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.
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TURMOIL |
 
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20th CENTURY
FOX |
SIRIUS
SOFTWARE |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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OUT OF
CONTROL |
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AVALON
HILL |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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!
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DEATH
TRAP |
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AVALON
HILL |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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?!
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GAUNTLET |
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ANSWER |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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MISSION 3000
A.D. |
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BIT
CORPORATION |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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ASSAULT |
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BOMB |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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!
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GORF |
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CBS
ELECTRONICS |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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MR. DO!'S
CASTLE |
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PARKER
BROS. |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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CAKEWALK |
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COMMAVID |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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ROOM OF
DOOM |
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COMMAVID |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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TRON: DEADLY
DISCS |
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M NETWORK |
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ACTION/SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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MEGAMANIA |
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ACTIVISION |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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!
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QB |
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ANDREW
DAVIES |
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PUZZLE/ACTION |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.
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SCUBA
DIVER |
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VARIOUS
PUBLISHERS |
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ACTION...? |
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ATARI
2600 |
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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.)
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BEAMRIDER |
|
|
ACTIVISION |
DAVID
ROLPHE |
|
SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
| | |
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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.
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CRACK'ED |
|
|
ATARI |
|
|
SHOOTER |
|
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ATARI
2600 |
| | |
|
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.
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SAVE THE
WHALES |
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20TH CENTURY
FOX |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
2600 |
| | |
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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 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.
