Surround

Atari 2600
Released 1978

It also has a rudimentary drawing option.

Starmaster

Atari 2600
Released 1982

Okay, this may blow your mind, but StarMaster is practically the same exact game as Star Raiders. You have a galaxy map (toggled on and off with the B/W switch on the console), you warp to wear enemy squadrons are attacking your bases, then you try to destroy them using broken first person flight combat controls.
Honestly, the games play exactly the same way, and use the same idiotic number pad controller.
StarMaster = Star Raiders. The end.

Star Raiders

Atari 2600
Released 1982

This game is too complex for it's own good.
It requires you to use a secondary keypad controller with a plastic overlay, but most of the time you never actually make it to that point in the game.
It's apparently some sort of real-time strategy game mixed with space combat, but the 2600 was quite obviously incapable of pulling it off. From what I gather from the manual, you first must fight off a wave of enemies before you can access the star map. Fighting off enemies is a first person affair where you can slightly alter your flight path and try to get enemies into the cross-hairs. After you destroy the enemies, you computer will let you know that the area is clear, after which you need to bring up the star map and locate other enemy groups. The enemy groups will be trying to destroy your bases, and you must stop them by warping to them and entering the first person space combat game again.
The actual space combat is practically unplayable. I can only recall once as a child actually seeing the star map, and that was when an adult was playing. Even now, at 26, I couldn't get past the awful shooting stage.
This game is bad.

Space Invaders

Atari 2600
Released 1978 AD

There isn't much that can be said about this game. Did you know that Next Generation Magazine, back in the late 90s, called Space Invaders the most groundbreaking game of all time? They say it was the first legitimate game that allowed you to do something you couldn't normally do in reality. I'm not sure if that's actually a fact, but it's a piece of trivia that pops in my head any time I play this game.
Check out that sweet cover art though!

My high score when I played it for this review was a paltry 2460.

I always thought the explosions looked odd. Especially the one for your cannon/ship/pyramid thing.

32. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Atari 2600 1982

Raiders of the Lost Ark is quite a bit more ambitious than your typical based-on-a-Spielberg movie Atari game. It includes such mechanics as multiple weapons, buying things, exploration, and an inventory system that you use a second controller to navigate. They really tried to make something cool with this game. Unfortunately, Raiders is cursed by the same problem that has plagued so many Atari games: It is an Atari game.

I tried to play this game several times and each playthroughl followed the same basic pattern. I started on the “whip” screen. I collected the whip and avoided a snake, before moving on to the next screen.  On this screen, the “random shit” screen, I wandered around causing things to appear in my inventory magically.  Because the manual told me that they had different functions, I used the other joystick to try equipping the various items I had collected. Perhaps some of them do things, but I couldn't achieve any positive results. While fiddling with the other controller, a snake appeared and killed me. 

In order to avoid further snake related deaths, I ventured onto the next screen. This is the “tree branch” screen, and you sort of fall through this one. Despite it being painfully obvious that I’m supposed to use the whip to snag the tree branch and swing into what I assume to be a cave, I think the programmers may have forgotten the part about making that possible to do.   I could not snag that branch.

So, I fall through that screen and land in the “get robbed, then killed” screen. On this screen some dude takes my stuff and then kills me. Consistently. In multiple attempts, I just can not kill this guy, despite landing on the screen with a pistol, a whip, and a hand grenade.  Maybe the programmers forgot to make him killable. 

To fulfill the obligations of the license, all this game needed was a screen of running from a goddamn big boulder and a screen of hitting Nazis with a whip. And maybe a screen with a monkey. Instead, the game designer chose to  make an overcomplicated, unplayable mess of a game.  I applaud the ambition, but not the game. 

Popeye

Atari 2600
Released 1983

This is an odd game that I remember playing a lot of when I was younger. It starts up with the classic Popeye theme, or the closest they could get to it with their cutting edge audio sampling. Then you control the spinach man himself as he tries to avoid the yellow jumping mess of pixels that I only assume is Bluto, along with the yellow bricks he, and the sides of the screen, throw at you. While doing this, a strange red mass walks around at the top of the screen. Since the Popeye franchise centered around Popeye, Bluto and Olive, I assume this is Olive. Olive occasionally pulls off pieces of herself and tosses them off the platform, and it's up to Popeye to catch them. You also have a flashing dot that shifts around and if you punch it, you become invulnerable and can destroy Bluto. Olive inexplicably refuses to throw any more pieces of herself during this time of invulnerability.
Once you collect 20 pieces of Olive, you move onto the next level
This is the most accurate recreation of the cartoon series around, if you ask me.

I was never able to pass the second level. I think I just played it for the music. I couldn't find the instructions for this, so I'm working entirely under assumptions of what is actually going on.
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Now playing: Brendon Small - Murmaider
via FoxyTunes

31. Pitfall!

Pitfall!
(Pitfall Harry's Jungle Adventure)
Atari 2600
1982



Pitfall! is one of the true Atari classics. It was my first favorite video game, and it had been one of the small number of Atari games I had actually been eager to replay. It makes you jump on the heads of crocodiles!

It kinda sucks.

Pitfall! is a game of jungle exploration. As Pitfall Harry, you delve into a huge jungle setting, searching for 32 treasures hidden deep within. The game enabled this premise of exploration in ways never before seen on a console. First of all, it had a large, nonrandomized environment for you to explore. It also presented shortcut routes through this very large jungle, and then presented you with a tight time limit, spurring you to find the shortest route to the treasure possible. 

Pitfall! was like nothing else at the timeNot only is Pitfall! is the only console game I’ve ever played that encouraged a player to make their own map, but it is a sidescroller in every sense, save actually scrolling sideways. Pitfall! is an innovative game, mixing exploration, new run and jump gameplay, and a evocative environment. It is no wonder that this is a staple of every Atari collection ever and it is for these reasons that it is a bona fide classic. 

However, in the years since its design, developers have invented a new gaming technology.  A technology known as “Metroid.”   This “Metroid” technology, is an advanced, “non-suck” method of exploration found in games such as Metroid and Metroid III. While the details are complicated and difficult to explain to the layman, suffice to say it blows Pitfall!’s draw-your-own map approach out of the water. 

Compared to Metroid, to Castlevania, to Legend of Zelda, exploring in Pitfall seems more like running around in your back yard than finding your way through an exotic jungle.  What you are left with is a game with a very small number of obstacles, slightly remixed hundreds of times over. 

When released, this game was a marvel, a rejection of the previously understood limits of Atari cartridges. It was a game that pushed the boundaries of what video games could and should be. And even though Pitfall! sorely lacks timelessness, this game is still a damn classic. Just not one worth playing.