Whether one agrees with the concept of a one-sided video game review or not, we all know how much fun it is to share feelings about certain titles. I always endeavor to write gamer's-eye (and, incidentally, programmer's-eye) mini-essays that are fun to read. I base this hope on the fact that they're certainly fun to write.
Adam and I originally made our newsletter's review page a sort of "point/counterpoint" affair; one of us would select a game and explain how he felt about it, and then the other would critique the same title. Both reviews were blatantly personal diatribes or praises; it turned out to be a lot of fun to "collaborate" in this direct, honest manner, and it was often the most amusing part of the publication.
Now that the website's our focus, I'm upgrading the idea to include our readers.
It's true that I pursue a lust for
the 3-D worlds of the PlayStation, but I continue to find that the most
addictive challenges and most imaginative scenarios are found on the
early systems (often because the relatively primitive ROMs forced
programmers to cough up that addictiveness and imagination). The VCS had
the biggest library; it therefore featured all the best and all the
worst. Below, you'll find a lot of passionate opinions on a great many
Atari 2600 games. I hope to eventually get all of them in there.
Included will be a little historical info, just for fun. I'd love for
anyone who has a game to add, disagrees with anything I've written, or
agrees but has a different angle to
e-mail me and write a short
entry that I can include in this huge, multi-authored review column.
I'd love to see comments below from dozens of classic gamers. Have some
fun! -- CF
ADVENTURE (Atari)
Anyone familiar with the stuff I've written for OC&GS
or any other newsletter will know how dear this game is to me. It's my
favorite video game of all time; it continues to give me a palpable
mystified feeling. The rooms are eerie and the challenge presented in
the beautiful abstract kingdom never grows old. Sure, it's easy once
you've figured it out; but it still seduces. For one thing, the absence
here of music or extensive sound effects works better for the atmosphere
than all the fancier systems' soundtracks put together. The bare cursor
representing the hero does more to focus the player on the scenario at
hand than the most intricate animation you'll find on any shinier
console or computer. Game 3, which randomly selects from several set-ups
dictating object and enemy placement, is the archetype for all
subsequent graphic exploration contests.
I'll leave it at this: When I croak, I
don't want a funeral or any sort of commemoration; but if someone feels
inclined to do something like that against my wishes, I want the
victory theme at the end of Adventure played over loudspeakers before my memory's sealed.
"You can't take it with you?" Whatever. My chalice and I will be quite comfy, thank you.
KEY KIDS! CHRIS'S FUN FACTS(tm):
Did you know that Warren Robinett named the dragons himself (Yorgle,
Grundle and Rhindle) and, although it didn't appear in Steve Harding's
manual for the game, Robinett named the bat Knubberrub? It's true! WOW!
BERMUDA (Suntek)
Now, wait just a goddamn minute here. This is a blatant clone of River Raid with worse graphics, sparse landscaping and no bridges. Did they really get away with this? Wretched.
Still, I wonder if I'd condemn it so quickly if I'd never heard of River Raid. Everything's relative.
BOBBY IS GOING HOME (Puzzy/Bit)
Waste-matter. Don't bother collecting
imports, kiddos. They all suck. This one's especially revolting. Picture
Coleco's Smurf with nearly imperceptible graphics, slow, bumbling movement and recurrent immobile obstacles. It's still worse than you're imagining.
BURGERTIME (M-Network)
This is at least as annoying as the
arcade original, thanks to the ongoing refusal of the control scheme to
acknowledge diagonal movement. In most platform games, pushing
diagonally will cause your character to run horizontally until a
ladder's encountered, at which point he'll automatically ascend or
descend, depending on which kind of diagonal it is. In Burgertime, however, pushing the joystick in any direction other than perfectly straight -- on purpose or
accidentally -- will cause your little chef to halt altogether. If this
is an attempt at "increasing the challenge," it's unsuccessful; it
merely increases the reluctance of the player to keep trying. Bringing
the game home provided a great opportunity for the introduction of
diagonal detection, but it was missed. I'd rather deal with tougher bad
guys than substandard mechanics.
Speaking of the bad guys, the graphic
charm of the arcade version has gone right into the grease fryer. You're
being chased by a wiener with an apparent pituitary disorder, plus a
couple of squares who've evidently gotten sick of their original home in
Surround. And instead of hamburgers, you're constructing what
appear to be giant cheese crackers. There's no attempt at all at
rounding off the patty edges, or even differentiating the burgers from
the platforms they're stuck in. Everything's square and orange. It's
hard to tell where one item or character ends and another begins. And
even if we remember that graphics don't really make or break a game, one
has to admit that the controls seem especially cumbersome, and the new
screen layouts make playing quite awkward. The sad thing is that with
enough effort, this could've been terrific on the 2600. But it's just
the opposite, so don't waste your time or your spices.
COMMANDO RAID (U.S. Games)
There's nothing more frustrating than playing a game that could
be addictive but which has been ruined by a bug or oversight. The
graphics are excellent and the cannon-at-the-bottom concept's actually
unique in this case; you don't have to worry about threats to the gun
itself, since it's not harmed by paratroopers (which is a good thing,
since you can't move anything except its aim). You just have to protect
the cities to either side from men who want to land on them, because
when enough reach one city, they can get underground and start tunneling
toward your cannon. And they ain't a-comin' over to play records.
This Missile Command-like defensive campaign could've been a lot of fun, especially with these graphics and this fluid movement; but it's not
a good game. Not at all. The collision detection routine in the code
fails at least half the time. You have to shoot a trooper two or three
times before the game realizes that he's dead. You can almost hear the
ol' 2600 saying, "Oh yeah. Sorry." The gun can't aim very low, which
augments the bug; by the time you've managed to register a shot,
edge-of-screen baddies have fallen below your gun's extreme shooting
angle.
ADAM: Play-testing. Those are two words that U.S. Games didn't
have in the company vocabulary. If a few minutes had been spent with
this game by someone outside the company, or at least by someone honest,
it would have been a lot better. Just a little time polishing up the
details is all it would have taken.
There is a special feature included to
make the game more fun. You see, some of these guys, these horrible
commandos, wear special suits that let your bullets pass right through
them! I know this sounds like a bug of some sort, but it isn't! It adds
an exciting element to the game. (Ahem.) Yet another powerful feature
involves some stray plane from Air-Sea Battle flying by and dropping a bomb on you.
But since I don't ever plan to play
this game again, I don't care all that much about the features!
CONDOR ATTACK (Ultravision)
Yet another overnight company tries to
cash in on the popularity of the VCS. The invasion genre is already too
full of titles contributing nothing fresh to be fattened by tripe like
this. The characters move and shoot as if they're in a movie being
played on a projector with chewing gum stuck in the gears. Lumbering and
spiritless, this is just as dull as any version of Galaxian and even more redundant than Demon Attack. Its every factor is programmed badly. Unless this cannon thing can get rid of the condors in Pitfall II, I'm not interested.
CONGO BONGO (Sega)
Swill. The opposite of addictive. The
antithesis of innovation. The original was no good to begin with; it
proffered one of many attempts to cash in on the climbing craze started
by Donkey Kong. Embarrassingly askew from the concept of genre progression, the developers tried to combine the Mario and Zaxxon
ideas and wound up building the whole game around a so-called 3-D
perspective that, far from being an actual twist on the "get to the top"
motif, merely made the mechanics cumbersome.
It's
especially bad on the 2600. What spare charm the visuals have in the
coin-op version is missing in this apparent imitation of a graphics
crash. Aside from that, it's repetitious and thoroughly uninteresting --
as always.
As you might remember, I have a
personal problem with the percussive two-note soundtrack present in
every
Congo Bongo rendition. It makes you want to bang your head
against the wall over and over until you pass out. The fact that it
would be much easier to just turn down the volume doesn't occur to you
as quickly as such irrational means of getting the "music" to go away
and let you live your life in peace. If I were a boxer or soldier and I
had to get angry and worked up before going into action, I'd listen to
the Congo Bongo theme for a few minutes. I'd emerge as a deadly weapon.
DARK CHAMBERS (Atari)
The 2600 and 7800 incarnations are two
different games, both tailored for their respective systems and
exploiting their different capabilities well. All said and done, the
7800 cart's a Gauntlet clone and the VCS version's essentially Adventure II (or could
be, anyway -- more in a second). There are, for instance, dozens of
keys and doors, and you have to walk around blocky mazes full of little
chambers, seeking the hidden exit from each level. One type of enemy
even flickers like the old dragons.
My main complaint is that your guy
moves too slowly for the amount of exploration involved; but my greatest
bone to pick is that once you've killed over an hour by reaching higher
levels, you encounter a bit of cop-out obstacle addition. The
programmer apparently realized that his baddies never became very hard
to kill. He could have left well-enough alone and released the game as a
long, pensive quest with enemies thrown in to break the silence a
little (I'd have had no problem with this); but instead, he inserted
strength-depleting objects (late in the alphabetized succession of
levels) that the player can't avoid if he wants to reach the next
respective exit. They're traps that are stuck right in the doorways.
You're barely given enough energy to survive all of these traps, even
though the doorways can't be circumvented. If you haven't been lucky
enough to save up a lot of strength prior to reaching one of the
thoroughly trapped areas, your long, slow exploration comes to a
frustrating conclusion.
What's somewhat comical about this is
that the actual game play never gets all that difficult. It's fun to
make it through maze after maze, especially if you like finding
treasures and searching for exits, like I do. But there's literally no
way through to Level Z if you haven't stayed true to foresight and saved
up your energy meticulously. It's an incredible disappointment to fight
and search your way nearly to the end, and then realize that your
forced path brings you through unavoidable items that deplete all of
your strength. A "reincarnation" feature should've been added, like in Adventure, or
at least a "continue" option. But there's no such thing, which,
tragically, makes this a pretty good game, rather than the great one it
could've been.
(Hey, some of us take pleasure seriously.)
DIG-DUG (Atari)
They did a good job of leaving in all
of the elements. This was always a feat on the 2600, especially before
later programming techniques were developed. So I have no complaints
there; if you wanna play Dig-Dug, this is definitely Dig-Dug. It's
just always been sort of a dull game to me. Regardless of my own
tastes, there's a major problem with the ground. It has petrified spots
that can't be excavated. The whole reason that the free-form,
create-your-own-maze mechanic of the original is fun is that you can
turn on a dime and make a new tunnel anywhere you want. In this version,
however, there are bigger non-diggable spots than in any other port;
certain huge bits of ground act as permanent medians, often forcing you
to move a little further and then start making a tunnel. This
often results in death. Other than this annoying byproduct of
low-resolution limitations, it's a good translation but not one of the
best.
ADAM: This is very close to the arcade game -- for the 2600,
anyway. Of course, I haven't played the arcade version in about sixteen
years, so forgive me if I am being a bit lenient. The game is fun, if a
bit too easy. It makes good use of color and the graphics are
well-defined. Everything I remember about the arcade version is there.
But can anyone explain why the earth has horizontal lines running across
it? They look like the lines in Surround that appear when you move. You know -- how come it can't just look solid?
FAST EDDIE (Sirius/Fox)
This moves like a flip-it book with
every third page torn out. I have no desire to get the hang of something
this clumsy. I could simulate the game just by smashing myself in the
head a few times with a clothing iron and then playing Apollo's Infiltrate.
The 8-bit version was nothing special to begin with, but at least it
felt nice to jump around and grab prizes. The physics have been
obliterated; Fast Eddie has evidently switched from amphetamines to
beer. He can't run, can't jump and doesn't respond very quickly when
you're trying to make him climb a ladder. An utter failure in the
computer-to-console translation department.
FIRE FIGHTER (Imagic)
Is there a point in trying to do well
at an action game that doesn't try to inhibit or kill you? I sure hope
this was intended for kids (perhaps to familiarize them with
controller-based video activities, since the player has to put out the
flames, run to the truck, extend the ladder, etc.). If it was meant for
young'uns, though, it should've been advertised as such. If it was aimed
at the usual crowd, it failed miserably. I mean, it's easier than
playing Outlaw without anyone manning the other joystick. There's
no reason to rescue the trapped inhabitant in the first place;
considering how long it takes for the flames to pose any danger, the
victim could install fireproofing on the top floor.
That's
why you never read any articles in old magazines about high-score
marathons for this title. "Local teen Mike Palisano's trying to set a
world record by playing Fire Fighter as long as he can. He's been
at it for 35 weeks, 4 days and 11 hours now. He's able to take lunch
breaks, etc. without losing. 'I walked to the theater and saw a movie
earlier today,' Mike commented. 'The game was still going when I got
back. I might be playing for years. I hope our TV holds out.'"
FIRE FLY (and SORCERER) (Mythicon)
These and other games were sold in
1983 at bargain prices (ten bucks apiece) by Mythicon, who might be, if
the games offer any evidence, the only company in gaming history at
which the founder, accountant, P.R. man and programmer were all the same
guy.
These are the only two I've played,
but they are, quite literally, the same program with different graphics
plugged in; I'm therefore pretty sure that the others are equally bad.
It's more interesting to look at the illustrations on the cartridge
labels than to play the games themselves. There's no substance to really
attack. They almost don't even exist.
Your character is supposed to fly
across each screen from left to right, exiting into further screens
until he gets back to the first one. On each playfield is a bad guy that
you can either ignore (this is laughably easy) or shoot. Most bad guys
render a treasure when shot. Grab the treasure for points! (Phewww...)
If you opt to ignore your adversaries,
the object of the game becomes primarily to move from left to right
over and over again. It's like a primitive screen-saver that you have to
operate manually.
This is funny: When you die, your
character assumes a horizontal dead-person guise and becomes overtaken
by forced downward movement. In other words, you're supposed to fall to
the bottom of the screen. However, you can control yourself while you're
falling, and pushing up on the joystick stops your plummet and hovers
your carcass indefinitely. You can still move left or right while you're
doing this, if you're good with diagonals.
So not only are these games badly
conceived, but they're badly coded as a bonus. If you get really sick
this winter and drug yourself up so much that you can barely move, plug
in a Mythicon game to get your video fix until you're healthy again and
can move on to something more engaging, such as Canyon Bomber.
FREEWAY (Activision)
What happened in almost all instances
of partial plagiarism from 1978 to '84 was that a VCS or 8-bit
programmer would spot a coin-op idea that either sold well or caught his
interest, then write a modified version for the home on the same theme,
occasionally creating an altogether different and/or more intriguing
contest via a lone plot-twist. Very rarely did ideas travel in the other
direction.
Freeway involved the first
concept to originate on the home screen and then show up in the arcade.
David Crane's somewhat primitive dodging game should therefore be taken
for what it is. It's not really just the easier half of Sega's Frogger,
which overtly "borrows" from it; it's a complete game that spawned a
genre, and when played for its purity it emerges as a terrific
cartridge, widely varying in difficulty options and elegantly executed
with tasteful graphics and perfect controller response.
It bugged me to no end (and continues to, for that matter) that every review or mention of Freeway
started with the riddle, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Then the
author always answered himself with some clever-clever turn of the
original phrase that wound up being NOT FUNNY AT ALL. "In this case,
he's crossing the road because you've turned on your Atari!" "Here, he's
crossing because Activision has released a new game in which..." "Well,
in this game, he's trying to get to the top of your TV set so he can
fix the reception!" Hey, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND START WRITING, WILLYA?
You're not funny. NOT FUNNY. ARRGGH. RRG. RG. (wince pant pant pant
pant) Sorry.
I don't play the game much because
it's more fun as a two-at-once competition and I fight alone almost
without exception. Solitaire games are my preference. As a one-player
race it gets a bit dull after a few minutes and then, without warning,
does a U-turn, making me increasingly vexed and revealing the real
reason I don't pop it into my VCS too often: I'm afraid I might keep
playing and playing and playing. I don't think I could stand the "you've
been knocked back a lane" noise for very long. But this is a well-done,
gorgeously raw early game for the first popular system.
FROGS AND FLIES (M-Network)
"Bad" is the wrong word. It doesn't
try to be good, so its intent doesn't necessarily fail. It's more
like...anti-fun. For starters, I prefer using at least half of
the controller's available functions. This cart is what the Misfits
meant by "Green Hell." I'd rather play something awful like Air-Sea Battle. By myself. Even trying to enjoy Combat alone allows for a modicum of success, because you can try to knock the other tank through the wall so it wraps around. But Frogs and Flies
doesn't even merit use as a book-end to keep your other carts in place,
since it has that irritating M-Network shape. This might well be my
least favorite 2600 game. I can only imagine how wonderful the
Intellivision original, Frog Pond, is with those "cutting edge" disk controllers. Assuming the disk is used at all.
FROSTBITE (Activision)
One of my favorites. Its very slight similarity to Q-Bert is immaterial; this is yet another addictive, perfectly balanced Activision contest and it really
gets fun once you've become confident enough to jump from floe to floe
very quickly, turning ostensibly strategy-requisite screens into manic
reflex rushes. What it also has in common with all other good Activision
games is that it includes a brilliant little defensive twist: You can
reverse the direction in which the current row of ice floats by
subtracting one block from the igloo you're trying to build. Subtle
enough not to indicate overuse but effective enough to occasionally save
your chilled skin, this extra's typical of the software group and
enhances a game that readily illustrates why their titles are considered
among the best of the era. And just as you're getting into the groove,
that damn bear shows up to keep things from getting too easy. Such
gradual introductions of new elements remarkably affect theoretically
simple games; the necessitated change in player approach is as clever
yet initially underestimated as an intriguing chord-change in a song. No
wonder Jim Levy promoted his team as if they were rock stars.
This was a victorious farewell to the
2600 from Steve Cartwright, who rectified the disappointment of his
preceding game, Plaque Attack, by delivering the sort of excellence he'd once been known for due to things like Seaquest. Most gamers assume that Frostbite
wasn't as popular as others because it was released after the market
crashed. This isn't the case. What actually happened was that nobody
could talk about it, much less praise it, because of the name. The
conversations were always too confusing: "Do you have Frostbite?" "No, I'm fine!" "What I meant was...oh, never mind. Let's play Pitfall! again."
GOPHER (U.S. Games)
This gets redundant very quickly, so
you have to stick in there and play until you get pretty good before you
can really conclude on whether or not you find it enjoyable. Although
it lacks the irresistibly addictive qualities of the best VCS games, it
deserves more than the single chance you'll be inclined to give it at
first. Once you figure out how to bop the gopher on the head as he
emerges and threatens to grab one of your veggies, it gets a lot more
fun; and after you've garnered the dexterity necessary for catching and
planting seeds, it gains depth and becomes one of those games that you
find yourself wanting to play once in a while.
But what a waste of sky! They could've
added airplanes spraying carrot-killer or something. The farmer
could've knocked them out of commission by throwing his spade like a
boomerang. Chasing the gopher gets annoying after a while; you
eventually just want to let the scoundrel have the carrots. They
probably taste yucky anyway. Even looking at it from the standpoint of
the farmer's family, I find it hard to care about saving all the carrots; look at the size of those things! Just one could feed them all for a year!
GREAT ESCAPE, THE (Bomb)
Foul. Someone tried to knock off an Asteroids
clone without diagonal movement, challenging obstacles (as long as I
could stand to play a few minutes ago, there were never two bad guys
onscreen at a time) or accurate controls. There's a reason for the
scarcity of carts made by these people. The name of the company almost
sounds intentional, as if they knew what bad programmers they'd hired.
Maybe Bomb was started on a dare. (I guess a bar-bet would be more
likely.)
HAUNTED HOUSE (Atari)
I really want to like this game. I've
wanted to like it since it came out. It has all of the elements that
should make it an engaging adventure game: a big house with multiple
floors, mazes of rooms constituted by the occasional locked door,
treasure-pieces revealed only in the orange glow of a match...even the
patter of footsteps as you scurry around the manor, trying to remember
where the locked doors are in the particular variation you're playing.
In fact, that's part of the problem.
It's no Adventure sequel, as it
was touted -- unless you only liked that game's catacomb screens -- but
it's still a good idea. What keeps it from being much fun are choices
in design -- how the game's aspects were ultimately implemented. There's
no challenge in the exploration once you've memorized the layout of the
locked doors; it's just a matter of searching every room without losing
all nine of your lives (are we controlling a cat? Do we only see the
eyes because the programmer didn't want the game looking like an even
more primeval Radar Rat Race?). I only play game 6, because it's
the only variation in which the pieces are placed at random and the bat
doesn't steal any when he kills you. There's not much that can be done
to prevent death by any of your nemeses, because there's no way
to tell if a baddie's lurking behind the next door until you go through
it. I often run right into them. Once the locked doors are committed to
memory, the only reason to play is to try and beat my old "low score" of
spent incarnations and matches; so I find myself hitting RESET over and
over until I get as close as possible to an unobstructed run through
the house. Kind of a shame, because if the game had been designed with
longevity in mind, it would now be on Atari's roster of esteemed
adventure titles instead of a mere curio.
HUMAN CANNONBALL (Atari)
People used to play this. He he heee. They used to be really into it. They would actually try
to do well. He he...hee.....he......ahem. All better. No problem.
He....he....... YYAAAAAAAAAHH HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
HARRRRRRRR.... cough cough. Hee...cough.
See, I'm not pointing this out to be
one of those people who say, "Oh, well, games back then were so terrible
and it's just so amusing to remember what primitive piffle those poor
early gamers had to get into." If I were like that, I wouldn't be
writing any of this. No, what I'm doing is comparing bad simple, early titles to good
simple, early titles to highlight how an addictive game kicks ass no
matter how advanced the graphics or extensive the scenario. This game is
bad; so is a modern martial arts head-to-head game on the Dreamcast.
Reciprocally, Dodge 'Em, Superman, Adventure and many other
first-wave efforts reveal a pioneering brilliance and a captivating,
magical quality that keeps premium players like me and you glued to the
2600 (and writing about it).
"Hey, Jimmy, I can hit the target more
times than you!" He hee....ahem. Breathe. Breeeeathe. That's it. No
prob...YYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HARRR.....wheeze...ahem.
JAWBREAKER (Tigervision)
Even though it was the first good
Pac-Man clone for 8-bits, John Harris's original for Sierra
On-Line now seems a bit dull compared to this excellent, thoroughly
redesigned VCS version. Tigervision quickly (and justly) established
themselves as the next Activision, earning a reputation for
standard-pushing titles like this one, Threshold and Polaris (not to mention their heralded pair of Miner 2049'er adaptations).
The twist is that instead of
navigating a maze per se, you maneuver the insatiable mouth through a
series of horizontal corridors, accessible from each other via sliding
gaps in the walls. The level of difficulty starts satisfyingly high and
the most appealing two aspects are the unpredictable movements of the
enemy sourballs and the strategy perceived upon keeping in mind that
only one baddie can exist per corridor (and that they can't move
vertically through the moving doors or borders like you can).
Disappearing off the edge or reversing direction at the most maddening
times, these rolling adversaries give the dismembered mouth a run for
its money that might surprise a player distracted by the deceptively
cute cosmetics (the 8-bit's end-of-board toothbrush animation survives
in this version). Very, very good game.
JR. PAC-MAN (Atari)
Aren't you sick of seeing every
Pac-person being drawn on his or her box, book and label with a
friendly, happy face? Just once I'd like to see a Pac-simile grimacing
in demented anger, eyebrows lowered and jaws dripping colorful monster
blood.
Jr. Pac-Man is, after all, one
mean mother-sequeller. He goes faster than any of his Pac-cestors, which
makes this more fun than the other VCS Pacs. The faster the
protagonist, as far as I'm concerned, the better. I play the hardest
variation of any Pac-Man on any system for this very reason.
Sure, the monsters go faster too; but it's not much harder if your
synapses are firing just as fast that day. This makes any Jr. Pac-Man my favorite over the prequels, because he's always faster than his elders (have you played the "Turbo" variation of the C-64 version? WOW!).
The mazes change like in
Ms. Pac-Man, but they're more numerous -- not to mention more
interesting, since they're so big that they scroll. This is done
smoothly with no control compromises; I can't find a single flaw in this
game. The monsters are actually smart (it's definitely the toughest
Pac-daptation) and the animation absolutely superb.
You can see the commercials, can't you? "Sorry about the first VCS Pac-Man. We're better now. Please? It's not too late, is it?"
(Hmmm...Pac-yard? PacDonald's? Nope. I think I hit all the good ones.)
ADAM: Pac-Man must be the game with the most sequels.
Although some modern games are closing in fast, few have as much variety
from sequel to sequel. The first Pac-Man only has one maze. Can you imagine that? Jr. Pac-Man is almost the complete opposite -- the mazes scroll! Game-play-wise, that erases any relation to the original!
Jr. Pac-Man is the best of the
three available for the VCS. The scrolling screen makes spotting the
ghosts difficult, but this element actually makes the game more fun. The
only reason it seems hard at first is that the player is accustomed to
knowing where all four ghosts are at all times. The change only takes a
few plays to get used to. Careful watch of the movement of the ghosts
while they are visible on the screen will allow the player to know the
positions they are likely to be in when offscreen.
Every version of Pac-Man has
that special quality that makes the player want to get even with just
one more ghost and reach just one more screen. The VCS version brings
home the arcade experience better than any other Atari translation,
including the unreleased 5200 version (which I played on an 8-bit) and
the poor C-64 version (which doesn't scroll). This game makes the
original Pac-Man look even more pathetic. Even if you don't like this type of game, you have to get this just so the first Pac-Man cartridge (which everyone owns -- admit it) is not the best one you have.
JUNGLE HUNT (Atari)
Litter. It wasn't much of a game in
the first place. Why'd they bother bringing it home? Maybe they wanted
to cash in on the success of Pitfall!. Not even close, guys. The
only thing they have in common is the jungle setting. I especially hate
the anal way in which you have to knife the alligators without touching
them too much. What the hell is that? There's nothing in this
program that I enjoy. In the interest of balance, I should point out
that I don't like it on ANY system, computer, etc., including the
coin-op. I mean, all you have to do in the first part is press the
button over and over! Whoops. Missed. Gee, darn. Time to play something
else.
KANGAROO (Atari)
Vile. It was somewhat intriguing in
the arcade, since so many new elements were incorporated into the
climbing scenario; but without the gloss -- and with the exciting new
addition of poor character response and insufferable movement
characteristics -- it's practically unplayable. I don't wanna save a
baby kangaroo anyway. I'd gladly play a game in which I shot one, but I
don't appreciate having to rescue one. Who gives a shit about baby
kangaroos? Gimme a dame like in the old days.
KOOL-AID MAN (M-Network)
Keeping in mind that this is probably aimed at a younger audience....it still sucks.
You're a glass pitcher of everyone's
favorite sickly sweet liquid (I've never read the manual, but I'd bet a
six-switcher that it begins with the titillating statement, "YOU are the
Kool-Aid Man!"). For some reason, this little glass container's
amazingly supple; he bounces off the walls with the abandon of a Pagan
Ping-Pong ball, all the while attempting to stop a flurry of animate
circles from drinking away the contents of his demented chamber of
refreshing beverage. I'm serious: The room's filled with Kool-Aid, as if
Kafka's gone haywire in his designs for new fictional torture methods.
And your Kool-Aid Man wants to stop the circles from stealing the good
stuff, not bothering for a second to confront his own twisted
compulsions (or wonder why he can fly).
So you grab the evil balls who are
draining your booty, as it were, and then you...um...do it again.
There's no game here; it's a graphics demo with bad graphics. But then,
what can we expect from an overblown commercial? Shame on you, Mattel.
Someone paid real money for this back in the '80s. Imagine how much Dr.
Pepper they could've bought for the same price.
LASER GATES (Imagic)
I don't usually find enjoyment in forced scrollers, especially the horizontal updates on Scramble that filled the arcades and console catalogues in the early '80s. Super Cobra,
Cosmic Avenger and Zaxxon: These are all overrated sit-and-waits that don't allow enough control over the action to sustain my interest. Laser Gates, however, is a striking exception.
Developed for VentureVision as a sequel to their Rescue Terra I, this scrolling shooter was originally entitled Inner Space
by its designer, Dan Oliver. Imagic bought the rights and released the
game under its new name in 1983, which was too late for it to make the
impact it surely would've enjoyed a year earlier. You don't so much wait
for something to happen as try to quickly prepare for what's coming
next. Bouncing, hard-to-hit monsters and bats, homing missiles, every
conceivable limited-passage wall of light or rock, Death
Star-reminiscent towers that explode into falling pieces, booby-trapped
reactors and rapidly dwindling energy and shield supplies all work in
well-planned tandem to continuously intensify the challenge of getting
through the four-part flight. Thankfully, Atari 8-bit versions of the
game exist as well, although I've never been lucky enough to engage a
copy that doesn't crash right away.