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| Atari Games Everywhere! |
When I was younger we used to go to yardsales a lot (every other weekend it seemed) and every once in a while I would stumble upon someone selling old video games - this was a great source of games for me when I was that young. It wasn't like it is today with ebay and the rest of the internet making people jack up their prices at yard sales/flea markets, you could really get some deals on games if you looked around. In early 1994 I came upon an Atari 2600 collection and was able to snag some really cool games, later I learned that several of these were highly rated games for the system, seems the guy who was having the yard sale had good taste.
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| 1. Pitfall |
When Activision split from Atari they took some of the best programmers Atari had with them, now more free with their creative choices (and receiving credit and royalties) these programmers made some awesome games - Pitfall (by David Crane) was one of these and widely considered one of Activision's best on the Atari 2600 (it also sold the best for them). I popped this into my Atari 2600 to replay for this post and was pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up, the graphics on the 2600 are hard for even a retro gamer like me to stomach but even with those Pitfall's gameplay shines through. The basic concept of the game is a side-scrolling (or at least side-to-side screen transitions) game where you jump over holes (or Pitfalls) along with several other obstacles (logs, snakes, etc.) as you navigate through a jungle to collect treasures. Having explored (just a little) into Atari 2600 programming, it is awesome to see how David Crane utilized some pretty cool techniques to get the multi-colored player sprite and the swinging vines. I very much enjoyed the game then and now!
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| 2. River Raid |
Another of Activision's best on the Atari 2600 was River Raid (by Carol Shaw). Besides the significance of being one of the first games made by a female game designer, River Raid was an awesome achievement in that it was a vertical scrolling shooter with much more non-random terrain than was thought possible with the 2600's memory limits. This was made possible by Shaw's use of a procedural generation algorithm that created the terrain based on an equation each time the program was ran (instead of storing the terrain). It also employs a rudimentary random number generator program for the enemies artificial intelligence making them fairly randomized and the experience more of a challenge. I am a sucker for SHMUPs (Shoot 'Em Ups) and this beign one of the earliest makes it quite significant, plus its still a decent game despite its age. Apparently there was a sequel (River Raid II) but I have never been able to get my hands on that.
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| 3. Demon Attack |
Activision wasn't the only third-party publisher on the Atari 2600 (eventually there were way too many), they were just the first. The second (both in chronology and likely in significance) was Imagic, who like Atari consisted of largely all former Atari programmers, and also were known for a high standard for their games and giving credit (and royalties) to their programmers. Imagic also had a distinctive cartridge and box designs that made it easy to spot their games.
Demon Attack was Imagic's best selling game and largely most significant. Supposedly loosly based on Galaxian, Demon Attack looked and played very similar to a game called Phoenix that was popular in the arcades at the time (and was eventually made into a 2600 game by Atari) which prompted Atari to sue Imagic (as they had the rights to a home console version of Phoenix), they settled out of court and Demon Attack became Imagic's best seller.
The game itself plays similar to Galaxian and Phoenix (I can see where both were inspirations) with waves of enemies who have different ways of attacking. It is a great game, especially for the time and the system and still a good time even today.
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| 4. Dragonfire |
Apparently this yardsale owner was a big fan of Imagic as this is #2 of 4 Imagic games they had. Dragonfire was an awesome game for the time, where you had to make your way across a drawbridge into a castle (while being attacked by a dragon's fireballs), once inside the castle it switches to a top-down view where you have to collect the treasures while dodging more fireballs. If you can collect all the treasures in the throne room you advance to the next level (next castle) where everything is sped up, this process continues until you take enough hits to deplete your 7 lives.
Not only was the game fun and the two different play-rooms cool, Dragonfire was also an example of Imagic's philosophy of utilizing the power of different gaming systems. As opposed to Activision, which had a policy of making all of their games play the same no matter what system they were ported to, Imagic made games in a way where they tried to utilize the full potential of a system. Dragonfire on the Colecovision for instance looks at least twice as good as on the Atari 2600 and is much smoother to play.
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| 5. Atlantis |
Atlantis is a variation on the Space Defense games (space invaders, missile command, etc.) that were popular at the time and plays very similar to Taito's Colony7. The basic premise is that you are trying to defend Atlantis (a collection of 7 bases at the bottom of the screen) from flying enemies that drop bombs. 3 of the installations have weapons that can fire at the enemy (two on the sides fire diagonally at a 45 degree angle and the center base fires straight up). The goal is to destroy the enemies before they can destroy all of your bases, if you destroy enough enemies you bases will slowly recover. The game is a high-score game only (in that eventually the waves will increase to a point where you loose) but upon a loss a small ship will raise from the rubble and fly away, forshadowing the sequel to Atlantis - Cosmic Ark.
I have only played the Atari 2600 version, but Atlantis is another example of Imagic making games suited for different systems - the Intellivision version of the game apparently has two gun turrets instead of 3, but they are movable and there is also a friendly flying unit that you can deploy to fight off enemies one-on-one.
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| 6. Cosmic Ark |
Cosmic Ark is the nominal sequel to Atlantis. In the game you pilot a space ship (the Cosmic Ark) which you have to defend while it passes through an asteroid field (similar in playstyle to the arcade game Space Zap). The Cosmic Ark is inhabited by survivors from the city of Atlantis. Once through the asteroid field you make your way to a planet and the goal of this second gameply type is to pilot a lander craft to collect specimen from the planet (presumably to refuel/restock, etc.) while the planet's defenses attempt to gun you down (in kidn of a reversal of the roles in Atlantis). Once you had collected enough specimines you would return to space travel and have to defend the ship from asteroids again. An insteresting part of the game is the starfield background which was apparently an exploit of a hardware bug with the Atari 2600. Earlier systems you can't turn this off, but with later systems the 'TV Type' switch affects this bug and can turn the starfield on and off.
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Where to play them now
Activision absorbed Imagic in the mid 80's, most of these games are available for the XBox360's game room but your best bet is to either download an emulator and the roms or to purchase the carts themselves and play them on an Atari 2600 - they are relatively cheap and easy to find even now.
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