Second Playthrough | Yardsale 1994 - Or 'Score! Awesome Atari Games'

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Second Playthrough | Birthday 1993: Entering the world of Video Games

Only about a decade and a half late!

As a young child (living in the house I now am back in, renting from my father - we lived her originally until I was 9) my father had an Atari 2600 that he kept in the attic. He would bring it down on the occasional weekend day and let my sister and I take turns playing with on the family TV. This was my first taste of video games and I was hooked immediately. 

In August 1993 I turned 4 years old and my present from my parents was that Atari to have as my own (only like 16 years after the system came out, I was a retro gamer from the beginning!).

1. Missile Command

Initially I had 6 games for the Atari. The game I played the most was Missile Command, I would spend hours shooting missiles out of the sky. I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that the Atari 2600 version was woefully inadequate versus the arcade version - heck I didn't even realize until later that I was playing a game about trying to stave off nuclear annihilation! I simply loved shooting down those missles, and it was a game I could play on my own long after my parents and my sister grew bored and left to do other things.

Going back now, Missile Command is actually kind of hard to play - mainly because like most Atari games they expect you to have read the manual and to figure stuff out on your own so it was difficult to know where to begin. Once you figure out how to use the switches and numbers at the top of the screen to choose your game 'mode' and get into the action though it is pretty simple: the missiles fall from the sky and you move your target indicator around the screen with the joystick and fire with the button. If your missile explosion catches the falling missile it will be destroyed, otherwise you miss. If the missiles find their way to the ground they can destroy your cities (or your main base with enough hits) eventually ending the game.

2. Combat

Combat was a close runner up, especially the Tank game against my sister - although my dad preferred the Jets (he rarely played, but when he did I happily played that game mode). Combat is arguably a better game than Missile Command (even at that age I could tell) and I even enjoyed it more, but it was a two player game and as I mentioned, my father (my mom never played) and sister would eventually get bored and go do other things and Combat was no longer an option - when I had someone to play with though this was awesome!

I've tried to get Combat out recently and play but unfortunately it is much harder to find people to play with now. I have one friend at work into retro games enough to have gotten to play with twice (a few other friends are gamers but to them Retro means N64/PS1 or maybe SNES or NES but they can't stomach older unfortunately). Everyone I talk to about Atari games speaks highly of Combat though and I do enjoy it when I get a chance to play - I also have one of the Atari Flashback consoles and it has Combat 2 on it (I don't think that ever actually came out on the 2600, was only planned).

3. Donkey Kong

I don't remember playing Donkey Kong much on the Atari 2600, I remember we had it and it was the main reason we eventually got it for the Game Boy (and later for other systems) but maybe even then I realized how crappy it was (on the Atari at least). More recently with internet research I have come to learn that the Atari 2600 port was basically intentionally made bad by Coleco as they wanted people to get the version on the Colecovision (which just happened to be their console - talk about conflict of interests).

I pulled out Donkey Kong recently and tried to play it and basically couldn't - the controls are crap, the graphics are horrible even for the Atari (hard to tell what's going on) and having played the Colecovision version (which wasn't that much more powerful than the 2600 really) I can see how they basically put no effort into this game.

4. Video Olympics

The only game I ever really played in Video Olympics was of course Pong, I didn't get to play this much as 1) Combat was better and if I had another player we usually played that and 2) One of our paddle controllers didn't work really well so one player was always at a disadvantage.

5. Circus Atari

I never knew (until later) that Circus Atari was based on the gameplay of Breakout and to be truthful I didn't play Circus Atari much.

6. Bowling

I don't recall playing Bowling much back then, I've plugged it up recently and was not very impressed so I doubt I was then either. It seems to be a faithful representation of the real game of bowling - but the fun in bowling is being with friends, drinking and having a good time - a pixelized representation of it with very little skill involved (or at least it seems to just be luck, didn't try that hard truthfully) wasn't the most fun. They can't all be winners!

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Where to play them now:

There are several options for playing Atari 2600 games now, the best is to get an actual Atari 2600 (or 7800 or heck a Colecovision with the adapter will play the 2600's games too) and an older TV and go to town! 

Alternatively you can download emulators and play on the computer, but the controls are just not the same (unless you mod or get a modded Atari controller that can plug in USB).

There is also the Microsoft Game Room service on the 360. I can't say I've used it but there are quite a few good (and not so good) Atari 2600 games on there.