Eventually I'd like to have all of the 300+ Atari 2600 Video Games I own here
and reviewed. As you can hopefully understand, this is not an overnight project.
And of course I keep adding to my collection- the never ending task continues...
I've broken the review down into Game play, Graphics, Sound, and Rarity (based
on the VGR list). The rating system goes something like this:
0- Ugh, this REALLY sucks.
1- Video Games in 3-B! Three beers, and it's pretty good!
2- Passable. Certainly nothing to write home about.
3- Above average, and you could spend an hour in worse ways...
4- Wow.
5- It's the holy grail of video Games! Nirvana! True enlightenment! Bliss!
About the Cool Bugs section:
Some hints refer to frying the Atari, which is the achieving of strange effects
some games by rapidly switching the power on and off. This could damage your Atari. Should you try it, I
wont be held responsible for any damages caused to your system because of it.
Game: Return of the Jedi- Death Star Battle
Company: Parker Brothers
Model Number: PB5060
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 3
Sound: 3
Rarity: R
Comments: Not much to this game, blowing up TIE fighters and Lambda shuttles,
penetrating the shield around the Death Star, and playing breakout to get to
the reactor core (while the wall shoots back- a cool idea worthy of it's own
game, I think). Sound is pretty meager compared to TESB and Jedi Arena- just a
bunch of beeps and whistles for TIEs, a superlaser 'ZAP' and an explosion that
doubles for the destruction of both the Death Star and the Falcon.
Cool Bugs: If you lose your last ship while avoiding the Death Star explosion
and you are about 200 points from earning an extra ship, you'll get the extra
ship, but the game will still end, with the extra ship being displayed! Not
extremely useful, but interesting.
Hitting the select switch blanks the screen and pauses the game. Moving the
joystick resumes play.
The game can be fried until it begins with the Death Star blowing up.
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Game: Star Wars: The Arcade game
Company: Parker Brothers
Model Number: PB5540
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 5
Sound: 5
Rarity: ER
This game looks slick! Ho baby, does it ever. However, man-o-man, the game play
stinks- it's just too darn easy. I remember when I first got this, I managed
to roll it over within 2 days of first playing it. Even now, after not playing the
cart for 10+ years, I still managed to get an impressively high score. The big
problem? The thing is just too darn repetitive- 4 or 5 levels into the game,
and everything starts playing the same. It's the weakest of the Parker Brothers
Star Wars games. If you want to blow up a Death Star, go play X-Wing.
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Game: H.E.R.O.
Company: Activision
Model Number: AZ-036-04
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 2
Sound: 2
Rarity: R
Comments: This game rocks. Who would have thought rescuing miners with a
helicopter pack would have been so fun. The sound is kinda skimpy, the >whup<
>whup< sound as you fly, the laser zap, and an explosion make up the hero
experience. But the lackluster sound is more than made up for in game play- an
intricate maze obstacle course and race against time. This is one of the 10
Desert Island Games I'd take with me.
Cool Bugs: Fry the Atari until all you see is a miner and spider (but no hero),
let the power run out. The game will start with about 250 lives.
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Game: Space Invaders
Company: Atari
Model Number: CX2632
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 2
Sound: 2
Rarity: C
Comments: What am I supposta say about THIS one? It's Space Invaders, man- the
classic, the one that spawned a whole genre! Simplistic, yet compelling. Mortal
Kombat should be this interesting. Get it, play it, love it!
Cool Bugs: hold down the reset switch during power on, and you get double shots
instead of just normal one at a time.
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Game: Donkey Kong
Company: Coleco
Model Number: 2451
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 1
Sound: 1
Rarity: C
Comments: As arcade adaptations go, the Atari is wildly uneven. Sometimes it
excels beyond what we could reasonably expect for the time (Ms Pac-man and
Stargate), and sometimes up just stinks. Guess what category THIS one falls
into. Only 2 of the 4 levels made it to the home version, none of the music,
and just one or two sounds. The game play is simplistic and waaay too easy. I
generally only lose my games through attrition and stupid mistakes- not due to
any actually difficulty. Get this one only if you must have EVERY cart out
there.
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Game: Pac Man
Company: Atari
Model Number: CX2646
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 1
Sound: 1
Rarity: C
Comments: From bad to worse. Pac-Man hurt even worse than Donkey Kong, just
because the nation (nay, the world) was caught up in the grip of Pac-man fever.
We all anticipated this cart so badly we could collectively taste it. I
remember running home, wallet empty, short of breath and eager with
anticipation, box in hand- only to find... uh, well, a really bad game. Gone
was all the charm of the original, replaced with pale ghosts devoid of all
personality, and a pipe wrench Pac-man. There's a reason this game fills the
shelves of Goodwill's and Salvation Army's across the land...
Cool Bugs: Enter the escape-tunnel, and then quickly go up and down in the
tunnel a few times without coming out. If you go down as your last move,
suddenly be free of the constraints of walls. The Pac-Man may now move up &
down in this vertical plane through the walls, but not sideways. Hey can eat
vitamins and get killed by ghosts. (Not particularly useful, but interesting.)
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Game: Ms Pac Man
Company: Atari
Model Number: CX2675
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 4
Sound: 3
Rarity: C
Comments: Wow, what a quantum leap above the orignal Pac Man. Oooh, REAL music, accurate adaptions of the arcade mazes, ghosts with diffrent colors- this is what Pac Man >SHOULD< have been! This is one of the best arcade adaptions I've seen for the 2600 ever. This is one game that should be in everyone's collection!
Cool Bugs: Press up & down at the same time. Ms. Pac-Man will go left and get stuck in a wall.
Let the game enter the demo mode, then play with Game Select. The monsters will appear and disappear as they move around, depending on the difficulty that's currently selected. Rather useless, but real amusing.
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Game: Jr Pac Man
Company: Atari
Model Number: CX26123
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 3
Sound: 4
Rarity: U
Comments: After Ms Pac Man improved on Pac Man so
much, the programmers had nowhere to go but down. Well, I wouldn't say Jr. Pac
Man is down- just more of the same. The game is good adaptation of what I
remember from the Arcade Game, with the major difference being the game scrolls
up and down instead of side to side. Unfortunately it's this cool feature that's
the games biggest liability. The game is tough- WAY tougher than Ms Pac, even on
the easier levels (yeesh- that's a KIDS level?). Add in the factor of missing
one dot in one corner of the maze, while being brutally hunted Ghosts and this
game is lethal! After 10 or 15 plays on this newly acquired cartridge I >STILL<
haven't gotten off the 1st level.
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Game: Adventure
Company: Atari
Model Number: CX2613
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 3
Sound: 2
Rarity: C
Comments: The grand-daddy of Zork and Ultima! Not THAT tough of a game, under
the memory constraints of the old Atari, but certainly an impressive outing,
and certainly kept a 10 year old enthralled for hours. How does it stand the
test of time? Well, sure I know where everything is, and how to beat the game,
but on the hardest level, with the scared dragons who run away from the sword,
it's still a 50-50 chance of me beating the thing.
Cool Bugs: On either game two or three, go to the maze in the Black Castle. One
screen to the left of the first maze, the screen will start to flicker as if
there's another object in the room. In the bottom center of the room is a
closed off cubicle, containing a Secret Dot. Use the bridge to get in there and
carry this to the screen down and to the right of the Yellow Castle. Drop it
there and bring any two other items onto the screen. Head right, pass through
the line on the right of the screen and. Behold! The first Atari Easter Egg!
(When carrying the dot, be careful not to drop it, since it's the same color
as the outside ground)
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Game: Pitfall
Company: Activision
Model Number: AX-018
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 3
Sound: 2
Rarity: C
Comments: When comparing the software of game systems today to classic games,
this is the one that gets mentioned the most. The Super Nobrain-o, and the
Playstation have yet to produce a game as basic yet enthralling as Pitfall.
Scroll left or right until all three Pitfall Harrys are dead, or you run out
of time. Simple, but not simplistic- certainly more than interesting enough to
keep people coming back for more, and spawn several sequels.
Cool Bugs: Frying can sometimes produce Ninja Harry, dressed only in black.
Pressing the button makes him drop from trees. There's only one screen however.
Using the stock Atari joystick, climb to the top of a ladder and pound straight
down on the joystick (I usually slap down flat down like I'm trying to "impale"
my palm.) Harry will jump straight up...and fall back down. Nothing useful,
just interesting.
Game: Pitfall II- Lost Caverns
Company: Activision
Model number: AB-035-04
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 5
Sound: 5
Rarity: R
Comments: The list of sequels that not only expand on the original story, but
go in a totally different direction is really short: The Empire Strikes Back,
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, and now- Pitfall II. Although the game is more
confined than the original, with a limited number of screens in a fixed order,
P2 is expanded enough in other ways to more than make up for the limitations.
The music is- well, state of the art for it's time, the graphics look amazing,
and the game play is enough to keep you coming back from time to time- even though
you've beaten the game.
Cool Bugs: Frying the game may let you start from one of three locations.
Game: Superman
Company: Atari
Model Number: CX2631
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 2
Sound: 1
Rarity: C
Comments: Look, up in the sky! It's a strange visitor from another planet with
powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man! As adventure games go, this
one was really middle of the road, an OK game- but nothing to get excited about.
The REAL reason people bough the game was to be the Man of Steel. Too bad the
worst thing that happens is Lex Fly around and hides behind Kryptonite
satellites. The game could really use the touch of badguys shooting at you, with
the bullets bouncing off Sup's mighty blue chest. Ah well...
Cool Bugs: Hold down the button down as you power on the game. Wait for two
seconds to pass and release. Superman won't change into Clark Kent, and the
bridge won't explode. You'll find the bridge pieces in the subway, but don't
worry about it. All you need to do is capture Lex Luthor and his men (and
return to the Daily Planet).
Game: Karate
Company: Froggo
Model Number: FG 1001
Gameplay: 0
Graphics: 0
Sound: 0
Rarity: R
Comments: Bruce Lee would be spinning in his grave
if he saw this game. Hell, if Jackie Chan saw this, it would kill him! Oh, this
is some deep hurting, folks. The game consists of 2 people (though calling them
this would be a stretch of the imagination) about 1/3 the height of the
screen trying to beat each other up with a kick or a punch for one minuet.
Score more points than the other guy, and get the next level of belt. The
sound consists of a high pitch thump for the punch, and a low one for the
kick, and burst of crowd cheering when the round ends. Get this only if you
are trying to collect all the 2600 games on the planet.
Game: Demon Attack
Company: Imagic
Model Number: IA3200
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 3
Sound: 2
Rarity: C
Comments: It's Galaxian before Galaxian was out.
Mix in a bit of Phoenix and season with the typical quality of Imagic's games,
and you have a good cart, with strong play value.
Cool Bugs: Well, its not really a bug- or so Imagic
claims, but after the 78th wave, the aliens give up and the screen turns black.
The only way to get the game back is to power off. Sounds like a glitch to me,
and they found it too late to fix the carts...
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Game: Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man
Company: M-Network
Model Number: MT4319
Gameplay: 1
Graphics: 2
Sound: 3
Rarity: R
Comments: By the power of GRAYSKULLLLL!!!
Too bad this semi-cool cartoon, and reasonably decent Intellivision game didn't
translate very well into this cart. The concept is really simple- He-Man(TM), in
his little flying car thing, is inroute to Grayskull Castle(TM) to stop
Skeletor's(TM) evil plot for the episode. Skeletor(TM) and his minions are
trying to shoot down He-Man(TM). Once at Grayskull(TM),. He-man(TM) has to run
through some moving, multi-colored walls to get to Skeletor(TM) and defeat him.
Do that, and you get the bonus screen of He-man(TM) flexing his mighty biceps,
before you go on to the next level/episode where you get to do it all over again
(Will Skeletor(TM) NEVER learn?)
Unfortunately the game doesn't have the appeal to draw folks back again and
again. The levels are really similar to each other, the difficulty seems
consistently tough- even on first level, and the controls are not intuitive.
Play the Intellivision version instead, if you have access to it.
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Game: Journey Escape
Company: Data East
Model Number: 112-006
Gameplay: 1
Graphics: 2
Sound: 2
Rarity: C
Comments: You must get Journey back to their Scarab Spaceship (what? Did someone
think a plain tour bus would be too boring?) before the evil promoters, groupies,
and National Inquirer reporters keep you from the next concert! Fail and the
music world will be deprived of Journey's soulful music forever (oh yeah, a big
loss there). I would have rated this cart very highly at all, but any game that
allows you to destroy Steve Perry's career cant be ALL bad.
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Game: Lost Luggage
Company: Apollo
Model Number: AP 2004
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 2
Sound: 2
Rarity: U
Comments: At an airport, a crazed luggage carousel
hurtles (what else) luggage at you. Miss one, and embarrassing examples of your
clothes fly EVERYwhere from the exploding luggage. This is a Kaboom clone, but
very well done. The variations include exploding terrorist luggage, a 2 player
head to head version (one being the carrousel, one catching the goods) and more.
The crowning touch of the game, however is the long johns, panties, bras, combs
and pants the luggage turns into if you miss a bag. This is a very cool game...
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Game: Fast Food
Company: Telesys
Model Number: 1003
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 3
Sound: 2
Rarity: R
Comments: This is one odd game. You are a pair of disembodied
lips, constantly on the move and hungry (like some sort of demented shark). Food
is flying at you at varied rates of speed. Greedly, you consume all you can- but
beware the Dreaded Purple Pickels! They give you gas. Eat too many of them, the
game is over and... well, we wont go there.
The game is similer to Kaboom- but not quite (you dont have to catch ALL the
food), and sort of like Space Invaders- but not quite (you dont have to shoot the
food to survive). It's just a hard to place in a catagory. It's damn inthralling,
tho...
Cool Bugs: On game 13, if you manage to not score any points, and kill all your cities, the rubble of the rightmost city will change to "RF"- the initals of the programmer.
Game: Popeye
Company: Parker Brothers
Model Number: PB5370
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 2
Sound: 2
Rarity: C
Comments:
This game is one of those brave attempts to compress a colorful, loud arcade
game down to Atari limitations. Although the graphics can't compare to the
arcade, the gameplay works.
Cool Bugs:Get nine or more hearts, and then
purposely die. Once you start your next life, you go to the right off of the
ledge, immediately get the spinach and hit Bluto/Brutus. If you do it
quickly, your score will become 155,120 (or thereabouts), and if you have died
twice already, your score will be 144,120 (or something like that).
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Game:Stampede
Company: Activision
Model Number:AG-011
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 2
Sound: 2
Rarity: Rare
Comments: This is an ok game that I would rank higher if I was better at it- this thing is TOUGH! You travel the old west (riding a horse- this is a western after all), trying to lasso cows as they scroll from right to left. If you touch a cow with the rope, it disapears. If you bump into it with your horse it runs back to the right, letting you try again at roping it. However, if you let 3 cows past, it's happy trails to you, buddy boy. Ok graphics showcase this OK concept, making it just a moderate game.
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Game:Enduro
Company:Activision
Model Number:AX-026
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 3
Sound: 2
Rarity:Uncommon
Comments:
Put aside your Jet Moto and Mario Kart 64- Enduro is the cool racing game here! This is one of the best race games done on the 2600. This game features all the touches Activision put into their games- slick roadways, changing weather patterns, sunset/night racing- this game is ever changing. The simple sounds drone on, drawing you in and hypnotising you, making it feel like you really have raced for a week without stops. Yes the graphics are little blobs on the roadway, but the setting more than makes up for it.
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Game: Tennis
Company: Activision
Model Number:
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 4
Sound: 3
Rarity:
Comments:
Wow- this one was one of the first big leaps in atari games. Up to this point they had been just big pixels making indistinct blobs on the screen. Not so here! This could easlity be mistaken for the an Intellivision game. (I even thing the running styles of the men are quite the same too- but thats just me). As far as game play goes... well, it's tennis. Theres not a lot you could do to the game, really. The computer is certanly challenging enough, unlike some of the M-Network games where you only have a 2 player option, so the game has legs, as far as playability goes.
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Game: Montazuma's Revenge
Company: Parker Brothers
Model Number: PB5760
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 3
Sound: 4
Rarity: ER
Comments: This is a shame that the game is a rare as it is- Monty kicks some serious ass! This is easly the most requested cart I own, according to my friends at least. The game is your basic platform run-jump-grab game, set in an aztec temple (hense the name). There is more than enough obisticles- fire pits, snakes, laser gates, flying heads, spiders, to make the game addictive yet not frustrating. A price -tage as high as 20 dollars would still be a deal for this game.
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Game: Asteroids
Company: Atari
Model Number:CX2649
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 3
Sound: 2
Rarity: Common
Comments:Asteroids is a game in that nebulous area where the Atari was reaching for higher end arcade games, yet didnt have the knowhow to squeeze every byte out of the system.
The gameplay is simplistic- all the asteroids hover near the edge of the screen, slowly working their way in. You, in the middle have plenty of time to pick them off before they pose any real danger is presented to your ship. It is entertaining enough to have kept a 9 year old enraptured for hours on end, so it's not too bac, I guess. As a 'port of a vertor graphic arcade game, atari could have done much worse.
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