with a trackball. The mazes are blocky, and there's a lot of flicker, but that's forgivable since there are so many rounds and the characters are so nicely detailed (especially the gem eaters! Wow!). The play mechanics are pretty complex for a 2600 game, too, which is always a plus. HIGHLY recommended.

DEATH TRAP
Avalon Hill
Shooter
 

Avalon Hill tries to bring a new twist to an Atari 2600 classic, without much success.  Thanks to the awkward title screen, Death Trap is even hard to start... and it doesn't get much better from there.  You've got to take out targets perched behind a series of laser walls, but the walls actually increase in strength every time a cannon is blasted, making the colorful barriers more and more difficult to penetrate.  Unlike Yar's Revenge, which only took a single well-timed shot to bring down the Quotile, each cannon takes an absurd amount of damage to destroy, needlessly drawing out the action and turning the gameplay into a long and repetitive chore.  Just when you think you're on the edge of victory, ANOTHER cannon pops up to take the place of the ones you just vaporized!  What does this stupid trap kill you with anyway, lethal doses of boredom?!


DEMOLITION HERBY
Telesys
Action
 

Funny how such a clever concept could result in such a terminally dull game. As a dime-store knock-off of that famous possessed Volkswagen Bug (no, not the one in the commercials... the one that hangs out with Lindsey Lohan!), you must literally paint the town red while evading a trio of pursuing vehicles. Painting a city block earns you some points and gas, but if you're smart enough to paint two blocks at once, you'll receive a lot more of both. Also, you've got a turbo boost, activated with the fire button. Hold the button down while ramming the side or back of a vehicle and you'll bounce it around the city... time it just right and you'll start a chain reaction which will take all three of your enemies off the road for a few seconds. However, it's just as easy to get caught in the chaos and lose several lives as you're helplessly thrown into the other cars. That's pretty obnoxious, but the real issue with Demolition Herby is that this initially challenging game is quickly outsmarted. Once you know the trick, you could theoretically play it forever... and what a horrifying eternity that would be!

DESERT FALCON
Atari
Shooter
 

Zaxxon fans will be delighted to know that Desert Falcon is much closer to Sega's arcade classic than Coleco's own 2600 version of Zaxxon, and the sound is absolutely astounding. Unfortunately, the gameplay is severely limited... there's never more than one enemy onscreen for the majority of the game, and there's no artificial intelligence to speak of: even the mighty Sphinx is easily destroyed once you find his soft spot. The graphics are pretty blocky, too (yes, even by 2600 standards!), but that's offset somewhat by the excellent animation of the title character (your falcon flaps its wings with admirable realism, and when it hops along the ground to pick up items you're instantly reminded of the crow from those old Warner Bros. cartoons) and the smoothly scrolling backgrounds. Another point of note: this is one of the few 2600 games with actual power ups! Pick up three hieroglyphs in the correct sequence and you're rewarded with everything from faster shots to invincibility to a smart bomb (not that this comes in handy since there are never enough enemies onscreen to warrant its use...). Each ability is mentioned briefly, and if necessary, the game will actually instruct you to double click your fire button to activate it! This feature is a real lifesaver, especially when you don't have a copy of the instructions... Anyways, Desert Falcon is worth the price of admission, if just to hear your humble 2600 kick out some of the funkiest Egyptian tunes since Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'd recommend the 7800 version if you want actual gameplay to go with your great music, though.


DOUBLE DRAGON
Activision
Fighting
 

There's something strangely fascinating about watching a 1986 arcade game running on 1977 hardware. It just shouldn't be happening, yet for better or worse, there it is! Like the Hong Kong Street Fighter clones on the NES, or Virtua Fighter 2 on the Genesis, or Far Cry on the Wii, Double Dragon on the Atari 2600 represents an almost insurmountable challenge for the team that designed it. They get plenty of credit for nailing the graphics and sound... thanks to the colorful, detailed backgrounds, there's no mistaking this game for anything other than Double Dragon. In fact, the incessant and incredibly obnoxious soundtrack will never let you forget it! Unfortunately, something had to give in this overreaching conversion of the Technos arcade classic, and that something was the gameplay. The 2600's single button joystick is one button short of providing the full arcade experience, so a lot of moves either have to be accessed through awkward joystick motions or were removed completely (oh man, not the throws!). The outcomes of the fights are also frustratingly random; so much so that it would be hard to imagine anyone finishing the game with the paltry three lives and zero continues they're given. The developers had high hopes for this one, but Double Dragon on the 2600 is more a proof of concept than a full-fledged game.

FAST FOOD
Telesys
Action
 

Following the lead of eating machines like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, and Super Pac-Man (oh, and we can't forget Super Pac-Mon, of course... >:) is Mr. Mouth, the star of Fast Food. Mr. Mouth, a pair of grossly distorted purple lips, resides in a diner where the food is delivered air mail. Unfortunately, the diner also seems to be in poor standing with the FDA as rotten pickles fill the air as well. In case you hadn't already guessed, Mr. Mouth must dodge these undigestable threats while gobbling up everything else that flies past. It's definitely weird enough to pass as a video game concept, but the execution of the game itself leaves much to be desired... Mr. Mouth looks like a scrambled mess (could drawing a pair of lips be THAT difficult on the 2600? I don't think so...), and the food is blocky and sloppily drawn, which was a huge mistake on the parts of the designers since with such a simple premise, good artwork was really all Fast Food had going for it. To its credit, it's a pretty fast game, but with so little to do you'll still get tired of it rather quickly. The most fun you could possibly have with Fast Food is sending it to Rosie O'Donnell in a box with Donnie Osmond's return address on the front, since the game proudly announces "You're Getting Fatter" at the end of each round...

FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER
Data Age
Puzzle/Action
 

Although I must admit that this is better than any of Data Age's other releases, Frankenstein's Monster is still lacking in several critical areas. With only one three story screen, FM isn't nearly as varied as its obvious inspiration Pitfall!, and the frustrating gameplay is a minus as well... spiders drop from the ceiling of the basement floor without warning, often ruining otherwise perfectly-timed jumps, and wading through the hordes of bat-like creatures on your way to Frankenstein himself becomes tiresome quickly. The graphics are fair (and appropriately creepy) and the sound effects are tolerable (which is a miracle in itself considering that this is a Data Age title), but I still wouldn't recommend this over either of David Crane's Pitfall! adventures.

FROGS 'N FLIES
M Network
Action
 

Ahhhh... this is the perfect way to relax after fraying your nerves with a few games of Solar Fox. The title pretty much says it all... you compete against a rival frog (controlled by the player or, after fifteen seconds of nonuse, the computer) for the flies which lazily flitter over a picturesque swamp. With the difficulty switch set to novice, your frog always jumps in a set arc and can catch nearby flies without your intervention, but the expert setting (which gives you complete control over your frog) is much more fun, especially with two players. The setting is really cool, too... the scenery's blocky, but it certainly sounds like you're hanging out at a swamp, with plenty of chirps, croaks, and (some very realistic) splashes to go around. The nightfall aspect of play is equally brilliant, although it's a little disappointing that the game ends once the sky becomes pitch black (I'm sure I'm not the only one to have fantasized about eating the firefly that carries the Game Over banner to the center of the screen, right?). Anyways, Frogs 'n Flies is the game for you if you're not particularly interested in saving the world from aliens for the millionth time.

FROSTBITE
Activision
Action
 

This incredibly disappointing Activision release is sort of a hybrid of Frogger and Q*Bert, and while it's more attractive than either (well, the 2600 versions of either, anyways), it's certainly no more enjoyable. As an Arctic explorer, you must hop on rows of ice floes, changing the colors of each, to build an igloo which will eventually protect you from the elements. Canada geese, Alaskan King crabs, clams, and other things that would taste great in a chowder patrol the freezing waters and threaten to push your insipid, er, intrepid explorer into the deadly drink. And wouldn't you know it, it's nearly impossible to avoid being shoved into the ocean by these unassuming threats once you've built your first igloo. Lovely. The artwork is pretty decent by 2600 standards (although not by Activision stardards) but that doesn't change the fact that the game is unplayably frustrating.


GANGSTER ALLEY
Spectravision
Shooter
 

Before Hogan's Alley, and before light guns, there was Gangster Alley. Here's a game that was quite literally ahead of its time, since it was released years before a proper peripheral was available for it. Just like Game B of Hogan's Alley, random characters peek out from behind the windows of a run-down slum, and it's up to you to pick off the thugs while sparing the innocent civilians. However, since you're armed with a joystick-guided cursor instead of a firearm, the gameplay has been slowed down to accommodate your less than lightning-fast reflexes, making this incredibly forward thinking game incredibly boring. That's a shame, because this release could have been pretty enjoyable with the right equipment, even if the hardened criminals look like cast-off Muppets and there's not much in the way of variety.

GAUNTLET
Answer
Action
 

In real life, the path to manhood is paved with breaking voices and hair in weird places, but here, it's filled with flying tomahawks, razor-sharp arrows, and piles of stones.  You'll have to endure all of these threats and more to snuff out the ceremonial torches and prove your worth to the rest of the tribe.  Well, enough of the plot.  What this game boils down to is racing through a forest trail with a jug tucked under your arm.  You can slide under the arrows and leap over the stones to protect yourself and preserve your limited supply of water, but it's so hard to tell if you'll clear these obstacles that you're better off running around them.  The graphics aren't too shabby, resembling a more earthy River Raid, but it's the dull, slightly sluggish gameplay that brings a premature end to this woodland adventure.  Eh, manhood is overrated anyway.

GORF
CBS
Shooter
 

You tend to be rather particular about home conversions of the arcade games you loved as a child.  At least, that's the way I feel about Gorf... heck, I'm not even satisfied with MAME's emulation of the well-rounded Bally-Midway shooter, some twenty five years after the game was released!  Obviously, a 2600 version isn't going to meet with my high standards either, but CBS Electronics did the best it could with what it had.  There's much missing from this port, but just as much has been faithfully reproduced, including the player's colorful space ship and the varied gameplay that made the original more than just another shooter.  There's even the famous flagship at the end of each mission, and although it looks like a hypodermic needle and doesn't break apart when you fire into it, it's still just as rewarding to sink a shot into the tiny vent leading to its nuclear core.  Well done, CBS!  You haven't captured the full Gorf experience, but you did get everything that counts.

GYRUSS
Parker Bros.
Shooter
   

I didn't appreciate this game as a teenager, but now I understand that it was unrealistic to expect a perfect conversion of Gyruss on the Atari 2600.  Parker Bros. did the best they could with what they had, and given the limitations of the system, they did pretty well.  The control is every bit as sharp as it was in the arcade game, with your ship gliding smoothly along the edges of the screen, and much of the gameplay has been perfectly preserved, from the challenge stages to the satellites which double your firepower.  There's even a planet waiting for you at the end of each set of stages, a small but nevertheless welcome detail which demonstrates that the developers went the extra mile in bringing the arcade experience home.  On the down side, Gyruss suffers from indistinct graphics and the same limited field of vision that held back its cousin on the Atari 5200.  Your ship is much too close to the center of the playfield, putting it in constant danger of being demolished by the heat-seeking meteors that stream out of the horizon in the game's later stages.  Also, the sound effects have been removed completely, but that's no great loss when you consider the rockin' Bach soundtrack that replaced them.

HE-MAN
M Network
Action
 

Yes, it's based on the cornball Filmation cartoon, but we won't hold that against it. In fact, the tie-in with He-Man is part of this otherwise average shooter's charm... the game greets you with a really neat morphing sequence loosely based on the one in the cartoon, and if you're lucky enough to beat Skeletor in a somewhat anticlimactic end of level confrontation, you're treated to a huge picture of He-Man standing victorious with his sword held high. If only the cake were as delicious as the icing... it's just your basic side-scrolling shooter, similar to Fox's Mega Force but with better, less flickery graphics. Once you reach Skeletor's castle, the perspective changes, and you must now tag the fiend while deflecting his energy bolts with your sword and squeezing between the gaps in his twin force fields. Pretty basic stuff, really, although to the author's credit it is fairly well done. Bottom line: He-Man is definitely worth the purchase if you can find it for a few bucks at a garage sale or pawn shop, but don't bother with it if you have to order it from a game dealer or own an Intellivision (as its version of He-Man is better).

I WANT MY MOMMY
ZiMAG
Action
 

ZiMAG was never going to win any awards for the quality of its games, but I Want My Mommy is the best of this rotten bunch.  It's a kid-friendly alternative to the brutally difficult Donkey Kong series, with just four enemies in each stage and a cuddly lead character who's a lot less frightening than Mario before his late 1980s marketing makeover.  You'll guide your fuzzy hero up a series of platforms, first planting a pair of poles and then climbing one of them to the next floor.  Strange creatures pursue the plucky teddy bear on the higher platforms, but can be clobbered after he grabs a floating kiss from his mother.  Finish the first stage and the bear is rewarded with a giant apple... complete the second and he's reunited with his mom, who looks like a Lego man struggling to escape a zipped up sleeping bag.  Okay, so the graphics aren't mindblowing, but they're suitably colorful for the game's young audience, and the action will hold even an adult's attention for the five minutes it will take to reach Mommy.

KUNG FU MASTER
Activision
Fighting
 

There aren't many martial arts titles on the Atari 2600, mostly because the subject didn't really catch fire with Americans until 1984's surprise hit The Karate Kid but also because the massive characters and complex play mechanics of fighting games demand a higher octane console. With that in mind, it was pretty ballsy of Activision to attempt this conversion of the Irem arcade game Kung Fu Master... and impressive that they were able to reproduce the original so accurately. Granted, it doesn't hold a candle to the version that Nintendo released around the same time, but if you hadn't yet stepped up to the big leagues of the NES, you could learn to live with the slightly kludgy controls and knife-throwers who look disconcertingly like trenchcoat-clad flashers. What's important is that all five stages are intact, including the pottery barn of doom and the hatchery filled with fearsome (?) poison moths. The game runs at a pretty brisk clip as well, a pleasant surprise after similar Atari 2600 efforts like Chuck Norris Superkicks and Activision's less successful port of Double Dragon.

LASER GATES
Imagic
Shooter
  

As a video game critic, I've reviewed plenty of software that wasn't up to snuff, but occasionally, a game will turn the tables and leave me feeling inadequate. Imagic's Laser Gates is a prime example... it's not only one of the best shooters on the Atari 2600, but also one of the toughest. As you fly through a cramped cavern in your sleek space cruiser, you'll not only face the eponymous laser gates but concrete walls, armed satellite dishes, hungry aliens, and even the 2600's own brain in a desperate and increasingly hopeless battle for survival. The further you advance, the thicker the walls and the faster the gaps in the laser gates become, leaving you crossing your fingers for the next precious fuel pod that will keep you in the game for just a few minutes longer. The graphics and sound are trademark Imagic, with enemies exploding into showers of cosmic confetti and the snarling sound effects for each trap ratcheting up the tension. However, it's the unrelenting challenge of Laser Gates that ultimately makes the game a winner... and the player a loser.  Frequently.
 

M.A.D.
US Games
Shooter
 

Missile Attack and Defense, eh? The title pretty much says it all*, although there are elements of Atlantis in this sub-par shooter as well. In it, you must defend cities (original, huh?) from an unending barrage of missiles and jets. The attackers fly in a straight horizontal line, flash briefly, and (if given the chance) fall to earth, destroying any cities they touch. You, of course, must intercept the missiles by spraying them with gunfire, which is easier said than done since the cannon used for the job is awkward and difficult to aim. Because of this, your death is guaranteed once the game speeds up and the screen literally fills with enemies. This would be tolerable if the game had striking graphics or bone-jarring explosions, but unfortunately, neither is the case... the sound effects are actually pretty irritating, and the character artwork is (putting it kindly) minimal, with monocolored foes and a cannon that bears an uncanny resemblence to a cow pie. Needless to say, I don't recommend this.

* EDITOR'S NOTE:  M.A.D. could also be a reference to the term "Mutually Assured Destruction," which is the reason that most countries are hesitant to use nuclear weapons.
 

MEGAMANIA
Activision
Shooter
  

Hostile hamburgers?  Belligerant bowties?  Sinister steam irons?  It can only be Megamania, the first shooter with the guts to poke fun at the genre and the best game of its kind on the Atari 2600.  Long before Paradious, Game Paradise, or the dreaded Cho Aniki, Megamania was making gamers laugh with the wackiest foes in the universe, while testing their skills with mesmerizing flight patterns that were hard to survive and even tougher to outsmart.  Twenty five years later, the game is every bit as awesome as it was in the early 1980s... even if the visuals are a notch below the usual Activision output.  All that detail went into the 5200 version of Megamania, but the lightning-fast action is right here, baby!  You'll pick off dancing formations of radial tires and diamond rings, struggling to annihilate the unlikely foes before your fuel supply runs dry.  Then once those nasty irons steamclean your clock and you've run out of lives, you'll scramble for the reset button and another chance to play... because with Megamania, once is never enough!
 

MIDNIGHT MAGIC
Atari
Pinball
   

How can I pay adequate tribute to a game that is the definition of what a good pinball simulation should be? Midnight Magic is absolutely incredible in so many ways... the playfield, while somewhat simplistic, is brilliantly designed and wonderfully drawn, the physics of the ball are amazingly realistic, and the game's music and sound effects are so advanced that you'd almost suspect that the programmer himself was a magician. That's not to say that Midnight Magic is perfect... the ball is square (just like the one in Atari's decrepit Video Pinball), there's no tilt feature, and the game becomes incredibly frustrating in spots, but when you stop and consider that it's much more fun than similar games on the Intellivision, Odyssey2, Astrocade, and even the NES, who cares? If you love pinball, and even if you can't stand it, Midnight Magic is a must-have.

MILLIPEDE
Atari
Shooter
  

"Insanely good" would be the best way to describe this port of the Atari arcade game that took the fast, frantic action of Centipede to the next level. The cast of characters from the original has been greatly expanded, with hypnotically swaying bees, screen choking mosquitoes, and bullet time inducing inchworms joining the armies of spiders and cent-er, millipedes. The oppressive swarm of bugs is truly a sight to behold on the Atari 2600, especially in the challenge stages, where the playfield is beseiged by enough pests to give even the Orkin man a heart attack. Some sacrifices had to be made to achieve this level of unrelenting intensity, of course... the graphics have been scaled down to the point where your ship is a square and the mushrooms no longer take visible damage, making it tough to effectively use the DDT canisters at the top of the screen. However, the game controls beautifully, with just enough inertia to simulate the feel of a trackball without sending the player helplessly careening into one of those obnoxious spiders. It also sounds a whole lot like the arcade version, although the ear-splitting screech you'll hear when you lose a life will leave you wondering if that's a plus. It may not have the visual polish of Crystal Castles, but Millipede is one of the most satisfying arcade conversions on the Atari 2600... to say nothing of the most thrilling!

MINER 2049'ER VOLUMES 1 AND 2
Tigervision
Platform
 

Hear that ringing? It's TigerVision, phoning in yet another 2600 conversion of a hot computer game. They've split this release into two volumes, much like NEC had with the PC Engine version of R-Type, but don't be fooled into thinking that this was due to any earnest effort on their part. The basic structure of the rounds is intact in both cartridges, but the production values have been dropped through the floor. Bounty Bob has been reduced to a charmless, stiffly animated robot, and the gameplay that was already slow on other systems has been shifted into neutral. Grating sound effects and a jump that can't quite vault Bob over the roving mutants in each level offer further proof that sometimes, just good enough just isn't good enough.
 

MINES OF MINOS
CommaVid
Action/Maze
 

Ugh! As bad as Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes was, this is far, far worse. You take the controls of a bow-legged robot which must locate and assemble the scattered pieces of another equally ridiculous mech, all while avoiding or bombing the hell out of a cast of unrelenting foes. It's ugly, slow, and mind-numbingly boring, to say nothing of frustrating when the enemies pick up speed and the maze fills with water. The fact that eliminated foes are replaced with new, more deadly adversaries is the ONLY redeeming aspect of this intolerable mess.
 

MISSION 3000 A.D.
Bit Corporation
Shooter
 

Some things just shouldn't be.  You know, like three legged ducks, or two headed turtles, or The Price is Right hosted by Rosie O'Donnell.  This is just another one of those affronts to nature; an overreaching conversion of Bosconian for the Atari 2600.  Bosconian was one of the lesser-known games from the Namco hit machine of the early 1980s; a search and destroy mission set in the depths of space.  On the 2600, however, it's a seizure-inducing dogpile of flickery, eternally confused enemies.  They stumble around the screen blindly, hoping to collide with the player... and often do in the later stages, where they become too fast and numerous to avoid.  Bit Corporation gets points for ambition, but the futility of porting such an advanced arcade game to 1970s technology doomed this mission to failure.

MOUNTAIN KING
CBS Games
Action
  

Convinced that it would be a smash hit, CBS Games was determined to bring Mountain King to every video game console known to man.  It's easy to understand their enthusiasm for the game once you've played the Atari 5200 version, but it's harder to get excited about its 2600 counterpart.  While it's certainly recognizable as Mountain King, much of the magic that made the 5200 game so thrilling has been stripped away.  Choppy scrolling takes the spring out of the lead character's step, clusters of diamonds are set so far apart that it takes forever to collect enough to summon the fire spirit, and the Edvard Grieg soundtrack hits a few sour notes after you've retrieved the crown.  Nevertheless, if an Atari 2600 was all you had in the early 1980s, a taste of Mountain King's massive playfield and clever, music-dependent gameplay was better than nothing at all.
 

MR. DO!'S CASTLE
Parker Bros.
Action
 

I love this game!  It's the offspring of Lode Runner and Space Panic, but with the brisk gameplay and candy-colored visuals that both of its ancestors were lacking.  So why am I not jumping for joy over this conversion?  I could give you a whole bunch of reasons, but here are the most important ones.  First, Mr. Do! seems to have been replaced with a hyperactive hamster wearing a clown hat.  He shivers like a chihuahua on crack when he runs, and when he swings his hammer... well, let's just say that it looks like he's really enjoying his work.  That's pretty disturbing, but what's worse is that Mr. Do!'s furious masturbation fails to protect him from the unicorns roaming each stage.  You have to be positioned in juuuust the right spot to dislodge blocks, and hitting the unicorns with the... er... hammer results in a quick, puzzling death.  Since the equine predators are as smart as ever but Mr. Do! is five times as wimpy, you can guarantee that you won't be making much progress, or having much fun.
 

OUT OF CONTROL
Avalon Hill
Action
 

This little-seen Avalon Hill release combines the time-based slaloming of Activision's Sky Jinks with the careful thrusting of Atari arcade hits like Lunar Lander and Asteroids.  You've got to weave through a series of space buoys, pop a dozen randomly placed space balloons, then park your space ship inside a space station, where you can take a break at the space diner and get yourself the space soup or the space special.  Hint... don't order the space special.  Joking aside, Out of Control doesn't look or sound like anything special.  The color striping and stunning background details of Activision's best games are nowhere to be found here, and the stark silence of outer space is broken only by the blast of your thrusters and a harsh buzz whenever you bump into a space buoy.  However, if you can get past the bland aesthetics, Out of Control is a fairly enjoyable experience... and that's more than you can say about most Avalon Hill games!
 

PHOENIX
Atari
Shooter
 

Call me a blasphemous heathen, but I actually prefer this to Imagic's Demon Attack. Sure, Demon Attack has flashier graphics, but blasting the same three aliens over and over and over, as colorful as they may be, gets old fast. The changing rounds of Pheonix force players to adopt new strategies to win, and the enormous boss ship at the conclusion of each level makes all the difference to me. This confrontation isn't as exciting as the one in the arcade original, but what's important is that it's there.
 

PICNIC
US Games
Action
 

I've listened to Digital Press (in both its print and online forms) rant and rave about how horrible this game was, so I just had to try it myself and find out if it really was the worst thing to happen to happen to picnics since spoiled mayonnaise.  It really isn't, but after bouncing a small army of flies into a flashing box for what seemed like an eternity, I can understand why Joe Santulli and his staff desperately wanted to see all their copies of Picnic carried away by large, badly drawn insects.  The game doesn't even make sense at first, but once you know how to deal with the flies, it starts to pick up... well, a little, anyway.  It's cool that the designers tried something different with this game, and I liked the fact that there's a boss fly at the end of each round, but Picnic just isn't complex enough to be truly enjoyable.  If you could actually interact with the flies somehow while they're bouncing around the screen, that would have made Picnic a lot more fun and exciting.
 

PICK UP
20th Century Fox
Shooter
 

Before Joe Millionaire and Mr. Personality, there was Pick Up.  Oh wait, no there wasn't!  Before Rupert Murdoch was calling the shots, 20th Century Fox still had some of its dignity left and decided to pass on releasing this viscivious video game.  In Pick Up, you aim to satisfy your manly urges by collecting what a girl wants (by shooting at it...?), then luring the nearest comely lass to a hotel.  You can guess what comes next... in fact, you'll have to, because Fox draws the curtains in the love shack shortly after you and your girlfriend walk in, leaving the encounter to your imagination.  The biggest letdown of all is that Pick Up is only marginally more entertaining than other sexually suggestive 2600 games.  Your targets become frustrating obstacles after you've fired at them... nick them again with a bullet and you'll lose a life.  You can't take your time to fire, either, because specific items will start to flash, once again costing you a life if you take too long to line up a shot.  You're a lot better off playing Megamania... it may not give you the opportunity to nail pretty women, but it's much more satisfying... and you've got to admit, it features a really phallic ship.
 

PITFALL 2: THE LOST CAVERNS
Activision
Platform
    

Everyone who's played this has called it a milestone in 2600 game design, and from a purely technological point of view, I'd tend to agree... Pitfall 2 stretches the system to its limits both visually and musically, and its incredibly detailed backgrounds are arguably the best ever on the humble VCS. Still, the game itself is disappointing. Sure, there's a wider variety of screens to explore, but Pitfall Harry has gained only one skill since his last adventure- the ability to swim- and many of the obstacles that made Pitfall! really live up to its name, like the mud bogs and vines, are nowhere to be found here. Also, although Harry is vulnerable to enemies, he can never really be killed by them, effectively lessening the element of danger that made the original so exciting. Despite all this, Pitfall II is still a recommended purchase, thanks in large part to its jawdropping graphics and vast, challenging playfield.
 

POLARIS
Tigervision
Shooter
 

Get those bad Sean Connery accents ready, folks, 'cuz it's time to take a trip to the bottom of the ocean in a high powered, constantly hunted submarine.  It's your job to keep the sub seaworthy amidst a swarm of slow moving, bomb dropping airplanes.  Knock them out of the sky and a faster, smarter jet arrives, diving around your shots and unleashing deadly accurate guided missiles.  If this intense battle ends in your favor, you'll then navigate through an underwater passageway strangely reminescent of the mesas in Raiders of the Lost Ark, blasting neon colored mines on your way to the next confrontation.  You'll be surprised at how well all this turned out on the 2600... the ships are a little chunky and the sound effects are pretty irritating, but the gameplay's smooth and responsive, and the whole nuclear-powered package is more complex than your average 2600 shooter.
 

PORKY'S
20th Century Fox
Action
 

You have to wonder why this game was released instead of its far superior ColecoVision counterpart.  Sure, the rounds and the basic gameplay are the same, but the gap in quality is even wider than the enormous pond the main character has to pole vault across to reach the greasy spoon he intends to blow up.  The only advantage the 2600 game has is that this round is a lot easier than it is in the ColecoVision prototype... however, the three remaining rounds are much, much harder, with ladders that are almost impossible to climb when you need them most and rampaging enemies that are guaranteed to break, or should I say brick, your balls.  It's understandable that the graphics and sound in the ColecoVision game are light years ahead ahead of Porky's on the 2600, but why on Earth does the GAMEPLAY in the 2600 version have to be so awful?
 

QB
Andrew Davies
Puzzle/Action
  

Before I begin, I'd like to apologize for waiting so long to cover homebrew games like QB in The Gameroom Blitz.  In the last five years, video game fans have designed, programmed, and published dozens of software titles for older systems like the ColecoVision, Vectrex, and of course, the 2600.  This takes a whole lot of hard work, because they not only have to program in machine code on a console with a lot of hardware limitations, they don't have access to the official documentation and development systems the major game companies of the early 80's were able to use.  Despite this handicap, a lot of these new games are surprisingly good... sometimes even better than the games professional designers were PAID to create back in 1983.

I've played a lot of these user designed games, and in my opinion, Andrew Davies' QB is the best of the homebrews for the 2600.  Sure, This Planet Sucks is more colorful, and Oystron has better special effects, but QB's play mechanics are more original... you don't see many puzzle games on the 2600, and you don't see many puzzle games for ANY system that aren't Tetris or Columns clones.

As the name suggests, QB plays a little like Gottlieb's Q*Bert, but there's a little inspiration from Locomotion as well.  Your character has to arrange tiles in a room to match the pattern on the right hand side of the screen.  Like Q*Bert, he can leap from tile to tile, but QB can also slide tiles around if there's no place for him to jump (a little like Locomotion).  You'll have to come up with the best combination of sliding and jumping to finish the pattern, because if you're not careful you could put a tile in the proper place, but isolate it from the others which still need to be moved around.  Also, there's a time limit on each pattern... if you spend too much time thinking and not enough moving, a new random pattern will be chosen, spoiling your work (this can be very frustrating if you've got just one tile to move into place, but can also help you if you can't figure out how to finish the pattern).

As you'd expect, the game's got both items to collect and enemies to avoid, and there's a good variety of both.  Fruit will hatch out of the eggs that magically appear on the playfield (whoa, surreal!), and if you get the right combination, you'll earn an extra life.  Beware, though... the eggs may also contain bad guys who serve the dual purpose of hunting you down and moving the tiles.  The timid bunnies are no problem, but the squid's a bit more tricky, and that bloodthirsty flame is more aggressive than the first two combined.  All three can be sprung off the playfield with the fire button, but you have to get in close to use it, and it does devour your points pretty quickly.

With regards to the game's overall quality, I think QB compares favorably to the better 2600 games released in 1983, although I wouldn't go nuts and pit it against the truly incredible titles released for the VCS in the late 80's (heck, some NES games weren't as good as Solaris and Midnight Magic!).  The graphics are alternately functional and fantastic... the tiles are, well, flat colored squares, but the fruit looks tempting (which is saying a lot from a guy who doesn't eat much fruit) and the main character, whatever he is, is very well detailed and animated... he'll even blink from time to time if he's standing still.  As for sound, well, there isn't much in the game, but that's probably a wise decision on Mr. Davies' part... I don't know how well the 2600's raw, harsh sound output would have worked with a cute game like this.  Finally, there's the gameplay, which is entirely on target... except for attacking enemies.  You have to aim for the hostile hopper with the joystick while pressing fire, meaning that you'll leap right at him.  Usually, the bad guy is tossed off the board, but if not...

The most exciting part about QB is that I had some (small) influence on the project... I tried the betas and sent Andrew Davies a letter about what I thought could have been improved (in early versions of the game enemies could be thrown from the board even if you were nowhere near them, and extra lives were too easy to earn).  Instead of ignoring me, Andrew actually replied to my letter and considered some of my suggestions!  Andrew had already made QB great, but his responding to peoples' constructive criticism without being hostile makes him great as well.
 

RAM IT
Telesys
Puzzle/Shooter
    

What? A competant Telesys game? No way! Yes way. Even with its simple graphics and disturbing title, Ram It is much more entertaining than Squeeze Box by U.S. Games, the company responsible for such triumphs as Eggomania, Gopher, and the Cap 'n Crunch line of cereals.

So how does the game play?  Hold on, I'm getting to that!  You're at the controls of a small turret strung on a pole. To your left and right are colorful rows of bricks, which if left unchecked will grow at an alarming rate and eventually overwhelm you. You've got to clear the entire screen of bricks within the time alloted to complete rounds, but things aren't always that simple... sometimes, bricks will touch the pole, confining you to one area of the screen when others desperately need your attention. These bricks can be destroyed only if they're flashing, and this is regrettably a random and unreliable occurance.

Sure, Squeeze Box had all these elements as well, but much of its functionality was sacrificed for eyecandy... its title character was impractically large, ruining the game's strategic element. Ram It is more of a player's game... the graphics are simple (yet still attractive), but the gameplay is more intense, and the control is sharper, allowing you to line up shots with relative ease. In other words, Ram It is a fine game that unlike Squeeze Box is worth the high price it commands.
 

REACTOR
Parker Bros.
Action
  

Reactor is intense, unique, and surprisingly complex, but the one thing about this game that truly makes it memorable is its wild heavy metal soundtrack. It's the kind of music that you'd imagine Beavis and Butthead playing air guitar and thrashing their oversized heads to, which is especially ironic since Reactor preceeds them by nearly a decade...

But enough about that! As the title suggests, you're inside a nuclear reactor that's constantly bombarded with potentially deadly atomic particles. To prevent a nuclear disaster, you must shove these particles into the walls of the reactor with your atomic steamroller (huh...?) to break them down into their component parts and eventually destroy them. This all sounds pretty cut and dry, but unfortunately, the particles are surprisingly feisty and can destroy you by forcing you into the walls of the reactor as well. They're pretty easy to avoid at first, but eliminating them without being shoved into the deadly reactor walls takes finesse, and the core will eventually grow to such a size that you'll be forced to confront the particles whether you want to or not.

However, you do have limited protection in the form of radioactive decoys. Plant one of these (preferably near a reactor wall) and the particles are attracted to it for the remainder of its halflife, giving you precious time to reorient yourself and take a breather. Also, there are pins at the sides of the reactor wall... destroy a set of these by shoving particles into them and the core shrinks considerably. Finally, the reactor has pockets which can trap particles. These are tricky to use effectively but once a proton or neutron is trapped inside a pocket, it almost never escapes.

In short, Reactor is the video game equivalent of a mosh pit... it ain't pretty, the music's too loud, and you're going to get shoved around a lot, but hey, you get to do a little shoving back.  That catharsis is easily worth a few bruised limbs and ear drums.
 

REVENGE OF THE BEEFSTEAK TOMATOES
20th Century Fox
Action
 

Sorry, ladies, no George Clooney here. That would be Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes... Anyways, all you get here is a simplistic shooting contest in which you must spray pesticides on evil tomatoes and build walls over shrapnel-firing tomato plants. The game is incredibly cheap on the harder levels, as tomatoes zip from side to side at such a speed that they're almost impossible to dodge, and a real snooze in the practice mode, which gives you infinite lives and no incentive for continuing after the second round. The final nail in Beefsteak's coffin is Fox's soulless presentation... the programming was done without a hint of flair or personality, making this about as fun as eating (tomato) paste.
 

ROOM OF DOOM
CommaVid
Shooter
 

Here's a deliciously sadistic concept!  You're trapped inside a cramped room filled with dangerous beasts and whirling blades.  However, what's inside the room isn't quite as threatening as what's outside it.  Windows in the walls slide open to reveal snipers eager to use you as target practice.  Your only hope for survival is to fire a few shots of your own into the windows before they close, nailing the snipers before they can draw a bead on you.  It's an idea that's almost as good in practice as it is in theory, but there are two things holding it back.  The first is that the graphics and sound really suck.  Your hero looks like the spawn of the Bic mascot and the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and those dangerous animals mentioned earlier never get more intimidating than that sickly iguana at the local pet store.  Rather than bursts of gunfire and loud, jaw-rattling explosions, you're served up a random assortment of stock sound effects that don't really fit the context of the game.  Oh yeah, then there's that other thing... mind-numbing repetition.  Once you've seen the first three rooms, you've seen them all.  The snipers never get any smarter and there aren't any surprises to keep you on the edge of your seat; just new sprites for the hungry monsters.
 

SAVE THE WHALES
20th Century Fox
Shooter
 

When even the notoriously underachieving 20th Century Fox refuses to release a game, you know it's got to be awful.  Turn Space Invaders upsidedown, shake it vigorously so that all the fun falls out, then put the player on the side of the aliens, and you've got a pretty good idea of what Save the Whales is like.  You've got to protect a pod of whales from a ship armed with nets... nets that somehow cause the grinning cetaceans to explode on contact.  The graphics are good enough, but the rest of the game is not... the nets launched at the whales always manage to reach their targets while slipping past your bullets.  It won't be long before you're up to your neck in precious ambergris, and there's not a thing you can do to prevent it.  Actually, there is one thing you can do to prevent the senseless slaughter of these majestic creatures... just play something else, and they'll all be fine.
 

SCUBA DIVER
Various Publishers
Action...?
 

Russ's worst nightmare...


How do I hate thee?  Let me count the ways...

1) BAD START

The first screen requires that you jump into the water and harpoon the three fish swimming about.  The problem?  You can't control the diver for a couple seconds, so even though it may have LOOKED safe to jump in, it won't be by the time you get your control back.  Plan on dying a lot, unless you're smart enough to turn the game off right away and play something better (may I recommend Adventure?).

2) BAD COLLISION DETECTION

Okay, let's say that by some stroke of fate you survived your jump into the water.  Now you've got to harpoon some fish.  Don't think that's going to be easy!  You see, you can be pretty far from a fish, but it's close enough to register as a death.  Okay, so dodging isn't going to work.  Try shooting quickly.  Well, that's not going to work either, because to make up for the bad collision detection one way, they make it almost impossible to hit the fish.  Although you'll die if you merely swim in the wake around the fish, a harpoon to the fin will have no effect other than make sure you get eaten before you can reload.  But I have found one way to avoid the bad collision detection -- turn the game off and play something good instead (may I recommend Taz?).

3) BAD IDEA OF A CHALLENGE

On the off chance you stuck with the game enough to start harpooning fish, you'll notice a couple things.  First, you have to actually reel the damn things in, and since you have to clear all three out before you can progress to the second screen, you'll really hate when more fish reappear before you can even get to the next one.  You'll hate missing, since another fish will kill you before you can move or fire again.  You'll hate the way the shark will chase you into a corner or another fish while trying to get set up so as NOT to miss.  You really can't fulfill your goal very easily.  Unless of course your goal is to play a good game, in which case you simply need to take Scuba Diver out and put a decent game in (may I recommend Quadrun?).

4) BAD PORTING

At least with the Sancho version, which is PAL format and therefore has 100 more scanlines and so a deeper screen, you can move around a LITTLE to avoid the fish.  Not so in the NTSC versions by Panda & Froggo -- to get the same game screen to fit the smaller NTSC screen, they just hacked out some of the vertical depth, which means you can't get away from the fish, unless of course you play something more worthwhile instead (may I recommend Tapper?).

5) BAD IDEA

Okay, let's assume you were stubborn enough or stupid enough to keep playing until you were able to harpoon all three fish, and get into the galleon at the bottom.  Now you get to play the second screen.  It's a simple maze, and again you get three creatures, only this time you must avoid them, as they can't be harpooned.  You need to dodge them and work through the maze to pick up three treasures, then go back to the top to go out the galleon and swim up to your boat.  But, the maze is "sticky", and you can get stuck against the walls while your oxygen supply (oh, I didn't mention that before?  that's because you rarely live long enough that it matters) runs down.  Who thought this was a good idea?  If there was ANY fun whatsoever in this game, it disappears at this point.  And on the off chance you didn't get stuck, managed to avoid the monsters, and got the treasures, rest assured that the fish are back to prevent you from ever reaching your boat.  Now, if you've gotten this far by yourself, nothing I can say will matter, and perhaps you're actually enjoying it, but I really think there are better ways to spend your time (may I recommend a psychiatrist?).

<><>) BAD THINGS BE UPON YOU...

Hopefully the gods have already punished those responsible...

PLAYING TIPS:

Don't go near this atrocity.  Life's too fucking short.  Dammit Jess, why did you make me play this horrible game again?

I feel so dirty...

(Ed: Geez, Russ, aren't you being a little melodramatic?  Let me play Scuba Diver for a while and... wait a minute, you're right!  I got dibs on the shower after you're done.)
 

SKATEBOARDIN'
Absolute
Sports/Action
 

This kind of reminds me of an elevated side-view version of Pitfall! on a skateboard. The big difference is that the playfield is much larger (with a map that extends in four directions as opposed to Pitfall!'s two) and instead of collecting treasures, your character must perform stunts within the alloted time. It's very difficult to do this- I've only been able to perform twenty of the thirty stunts in the eight minutes given- and the music is out of place (it sounds more like something from an early 60's sitcom than your typical shredder soundtrack from the late 80's) but Skateboardin' is still a pretty decent effort, considering the limitations of the system.
 

SKY SKIPPER
Parker Bros.
Action
 

Never heard of it, eh? Doesn't surprise me. What will surprise you is the fact that this is based on a Nintendo coin-op, and one starring the gorilla who first pestered Mario and later proved that uninspired Adventure Island rip-offs could become best sellers if rehashed with purely superficial computer rendered graphics (what, me bitter?). Donkey Kong doesn't look much better in Sky Skipper than he did in his first two 2600 games, and sadly, the game itself isn't as enjoyable as Coleco's VCS primitive translation of Donkey Kong. If you've played the biplane games in Combat and Looping for the ColecoVision, you know what to expect... Donkey Kong's stolen twelve animals and it's your job to rescue them from his clutches. To do this, you must first fly over the big ape and stun him with bombs. Once he's incapacitated, the critters literally jump for joy, and that's when you swoop down and collect them, taking care not to crash into the surrounding walls. With that done, you must fly upwards (avoiding the clouds in levels 2 and above), take on Donkey Kong again, and catch six more animals before your fuel supply is tapped out. Succeed and you're given a new round, and so on and so forth. Pretty simple stuff, really, which is especially depressing since the designers didn't try to hide this fact with incredible graphics (which these days is anything but a RARE occurance, so to speak). If you're into all things Donkey Kong, this won't matter, but I doubt that Sky Skipper will satisfy anyone else.
 

SMURF RESCUE
Coleco
Platform
 

The control is a little hard to get the hang of (since you have to press up to jump, and the joystick button does nothing), but once you adjust you'll find that Smurf is one of Coleco's better 2600 titles. The graphics are blindingly colorful, and there's a nice difficulty ramp for seasoned players (in fact, it gets a little too hard after you've saved Smurfette twice... the enemies all get a turbo boost, and you have to repeat each round multiple times to move on to the next one). The tunes are a little rough, but that's a minor complaint. In fact, rough music is better than the usual 2600 alternative (no music at all)...
 

SOLAR FOX
CBS
Action
  

It's kind of hard to describe this game without outlining the plot, so here goes... You're behind the controls of a small solar-powered star ship from a planet tapped of its natural resources. You've been floating aimlessly in space for what seems like centuries and you're about to give up hope until suddenly, you run across an enormous cache of energy pods. You close in, only to be surrounded by heavily armed fighters which mercilessly pelt you with photon blasts. They refuse to respond to your communiques, and you can't fight back as what little energy your ship uses is diverted solely to its impulse engines. Do you run like hell and hope that you can make it home in one piece? No! You stick around and steal as many energy pods as you can before you're blown to bits, of course! And one thing's for sure, it ain't easy. Remember those grade school games of Dodge Ball where you'd stand in front of a wall and nearly everyone else in the school would gleefully hurl rock-hard volleyballs at you? That's what it feels like to play Solar Fox, except you don't wake up with welts and bruises the next morning. If you can handle that kind of intensity, by all means pick this up, but if not...
 

SOLAR STORM
Imagic
Shooter
 

Yeesh. Another mediocre blastathon on the 2600. Just what I needed. What's most disappointing about this mess is the fact that it was designed by Imagic, the company responsible for such groundbreaking titles as Demon Attack and Atlantis. Solar Storm has elements of both (the perspective is similar to Demon Attack's, and you must protect your planet from enemies a'la Atlantis), but the mixture of themes just doesn't work here. Does it have something to do with the ho-hum graphics? The prefunctory bonus round? The fact that there's no way to dodge the enemies' laser blasts? Or Dennis Koble's insistance on making the game paddle compatible? Well, whatever it is, the game's not much fun, so pass it up.

SPACEMASTER X-7
20th Century Fox
Shooter
 

Here's a fun fact for you! The Atari hit Yars' Revenge was originally envisioned as a port of the Cinematronics arcade game Star Castle. However, when faced with the limitations of the 2600 hardware, Howard Scott Warshaw took the game in another direction, and a classic was born. 20th Century Fox and Sirius Software weren't as easily deterred, though... in true Obama fashion, they shouted "Yes we can!" and forged ahead with a game that more closely approximates the action of Star Castle. It even improves on it in some respects, giving the fortress in the center of the screen a wider assortment of enemies to throw at you along with an energy field that contracts and expands, often threatening to crush you against the edges of the screen. However, some of these enhancements are less welcome than others. The Spacemaster has a fuel gauge which replenishes over time, so sinking a single lucky shot into its core isn't enough to destroy it... you'll have to hammer the fortress with laser fire until it grudgingly admits defeat. That's not a problem in the earlier stages, but in the later ones, where aliens flow from the center of the screen like water and the flimsy energy shield is reinforced by impenetrable walls, you're going to be locked in combat with the Spacemaster for an extra, extra, extra long time. Better bring along some of that long-lasting gum.
 

SPRINGER
Tigervision
Platform
 

Silly rabbit, sucking is for Acclaim!  This could actually have been a fun platformer in the tradition of Donkey Kong if it hadn't been for the ghastly level design.  I'm totally convinced that the first level- the FIRST level!- is impossible to complete because the platforms are spaced too far apart.  You can stand on the very edge of any given platform, leap for the next, and still miss, even though the path you tried to take was the only possible way to reach the top of the screen.  If the designers had bothered to make sure that the rounds could actually be FINISHED, Springer would have been an acceptable translation of the Orca coin-op, even with the lackluster graphics.  Since they didn't, it's better that you forget about Springer and satisfy your furry platforming needs with a game of Kangaroo instead.

SSSNAKE
Data Age
Shooter
  

Space Zap and Centipede... two great tastes that taste great together? Not if Data Age has anything to say about it! Sssnake traps you in a simple maze patrolled by strings of dots, which could only be charitably described as snakes. You've got to blast the primitive pythons as they weave their way through the maze, but you're anchored to the center of the screen, only allowed to circle its edges like a crazed Rottweiler on a chain. The woeful collision detection only adds to the frustration... chances are, you're not going to be able to hit a single segment of snake unless you set yourself directly in its path. What's your reward for this act of borderline suicidal heroism? Absolutely nothing. For some unfathomable reason, there's a single digit score and you only earn points from blasting the gape-jawed monsters that wander through the maze. If they're the only target in this game that matters, shouldn't it be called MMMonsters? Better yet, maybe that title should be reserved for the blackhearted designers, who took the allowances from hundreds of unsuspecting children and gave them this steaming load in return.

STAR TREK: STRATEGIC OPERATIONS SIMULATOR
Sega
Shooter
  

C'mon, you know you love Star Trek. In fact, if you're any sort of self-respecting Internet nerd, you probably love it a little too much, the way Shatner loves himself or Takei loves that stumpy little Jewish guy he married. That's all right, though... you're in good company. I firmly believe that Star Trek is one of the most compelling franchises in the history of television, and that high quality shines through in Strategic Operations Simulation. Based loosely on strategy games designed for home computers in the late 1970s, SOS puts you on a mission to defend space stations from fleets of Klingon warships. The player can dock with a station to restock his ship with shields, warp energy, and devastating photon torpedoes, but resisting that temptation earns the player a huge point bonus after cleaning up the Klingons in a sector. This element of risk and reward adds variety to the gameplay, as does navigating through asteroid belts for free power-ups and confronting the mine-dropping artificial intelligence NOMAD. Compared to other ports on beefier consoles, SOS is remarkably uncompromised... not only is the core gameplay preserved, but the unique split-screen display and snippets of the original Star Trek theme music are here as well. Let's face it, we Trekkies are a demanding bunch, but this game easily justifies our love.
 

SUPERMAN
Atari
Action/Adventure
 

If anything could be best described as a side-view version of Adventure, this would be it. Superman has that unmistakable Adventure feel despite the change in perspective... the action is centered largely around dropping and dragging objects, and the artwork (although slightly more detailed) bears a resemblence to Warren Robinette's work in the first video game RPG. The formula just isn't as successful here as it was in Adventure, however... the background colors were poorly chosen, and Superman's powers are somewhat underwhelming. Sure, he can fly, and carries around everything from Lois Lane to helicoptors with the greatest of ease, but he never actually gets into fights with the numerous gun-toting thugs that populate Metropolis, and his X-ray vision is limited to previewing screens directly adjacent to him. And that aside, once you've beaten the game, there's no point in playing it again except to beat your best times.
 

TAPE WORM
Spectravision
Action
 

Unpleasant name aside, this is just your ordinary, average eat the dots and don't run into your tail style of game that was overdone on PCs in the early 80's. It's pretty weak in comparison to games like it, with poor graphics and enemies that pop out of nowhere and are nearly impossible to avoid, but at least there are various fruits at the conclusion of each round (unlike a certain crappy Pac-Man translation for the 2600 that I need not mention here). Pretty unsatisfying and/or annoying otherwise.
 

TRON: DEADLY DISCS
M Network
Action/Shooter
 

The Intellivision favorite comes to the Atari 2600, faster and easier to play than ever... yet also more boring.  Could the blame lie with the unappealing visuals, consisting of dumbed down Running Men pasted on a plain grey box?  Could it be the lack of variety in the enemies?  Rather than several kinds of rogue programs, each with a different level of artificial intelligence and resistance to attack, you get an endless wave of digital dummies who fall with a single strike of your disc.  Could it be the greatly simplified battle system?  You can't shield yourself with your flourescent frisbee like you could in the film... your only option is to attack.  Could it be the omission of the towering Recognizer, which marked the end of each stage and added extra challenge to the gameplay in the Intellivision version?  Whatever it is, you won't be able to shake the feeling that you're getting cheated out of the full Deadly Discs experience, including much of the fun.
 

TURMOIL
20th Century Fox, Sirius
Shooter
 

Turmoil's sole aspiration in life is to be the quintessential early 80s shooter.  It's got the unique hook... you're sandwiched between two sets of horizontal chutes teeming with deadly spaceships.  It's got the wide variety of foes... each one's got its own plan of attack and vulnerability.  It's got gameplay that starts out slow but steadily turns up the heat as you play.  However, what it doesn't have is the addictiveness that makes the best games in the genre difficult to put down and impossible to forget.  It's not due to a lack of effort on designer Mark Turmell's part... he's got all the bases covered, from the responsive control to the vibrant graphics.  Unfortunately, it's the underlying concept that comes up short.  Because they're trapped in the chutes, the enemies have a limited range of motion, making them more predictable than the frantic flippers in Tempest or the wily white saucers in Beamrider.  Worse yet, they're just not aggressive enough or smart enough or well-armed enough to make you sweat until the later stages, where their sheer number makes survival an impossibility.  The lack of challenge in the first few stages, followed by the brick wall you hit in the later ones, makes the game less of a turmoil than a malaise.
 

WIZARD OF WOR
CBS
Action/Maze
    

I've given Wizard of Wor a high rating because it's a solid conversion of an excellent arcade title... but to be perfectly honest, I have mixed feelings about this particular version of the game.  It's flickery beyond belief, the characters are both dully colored and blocky, and all of the text messages were removed.  Even on the 2600, I have to believe that a better translation of Wizard of Wor could have been possible.  On the plus side, the game plays really well and gets just as intense as the better versions available on the 5200 and Bally Astrocade... and you can even play with a friend, a luxury that many gamers had to do without when arcade titles were converted to the more powerful NES.
 



ATARI 2600

tech specs

CPU

6507

MHz

1.19 MHz

RAM

128 bytes (!)

Media

carts, 4K

Sound

TIA

Gfx

TIA

Res

40x192

Color

128

Sprite

player/missile

Polys

N/A

best games

Adventure
Crystal Castles
Midnight Magic
Megamania
Ms. Pac-Man
The Official Frogger
Reactor
Solaris
Solar Fox
Winter Games

worst games

Acid Drop
Chuck Norris Superkicks
Double Dragon
Infiltrate
Karate
Mines of Minos
Panda Chase
Scuba Diver
Springer
Sssnake