12. E.T.: The Extraterrestrial

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial
Atari 2600
1982

Oh boy.

This is not the worst video game ever. It ain’t as awful as Barnstorming, for instance. But it sure is a big piece of shit. 

You play as E.T., an extraterrestrial. E.T. came to Earth, apparently to fall into holes. Randomly. Repeatedly. On occasion you will find piece of a telephone in one of the holes. Immediately after finding this piece, Dick Tracy will steal that piece from you, hiding it in some other fucking hole. Presumably, this is because Dick Tracy hates phones. 

That is normally the point in which I scream with frustration and rip this worthless goddamn game from my Atari, swearing to never play the game again. But today was different. Today, I was a man on a mission. I was going to beat this stupid freaking game, no matter how many damn holes I had to fall into. 



The first step of making this fantasy a reality was to read the manual. This actually did a lot to explain the non-intuitive control scheme the game used. What I had always thought was a broken radar system at the top of the screen, turns out to actually be a key to using E.T.’s magic powers. I didn’t even know E.T. had magic powers.

Armed with magic powers, and schooled in how to not immediately fall back into the hole E.T. just climbed out of, I returned to the game confident that I could spank the hell out of Dick Tracy and phone my Extraterrestrial ass home.

Obviously, I’m kind of stupid.

Three hours later, I have managed to build a phone, I have actually phoned home, but just when my spaceship is about to show up, Dick Tracy blunders into the forest, scaring them off. Then Dick Tracy takes part of my phone. This game is bullshit.

Demons to Diamonds

Released 1982
Atari 2600

Demons to Diamonds was such an odd game. I've honestly never played anything quite like it.
It's mechanics were pretty solid, so it wasn't exactly a bad game. It was mainly designed for 2 players, but the single player variant was still quite serviceable.

You used the Paddle controls to move a ship/cannon/race-car/angryface/magic-carpet-like thing on the bottom of the screen, and player 2 controls one on the top. In the middle field, little demons start appearing that resemble the Recognizers with mouths, and slowly move back and forth. The goal is to shoot the enemies that are the same color as you. When a player destroys a same-colored enemy, a white diamond appears on the left or right side of the screen, then zips to the other side and disappears. Either player may shoot this diamond for bonus points. If either player shoots an enemy of the opposite color (red player shoots white enemy), a stationary skull appears and will randomly fire up and down in an attempt to destroy either player. If one of the colored demons reached the edge of the screen, it moved up or down one row and switched to the opposite color.

There was a respectable amount of strategy to the game when playing with a friend. You could sabotage your opponents score by destroying their targets, but that would also make the game more dangerous for you as well as it would create skulls that kill indiscriminately. Considering that diamonds were the most valuable targets in the game, players could also play more conservatively and attempt to simply intercept diamonds created by the other players kills.

Visually, the game looks terrible terrible terrible. The sound effects are equally terrible. The controls are great thanks to the Paddle controllers, and the gameplay itself is actually pretty fun, though it does wear thin after a while. Playing with a friend does make the game more entertaining, but both players may end up frustrated and bored once 2 or 3 waves are completed and the skulls are more abundant.
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Now playing: Dr. Hook - Last Mornin'
via FoxyTunes

Demon Attack

Released 1982
Atari 2600

Demon Attack is another take on the classic Space Invaders formula. You control a little ship/guy/cannon/pyramid/fluffy-kitten thing on the bottom of the screen. Enemies fly around at the top, and you try to shoot them. It's a framework for arcade games that worked for years. Galaga, in my opinion, perfected it. But games like Demon Attack or Gorf were a nice stopgap between Space Invaders and Galaga.

The twist to Demon Attack that makes it stand out is that the enemies continue to respawn several times in each wave. At any time, there can be up to 3 main enemies on screen. They've got random flight paths, and never approach the bottom of the screen. The lowest enemy can fire back at you, and in the later levels, enemies that are shot split into 2 suicidal demons. As you clear each wave, the lowest enemy fires progressively faster, making it very difficult to eliminate.

It's a simplistic game of course, but it had some decent animation and sound effects for it's time. I enjoyed it as a kid, and it still had it's charms today. But I'd still rather be playing Galaga.
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Now playing: Kirsty Hawkshaw - Beautiful Danger
via FoxyTunes

Defender

Released in 1981
Atari 2600

My oh my. As a kid, I never had the chance to experience the original arcade version of Defender. All I knew of Defender, was this sham on the Atari 2600. I hated it, and barely ever played it. It was much more entertaining to play Chopper Command, since the enemies and escorted trucks didn't have a habit of blinking in and out of existence as I played. Chopper Command also didn't try and cram a 3 button control setup onto a 1 button controller. These are my main problems with this port of Defender.
The concept of Defender is pretty simple, but I guess in 1981, it was video game brain surgery. You have a ship, and you have to stop aliens from killing you, or abducting humans. You have a radar at the top showing you locations of enemies, and you fly around shooting various alien craft out of the sky. Some of the enemies leave mines, others split into faster enemies when you destroy them, and some try to abduct humans. Humans, of course, are lovingly rendered as a single white flashing dot.
I cannot stress enough how poor this arcade conversion is. The original arcade Defender is still fantastic, even in the bizarro future world we live in today. But this crap...

It's often difficult to see enemies on screen since they suffer from major flashing glitches. In order to use your smart bomb, you must actually fly into the ground, and to use your "hyperspeed" you must fly off the top of the screen. These were special abilities in the arcade version that you could use where your survival relied on a split second decision. Due to the fact the 2600 had only 1 button on it's controller, you had to spend a few seconds putting your ship into position to use these fundamental actions.

The real draw of the original Defender was it's animation and sound effects. The game used vector graphics to animate some of the best looking explosions in a game of it's time. It was fast paced and was notoriously challenging. This version, sadly, has none of what made the original great. I hated it when I was a kid, and I still hate it now.

But I would still recommend checking out the original arcade version. You should be able to find some videos of it on youtube. It's still great.
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Now playing: Conjure One - Endless Dream
via FoxyTunes

11. Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong
Atari 2600
1982

With Donkey Kong, I once again find myself playing a mediocre port of a great arcade game.  Jump over barrels.  Jump over ducks.  Repeat.  

It always feels somewhat strange to be playing this game on the Atari.  Mario is the Warrior Prince of Nintendo, a self-made man who has crushed any and all foolhardy enough get between him and his goal world conquest in the name of the Famicom Family. So it is a bit unnerving to see him on a non-Nintendo cartridge.  

10. Barnstorming

Barnstorming
Atari 2600
1982

So I’ve been slogging through my large supply of Atari games for a while now, so naturally my best friend gives me a box fulla even more Atari games. This means, that two weeks into this project and I’m back to the letter B. I’m never going to reach the N.E.S. Never.

Instead I’m going to play “games” like Barnstorming until I die of internal bleeding.

Seriously, Barnstorming, what the fuck? Who the hell made this? Who conceived this? Is this a joke? A game made as a dare? I’ve played some bad Atari games in my time, but this one leaves me with an uncomfortable burning sensation. 

This is the whole game: You fly a biplane above barns, trying to avoid geese and windmills. If you hit a goose or windmill, you are momentarily slowed down. You just keep going until you get bored and turn off the game in bitter frustration. 

I refuse to even classify this as a game. Barnstorming makes me yearn for yesterday when I was bitterly dying from Crystal Castles. Those were damn good times compared to this load of cartridge. The time I spent playing Bowling was productive and enriching compared to the time I spent playing Barnstorming. 

Barnstorming makes me want to set fire to my Atari for having ever been exposed to such a waste of time. Barnstorming wants me want to punch myself in the face for having ever seen this game. Barnstorming makes me want to track down the designer of the game, and write him a letter saying simply “you suck.” 



I’m going to kill my copy of Barnstorming.

9. Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles
Atari 2600
1984

In Crystal Castles you play a Teddy Bear collecting power pellets while trying not to be killed by trees. That is the only good thing about this game. The rest of it is an exercise in frustrating unplayablility. Once, years ago, somebody took a look at Q*Bert and decided that the problem with the game was that it needed to be crappy.  That person made Crystal Castles.  Then they ported it to the Atari. 

There is a mindstate you can slip into when playing a certain type of game, wherein you refuse to quit playing because you know you could blow through these simple stages if only you could overcome the incredibly awkward controls. This is a textbook example of such.  Crystal Castles has painfully simple mazes that kill you because successfully jumping is a taxing challenge. This game also makes an often fatal challenge out of the mere act of successfully spotting the pellets that you are supposed to collect.  

This is the worst video game that this project has caused me to play, so far.

8. Combat

Combat
Atari 2600
1977

Sun Tzu wrote “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”  He was probably talking about Tank-Pong when he wrote that. 

War may be hell, but Combat is just plain fun.  You and a buddy try to kill each other in tanks.  Or you and a buddy try to shoot each other down in a dogfight.  In tanks, you can play with guided missiles (awesome), invisible tanks (awesome), or ping-pong shells (awesome).   In the skies you can play with jets (awesome) or biplanes (not all that awesome).

  

Despite the fact that the tank stages can be pretty imbalanced, with one side quickly racking up consecutive kills, Combat never stops being fun.  When I play Combat with my roommate, we play a lot of Combat, as cycle through one game mode after the next.  If this game has taught me anything, it is that Combat breeds more Combat. 

Circus Atari

Released in 1978
Atari 2600

Circus Atari is Breakout with a twist. You now control a teeter-totter with the Paddle controller, and must bounce "clowns" up into 3 rows of moving brick- uh.. "balloons" and pop them. If you fail to bounce the clown, the clown dies, and his twitching corpse is removed from the playing field as the next identical "clown" prepares to jump into the field.





I mention the "twitching corpse" because that's the image that stuck with me as a kid since you see it happen a lot. You little guy is still kicking his legs in the air despite the obvious fact his spine is broken and his head caved in. Grim stuff. This is balanced out by the lovely pastel colors. Everything is pink, blue, red or white. It's a very cheerful looking game, which is of course to help reinforce the "circus" feeling. Apparently circuses had this sort of event all the time in the 80s.


You get free lives every time you take out a row of balloons, and the score rolls over at 9999. There really isn't much else that can be said about the game, but it's worth no ting that this is the first video game my conscious memory ever encountered. I've mentioned before how I remember watching my mom play it, and it's an image that's stayed with m e, since she's never played any other games in the past 20 years until I gave her a Nintendo DS. Curse you Nintendo, for awakening retired gamers, and take note! Release an updated "Circus Atari" and you'll have a million seller on your hands. The retirees will pick it up, I'm sure.
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Now playing: Silent Hill 2 - 21 - the reverse mill
via FoxyTunes

Chopper Command

Released in 1982
Atari 2600

In Chopper Command you control a giant orange helicopter with a cannon of some sort. It's your job to protect convoys of trucks on the ground whose sole mission is to continue driving west at all times. There are evil blue jets, and evil white helicopters who wish to destroy these westbound trucks. Their weapon of choice is a missile that splits into 2 separate bombs that travel straight up and straight down. They will also fly straight into you if given the opportunity. Once you clear a board of all enemy aircraft, more appear, and you destroy them too. This, like most Atari games, is unceasing. Enemy aircraft get progressively faster with each wave until you can no longer move fast enough to avoid their suicidal tactics.

As a kid, I really enjoyed this game, mainly because of it's sound effects and controls. The helicopter has inertia when changing directions, and has a helicopter rotor sound effect that I'm sure sounded super cool pre-Nintendo. It also allowed players to just hold down the fire button for rapid fire instead of mashing it over and over again. Groundbreaking stuff, I know.

Today the game is just another ugly repetitive shooter. It's controls are still solid, and the sound effects aren't nearly as annoying as most 2600 games. It's definitely the most enjoyable game yet in these retro gaming reviews.
Games like Chopper Command and Defender definitely seem to be the progenitors of modern side scrolling shooters like R-Type, Ikaruga, or Omega Five (see right). The genre has definitely evolved significantly, but games like these are certainly the seeds to the "shmup" genre.

7. Centipede

Centipede
Atari 2600
1982

Here’s the thing about ports of games that were meant to be played with a trackball:  They are never worth playing without a trackball. This rule is always true. So even though this is a pretty good port, the Atari doesn’t have a trackball, so they should have never bothered.

Also, the game is some serious ugly.  I mean the mushrooms look like rectangular dots.  Check it:

Breakout

Released in 1978 (older than me!)
Atari 2600

Isaac skipped this one, so I'm popping it in here. There really isn't much to say about this game. It's Breakout. It's single player PONG. But I will elaborate.

You have 6 rows of colored bricks at the top, and a little bar at the bottom. You move the bar and bounce a ball up at the bricks. The bricks break when the ball hits them. The ball bounces back to the bar. Move the bar to bounce the ball back to the bricks. Don't miss the ball or you FAIL!

There are 12 variants in the game, and each supports up to four players (2 teams of 2). Variants include invisible bricks, a sticky bar, ball control, a time-attack, and the trademarked "Breakthru" mode which allows the ball to pass through the brick walls to the top of the screen before coming back down.

It's worth noting that you were required to use the interesting spinning dial "Paddle" controllers in order to play Breakout on the 2600. They offered a surprisingly high amount of control for the player, that could only ever be reproduced using a PC mouse. Even with a mouse, I feel it still falls short of offering the precision the dial had. I imagine it could be done with a track ball, but that's about it. So as simple as the game is, it's somewhat of a breakthrough (no pun intended) in precision control.

The game itself is mildly addicting, thanks to it's simplicity. However, it's understandably shallow, and mostly unrewarding. It's also a prime example of what video games meant to the uninformed. "Bleep, bloop, bleep" for hours upon hours. Super Breakout (which will be reviewed later) had a livelier sound effect selection, but the original is a relic of ancient technology. It was what we, of the future, would consider a "tech demo" for the home game console in 1978.

6. Carnival

Carnival
Atari 2600
1982

A truly good Atari game is one that leaves you with the compulsion to play over and over again, trying to beat your high score and/or the high scores of your friends. By this metric, Carnival is a good Atari game, the first one in my collection. 

Carnival is a shooting gallery game and it is all about ammo conservation. Every shot counts and you are under constant attack from bullet-eating ducks, which is a refreshing departure from most shooting galleries.  This game is a really nice mix of strategy, precision, and making every shot count. 



Honestly, years later, this game still feels refreshingly unique, although as is so often the case, it does suffer in comparison to the arcade original.  Also, it loses a little bit of its luster once you figure out the optimum approach to clear stages, effectively allowing you to repeat the same pattern until you slip up.  This keeps it just a little too solveable to be truly great. 

5. California Games

California Games
Atari 2600
1987

California Games is a package of four “extreme” “sports” "games" for the Atari.  They are Skateboarding, Biking, Surfing, and Hacky Sack. That’s right, there exists a hacky sack simulator for the Atari. I spent today playing it. This is how I’m choosing to spend my life, playing virtual hacky sack running on an Atari VCS. 

I will share with y’all the best thing about this game. From the manual “After each event, 'Louie, Louie' will play, signifying the end of the event.”  That is the bes way to end a timed video game event I've ever heard of.  That is the best way to end anything ever. Louie Louie should be the signifier for the end of all things, not just “extreme” “sport” competitions. If you have to fire someone, just call them into your office and play Louie Louie. It will soften the blow. What could some lame eulogy communicate that couldn’t more eloquently be said by Louie Louie?

When my girlfriend dumps my ass for some Italian haberdasherer, I hope she break the news to me by way of Louie Louie. I’ll understand. 

Two Worlds - Don't Believe the Hype

Two Worlds

Developer – Reality Pump

Xbox 360, PC

So after countless arguments against virtually every gamer I know that has played this game, I am forcing myself to sit down and write up a quick review to hopefully educate some of you about this game. This game can contend with Oblivion. Yes it can. It has areas where Oblivion is better, but it also does certain things better than Oblivion, and for what it is worth, the game is WELL worth picking up at full price if you are a fan of the genre.

Now that I’ve hopefully gotten you this far, let me warn you. The voice acting and script in this game is absolutely atrocious. It’s terrible. I am failing to come up with a clever analogy involving broken glass and acid on your flesh, but the analogy is there. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, but it will never pass for decent voice acting. I have a feeling that a lot of people never got past this aspect of the game, and the game got a bum rap because of that. Forewarned is fore armed, or something, so now you know and can hopefully trudge past this aspect of the game to see the hidden gem beneath.

The game is a wide open free roaming RPG, much like Oblivion. The graphics are absolutely breathtaking, and the draw distance is so impressive. I specifically have a game saved where my character is standing atop a small rise that leads down into a HUGE valley with a river in the bottom of it. Far far in the distance, I can see the city walls and castle spires of a city I can actually travel to in the game – I am actually looking at the IN GAME city being rendered, not some clever background picture trick. It would take me twenty minutes to run to that place, that’s how far away it actually is.

The combat is done in a tight third person view, or first person if you prefer. It again, is very similar to Oblivion in that there are only a few different attacks, but in Two Worlds, your attacks string together into combos. The combos are nothing fancy, it’s not a God of War style game, but it plays well even with the simplicity. Another unique thing about Two Worlds is that the different weapon types handle COMPLETELY differently, and even their respective combos are quite different. For instance, pick up a quick one handed sword, and watch the quick successions of attacks snaking out to strike your enemies. But pick up a large two handed sword, and watch the fluid, sweeping swaths your blade cuts through your foes. It’s not a big deal, but it is nice.

Where Two Worlds really REALLY sets itself apart from the rest is it’s unique looting system. In a dungeon crawling sort of epic RPG, there is going to be loot, and there is going to be lots of it. Well, traditionally, you get a piece of loot that you like for either its stats or abilities, and stick with it for a large majority of the game. Towards the end of a game, once you get the best piece of gear (say a sword), you never have any need or desire to find another sword again. You’ve effectively hit a cap, and I hate that. I never want to know that my dungeon crawling isn’t going to yield anything better than what I’ve already got. Two Worlds solves this problem.

Two Worlds has a combination system where if you have multiple copies of the same item (Golden Sword and Golden Sword), you can combine them into Golden Sword Level 2, and it becomes stronger. All of your gear can be combined in this fashion, and it ensures that no matter how long you play, your gear will always be gaining in strength. I never once tired of my questing, because I was constantly improving my character in various ways.

There are also gems that add in a damage bonus via percentages, and they drop like candy. By the end of the game, you can have a weapon getting +1000% damage from a healthy use of gemstones. It’s fun, and you always feel rewarded for your efforts because the game doesn’t put arbitrary caps on things. If you can get enough gems to get +1000% damage, then by all means, do.

Now, I didn’t delve very deep into the magic system, nor the alchemy, so I can’t really elaborate too much on those. I can tell you though, that there are just literally hundreds of different plants and flowers and various alchemy ingredients all over the place, and some potions you can make even give you permanent effects, which is something I loved. Why make a potion that gives me +strength for a minute, I have to keep making a bunch of them, and then I’m drinking potions constantly before and during every fight. I would much rather make a potion that permanently increases my strength. But luckily, you can do either in this game, and the people that prefer the temporary gains will gain a very hefty increase for the duration of their custom potion.

If you liked Oblivion, you truly owe it to yourself to pick up Two Worlds and at least give it a shot. If the hype has you scared, rent it. Just make sure you give it a fair shot before you completely write it off. It’s good in so many ways, and for my money, can stand toe to toe with the Oblivions of the industry. Now it just needs a few expansions…

Score: 84%

Subjective Score: 94%

4. Boxing

Boxing
Atari 2600
1980




As Bowling illustrated, the phrase “Atari sports game” rarely leads to a happy ending, but Activision’s Boxing is an awesome 2 player game, a fast and frenzied game of finesse and fancy footwork. Really. Kudos to Activision and to game designer, Bob Whitehead.

It is a very simple game: One player is the white guy, one guy is the black guy. You can punch with your left or right fist and who ever lands the most hits in one round wins. Sounds dull, but somehow it isn’t.   The single player game is worthless, but get a friend to play this game with you, and there’s an elegance to the game that endures decades of advances in boxing game technology. They say that boxing is a just like ballet, only with no music, no choreography and the dancers try to hit each other. This game captures that feel perfectly.

3. Bowling

Bowling
Atari 2600
1978














Atari Bowling is exactly what you’d expect it to be. I bowled a 158.

2. Berzerk

Berzerk
Atari 2600
1982














Like Asteroids, Atari’s Berzerk is a port of a popular arcade game. Unlike Asteroids, actually, unlike most Atari games, this is a prety close port of the original. Unfortunately, what’s being ported is a fairly crap game.

I guess you’d say that Berzerk is an overhead run ‘n gun game. You are a dude in a maze shooting robots that are trying to shoot you, which is the sort of scenario I like to encourage. This game was probably mindblowingly cool in 1982.

But this is 2008, and I can’t help but notice that there is only one kind of robot. And the maze is generated randomly. And if you touch anything, you die. And the random generation means you will die cheaply sometimes. And by “sometimes” I mean “often.” And if you die the game makes an unusually annoying electrocution sound. Seriously, that annoying sound effect is the most memorable part of this game.

Y’know, this is a game that is simple enough to feel boringly easy, while also being cheap enough to feel unfairly difficult. That’s a good trick.

Despite being a pretty crappy game, Berzerk does have some charm. For one thing, the robots are extraordinarily stupid, constantly shooting each other and walking into the death walls. I choose to view that bloody-minded robot behavior as a feature not a bug. The really crazy thing about the game is that if you dally too long in one room, you will be chased by an unkillable bouncing smiley face. The smiley face is named Evil Otto. I dare you not to love that.

In recent years we’ve made gains in technical capabilities and in game design allowing for much better robots-in-a-maze-scenarios. However, we’ve lost something along the way, and that something is evil unkillable smiley faces. Designers, take note.

1. Asteroids

Asteroids
1981
Atari 2600














Thanks to the quirks of the alphabet, I get to begin this exercise with one of the true classics of the field, Asteroids. Asteroids is a timeless game, worthy of inclusion on any Greatest list, as fun to play today as it was 29 years ago.

The arcade original, that is. However, I’m playing the Atari 2600 port.

This is a game I’ve played off and on for my entire life without it ever leaving a strong impression. Usually when I start a game of Asteroids my reaction is, “why am I not playing Space Invaders?” I then swap out my copy of Asteroids and play Space Invaders. But not today. This time I keep playing Asteroids.


If you somehow don’t know, the entire point of Asteroids is to shoot giant space rocks from your space ship without being hit by the rocks as they crumble into smaller rocks. The winning strategy for the Atari version is to never move your space ship from the center of the screen.

On my very first play attempt today, I maxed out my extra lives and rolled over my high score. This consumed about 45 minutes of my life. It turns out that this game is as much fun as you’d expect from a simulation of shooting rocks while standing still.

Fortunately, I have options, for the coolest thing about the Atari is that almost ever game for it comes with alternate versions. Asteroids, for example, has 132 seperate variants. That means I can make it harder. Much harder. After some tinkering, I find that variant 6A (Fast Asteroids, Hyperspace, exra life every 20,000 points, flying saucers) makes for a solid game, a rough but passable imitation of the classic original.

From 2600 to 360

I own a lot of console games. Maybe 200 games over 18 systems,
including hand-helds. I'm not a collector. I don't buy games I don't
intend to play and I don't keep games I don't like. I've tried to
maintain my collection to only games that I'm likely to play or replay
at some point, but fact is, many of these games have sat on my shelf
for years. Some have never been played.

That all changes now. Starting today, I'm going to play every game I
own, in order, starting with my oldest systems and working my way
forward. I'm going to include hand-held games as part of this series,
and I'll probably include Xbox Live Arcade games once I get to the
current generation of gaming. However, I intend to exclude PC and MAME
emulated Arcade boards. Maybe after I've played and reviewed every
game in my library I will go ahead and review every Arcade game ever
made. Maybe that's stupid.

First up is my catalog of Atari 2600 games. The Atari is noteworthy
as being the system I've had parents throw away without my consent 3
times. Despite undergoing multiple involuntary purges, I've still got
a lot of Atari games, many of them awful. I can't wait to dive into
them.