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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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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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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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.