The A to Z of the Atari 2600

by

Justin Kyle
Text copyright ©2013 Justin Kyle

All Rights Reserved

Images are copyright ©Atari, Inc.

 For Jason, Seán, and Stephen.

Today’s casual gamers, tomorrow’s hardcore.

I pass my addiction to you.
I awoke on Christmas morning 1983 to one of the greatest gifts I had ever
received, certainly at that point in my life, and perhaps ever... a brand new
Atari 2600. It came with one joystick, and one game… Asteroids. The
joystick was the style that sat in the palm of your left hand, and the dual fire
buttons (which worked as a single button) were gripped by your fingers – the
ball top on the stick gripped by your right hand. With its sleek black design
and glued on faux metal trimming, the revised 2600 console that I had
received looked so futuristic in comparison to its wood paneled ancestors.

My only previous home gaming experience was a knock-off Pong machine

that had a plastic .44 Magnum attached (and 6 variations on the Pong theme
that crudely depicted soccer… where a white square bounced around a black
background, or basketball where a white square bounced… you get the idea).
I had played in the arcades, but 10 pence pieces were hard to come by. Years
later I realized that Americans had to shell out a whole 25c for the same
experience, so I felt better that Europeans somehow got it cheaper. I should
note that 10p is about 16c, so we are coming out ahead by about 9c. But I
digress.

No longer would I be shackled to a single game! No longer would I have to

sit about one foot from the TV! Ok, so that last one still remained the same as
the RF and joystick cords were ridiculously short. Truth be told, times were
different back then, and growing up within a poor family just outside of
Belfast, Northern Ireland meant that it would not be until my birthday that I
would receive another game… and my birthday is in September. So, I was
still shackled to a single game.

But what a game it was! Asteroids on the 2600 was amazing. It had that
monotonous soundtrack that drove my parents nuts (but I can still hear in my
head even now), bugs, and crude graphics compared to the arcade’s vector
equivalent, but it was so playable.

I learned the meaning of addiction at the tender age of 8. I would come home
from school each day and my routine would consist of pulling out the Atari
from under the TV shelf, swapping its RF cable for the VCR’s, play
Asteroids until dinner, switch back to TV so my parents didn’t have to
(quote) “suffer that God-awful droning noise”, switch back after dinner for a
few more rounds, and play until bedtime.

Again, if I’m honest, I wasn’t the only addict in the house, much to my
Mum’s chagrin. I would come down on Saturday mornings for another day of
asteroid blasting and find that the machine had not yet been unplugged from
my Dad’s Friday late night session on it either.

It wasn’t until I got Berzerk and Outlaw for my birthday that my addiction
got out of control. Not to mention my need for a second controller.

Alas, the fabled poor construction of the 2600 put paid to my first real
console, a mere couple of years into its life. First to go were the pins that
stick up on the console base and pushed the cartridge protection slot up.
When these broke off I glued makeshift replacements so that the carts could
still be mounted. Soon after, it simply refused to power on. The irony here
was that the day it finally died was the day I bought my last 2600 game,
Warlords.

I never got to play that fateful final game, but it wouldn’t have mattered
anyway… I didn’t have a paddle controller.
Contents

THE ATARI 2600, A BRIEF HISTORY…

ADVENTURE
AL ALCORN
ASTEROIDS
ATLANTIS
BATTLEZONE
BERZERK
CENTIPEDE
COMBAT
COSMIC ARK
DAVID CRANE
DEMON ATTACK
DIG DUG
E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
FROGGER
GHOSTBUSTERS
GOLF
HOME RUN
HOWARD SCOTT WARSHAW
IKARI WARRIORS
JUNGLE HUNT
KABOOM!
KANGAROO
KLAX
LOGO
MEGAMANIA
MINER 2049ER
MISSILE COMMAND
MOON PATROL
NIGHT DRIVER
NOLAN BUSHNELL
OUTLAW
PAC MAN
PITFALL!
POLE POSITION
Q*BERT
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
RIVER RAID
SPACE INVADERS
STAR RAIDERS
STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
TIME PILOT
UP’N DOWN
VANGUARD
WARLORDS
XENOPHOBE
YARS’ REVENGE
ZAXXON
TOP 10 BEST-SELLING GAMES
THE ATARI 2600, A BRIEF HISTORY…
The Atari 2600 has the odd distinction of being both the console that created
the videogame boom of the late 70s and early 80s, as well as causing the
infamous crash of 1983. Released in 1977 by Atari, Inc. it popularized the
use of microprocessor based hardware and ROM cartridges. Previously
machines had been released with dedicated hardware and built-in games,
usually variations on the Pong theme.

Originally called the Atari VCS (Video Computer System), it was renamed to
the now more famous moniker of Atari 2600 (named after the unit’s part
number, CX2600) after the release of the Atari 5200 in 1982.

The original VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a connected pair
of paddle controllers, and a copy of the game Combat. Later pack-ins would
include Pac-Man or Asteroids. The machine had been so expensive to
develop that Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell had been forced to sell Atari,
Inc. to Warner Communications in 1976 to keep the company afloat and
ensure that the system saw the light of day at all.

Launching in the US on September 11th 1977 (1978 in Europe) with a price of

$199, it went head to head with the Fairchild VES (Video Entertainment
System), which also used a cartridge format. Atari naming their console the
VCS was intentional, which prompted Fairchild to quickly rename their
system to the Fairchild Channel F. Fairchild soon threw in the towel
altogether, assuming video-gaming to be a passing fad.

At first sales were slow. Atari, Inc. only sold 250,000 in 1977, but as
programmers learned how to use the hardware (and take advantage of its
many bugs and flaws) more games of increasing quality would be released.
Also, the public was awakening to the idea that their system could be used for
multiple games, and sales increased dramatically. In 1978 sales increased to a
not-yet staggering 550,000 (out of a manufactured 800,000). However, by
1979 the Atari VCS was the number one Christmas gift that year, selling a
million units.

It wasn’t until 1980 when things really took off. Atari, Inc. licensed the
smash arcade game Space Invaders from Taito and sales practically doubled
overnight. By now the public couldn’t get enough as they could finally play
arcade style games in their homes, albeit in cut down versions.

In fact, the quality of the games were not directly comparable to sales at all as
Atari, Inc.’s biggest smash was yet to come, despite its famed atrocious
gameplay. In 1982 Namco’s Pac-Man was released on the Atari 2600 and
went on to sell over 7 million copies… a staggering number even by today’s
standards, yet the game itself was ugly, badly coded, and a far cry from the
arcade original.

The Atari 2600, as it was now known, was costing Atari, Inc. $40 to
manufacture, but sold for $125 at retail. The games cost $8 to produce
(including advertising) and sold for $18.95. However as Atari, Inc. continued
to grow, their fortunes were suddenly about to turn.

By now Atari, Inc. had one of the largest R&D divisions in Silicon Valley,
and had spent much of its budget on projects that never saw the light of day.
Several new consoles failed or were cancelled after blowing through
enormous research budgets.

Another problem that they faced was the dearth of talent. Atari, Inc. had
famously never credited programmers (instead all copyright and credit went
to Atari itself). Many of these skilled coders left to form their own
companies, the most notable of these being Activision (formed by David
Crane, Alan Miller, Larry Kaplan and Bob Whitehead). While Activision
continued to release top-rated games for the Atari platforms (but were free to
release for other consoles also), Atari, Inc. would go on to release numerous
low quality, but expensive, products such as Pac-Man and E.T. The Extra
Terrestrial. The market was now saturated with poorly made titles and even
crude pornographic games such as Custer’s Revenge, which portrayed a
cowboy assaulting a Native American woman bound to a post.
Public disappointment of these titles (especially the strong selling ones) and a
lack of new quality software being released led to the videogame crash of
1983. Manufacturing of the Atari 2600, while not discontinued, was put on
hiatus while the sale of Atari, Inc.’s Consumer Division was sold to Jack
Tramiel, owner of Commodore Business Machines, who promptly froze all
console and game development.

Despite the troubled history, the Atari 2600 is beloved in the gaming
community, and was named the second most important gaming console of all
time by IGN, and released a slew of games that are beloved to anyone who
was there to experience them at the time. To many older gamers, the Atari
2600 was their first console, and responsible for a lifetime of gaming
addiction. It saw many revisions (from the ‘Woody’ through the ‘Darth
Vader’ to the ‘Jr.’), and is the longest produced console of all time. It saw its
first games published in 1977, and continued having new releases (officially)
until 1990 with Atari’s own arcade puzzler, Klax. Even today the homebrew
scene keeps the 2600 alive with constant new releases.

There is no doubt – without the Atari 2600, there would be no games

industry. Even though it also almost killed it.

Did you know?

Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell got the name “Atari” from the game, ‘Go’.
It was a term that meant (in the context of the game) a state where a stone or
a group of stones is immediately in danger of being taken by one’s opponent.
In Japanese, atari ( 当たり , あたり , or アタリ ) is the nominalized form of ataru
（当たる , あたる , or アタル ) (verb), meaning "to hit the target" or "to receive
something fortuitously". The word 'atari' is used in Japanese when a
prediction comes true or when someone wins a lottery.

While most modern consoles live or die on third-party support for software,
Atari, Inc. actually fought (and lost) several legal battles to block third-party
publishers (such as Activision) from releasing games for their system. In the
case of grot-peddlers Mystique, we wish they had been successful.
Technical Specifications

CPU: 1.19 MHz MOS Technology 6507

Audio + Video processor: TIA (Television Interface Adapter)

160 x ~192 pixel screen resolution with 128 colors (128 on screen, maximum
4 per line without programming tricks)

2 channel mono sound. 1 square wave, 1 white noise

RAM (within a MOS Technology RIOT chip): 128 bytes (additional RAM
may be included in the game cartridges)

ROM (game cartridges): 4 kb maximum capacity (32 kb+ with bank

switching)

Input (controlled by MOS RIOT)

Two screw-less DE-9controller ports, for single-button joysticks, paddles,

“trak-balls”, “driving controllers”, 12-key “keyboard controllers” (0–9, #, and
*) and third party controllers with additional functions

Six switches (original version): Power on/off, TV signal (B/W or Color),

Difficulty for each player (called A and B), Select, and Reset. Except for the
power switch, games could (and did) assign other meanings to the switches.
On later models the difficulty switches were miniaturized and moved to the
back of the unit.

Output: B/W or Color TV picture and sound signal through RCA connector
(NTSC, PAL or SECAM, depending on region; game cartridges are
exchangeable between NTSC and PAL/SECAM machines, but this will result
in wrong or missing colors and often a rolling picture.)
 ADVENTURE
Written by Warren Robinett
©1979 Atari, Inc.

Adventure was a launch title for the Atari 2600 (then called the VCS) inspired
by the computer text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure. Programmer
Warren Robinett had been discouraged by his boss at Atari at attempting the
feat of creating a graphical version of the game, but he persevered, and
Adventure went on to be Atari, Inc.’s first major hit, selling over a million
copies. It stands as the seventh best-selling game for the 2600.

The game also holds a number of distinctions. It was the first action-
adventure game on a console – up until that point games had been score
based, mostly single-screen affairs. Adventure had no score or time limit, but
instead was the first fantasy adventure game that would spawn a whole genre,
and was a precursor to hits such as The Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana.
It was also the first game to give the player a stash of items, and required the
player to choose an item to use at any given time. Another first was the ‘Fog
of War’ effect in its catacombs, a staple of modern RTS games such as Red
Alert and Starcraft. This effect is also used in adventure games (and
MMORPGs) to slowly unfold areas that you have discovered. In true 2600
form, this feature came about due to hardware limitations, and was a
graphical trick to save memory.

As if that wasn’t enough, Adventure also holds the distinction for including
the first ever widely known Easter egg (secrets buried in code by
programmers). Atari, Inc. famously never credited its coders within the
games, so Warren created a secret room that could be accessed that displayed
the message, “Created by Warren Robinett”. To access this room, players
needed to find an hidden single-pixel object that was the same color as the
background, embedded in the South wall of a sealed chamber within the
black catacombs (referred to as the ‘grey dot’). Upon locating this item,
players could bounce the cursor along the wall to bump into the dot. Bringing
this dot to the east end of the castle while differently colored objects are
present caused a wall object to become invisible, creating a secret tunnel into
the hidden room. Atari, Inc. were only alerted to the presence of this Easter
egg when they received a letter from a 15 year old player, who felt the need
to write to them about this for some reason. However, with the cost of
producing a new chip back then reaching upwards of $15,000, they decided
to leave it in the game. This secret took up 5% of the original ROM cartridge.
Gameplay itself is fairly simple, especially by today’s standards, but on
release was enormously innovative and original. The player’s goal is to find
the enchanted chalice and return it to the gold castle. Your player, represented
by a square, must explore the maze like castle and find items to aid your
quest, such as keys, a sword, a magic bridge for traversing through walls, and
a magnet that attracts nearby items. Hindering you on your quest are three
dragons, Yorgle (yellow), Grundle (green), and Rhindle (red) – all who can
be killed upon touch if you have the sword.

If the dragon eats you, all is not lost! Hitting the game reset switch on the unit
spawns the player back at the gold castle, along with any previously slain
dragons. Having a hardware reset button was handy in this sense, as
programmers didn’t have to include controls for setting the program back to
its default state.

Playing the game again today it’s hard to understand what a revelation
Adventure was at the time. While it wasn’t the first action adventure game
ever, it was the first for a console, and especially considering the limitations
of the hardware – and the fact that programmers had yet to come into their
own to get around these limitations. For instance, to get around the lack of
processing power, every screen is a mirror image, left and right (with a few
exceptions). Also considering the number of firsts that remain gaming staples
to this day, Adventure is to be hailed as the progenitor of one of video-
gaming’s best and most cherished genres… the graphic adventure.
 AL ALCORN

Engineer at Atari
Designer of Pong

Allan ‘Al’ Alcorn will go down in history as the designer of the first
significant video game ever, and one of the most famous too… Pong. Born in
San Francisco, CA in 1948, Al is a pioneer of engineering and computer
science. He graduated from the University of Berkeley, CA, with a Bachelor
of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1971
and went to work at Ampex where he met Atari co-founder Ted Dabney and
several other luminaries who would go on to be constants at the Atari, Inc.,
Apple, Cyan Engineering and Pizza Time Theater companies.

Under the direction of Dabney and fellow Atari co-founder, Nolan Bushnell,
Al created Pong in 1972, which of course went on to become one of the
biggest hit games of the 70s, and was the impetus for the fledgling
videogame industry.

In addition to direct involvement with all Atari’s major product lines, Al was
also involved in some of the historic early meetings with Steve Wozniak and
Steve Jobs (himself an Atari employee at that time) who were presenting their
Apple I prototype.

After Atari, Al founded several successful companies and was involved with
many startups, including Zowie Intertainment which was acquired by Lego in
2000. In 2011 Alcorn co-founded Hack the Future, a technology festival
encouraging elementary school children to get involved with computing.

Al is a true pioneer of the industry and designed one of the most easily
recognizable, and oft-imitated games of all time. His role at the very start of
the gaming boom, and the upstart company that had the vision to create an
entire industry that would go on to rival even the movie industry cannot be
understated. Al Alcorn is a pioneer and a legend. We owe him a debt.
 ASTEROIDS
Written by Brad Stewart
©1981 Atari, Inc.

Converted from the seminal 1979 vector-based arcade shooter of the same
name, the home console version of Asteroids was sublime. Originally
designed by Lyle Rains and programmed by Dominic Walsh and Ed Logg, it
had already become Atari, Inc.’s biggest hit in the arcades. In fact, it was so
popular that arcade operators had to install larger coin collectors to keep up
with demand. Brad Stewart’s 2600 version was the first game to use a bank-
switched cartridge, thereby doubling ROM space.

Asteroids’ gameplay was deceptively simple, but coupled with the intense
difficulty, not to mention the minimalist soundtrack that featured a tonal
electronic pulse beat which quickens as the game progresses, it was
enormously addictive. I discussed in the foreword of this book that this was
my only game for the system for a whole nine months, and I never tired of it.

The object of the game was, as the lone ship in the center of the screen, to
clear the playfield of asteroids. Your player craft could rotate ninety degrees,
fire, thrust forward (and would keep moving via inertia until you slowed to a
stop), and hyperspace, although this would usually result in instant death as
you would re-spawn in a random area, potentially on top of an asteroid.
Hence I tried to never use this feature at all. Even thrusting would be life
threatening as you couldn’t control exactly where you would stop.

The asteroids themselves would split into several smaller asteroids when hit,
and launch in different directions. For this reason it was never a good idea to
fire on the larger asteroids too close to your ship as the debris could prove
deadly. Adding to the danger were UFOs who would, depending on the
difficulty setting, fire upon you as they travelled across the screen.

All objects in the game would use a screen wraparound technique that was
native to the Atari 2600 hardware. When an asteroid, your ship, or even your
gunfire reached one side of the screen, it would appear on the opposite side.
As the 2600 was hardwired to do this, many coders had to use tricks to
prevent this from happening. In the case of Asteroids, it suited the game
perfectly. A common tactic was to sit close to the screen edge and fire
diagonally up or across through to the other edge, creating a zone of fire that
could catch the smaller asteroids easily. However, the downside to this was
that a fast approaching asteroid could effectively “sneak up” on you, catching
you off guard and take another of your precious lives.

The 2600 version used sprites as opposed to the arcade’s vector based
graphics, which made for less degrees of freedom as you could not turn a full
360 degrees, but the upside was that the game was more colorful. Another
issue was that, while in the arcades your ship was controlled by a paddle and
3 buttons, the home version used a joystick, which was more cumbersome,
but necessary to perform all the functions. Left and right rotated the ship,
forward would thrust, and pulling down sent the ship into hyperspace.

Another hardware limitation that actually helps the game was the fact that the
frame-rate was not locked. As each “screen” progressed, and fewer and fewer
asteroids were displayed, the game, along with the music, would speed up.
This created a huge amount of tension, especially when the last tiny asteroid
was whizzing around with sometimes fatal consequences. Of course this
“feature” comes from the fact that the processor speeds up as it has less
sprites to keep track of and draw. This can be seen in many games of the era,
most notably Space Invaders and Centipede.

And like many games of its time, Asteroids contains several obvious bugs,
many of which stemmed from early coders underestimating the player’s skill
or determination, and even the popularity of their own games. For instance, in
the 2600 version of Asteroids, when you beat level ‘99’, the counter resets to
‘00’ as they only allowed for a two digit level readout. Also, the maximum
possible score in the game is 99,990 (after which it also ‘rolls over’ to ‘0’).
Another issue was the fact that the small saucer could only fire directly at the
player, giving rise to the common tactic known as ‘lurking’ where the player
would camp out at one end of the screen and fire into the screen boundary,
while remaining relatively safe.

Playing Asteroids today, I was pleased to discover that it had lost none of its
charm and addictiveness. It moves at a fast pace and despite the blocky
graphics and limited palette, has not aged badly at all. The gameplay and
design are timeless, bordering on perfect. It has that ‘one more go’ feel to it
that kept me addicted to a single game for so long back in the early 80s.
Designed by legendary Atari coders, and spectacularly converted by Brad
Stewart, Asteroids is a classic and every gamer should be able to say that they
have played this game in one form or another, on any platform, at least once
in their lives.
 ATLANTIS
Written by Dennis Koble
© Imagic 1982

Atlantis is a fixed shooter released by Imagic in 1982, and was coded by

Dennis Koble. The player must defend seven cities of Atlantis against the
Gorgon invaders in a single screen Missile Command meets Space Invaders
mash-up. Showcasing how games have come a long way in not just content
and graphics, but also storytelling, Atlantis is one of the top 10 selling games
on the Atari 2600, despite not being a recognizable IP or licensed title.

Three of your seven cities are capable of firing at the enemy ships that fly
over and bombard the terrain, although their cannons are fixed position. That
is, the left cannon fires diagonally up and to the right, the center cannon fires
straight up, and the right cannon fires diagonally up and to the left. The
player must switch between these bases to fire in that direction.
Regardless of the player’s skill or effort, Atlantis is doomed, as the relentless
attacks from the Gorgon fleet will eventually result in the destruction of the
fabled civilization. However, from the rubble rises a mothership,
foreshadowing the events of Imagic’s sequel, Cosmic Ark.

To be honest, despite some decent graphics and multi-colored sprite effects,

Atlantis is a fairly limited and shallow game. You basically have three
positions to fire, and switching between them to shoot almost randomly into
the sky is about as sporting as dip-netting in a bathtub. From a game design
perspective, it’s quite bland, especially considering the quality and originality
of games by this point.

Considering its lineage, not to mention the pedigree of the developer and
publisher, its odd that such a shallow game was released this late in the
Atari’s life, never mind go on to be such a huge seller. It also bears a striking
similarity to Taito’s Colony 7, which was itself a combination of their Space
Invaders and Missile Command franchises.

Atlantis is not a bad game per se, but it is boring, and I can’t see why it
outsold much better games such as Yars’ Revenge and Jungle Hunt, or even
Moon Patrol by such a large margin. It also smacks of a time when game
clones were rampant and could be released without fear of prosecution
despite definite similarities to major releases by other companies. In today’s
market, Imagic would be sued out of existence, and the game would likely
not see the light of day.
 BATTLEZONE
Written by Mike Feinstein and Brad Rice
©Atari, Inc. 1983

Battlezone is, to this day, one of my all-time favorite arcade games. The
original game, by Ed Rotberg, Owen Rubin, and Roger Hector, was the
pinnacle of the vector based wireframe games, and utilized a two-stick “tank
style” method of control (with each stick controlling either the left or right
tank tracks). One cabinet even had a plastic viewfinder that you could press
your face up against and get the full tank commander experience.

Gameplay involved driving your tank around a mostly barren plain with an
erupting volcano on the horizon, looking for enemy tanks. A spinning radar
at the top of the screen would let you know the position of these tanks, and
when you had one in your sights, the reticule would change shape indicating
a hit if you fired. Wireframe blocks and pyramids were scattered around
providing basic cover. Saucer shaped UFOs and missiles also appear and can
be destroyed for bonus points. Everything in the game can be killed with a
single shot, including your own tank. The enemies could move quite quickly
and you can only fire one shot at a time, so if you miss, your enemy could get
the drop on you until your shell disappears out of view. There were two
enemy classes, tanks and super tanks, but only one enemy ever appeared at
any one time. This did not apply to UFOs who could fly across the horizon at
any time.

The home console port for the 2600 was handled by Mike Feinstein and Brad
Rice, and was an amazing game despite some major differences from its
arcade counterpart. For one, gone were the amazing wireframe graphics as
the 2600 could never render anything close to those. Instead we got
functional, but more colorful raster graphics that gave a decent impression of
3D movement. Another major difference was the move from a first to a third-
person viewpoint. While the arcade represented a view from within the tank,
the 2600 version was set behind the tank. And lastly, the control scheme had
to be revamped as even if you had two joysticks, this method would be too
unwieldy so a standard control scheme of left and right to turn, up and down
to move forward and back was implemented.

The most damaging omission is the lack of geometric shapes on the

landscape that would otherwise provide cover. On the 2600 you were a sitting
duck at all times, and had to make your single shots count.

Aside from the lack of cover, none of these other changes affected the frantic
gameplay and the tension of finding and battling enemy tanks remained as
addictive as it was in the arcades. Firing and missing led to some panic,
especially as the enemy tank would position itself to fire back and usually did
so before your next shell was ready.

In the pre-internet days, many myths around games prevailed that could not
be easily dispelled with a simple Google search, and Battlezone was no
exception. One of the more commonly known rumors involved the erupting
volcano on the horizon of the arcade original, specifically that you could
actually drive up to it if you were persistent. The home version was missing
the volcano of course, but this didn’t stop people from insisting the hills on
the horizon could still be reached. Supposedly at the base of mountains there
was a tank factory spewing out enemies. To reach this fabled destination, the
player would have to drive for an hour without being killed. Plans to include
this as an actual feature were proposed for sequels largely in part to the
popularity of this myth.

The 2600 version was obviously stripped down in comparison to the splendid
arcade version, but the game was released in a time when kids were just
happy to be able to play even this basic version at home, with no need to
pump it full of quarters. I somehow convinced myself that this game was as
good as the arcade experience, but with the benefit of hindsight, it was a
fairly crude representation of the vector original. Nowadays the original can
be played on your phone with no problem, so going back to play the 2600
will not be appealing to most gamers. For me, it harks back to a time when
my imagination filled in any gaps that may be obvious now. I loved it at the
time, and it definitely made me smile playing it again now, and even brought
me right back to where I was when I first plugged it in and took on the forces
of whatever evil empire it may have been. Story was not important back in
these days and cut-scenes had yet to raise their ugly heads. I don’t know
about you, but I skip frantically to get on with the game every time they
appear. Maybe it was because of my origins in arcade and early console
gaming.
Although some of the ambient objects and features are missing, and the port
takes some artistic license with the graphics, and even colors, there is no
denying how well it plays. The same tension is present, and firing off a shot
only to miss can induce the same panic whether you are viewing your
impending doom from behind the tank or within. All in all, Battlezone is an
excellent conversion. Boiling down the gameplay of the original to its base
elements and translating that perfectly along with graphics that the 2600
could handle, results in a must-play title for any fans of Atari or retro-gaming
in general.
 BERZERK
Written by Dan Hitchens
©Atari, Inc. 1982

Berzerk began life as an arcade game developed in 1980 by Stern Electronics,

and designed by Alan McNeil. The player, a humanoid must run around a
maze in a flip screen environment, seeking an exit. The maze is guarded by
killer robots who fire on you and can kill you on contact. If you linger on any
screen for too long, an un-killable (in the arcade version) bouncing smiley
face called Evil Otto will appear and chase you. The player can run in all 8
directions and fire in the direction he is facing.

The arcade game was famous for its speech synthesis and was one of the first
games to do so. The robots could be heard saying, “The humanoid must not
escape!” when the player left a room, or “Chicken! Fight like a robot!” if the
player left without destroying a single robot. Otto boomed “Intruder alert!
Intruder alert!” when he entered an area. Even during attract mode the game
would say, “Coins detected in pocket!”. Hearing the robots’ taunts after
running straight past would even cause gamers to alter their play style just to
bring on the verbal assault in those tinny robot voices.

Unsurprisingly, the 2600 version by Dan Hitchens omitted this famous

speech synthesis, but included everything else. As the arcade version itself
featured somewhat crude graphics, the 2600 version wasn’t as stripped down
as some games of the time tended to be. It even included some extra features
such as the ability to temporarily ‘kill’ Evil Otto, although he always
returned.

Berzerk was quite a hard game, even for the time, to complete. It has 65,536
rooms (in a 256x256 grid) and 1024 actual maze layouts. The walls of the
maze were electrified, so touching them would result in instant death,
although they also handily killed the robots, leading to the strategy of luring
the robots into them. To get maximum points, the player would have to kill
every robot in the maze before escaping. When the game starts, there is only
a short interval before the enemy robots begin their assault on the player,
resulting in a lot of early deaths.

The robots themselves were quite stupid, and whether this was on purpose to
give the player a chance, or the result of poor A.I. programming is unclear.
However, the robots would often kill each other or themselves by running
into each other or the walls, or shooting each other… or even colliding with
Evil Otto. However, as the player’s score progresses, the robots would
change colors and therefore required more direct hits to be killed. After 5000
points, Otto would double in speed, thus significantly ramping up the tension
in the game and pace that it had to be played at.

Berzerk was another of my favorite games as a child. My friends and I would

be convinced that we had all kinds of winning strategies, such as firing at
walls with a robot on the other side to lure them to their deaths. Of course all
this accomplished was annoying my parents as the laser blast noise mixed
with the reverberation of it hitting the walls was quite shrill and irritating. I
never once made it out of the maze (or even close) but I loved clearing the
screens of robots and instead made it my mission to hunt them all down and
destroy them.

This game is another bona fide classic and popular culture references to it are
abundant. Futurama referenced it in several episodes, most famously in Fear
of a Bot Planet, the robot police officers exclaim, “Get the humanoid!” and
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”. It is also referenced in My Name Is Earl, The
Simpsons, and Newsradio. The king of MMORPGs, World of Warcraft, even
has a reference to it in the form of Gnomish Alarm-O-Bots who yell,
“Intruder alert!” in Otto’s robotic voice when attacked.
 CENTIPEDE
Written by Atarisoft
©1982 Atari, Inc.

Centipede was released into the arcades in 1981 and was designed by the
legendary Ed Logg. As I have mentioned already, Atari famously never
credited their programmers for their work – something that I am trying to
rectify by crediting everyone involved in the games in this book. However,
the true authorship of the 2600 version of Centipede alludes me, and all
attempts at finding them have thus far proven unsuccessful.

The home console version plays much like its arcade counterpart. You play
as an elf-like character (as depicted on the box art) in a cape, but are
represented on the 2600 as a single square. In the arcades, the play field was
littered with mushrooms, and alas, these too were just squares due to the
2600’s poor resolution. A centipede starts at the top of the screen and moves
left to right, coming down a row if it reaches either the edge of the playfield
or an obstacle. The player can shoot these obstacles to lengthen the time that
the centipede takes to reach the bottom (and kill you if it touches you), but
this is time you should be concentrating on taking the centipede itself down.
The centipede itself is segmented and a hit on any of these parts turns the
segment into a mushroom, sending the separate pieces to continue down the
screen independently. Other enemies include spiders and fleas (who leaves
mushrooms in their path). Scorpions poison the mushrooms which send the
centipede hurtling toward the player should it come into contact with one.

Aside from the graphics, the first omission you might expect would be the
controls. The player character in the arcade was controlled with a track-ball
which could spin in all directions and allow for a high region of movement
and precision. For most gamers of the time, this would be true, unless you
were one of the lucky owners of Atari’s Trak-Ball peripheral. I say lucky, in
this case, but truth be told, there were very few games that actually supported
it, making it an early example of an expensive add-on with a small software
library to support such a purchase. Of course, if you didn’t have a Trak-Ball,
you could still control the game using a joystick.

I, of course, only ever had a single joystick and no other fancy peripherals, so
I experienced the game not necessarily how the designers intended it. Even
back then I couldn’t really get past the horrendous graphics compared the
arcade original. This was a time when I was quite used to games not looking
the same on my TV as they did down at McMullen’s Funland in Carnlough,
and could reconcile the fact that I would not be getting the visual splendor
that cost 10p a go. Centipede, on the other hand, just didn’t seem to work in
console form. Aside from the graphics, the arcade favored a portrait
orientation that gave more time before the centipede made its way down the
screen. Add this to the fact that the blocky graphics seemed to take up more
screen real estate than the high-resolution (for the time) original, and the
game seemed less enjoyable all-round.

Looking at it now, I have to give the programmers credit for cramming in as

much as they could and for doing their best with what they had. It moved
fast, and was fairly colorful, although the screen does look a little busier than
the arcade.
 COMBAT
Written by Larry Wagner & Joe Decuir
©1977 Atari, Inc.

There was once a time, long ago, when a new console shipped with a ‘pack-
in’ game. In today’s World, this is almost a thing of the past, with the notable
exception of Nintendo’s most recent hardware. The advent of the PlayStation
meant buying an expensive console and a game, or in the case of the PS2,
you even had to buy separate memory cards. But once upon a time, the pack-
in was expected, and Combat was the very first of these.

Written by Larry Wagner and Joe Decuir, and released with the VCS in 1977.
Combat was not just a stripped down arcade game, but an original property
boasting numerous gameplay variations. It was commonplace on early box
art to claim to have dozens of ‘video games’ on each cart, but in the case of
Combat, it was actually somewhat true. Not mere difficulty variations or
minor differences via the Atari’s hardware switches, Combat’s gameplay
could be based on tank, biplane, and jet warfare, which all did play and
control differently.

The tank games consisted of moving the slow-moving armor around a screen
filled with obstacles and walls. The main mode was simply a classic tank
game, with each player controlling their own tank on either end of the screen
that can move, rotate and fire. You moved around the playfield until the time
ran out, whereupon the player with the highest score would win. Tank Pong,
however added the dynamic of shots that could bounce off the walls, with
scoring depending on direct hits or billiard hits, depending on the selected
mode. You could even choose from various mazes or an empty playfield.

Biplanes, unlike tanks, had three modes of fire – guided missiles, unguided
missiles, and machine guns. The gameplay itself remained the same player
versus player style, although even this had several variations. You had the
option of a one on one game, or grouping two or three planes that moved and
fired in tandem against progressively harder (and larger) enemies, such as
tandem enemies or a large bomber. Instead of having mazes and obstacles on
your playfield, the game played out in the skies with clouds that could be
flew through, temporarily hiding your plane from your opponent.
The jets were similar to biplanes, with the same options and playfield type,
but with a more limited selection of weaponry. This variation in play-type,
however, along with the multiple options within the sub-games themselves
made for an extremely re-playable game and a perfect title to show off
Atari’s brand new console.

Thinking back to what games were available in 1977, Combat is quite a

staggering showcase of design and engineering. The graphics are colorful and
represent quite faithfully what the programmers intended. Not only that, but
the options are staggering, and represent the brilliant coding and design work
that went into squeezing this launch title onto an 8K ROM cartridge. Keep in
mind that this was before anyone had figured out how to truly get the most
from the 2600, and only Pong was derivative. Almost every game invented a
genre (like Adventure!) and while Combat may look familiar now, in 1977 it
was unique.

It’s actually shocking how good Combat still plays today. The controls are
tight, albeit simple, and the graphics, while in some cases merely functional,
are still decent representations of the actual vehicles. I admit that I have a
hard time separating myself as someone with a modern critical eye, and the
pre-teen who challenged everyone he knew to a biplane war. I still maintain
that I was never beaten, although my Uncle Seamus still claims to remember
things differently.

Combat is easily my favorite from all of the Atari VCS (nee 2600) launch
titles, and one I absolutely would still recommend to this day. Larry Wagner
and Joe Decuir wrote and designed several games for Atari, but this one is
easily their best in my opinion… and that’s saying something – Joe Decuir
went on to design and patent a little communications protocol we all know
and love called USB!
 COSMIC ARK
Written by Rob Fulop
©1982 Imagic

Cosmic Ark, by Rob Fulop and published by his company, Imagic, is widely
considered to be the first ever videogame sequel, being a direct follow-up to
Atlantis. However, whether it was because of Rob’s direct involvement in the
development, or some other factor, Cosmic Ark is a substantially better game
than its precursor.

The game is split into two sections. In the first, the player, flying the titular
Ark, must fend off a meteor shower from all four sides of the screen by
pushing a direction on the joystick, which aims your defenses, and pressing
fire to launch a missile in that direction. In the second stage, a shuttle
emerges from the base of the Ark which you use to capture life forms in a
tractor beam. Fly too close to the surface and planetary defenses will fire
upon you. If hit, you lose fuel and one of your captured life forms. When the
alarm sounds signaling an impending meteor shower, the shuttle must return
to the mothership as without you, it is defenseless.

You do not start with a set number of lives, but instead have forty fuel units
which are lost due to meteor impact or shots from the planetary defenses. The
game ends with the Ark being destroyed, and like its predecessor, Atlantis, an
escaping shuttle blasts off, which at the time was seen to be a foreshadowing
of a third title in the series.

Although I was never a fan of Atlantis, Cosmic Ark is an entirely different

story. Not only are the graphics quite slick, but the gameplay itself works
quite well, and isn’t just another shallow retread of Space Invaders. How this
story follows on from an Atlantis-based storyline, I have no idea. However,
storytelling was not a strong suit of any early videogame, outside of text
based adventures.

By this point Rob Fulop had figured out how to take full advantage of the
2600 hardware and even employed a technique that exploited a bug in its
processor to create the glowing starfield – an impressive technique
considering the machine’s limitations.

Considering the number of objects on screen at any given time, it’s surprising
how little flicker occurs. Of course, it is present, but not in the headache
inducing or gameplay breaking manner that we see in many other games…
Pac-Man, I’m looking at you. Capturing a life-form and seeing them rise up
in your tractor beam is still quite thrilling and gives the sense of being an
alien invader. That in itself is another original concept… playing as the
antagonist, as opposed to the planetary defense.

All in all, Cosmic Ark deserves its place in the Atari best-selling list, and is
another example of great coding and design work from Rob Fulop.
 DAVID CRANE
Programmer: Pitfall!, Ghostbusters, Outlaw, Grand Prix, Night Trap
Co-Founder of Activision

David Crane, born in Indiana in 1953, was one of the original programmers
and game designers at Atari, Inc. in the late 70s, coding several of Atari’s
early gaming masterpieces. His first title was Outlaw in 1978, which he
promptly followed up with Canyon Bomber and Slot Machine. Frustrated at
Atari’s policy of not crediting its game designers and programmers, he left to
form Activision in 1979, along with fellow Atari alumni, Alan Miller, Jim
Levy, Bob Whitehead, and Larry Kaplan.

It was here at Activision that David created the games that he is most famous
for – Dragster, Grand Prix, Ghostbusters, and of course Pitfall! (to name but
a few). Not limiting himself entirely to the 2600, he also released games for
the Commodore 64, Atari 7800, NES, Game Boy, SNES, and PC.
David was an early critic of Atari’s reliance on scaled down versions of its
arcade catalog, and believed the resulting glut of subpar games was one of
the factors that led to the crash of 1983. He strongly believed that when
programmers learn to code for the machine’s strengths while realizing their
own IP resulted in more innovative products.

If you really want to learn about the challenges that early coders faced on the
Atari 2600, I highly recommend David’s iPhone series, Technical Wizardry.
Taking the development of Dragster and Pitfall! as a background, David
explains every trick that made these games so great, from re-utilization of
sprites with differing palettes, to masking objects scrolling off the screen.
They’re fairly cheap, and are packed with some really great information that
will be interesting to any bedroom coders, and will definitely appeal to any
wannabe homebrew heroes.

I was slightly cheeky in listing Night Trap among his many achievements,
especially as it’s not even a 2600 game, but it’s just too interesting of a title
to not mention. For those who don’t know, Night Trap is a mad FMV (Full
Motion Video) game released in the ‘90s on various formats, where the
player must watch security cameras to protect badly digitized women in
pajamas (one of which was the late Dana Plato from 80s TV show, Diff’rent
Strokes) from an intruder. The game was wrongly accused of misogyny
(you’re protecting the women, not stalking them as some tabloids claimed),
but was rightly accused of being total rubbish.

However, aside from his 2600 glories, David also created a series of
Simpsons games, best of which is my old favorite, Bart Vs. The Space
Mutants, not to mention the brilliant Little Computer People (pictured) for
the Commodore 64.
 DEMON ATTACK
Written by Rob Fulop
©1982 Imagic

Marooned on the ice planet of Ho… I mean Krybor, you must defend
yourself from legions of demons attacking from above. That age old story
again. Fighting on ice planets against demons. In case you didn’t know,
Demon Attack is basically a Galaxian clone, although it more closely
resembles Taito’s Phoenix – so much so that it prompted a lawsuit from Atari
who had purchased the home conversion rights.

It mattered not, of course, as Demon Attack went on to be a huge hit for

Imagic, and is one of the best-selling Atari 2600 titles of all time, having sold
a whopping two million copies, placing it sixth. Coded by Imagic founder,
Rob Fulop, the game is another slick single-screen shooter, although
originality was hardly its strong suit.

Each wave brings new demon formations and weapons such as long
streaming lasers and cluster bombs. By wave five the demons divide into
smaller creatures that break formation and dive at the player craft (like the
aforementioned arcade hit).

These waves and formations add some value and interest to the game, but it
only highlights the rampant theft that was commonplace in the early
videogame industry as it is obviously a carbon copy of Galaxian. Invading
space craft become demons in name alone in most cases, and original titles
were born.

However, if you must steal, steal from the best, which Demon Attack
certainly did. Like its forebears, the game is a slick, addictive little fixed
shooter, although it would have benefitted from a “boss” level such as a
mothership or wave ‘X’ larger enemy. Despite the wave-based play and
variations on weaponry, the game still feels like a repetitive shooter, albeit a
very competent one.

The graphics are functional, and leave little to complain about, but hardly
break new ground. The fact that this game was such an enormous hit for
Imagic goes some way to explain the gaming cultural landscape of the time,
and indicates that Space Invaders and its many clones and knock-offs reigned
supreme.

Playing the game now, it’s a decent, but hardly original shooter. However, in
its defense, the game is extremely well coded, and the controls are smooth
and responsive. Not every game on the 2600 had to be a trend-setter or genre
defining title, and Demon Attack goes a long way to show that.
 DIG DUG
Written by Atarisoft
©1983 Atari, Inc.

Dig Dug was an arcade game originally released in 1982 by Namco, where
you as the titular Dig Dug must eradicate underground-dwelling monsters by
inflating them with a foot pump until they pop, or luring them under falling
rocks and debris. Enemies come in two varieties, round red monsters called
Pookas, and fire breathing dragons called Fygars. Atari acquired the license
from Namco and ported it to every platform under the sun, from the 2600 to
the TI-99.

Considering how old the original arcade game now is (31 years at the time of
writing), it still looks amazing, with small but colorful and well defined
sprites. And more importantly, it’s still fun, and quite challenging. The sad
news is that very little of this made it over to the 2600 cartridge. The graphics
in general are pretty woeful, even keeping in mind the 2600’s limitations.
The screen itself is colorful, but gone is the dirt effect that reminds the player
of the subterranean setting, replacing it with ugly horizontal lines. The sprites
themselves are monochrome and due to the lack of hardware sprites in the
system, flicker quite badly, even when there aren’t many on-screen at that
moment.

The action moves very slowly, and so, gone is the final piece of what made
the arcade game so great… the challenge. In my replay I breezed through the
first ten levels, turning off the game before even taking a single hit. While it
may seem cheap to criticize the graphics of a 2600 game, remember that this
was later in the system’s life (1983), and by now, many codies had figured
out graphical tricks to squeeze as more out of the machine than had
previously been thought possible.

The animations also smack of laziness as the pumping effect of the enemies
swelling up has been replaced by a crude and flickering stretched image of
the original sprite before simply disappearing. It’s probably unfair to criticize
this also, as the limitations of the console and the cartridge had a lot to do
with original game omissions, but as this is such an integral part of gameplay,
I would have included some separate animations for it.

Now, I admit, I didn’t play Dig Dug on the 2600 at the time of release, but I
did play it in the arcades. Looking back at both versions now I get to see the
game minus the rose tinted glasses, and can see the faults of the port. The
original game itself remains a classic, in my opinion, but it’s a shame that
Atari didn’t spend more time and invest more energy in this home version.
 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
Written by Howard Scott Warshaw
© 1982 Atari, Inc.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial almost killed an entire genre. In 1982, Atari, Inc.
thought they had scored a coup when they secured the rights to the World-
wide smash hit movie of the same name. Negotiations ended in July of 1982
and came with the stipulation that it had to be released for Christmas that
same year. That meant to get the carts ready for production and into stores,
the development time was limited to a mere 5 weeks. Even back then, this
was an impossible task.

Howard Scott Warshaw had been personally selected by Steven Spielberg

himself after seeing the results of his Raiders of the Lost Ark game, who
pitched an innovative graphic adaptation of the film. Spielberg was cold to
the original design, instead favoring a simple maze game. Warshaw,
undeterred, decided to proceed with his original idea of guiding E.T. around a
playfield looking for three pieces of his telephone (which were randomly
scattered throughout various pits) to phone home. Upon doing so, the player
would have a set amount of time to make it to the spaceship. In hindsight, he
might have been better off with a simple Pac-Man clone after all.

The game was famously an unmitigated disaster, and one of the biggest
commercial failures in video-gaming history. Millions of cartridges were
produced, and although it is mind-bogglingly one of Atari’s best-selling
games ever, the returned and unsold carts led to Atari’s massive financial
losses of 1983 and 1984, and contributed to the crash of 1983 that almost
sunk the entire industry. As the legend goes, millions of unsold cartridges
were buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and encased in
concrete.

Prior to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Warshaw had spent seven months

developing Yars’ Revenge, and 6 months on Raiders of the Lost Ark. He had
reportedly accepted the project with a five week deadline for the challenge
alone (although the $200,000 payment plus expenses paid trip to Hawaii
might have sealed the deal), and maintains to this day that he created a good
game considering the short development time. Whether he had five days or
five years he should understand something… he did not create a good game.

In 1982, however, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was the most sought after
Christmas present, such was the hype surrounding the game, and popularity
of the movie. The New York Times even ran a piece on how movie
adaptations were becoming an increasingly profitable source of income for
video game companies. The game, of course, was mauled critically, and for
good reason. Setting aside the lame plot and lousy visuals, players were
treated to an almost unplayable and frustrating mess upon starting the game.
Falling into any of the game’s pits where the phone pieces were randomly
dropped probably caused more joysticks to be smashed in frustration that
year than any other game. Escaping these pits required such pixel perfect
jumping skills that most gamers simply turned the game off, many going as
far as to return their copy to the store. In fact, this game actually caused
retailers to demand official return policies from publishers, such was the
dissatisfaction from consumers.

The price of carts dropped from a disgraceful $49.95 to under a dollar within
weeks. While Atari netted $25 million in sales, their loss is estimated at $100
million. Out of 4 million produced, 3.5 million went unsold or were returned.
In September 1983, it was reported that between ten and twenty trucks
pulling semi-trailers full of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial cartridges left an Atari
storehouse in El Paso, Texas and headed for Alamogordo, New Mexico,
where the contents were crushed and buried in a landfill. This story is
regarded by some as an urban legend, with Warshaw himself dismissing
these reports as speculation. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is not a great game,
but its listing on GameTrailers as the second worst video game of all time is
hardly fair. The game has simply become the poster child for shoddy movie
tie-ins and easy joke when referring to crappy games. While it is undoubtedly
bad, there are much worse, and much more offensive titles out there more
deserving of the bad press.
 FROGGER
Written by APh Technological Consulting
©1982 Parker Brothers

Put simply, Frogger needs no introduction. Released in the arcades in 1981

by Konami, Frogger has appeared on almost every gaming platform ever in
various guises, and has spawned numerous sequels and revamps. However,
none come close to the simple, but addictive delight of the original game.

Should I even bother to explain the game? It seems so ubiquitous that even
my technophobe Mother could explain in great detail how it plays. You start
at the bottom of the screen and you guide a frog past obstacles and hazards to
reach the top of the screen. Do this five times, and the playfield changes to a
faster, and therefore more difficult, level. Your first peril is crossing a busy
street, then you must navigate a river with flowing logs, to reach your nest,
which may or may not contain an alligator.
Frogger is so famous that it has been parodied and referenced in popular
culture for years and is instantly recognizable. There is even an episode of
Seinfeld named after the game (“The Frogger”) in which George Costanza
(Jason Alexander) must save a soon to be switched off Frogger arcade
cabinet as his initials still sits at the top of the scoreboard. The episode
culminates in George guiding the machine, rigged to a portable power source,
across the street, with the overhead camera view mimicking the hapless
frog’s actual in-game plight.

Punk bands Bad Religion and Lagwagon have both recorded Frogger themed
songs. Lagwagon have a track on their B-sides album, Let’s Talk About
Leftovers, where the bass player plays the theme song. Bad Religion took it a
step further and have a song on their debut album, How Could Hell Be Any
Worse, titled “Frogger” where singer Greg Graffin laments that he is
“playing Frogger with [his] life”.

So, what about the Atari 2600 port? Developed by Parker Bros. and released
in 1982, Frogger on the 2600 was a surprisingly faithful and slick version.
Taking into consideration the technical and graphical limitations of the base
hardware, this home port is a wonder of coding magic. A lot of fast moving
sprites have been squeezed onto the screen, and the play area is colorful and
detailed. With a lower resolution for display than the original arcade board,
it’s surprising that the entire playfield was so accurately represented.

The one flaw that is noticeable upon start is the flickering logs that pass on a
single line when an edible bonus flea is layered on top of them. When this
extra sprite is added to that line, the entire line flickers, although this is
entirely forgivable considering that they managed to get this feature of the
original game in there at all. On modern machines, sprites can be layered and
moved on this layer to prevent interference with background layers, and are
handled by a special GPU – these are known as hardware sprites. The 2600
did not have this feature, and it took some fancy coding to get around this. In
the case of Frogger, the machine would quickly ‘flick’ between two separate
layers – one showing logs, and one showing a flea, causing the onscreen
flicker to happen.

Frogger is considered one of the most famous and recognizable games of all
time, and between 1984 and 2013 alone has had 27 sequels on all modern
consoles, PCs and mobile devices. However, even though I did enjoy the
2.5D adventures in Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge, the original will always
be the best.

Fun fact: Only two scores on record have beaten George Costanza’s fictional
score of 860,630 points. They are Michael Smith’s 2012 score of 970,440
which beat the previous high score of Pat Laffaye’s 896,980 from 2009.
 GHOSTBUSTERS
Written by David Crane
©1984/1989/1992 (Europe) Activision

I should say right from the start that Ghostbusters is one of my favorite
movies of all time. I was just old enough to see it in the cinemas upon release
and “get it”, kicking off my lifetime love of Bill Murray. Nowadays we
expect two things from movies we love: One, there will be a game (and toys,
and comics, and Happy Meals, and… etc.), and two, that game will suck on a
level that will make you question if there is any good in humanity left.
Fortunately, that was not the case with the first Ghostbusters game.

Designed by David Crane, originally on the Commodore 64, in 1984, then

ported to every home computer and console of the era (such as the Sinclair
Spectrum, Atari 800, MSX, Amstrad CPC), the game went on to sell in the
millions and heading straight to the top of the charts. Despite average to
decent reviews, especially in the UK where home computers flourished more
readily than consoles, the game was a bona fide smash hit for Activision, and
another winner for Crane.

However, it wouldn’t be until 1989 that a version would be developed for the
Atari 2600. Activision shelved the game due to the system’s age and
diminishing sales, and it wasn’t until 1992 that British publisher, Salu,
released the game in Europe under their name, long after Atari had officially
ended support for the system. Licensing issues also have prevented the game
from being included on various Atari 2600 compilations that have been
released for modern systems.

So, how does the game stack up to the other versions, you ask? Well, not bad
at all, surprisingly. The graphics have that later in lifespan higher-definition
look, as opposed to the blocky sprites of early titles. The controls were
always pretty simple, despite the game being cunningly deep. Upon start you
pick the items that you will take into the level with you, and pick your
destination on the map screen.

If you have packed your ghost vacuum, you will suck up stray ghosts while
driving to your destination. Honestly, I always liked this section – in any
version – but I did acknowledge that it is more of cool interlude than actual
game level, such was its lack of challenge. However, if it lulled you into a
false sense of security, the next level would change all that.
Upon arrival at your destination you now control two Ghostbusters who must
place a trap on the ground, and then fire their proton accelerator packs
horizontally into the air. The player on the left fires up and to the right, and
the player on the right fires up and to the left. You can now move each player
left and right with the joystick to decrease the containment area before
pressing fire and releasing the trap. If you had contained the ghost correctly,
they would be caught in the trap, ready for imprisonment back at
Ghostbusters HQ. Of course, the ghost is always Slimer, so something is
amiss if you are charging some poor sucker for his capture over and over.

As I stated before, the graphics are actually quite good. Whereas the game
looked fairly crude on machines such as the Commodore 64, here they stand
out as a testament to what the 2600 could actually achieve. The controls work
quite well, and the game moves at a decent pace. All in all, not a bad
conversion, and a welcome addition to the latter end of the Atari 2600 library.

Fun facts: Ernie Hudson, who played Winston in the movies, said, “My kids
really hated [the NES game]. They thought it sucked.”

The NES game was redeveloped by Japanese software house, Micronics, and
had some awful (but typical for the times) spelling and grammar errors. The
end of game message read:

Conglaturation!!!
You have completed a good game.
And proved the justice of our culture.
Now go and rest our heroes!

A reference to this text can be read on a monitor in the Ghostbusters HQ in

the Xbox 360/PS3/PC version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
 GOLF
Written by Atarisoft
©1980 Atari, Inc.

Golf, as an actual sport is something that I simply can’t abide. Ranking it just
under tennis, it is probably one of the greatest wastes of time perpetrated on
the World by the Scottish. I hate seeing it on TV, and I refuse to remember
the names of any players not linked to a videogame. Speaking of which, golf
is a brilliant sport to play from the comfort of your living room. It’s not about
laziness, as, let’s face it, most golfers zip around in carts and don’t even get
their own clubs out of the bag. But, just in terms of sport to videogame
translations, golf works surprisingly well. From PGA Tour to Tiger Woods
13, gamers who wouldn’t be seen dead in plaid flock to the digital courses.

The first attempt at a videogame version of the sport, Golf, by Atari is quite
decent. The game features a single course played over nine holes. The play
area is green, and is surrounded by blue, with hazards scattered liberally
throughout each single screen ‘hole’. On some difficulties, balls that go out
of bounds stay there and must be played back in, whereas on other
difficulties, the ball sticks to the edge of the play area.

The player only uses one club, so all that pretending you know what each
club is used for is rendered unnecessary, although, to be fair, modern games
pretty much act like a caddy and prompt you to the point where choosing
another club is an exercise in futility. A nice feature is the variable powered
shot that is determined by the length of time you hold in the fire button. This
was fairly original back in 1980, and gives the player a large degree of
freedom for each stroke.

On most screens the goal is to get a hole in one. However, for the larger hole,
your aim is to land the ball on the green. The game then switches to a view
from the green, rendered as a light green circle, with a black dot representing
the hole itself. Once the ball reaches the hole, you move on to the next one.

While the graphics look blocky and simple at first glance, the sport is
surprisingly well represented, especially considering the limitations of the
hardware and the fact that video-gaming was in its infancy. The
aforementioned PGA Tour was the leading golf sim on the PC during the
‘90s, which later became Tiger Woods PGA Tour on various platforms, but
this precedes it by over ten years, and yet little was omitted with the obvious
exception in improved graphical fidelity. Over the years, varying clubs, more
courses, and factors like wind were taken into consideration, but as an early
version of the sport, Golf does a surprisingly good job.

Playing by yourself was fun enough, but playing against a friend is where the
title really shone. Playing against friends added to the pressure of taking each
shot, and as a competitive multiplayer title, Golf was up there with Outlaw
and Combat. Even playing today, Golf isn’t a bad game at all, and worth
another look if you haven’t got your virtual putt on for some time.

It’s also surprisingly hard to get details on this old game. I wanted to credit
every programmer that I could, but was unable to ascertain the developer for
this title.
 HOME RUN
Written by Bob Whitehead
©1978 Atari, Inc.

Home Run was an early original sports title for the 2600 by Activision co-
founder (and then-Atari employee), Bob Whitehead. It’s notable in that it
wasn’t based on a coin-op, and also for not being called Baseball, as would
have been expected. As it wasn’t a simulation of the full sport, the name
Home Run was used instead.

I have a confession to make, which will make me slightly unpopular with my

American jock friends… I don’t have a clue about baseball. I have no idea
what causes sides to switch, and have a very limited working knowledge of
the game. While it is fun to play (I hear), it is enormously boring to watch,
and not having been born in the US, I don’t see the massive appeal – much
like how Americans don’t care for Soccer (i.e. Football outside of America).

Appreciation of the sport isn’t necessarily always important. For instance, I

hate golf, but have wasted numerous hours on Tiger Woods PGA Tour. Same
for Football, but I have played every single Madden game of the last fifteen
years. My favorite sports, hockey and soccer translate exceptionally well,
NHL 13 and FIFA 13 being popular in my house currently. Unfortunately the
sport of baseball does not work as a videogame in my opinion, and never has.
Home Run can attest to that.

When modern consoles and PCs can’t produce a decent baseball game, the
poor Atari 2600 had no chance. While I do like some of the “sports lite”
games such as NBA Jam and FIFA Street, the stripped down mechanics in
Home Run just feel too much like a racing game being displayed on a
calculator.

The graphics are primitive at best, but that can be forgivable if the gameplay
is up to snuff. Unfortunately it isn’t. The reason I know very little about the
sport is because it’s as complex as explaining soccer’s offside rule to my
girlfriend. Here, the game is reduced to pitching and hitting, with the
complexity of the game left mainly untouched. I do know what a fly-ball is,
and for one, that is not represented here. Even your fielders move in a stilted
fashion and cannot pass balls between themselves. Hits to straightaway
centerfield (this had to be explained to me) result in automatic home runs.

It could be argued that I wasn’t the target audience for this game. However, a
good game is a good game, no matter whether the subject is familiar or not –
look at the Madden franchise’s popularity in Europe where the sport it
represents barely exists at all, or FIFA’s popularity in the United States. I
think what holds Home Run back is that it just isn’t very good, and does a
poor job representing the sport in digital form… even for an early title.
 HOWARD SCOTT WARSHAW
Programmer: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Yars’ Revenge

Howard Scott Warshaw is one of the programming legends from Atari, Inc.’s
early 80s days, releasing what are arguably the best and, ironically, worst
games for the system. Born in 1957 in Colorado, HSW was raised in New
Jersey and attended Tulane University, graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree
in Math and Economics.

His first game for Atari, Inc. was, in my humble opinion, one of the very best
on the system, and definitely one of my favorite games of all time… Yars’
Revenge. His success with this title led him to be chosen to develop what
would become famous as the World’s very first movie license tie-in, Raiders
of the Lost Ark. This game, also enormously successful, both critically and
commercially prompted Steven Spielberg to ask Howard personally to
develop the game based on his current hit movie, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
Yars’ Revenge, with its famous grammatical error right in the title, began life
as an adaptation of the arcade game, Star Castle, but hardware limitations led
Howard to redesign the game as an original concept involving mutated
houseflies defending the World from an alien attacker. In the days when plot
was merely a note in the instruction manual, that admittedly no kid in the
World ever read (a spurious “fact” that I am basing on my own history with
manuals), the “hows” and “whys” mattered not. The success of this game
gave Howard the opportunity to make his subsequent movie tie-ins for
exponentially increasing financial rewards.

Howard also produced the game, Saboteur, post E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,
which was re-adapted into a game based on the TV show, The A-Team.
Neither version were released officially. In 2004, video game enthusiasts
produced Saboteur cartridges, with Howard’s blessing, and released them for
sale at game expos. Howard was even in attendance at many expos, signing
the cartridges.

After Atari’s much publicized collapse, Howard published several books,

including The Complete Book of PAN, a guide to a card game of the same
name, and Conquering College, where he discusses his techniques for
academic success that allowed him to graduate a year early, saving on tuition
fees.

Of course, Howard is most famous for developing the game ‘credited’ for
Atari’s financial implosion in 1983, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which he
developed in a mere five weeks. Howard has maintained that he made a
“good game” considering the time constraints. It would be hard to argue that
Yars’ Revenge makes up for the thousands of Christmas’s ruined when E.T.
The Extra-Terrestrial was fired up for the first time.

In 2012, Howard Scott Warshaw became a licensed psychotherapist in

California, and practices in Cupertino privately. He also remains engaged in
public speaking, and provides training around Silicon Valley.
 IKARI WARRIORS
Written by Atarisoft
©1989 Atari, Inc.

Ikari Warriors, developed by SNK and published by TradeWest in the US

and Europe, was a vertically scrolling shooter (read: Commando clone) that
utilized rotary joysticks, and was the first game to do so. Games such as Ikari
follow-up, Victory Road and Forgotten Worlds also used this system, leading
to disappointing conversions where this peripheral would be unavailable.

Designed by Keiko Iju, players assumed the roles of Ralf & Clark (or outside
of Japan, Paul and Vince) who must take on a Neo-Nazi regime and eliminate
them before reaching the fictional village of Ikari (Japanese for ‘fury’). Our
heroes have limited bullets, another first for run and gun games, but with
ammo scattered liberally throughout the play area, not to mention the ability
to commandeer tanks, the odds are still heavily on your side.

Turning the rotary joystick turned the player on-screen and allowed you to
fire in that direction. The handy thing about this is that you could move in
one direction and fire in another, which definitely helped if enemies snuck up
behind you. Of course, this would have to go for the 2600 conversion, and to
be fair, every home port of the game.

Although the arcade game surfaced in 1986, most ports were released (on
everything from the NES to the Atari ST) in 1987. However, the 2600
version didn’t appear until 1989, begging the question, “Why?”. Many late
releases for the 2600 were from Atari’s own arcade properties, but the fact
that Ikari Warriors was an SNK game only makes the release all the more
confusing.

The graphics, in comparison to other 2600 peers, aren’t bad at all. Colorful
and detailed, they would be the best looking game of 1982 had the game been
released seven years earlier. As a game released near the end of the decade,
Ikari Warriors, is more likely to suffer from comparisons to its many other
ports, and even the ZX Spectrum version looks mightily superior. While it
may not be fair to compare 2600 titles to versions on other platforms, by
1989 it was no longer the little machine that could, and was officially
considered ‘retro’.

Gone is the two player co-operative play, a main selling point of most other
versions. Pushing a joystick direction before firing is awkward, but
understandable given the lack of a rotating stick, and all conversions were
prone to this. But the movement feels awkward, more so than other versions,
and more so than other similar games on the 2600. Berzerk, for instance, had
a better feel several years earlier.

It’s hard to love Ikari Warriors on the 2600. The machine was still selling in
the late 80s, so games were being released, at least in the United States. But it
was very much in decline and definitely showing its age. While Ikari
Warriors isn’t a terrible game, it suffered from new-school game design
mechanics being stuffed into an old-school platform.
 JUNGLE HUNT
Written by Mike Feinstein and John Allred
©1983 Atari, Inc.

Jungle Hunt is another game that easily sits in my personal Top 10 list for the
Atari 2600, but it isn’t as well-known as other similar games such as Pitfall!,
although there are some similarities. Released by Taito in the arcades in
1982, and originally known as Jungle King (and even Jungle Boy at one
point), Jungle Hunt had a troubled development. After a lawsuit by the Edgar
Rice Burroughs estate for similarities to the Tarzan franchise, the player
character morphed from a man in a loincloth (replete with Tarzan yell) to a
mustachioed explorer in a safari suit and pith helmet.

Charged with rescuing your girlfriend from hungry cannibals, you must guide
your explorer through four sections, each with unique gameplay styles before
being rewarded with the phrase, “I love you!” and heading right back to the
start with a higher difficulty level. In the first scenario you must swing from
vine to vine before fighting off crocodiles while swimming in a river. You
could attack with a knife, and must return to the surface periodically for air.
Bubbles rising from the bottom of the screen could trap you, raising you to
the surface, and leaving you powerless if you happened to touch an awaiting
crocodile. If you survive this section you will have to run up the side of a
volcano jumping over various sized boulders before saving your girlfriend
from being lowered into a cauldron by the cannibals.

Supposedly you are swinging on ropes, not vines, but as I’m less concerned
about a lawsuit from the Burroughs estate, I will say that ropes hanging from
trees in the jungle is ridiculous. That’s like Alex Raymond, creator of Flash
Gordon suing the Burroughs estate for John Carter being an out and out rip-
off of his own seminal sci-fi classic. But I digress.

Whether you’re a jungle man or explorer, swinging on ropes, fighting

alligators or crocs, it doesn’t take away that Jungle Hunt is a brilliant game. I
was shocked when I fired it up again to see just how good it still plays. The
graphics are excellent… colorful, smoothly animated, and they really
represent exactly what they attempt to portray.
The different sections of the game really lends itself to making the entire
package feel much more of a value for money purchase. Some games relied
on single concepts (Kaboom!, I’m talking about you) but Jungle Hunt, while
not having four full games in it, definitely uses every byte of memory and
packs in as much content as possible.

The game is just so tightly designed, and I give the credit to Taito for that.
But Mike Feinstein and John Allred’s conversion was superb and they left
nothing out. This was another game that, along with Yars’ Revenge, never got
old for me. In an age when space shooters and maze games were the norm,
the jungle setting was also quite unique, sharing a location with Kangaroo,
and only a few others.

In an age when Resident Evil 5 can be called racist, Jungle Hunt gets away
with murder. I’m sure nobody intended any offense, but showing tribes of
cannibals in deepest, darkest Africa is not subject matter that anyone would
attempt anymore. To these young eyes, Jungle Hunt was an original and fun
game, full of adventure, and really gave the impression that you were
exploring an untamed land. The distinct gameplay styles are all quite fun, and
get increasingly more challenging as you progress. The game is supremely
replayable. The difficulty is such that it is challenging, but never cheap.
For some years I had the game confused with Pitfall!, which I had never
played at the time of its original release. Many games (and even consoles)
received different names in Europe than the US and Japan (for instance
Contra was called Gryzor over there, and the Sega Genesis was known as the
Sega Megadrive – its original Japanese name) and my original assumption
was that Pitfall! was simply renamed for a different market. Obviously that is
not the case, but Jungle Hunt’s relative obscurity led me to wonder if it was
just known as a different name in the US.

This is definitely a game I recommend, and whether you have knew it or not
from back in the day, you should give it a go now. You won’t be
disappointed.
 KABOOM!
Written by Larry Kaplan and David Crane
©1981 Activision

Some things in life are neither fair, nor make any sense. Why does the most
delicious food make you fat? Who lets M Night Shyamalan continue making
movies? Why does country music exist? And how does a game that is
arguably the worst on the 2600 (“adult” games notwithstanding) go on to sell
over one million copies, one of only thirteen titles to do so?

The plot and gameplay can be explained in one sentence. A man in an old-
timey prison outfit (and curiously a bandit mask) drops bombs from the top
of the screen, and you must collect them before they hit the bottom or they all
blow up. While the game has that “mini-game stretched to full title” feel, its
one saving grace is that it is at least more tasteful than the sleazy “erotic”
title, Beat Em and Eat Em, which featured a similar premise.
While the graphic of the “Mad Bomber” is decent, employing the same
graphical tricks as Dragster to squeeze more out of the 2600 processor, the
gameplay itself is too shallow to be any fun at all. As a launch title in 1977 it
would have been a tough sell for me personally, but by 1981 it’s inexcusable.

The game seems more like an early Game & Watch title from Nintendo, but
sold incredibly well, somehow going on to cult status with remakes even
proposed for later consoles such as the Super Nintendo. It’s hard to review
something that would be a single game in a WarioWare title, played over a
whole three seconds, but the popularity and fame of this game somehow
confuse me as it’s basically Breakout without the bricks. It also happens to
have one of the lamest pieces of box art I have ever seen in a videogame.

All in all, Kaboom! is a poor game. I never really understood why it was so
well regarded, and it didn’t deserve to sell so well. There are many more
games that deserved to sell better, or be remembered by Atari fans.
 KANGAROO
Written by Kevin Osborn
©1983 Atari, Inc.

Kangaroo is an arcade game released by Sun Electronics in 1982, and ported

to the Atari 2600 by Kevin Osborn the following year. As a mother kangaroo,
you must rescue your Joey, who has been kidnapped by monkeys. The
game’s plot reminds me somewhat of an old TV ad for Fox’s Glacier Mints,
where a polar bear and a penguin argue over standing on the mint to cool
down. It didn’t take the invention of the internet for people to figure out that,
just like kangaroos and monkeys, polar bears and penguins did not inhabit the
same geographical regions, nor even continents.

Geological inaccuracies aside, Kangaroo is a brilliant, albeit almost

forgotten, little platformer. Across four distinct levels you start at the bottom
and must hop, jump, and punch your way to the top a la Donkey Kong, to
rescue your offspring before the time limit runs out. Monkeys throw apples
that can be jumped or punched, assuming the Big Ape hasn’t stolen your
boxing gloves.

Kangaroo has quite a high difficulty level, or at least, I thought so in my

youth. I actually borrowed the game from a friend while at Primary School
(Elementary School to my American friends) and had been told that the
second screen could not be beaten. After getting all the way to the fourth
screen that very night, I was forced to draw the proceeding screens on the
blackboard at school to prove my feat, as my friends were calling BS on my
accomplishment.

Playing again now I realize that the game moves rather slowly, and the
difficulty may be in part due to the slightly unresponsive controls. Many of
my deaths back in the day may be attributed to shoddy peripherals as opposed
to a lack of skill. Recognizing the game today as a Donkey Kong clone
doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of it. While it never garnered the cult status
of its peers, it was popular enough at the time to be made into a Saturday
morning cartoon segment for CBS’ Saturday Supercade in which kangaroos
Katy and Joey live in a zoo with their friend Sidney the Squirrel and Mr.
Friendly the zoo keeper.

Graphically it is a huge step-down from the arcade original, as looking at the

coin-op screenshots I can see that you are actually climbing a tree and
hopping along its branches. This was lost on 2600 gamers of the time, but it
doesn’t spoil the gameplay at all. Your kangaroo looks the part and is
animated decently. Even the monkey sprites do the job. It may not be
mentioned in the same breath as other classic titles on the 2600, but it will
always have a place in my heart, especially as I was the only one of my
friends who could beat it – even if they didn’t believe me.
 KLAX
Written by Steve DeFrisco
©1990 Atari, Inc.

I’ve said it before… I was always confused by the Atari 2600’s later releases.
Shortly after the sad death of my original Atari 2600, I graduated to the home
computer scene. The consoles had not been sold in stores for some time, and
game releases were a thing of the past, at least it seemed so in Europe.
However, I still saw ads ran in American comics such as Amazing Spider-
Man by Marvel for new Atari 2600 releases all the way up to the late 80s, and
seemingly the very early ‘90s. Klax was one such release, and as it would
happen, it would be the last official game released for the 2600.

Designed by Dave Akers and Mark Stephen Pierce, and released by Atari in
1989, Klax was a coin-op puzzle game that was originally conceived as a
follow-up to Tetris. However, legal disputes regarding that game meant that
Klax was released as an original title. The game involves dropping colored
blocks that fall in five separate columns onto rows beneath a pseudo-3D
board. Lining up blocks into rows of similar colors in any direction resulted
in the blocks disappearing, similar to the aforementioned Tetris. Blocks could
be stacked in the catcher five high, but if another block feel from above on a
fully stacked column, then it would fall off the screen and you lost a life.

While basically a cross between Tetris and Connect 4 (although you only had
to line up three similarly colored tiles in this game), Klax was an enormously
addictive game and a huge arcade hit for Atari. As always, ports followed.

It’s hard to understand the reasoning behind releasing this game so late in the
2600’s life, especially with the concessions that would have to be made to
make the game work at all. Gone is the pseudo-3D angle of the play area, as
well as the blocks that flipped and scaled as they made their way down the
screen. Gone is the speech, but that would be expected.

While the basic premise is still there, the game doesn’t feel right. I played a
port of this on the ZX Spectrum when it was released and there was a certain
rush and urgency to the gameplay that is somehow missing here. My guess is
that the simple puzzle game nature led them to think it was worth one more
outing for the 2600, and the result proved that the machine was just too long
in the tooth to justify any more development and publishing resources. Of
course, also by this time the original Atari, Inc. was long gone, and replaced
with various owner companies eager to exploit its history and brand appeal.

Klax was a decent coin-op, but I never really liked puzzlers in the arcade,
instead preferring co-op fighting games like Double Dragon, shooters like
Narc, and racing games like Out Run and Hard Drivin’. However, it did
make an essential home conversion title, and I played countless hours on my
Spectrum. As a 2600 title it just falls short of being interesting. It’s not
terrible, thankfully, so as a swan-song, at the very least, it’s far from being an
embarrassment. But the truth is, Klax on the 2600 is mostly only interesting
for its late in life release, and status as the final official release for a system
that defined most older gamers’ childhoods.
 LOGO
Designed by George Opperman

I should say upfront that this chapter is not in reference to Atari LOGO, the
programming language that was available in cartridge form for the Atari
400/800/XL/XE series of computers. Instead, I wanted to give an honorable
mention to arguably the most iconic company logo in gaming, and a design
that is instantly recognizable to gamers and non-gamers alike.

Hired by Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell personally, George Opperman

served as Atari’s first in-house graphic designer. After working on arcade and
pinball designs, George created the infamous “Fuji” logo, so called because it
resembled the Japanese mountain, although George’s real inspiration came
from closer to home. The logo is basically an “A” built from the Pong play
area with bent paddles on each side and the screen divider straight down the
middle.

This original logo was used on all Atari products up until 1984 when the
company was split into several parts and sold to various companies, such as
Hasbro and Infogrames. From this point, only variations on the original logo
have been used, and none have matched the brilliance of the original.

French publisher Infogrames, who gave us such non-classics as Enter The

Matrix and *NSYNC Hotline Phone and Fantasy (seriously), are now known
as Atari, and continue to use a variation of the logo, although the original is
used to trade on the early games in compilation and remake form.

Sadly, George Opperman passed away in 1985, shortly after the split of the
original Atari.
 MEGAMANIA
Written by Steve Cartwright
©1982 Activision

Megamania, another fixed shooter for the 2600, was an original game
released by Activision in 1982, and designed by Steve Cartwright. With no
backstory or plot to speak of, the game is simply another variation of the
Space Invaders theme. It is notable for being another of the best-selling Atari
2600 titles, having sold over one million cartridges.

The game was, in some ways, a pastiche of other similar titles. Pilfering
liberally from not only the aforementioned Taito classic, Megamania also
bore a striking resemblance to Sega’s 1981 title, Astro Blaster. Add to that
the lawsuit baiting similarity of the main player sprite to Star Trek’s U.S.S.
Enterprise, and Steve Cartwright appears to be some kind of early video-
gaming Fagan.
Enemies fly in scripted patterns, and the game utilizes the 2600’s natural
tendency for sprites to wrap around the screen when they leave one side,
appearing on the other. You must blast all the enemies and avoid their fire
before your ever depleting energy bar at the bottom of the screen reaches
zero.

Only the game’s enemies appear to be original in that instead of aliens or

spacecraft, they are objects such as cookies, hamburgers, diamond rings and
steam irons. This, to me, leads to a certain sense of disappointment as
fighting household objects is not inherently that interesting. While it works
fine in a quirky, surreal title such as Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum and
Commodore 64, it merely smacks of poor sprite design in this one.

While the game plays fine, the subpar graphics and basic game design really
cause me to wonder why it was such an enormous selling game. The box art
is also incredibly poor, looking like it had been slapped together by a first-
grader. While the game isn’t the worst I have played, it just isn’t as good as
some of my favorite Atari titles, but yet was enormously more successful
than most of them.

I guess Space Invader clones were all the rage back in the early ‘80s, with
Galaxians and Galaga sharing floor space in arcades with dozens of knock-
offs, but today it’s hard to see the appeal of the less famous imitators.
 MINER 2049ER
Written by Big Five Software (Bill Hogue)
©1982 Tigervision

Miner 2049er may not be the best known game for the 2600 – in fact, nobody
that I have asked about it seems to remember it at all – but I did want to
mention it for a few personal reasons. First of all, it was the inspiration for
two of my favorite games of all time, Manic Miner and its sequel Jet Set
Willy, on the 8-bit computer formats of the time, such as the ZX Spectrum,
Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. The other reason was that I was a huge
fan of the sequel, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, which also appeared on those
computer formats. Of course at the time, despite the sequel-y sounding name,
I had no idea that it was a follow up, or indeed, that the titular Bounty Bob
had starred in prior adventures.

Under the name Big Five Software, Bill Hogue produced numerous games
for the TRS-80 in the late 70s such as Attack Force, Super Nova, and Cosmic
Fighter, all clones of popular arcade games of the time. After the
discontinuation of the TRS-80 (fondly referred to as the TRASH-80) by
Radio Shack in 1982, Hogue moved development of Miner 2049er to the
Atari 800, with ports to all major platforms including the Atari 2600.

Bounty Bob, a Canadian Mountie, is on a mission to search every section of a

mine owned by Yukon Yohan (or Nuclear Ned in some versions) while
avoiding the various radioactive creatures that litter the mine. As he walks
over a section of flooring, it changes color (a la Q*Bert and Harvey
Headbanger) and to complete a level he must re-color all sections of flooring.
There are ten levels in total, a lot for platformers of the time (Donkey Kong
had four), and all must be completed before your ever depleting oxygen tank
runs out.

It’s interesting to read Bounty Bob’s backstory as I had no idea he was ever
intended as a member of the Canadian Mounted Police. From the box artwork
on this title alone he looks very much like a grizzled old prospector type, and
the backstory to Bounty Bob Strikes Back paints him more as a miner. Plus,
it’s kinda in the title…

Regardless of profession, Miner 2049er is a competent platformer that owes

more to A&F’s Chuckie Egg than to Donkey Kong, although it did come out a
year earlier, so I assume more than one plagiarist coder pilfered from its
game design wholesale. Another obvious comparison is the aforementioned
Manic Miner by coding genius, Matthew Smith, although he has stated on the
record that Hogue’s game was the inspiration for his own title.

Graphically speaking, Miner 2049er is quite pleasing. Bob is quite detailed,

although his running animation is only two frames and gives it a certain
charm as opposed to just looking odd. It takes three frames to animate
anything otherwise it just looks like two pictures flipping back and forth. This
rule does not seem to hurt Bounty Bob. The enemies are all simple blobs, so
detailed animation is not necessary – a common trick used by early
animators. Bob’s jumping animation is especially pleasing as his legs spread
when he jumps between platforms.

A platformer with ten screens was a rarity in 1982, and each level was quite
unique, but ultimately the gameplay boils down to running and jumping. I
suppose that’s the trapping of the entire genre. While the game never reached
the heights of Super Mario Bros., it was a fun little platform game with
enough charm to encourage you to look past its shortcomings.
 MISSILE COMMAND
Written by Rob Fulop
©1981 Atari, Inc.

Missile Command began life as an arcade machine designed by Dave Theurer

and released by Sega in 1980. As a base commander you must protect your
six cities from an endless barrage of incoming missile strikes using your three
anti-missile batteries. In the arcades you controlled a crosshair using a track-
ball, and had to fire at the approaching missiles, and taking into account their
speed, not to mention the speed of your own missiles, by pressing one of the
three fire buttons – one for each battery that you controlled.

On the 2600, you only had one fire button, so the notion of 3 bases that could
all fire at once was removed. However, this was one of the only concessions
to be made. Missile Command is rightly considered one of the best games of
the golden era of gaming, and the 2600 version doesn’t disappoint, and is
another great release by Rob Fulop.

Even the original coin-op wasn’t much to boast about in the graphical
department, but the 2600 recreates the arcade look and feel admirably. The
Trak-Ball peripheral was not required, and I personally only ever played it
with a joystick. The crosshairs were replaced with a single cursor, but aside
from that, everything is here.

Missiles rain from the sky and your cursor moved at just the right pace to be
both precise and effective. Never once did I feel like I had been defeated by
shoddy joystick mechanics or bad programming. The ‘feel’ of the game was
just right and Rob Fulop obviously took some care in tweaking the gameplay
to function at just the perfect pace. The feeling of the missiles approaching
your cities still makes the hair on the back of my neck standup, and panic
ensues as the final base awaits imminent destruction.

Therein lies the one criticism. With the rocket bases reduced to one for the
2600 port, your fire rate does not decrease as you are pounded with enemy
fire. This made the game harder for arcade players, and was likely to increase
the chance of spent coinage back in the day, but it also increased the tension.
This is, of course, a small criticism and doesn’t change the fact that Missile
Command is one of the best games on the 2600 and deserves its place on
Atari’s top-selling list.
 MOON PATROL

Written by Irem/Williams Electronics

©1983 Atari, Inc.

Developed by the pioneers of the scrolling shooter scene, Irem, who also
gave us such seminal titles as In The Hunt, Dragon Breed, Gunforce 2, and
the R-Type series, Moon Patrol is one of the earliest examples of the genre. It
also is one of the earliest titles to use parallax scrolling – a technique where
sections of the background scroll at different speeds giving a sensation of
depth – although the first game to do so was actually Hoei Corporation’s
Jump Bug.

Designed by Takashi Nishiyama for the arcades and released in 1982, the
game was an instant hit despite being released with several bugs, including
one famous glitch where if you shoot an alien ship as it falls, it remains on
screen with its point total. Also, occasionally you will appear to shoot an
enemy but the hit doesn’t register, although this also works in your favor
from time to time too.

The 2600 version, free from these bugs, is arguably a better version. The
graphics in the arcade are pretty gaudy and overly pink, so the scaled down
home conversion is actually a little more pleasing to look at. This is one time
when the Atari’s limitations actually benefit the home conversion. I do also
prefer the 2600’s sleek car design as opposed to the tanker look of the coin-
op.

You play as a Luna City police officer assigned to Sector Nine, the roughest
neighborhood on the planet, and home to the toughest thugs in the galaxy,
according to the manual. Along the bottom of the screen is a map showing
your location and the various checkpoints that you must reach to gain a
bonus. Getting to these checkpoints can prove difficult to even the best of
players. You must jump and shoot your way to the goal.

While not without its flaws, Moon Patrol was a game that I lost countless
hours to. It has a perfect mix of platforming (jumping over pits and
obstacles), driving (the game perpetually propels you forward), and shooting
(pressing fire launches missiles both forwards and upwards, replacing the
arcade’s dual fire buttons) that makes the game wholly unique and addicting
at the same time.

Your moon buggy has a funny animation that makes it look like it’s walking,
but this just adds to the charm. The graphics are fairly simple, but functional,
and I was never distracted by the so-so enemy design as the game moves at
such a decent pace that you never really have time to fret about such things.
Even the parallax scrolling from the coin-op made the conversion, with the
mountain range background scrolling slightly faster than the star-field, giving
a fairly decent sense of depth to the play area. While it’s no Shadow of the
Beast (Commodore Amiga), it is a nice effect and shows the level of care and
attention to detail that Atari took in porting this title to the 2600.

While the game isn’t as smooth as I remember, and the collision detection –
especially for the hazards along the moon’s surface – is definitely touchy,
Moon Patrol is still enormous fun. It’s easy to see how many games it
inspired (read: ‘was totally ripped off by’) such as Ultimate’s Lunar Jetman
on the ZX Spectrum and Imagine’s Army Moves on the Commodore 64,
which is practically a carbon copy of Irem’s original game.

I have always loved Moon Patrol as I have always liked games with crushing
difficulty. Not an unfair difficulty design to eat quarters, such as ‘bullet hell’
titles like Ikaruga, but games that require you to master the controls and
mechanics of the game, such as Dead Rising or Soldner-X on the current
generation of consoles and PCs. Anything that inspires that “just one more
go” feeling upon seeing the “Game Over” screen is a classic in my book.
Moon Patrol is one such title.
 NIGHT DRIVER
Written by Rob Fulop
©1980 Atari, Inc.

Night Driver might not look like much now, especially from a still
screenshot, but back in 1980 it was a miracle of coding genius, again from
the unstoppable Rob Fulop. While the original game (by Dave Shepperd, Ron
Milner, Steve Mayer, and Terry Fowler) was released in the arcades as far
back as 1976 and is one of the earliest examples of a first-person racing
game, the 2600 port, coming much later, was still one of the earliest driving
games, certainly on a home console (Atari’s Pole Position would not appear
until 1983).

Using the paddles to steer, and fire button to accelerate, the aim was simply
to stay on the track. Veering off into the side of the road would cause you to
lose a life and reset the car back in the center of your lane. Hazards would
stream along the side of the road, but they were mostly moot as hitting the
posts at the roadside would also result in instant ‘death’.

Although basic, certainly by today’s standards, the game is actually a

technical marvel. Every frame the processor toggles between displaying the
hazards or posts that mark the road shape, or the player vehicle. Naturally this
led to the expected screen flicker that the 2600 was famous for, but
considering what is being calculated and displayed, it’s actually quite
amazing.

The game is also incredibly difficult. Staying within the track boundaries
isn’t easy, and if you are playing a timed game, driving for the full ninety
seconds is quite a feat. With eight difficulty levels, it can go from hard to
nightmarish pretty fast.

Most home conversions were stripped down ports of the arcade originals, but
Night Driver stands out as being a title that actually added features instead of
leaving them out. Roadside obstacles such as trees and houses were added,
along with other traffic. As would be expected, given the age of the coin-op,
the original game was monochrome, with the 2600 version adding a much
needed splash of color. The view was also changed to a behind-the-car third-
person view – at least I think it’s a car! Of course, being a launch title, it still
looks enormously basic, despite the additions.
To fully appreciate Night Driver now, you must play on original hardware
with a cart and paddles. Emulators are great for discovering old gems without
dragging your 2600 out of the attic, but there is no comparison to playing it
as it was intended. It still plays surprisingly well, and if you can put aside the
sparse look you will find a title that was ahead of its time and gave the
impression of driving long before such things were commonplace.
 NOLAN BUSHNELL
Co-Founder: Atari
Founder: Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time Theaters
Designer: Breakout

Nolan Key Bushnell was born in Clearfield, Utah on February 5th, 1943.
Although raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he has
not been an active member since early in his life. He has since been described
as a “lapsed Mormon” and can be seen smoking a pipe which is inconsistent
with Mormon rules.

While working at Lagoon Amusement Park in Ogden during his High School
years he developed an interest in the midway arcade games where customers
would have to use a combination of skill and luck to win prizes. After
graduating from the University of Utah College of Engineering in 1968 with
a degree in electrical engineering, Bushnell formed the first of his many
companies, Syzygy, with future Atari co-founder, Ted Dabney. It was here
that they produced a clone of Spacewar called Computer Space, credited as
the World’s first coin-op arcade machine. However, Computer Space was a
commercial failure, due in part to the poor marketing from its manufacturer,
Nutting Associates. Undeterred, Bushnell and Dabney set out on a new
venture, this time on their own.

Having found that the name Syzygy was already in use, Bushnell and Dabney
incorporated under the new moniker, Atari, a reference to a check-like
position in the game, Go. After some initial success, namely with the game,
Pong, Atari set out to develop its own home console that would use
cartridges instead of pre-loaded software. It was this move that forced
Bushnell to sell Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for $28 million as
capital was required for the company to grow, not to mention stay afloat
during the hardware development period. By 1978 Bushnell was forced out
of the company after several disputes with Warner Communications over
company direction and a closed software strategy.

After the sale to Warner, Bushnell bought the former mansion of coffee
magnate James Folger in Woodside California, which he shared with his wife
Nancy and their eight children.

In 1977, while still at Atari, Bushnell purchased Pizza Time Theater, which
he had created, from Warner. Conceived as a place where kids could go and
play games and eat pizza, it was actually an homage to Disney. With
animatronic animals that played music, most notably mouse and band leader,
Chuck E. Cheese, the venture was also to function as a distribution channel
for Atari’s arcade games. By the end of 1983, Chuck E. Cheese (now named
after its most famous mascot) was deep in debt and suffering from major
financial problems. When the board rejected Bushnell’s proposed changes in
1984, he resigned, and the company filed for bankruptcy.

Since leaving Chuck E. Cheese, Nolan has founded several new ventures
such as Catalyst Technologies, uWink, and his most recent, BrainRush,
where he currently resides as Founder, CEO, and Chairman. All in all, Nolan
Bushnell has started over twenty companies, and is considered to be the
founding Father of the video game industry.
A Chat with Nolan Bushnell
I managed to have a quick chat with Nolan about his days at Atari, and the
state of the industry after his departure. Here’s what he had to say:

JK: Most people saw videogames as a passing fad. What made you different,
and what about those early games made you realize it would become the
enormous industry that it would be today?

NB: Games have always been part of the human existence and they tended to
follow the technology that was available, whether it was wood, paper, iron,
[or] plastic. It was only natural that computers would be the ultimate gaming
platform and continue thus until replaced by something superior.

JK: Do you regret selling Atari to Warner Communications to get the VCS
made?

NB: Every day!

JK: Do you think that Atari’s mid-80s fortunes would have been different if
you had remained at the helm? Ie. The unsustainable growth and cancelled
projects, not to mention the sub-par games that were emerging?

NB: Absolutely. Warner stopped all the innovation in the company and
destroyed the corporate culture of creativity. It was a "give me more of the
same" mentality that was absolutely destined to fail. I predicted the collapse
would happen in 1981... it surprised me that it took two more years.

JK: You have created many famous businesses and technologies, from Chuck
E. Cheese, to car Sat-Navs – what are you most proud of?
NB: Brainrush, my current project, which I think will revolutionize
education, something which I've been passionate about for years.

JK: You are referred to as the ‘Father of the Videogame Industry’ – how does
it feel to know that you created an army of bedroom coders out of gamers
who would go on to be the next wave of software developers and engineers?
(Myself included)

NB: I'm very proud, but it's not enough for me to look back on the past. I'm
always looking to the future for my passion. (But I have several sons who are
in that category)

JK: What would be your one piece of advice to anyone who wanted to be a
technology entrepreneur? My son wants to be a scientist and an engineer, but
“for himself” – ie. He doesn’t want to work for anyone who would own his
work. He is seven and has figured out that owning intellectual property and
rights is key. What would you say to him?

NB: I have that discussion with my own children regularly. As far as I'm
concerned it is a great path. But I also recognize that everyone is not
necessarily a risk taker, and that has to be respected as well.

JK: Thank you so much! It has been an honor to talk to you, and I appreciate
you taking time from your busy schedule.

NB: Thank you!

 OUTLAW
Written by David Crane
©1978 Atari, Inc.

The box art for old Atari games were always so devious. Even aside from the
fact that the painted space battles usually masked what was to be another
Space Invaders clone upon launch, the text always claimed “50 games!” and
“Two players!”. Outlaw, however, lies slightly in the claim “One player”. In
no real way is Outlaw playable with one controller. You could argue that it is,
in the sense that the game turns on and allows you to move around, it just
isn’t any fun… mainly because there is no enemy AI whatsoever. If, like me,
you received Outlaw for your ninth birthday and only had one controller, you
were basically playing a game while your friends and family ask non-stop
questions about why the “other guy” is just “standing there like a gack” (to
quote my Uncle Tony).
While there are some modes that attempt something approaching “fun” for
the single pad owning gamer, you definitely need two controllers to fully
enjoy the game. After sending the Atari owning friend who lived the nearest
on a mission to retrieve another joystick, we got to enjoy the game fully. And
what a game it was! Outlaw was, and still is, a joy to play, and the only party
game that could rival Combat. Slightly younger gamers would look to
Bomberman, Mario Kart, Goldeneye, and eventually Super Smash Bros.
(games listed in increasing age ranges) as the ultimate party games to lose
friendships over, but my friends and I got competitive first with Outlaw.

Like many 2600 games listed here, Outlaw started life as an arcade game.
Released by Atari in 1976 as a response to Midway’s Gun Fight, released the
year previously, Outlaw was a light-gun game that simulated an Old West
style fast draw duel between the player and the computer.

Of course, the game would have to be re-jigged completely for a home

release as the 2600 did not have a light-gun peripheral, although those had
been popular at that time, especially with Pong machines that usually came
with a light-gun attached. David Crane, then an Atari employee, wrote the
home conversion that was, ironically, more like Gun Fight.

Target practice modes were added, along with moving barriers between the
dueling cowboys that could be shot out. Shots could rebound off the top of
the screen which added another layer of tension and usually resulted in
strategies where one player would watch for the other to approach a zone
where they could be reached with a rebound shot, or attempt to lure them
there.

It was sad that there was no enemy AI, even in a basic form. While arcade
games thrived on multi-play, the Atari home consoles were usually played by
kids who gamed alone. This was definitely the case for me, and Outlaw just
wasn’t a fun game without another player. However, when friends came by, it
was the first game we would reach for. So, while it was limited in one sense,
it really made up for it in terms of replayability with other gamers. It’s just a
pity that it wasn’t as addicting in single player mode.
 PAC MAN
Written by Tod Frye
©1982 Atari, Inc.

Pac-Man requires no introduction. Designed by Toru Iwatani and

programmed by Toshio Kai for Namco in 1980, it was an instant smash hit
and cultural phenomenon. Having starred in countless games (of varying
quality) and TV shows, Pac-Man is ubiquitous and along with Mario, is one
of the most instantly recognizable characters in not only gaming, but
entertainment as a whole. Back in the early ‘80s, whoever was going to score
the license for conversions to home platforms basically got a license to print
money.

Fans of the arcade game were clamoring for a console version, essentially
getting their coin-op experience at home. Expectations were high, and when
Atari secured the license from Namco, they set Tod Frye to work with a goal
for a Christmas 1982 release.

Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 went on to sell over seven million copies, and as
a pack-in title, helped sell millions of hardware units also. Atari, Inc. had
scored a coup and the expensive license had proven to be a surefire winner as
they had a smash hit on their hands. The only problem was that the game
itself was a monumental failure.

Critically mauled and crushingly disappointing for anyone who received a

copy for Christmas that year, or packed in with their new console, Frye’s
game was an example of sales being indirectly proportional to the quality of
the product itself. In fact, the game was so successful despite the terrible port,
that it led to Atari’s downfall in many ways, as they chased expensive
licenses and rushed development to meet Holiday launch dates, assuming
gamers would buy any game that was a known I.P. whether it was good or
not.

Among the many problems with the game are its graphics. For one, Pac-Man
is crudely animated and doesn’t change direction when he moves up or down.
The other main problem was one that I didn’t spot right away… in the
original game, Pac-Man doesn’t have an “eye”. This is a weird addition,
graphically speaking, as it makes animating the mouth much harder as you
have less pixels to use for that.
Another problem, still on the subject of graphics, is the screen flicker. There
are actually 3 ghosts in the screenshot above, but as either they are displayed
or the ‘eyes’ graphic (when Pac-Man is powered up and eats a ghost), it
causes a headache inducing amount of screen flicker. There are too many
sprites to be displayed on screen at any time as the ghosts appear to flicker
constantly, mainly due to limited memory and an underpowered processor.

The maze stays the same after every round, which was a problem with the
coin-op original too, but this was not such an issue in the arcade where you
merely lost a quarter. In a commercial release sold at $37.95, it feels a little
cheap. All of these mistakes were rectifiable, proven by the vastly superior
Ms. Pac-Man conversion by Mike Horowitz and Josh Littlefield the
following year.

Pac-Man moves at a sluggish pace. The maze feels more claustrophobic than
it should be, and with the controls not being as tight as you would expect,
cheap deaths occur. Adding to the graphic issues, this makes for a very
shoddy piece of coding.

Although this port went on to sell over seven million copies, Atari
overestimated demand and produced twelve million, leaving five million
cartridges unsold. The game’s poor quality diminished consumer confidence
in Atari, and when the same mistake was repeated with E.T. The Extra-
Terrestrial, the end of an era was fast approaching.
 PITFALL!
Written by David Crane
©1982 Activision

Pitfall! is one of the most fondly remembered and revered titles for the Atari
2600, and introduced gamers the World over to Pitfall Harry. It also stands as
the second best-selling title for the system with four million copies sold, and
is the best-selling third-party game. Designed by David Crane, Pitfall! went
on to be his most famous creation and secured him in gaming history as an
early pioneer and coding legend.

The concept is simple. You must guide Harry through a jungle to recover
thirty two treasures within a twenty minute time period, negotiating traps,
hazards, pits, and various hostile wildlife such as snakes, scorpions, and
crocodiles. Harry can run, jump, and swing on vines in his quest for treasure.
A tunnel runs under the jungle floor which can be accessed at various points
which move Harry along by three screens. However, this tunnel is blocked at
various points by brick walls, forcing Harry to backtrack and waste time.
They are also infested with scorpions which must be avoided. A perfect score
of 114,000 can be achieved by finding all thirty two treasures without losing
any points. Hitting the rolling logs causes you to lose points, and falling into
the pits lose you a life.

In such a tightly designed game, it’s amazing to discover that David Crane
actually designed it in reverse. He wanted to create a game with a detailed
running man and coded the routine to utilize this first. Then he added in a
play area and simply added the jungle as it best explained the traps and
hazards that Harry must negotiate. The game is a marvel of coding magic as
the graphics appear to be quite high resolution, and all move very fast and
without a hint of screen flicker. With this being a common problem on the
2600, Pitfall! blew everyone away with its smooth movement and animation,
and detailed graphics. Not to mention the massively addictive gameplay.

It’s easy to see why Pitfall! is so famous and was such a massive smash hit.
It’s brilliant. Somehow I never managed to get a hold of a copy at the time,
but playing the game now is something to behold as it has aged incredibly
well, and the ‘one more try’ gameplay remains intact. After playing the game
for the purpose of this review I found myself playing it over and over,
chasing that high score.
Graphically, Pitfall! is a treat. David Crane explained the techniques used to
obtain such colorful and well animated graphics minus the dreaded flicker in
his iOS app, 2600 Magic. If you are interested in how crafty programming
can get around the inherent limitations in hardware then I recommend you
check this out. Even the backgrounds have a pleasant vibe to them, and the
sparse look for the trees is surprisingly effective. All in all, Crane managed to
cram two hundred and fifty six screens into a mere 4K using innovative
techniques such as including a polynomial counter to create the screen code
in fifty bytes. The vines were displayed as a ball then stretched and rotated to
create the swinging effect.

Considered an important game in the side-scrolling platform genre, the game,

of course, does not actually scroll. But the genre staples began here, and
Pitfall! was hugely influential on many titles that followed. The ability to
travel up and down through multiple levels of play was unique for the time,
as was the twenty minute time limit. Up until this point games were mostly
score chasers and a single game could be played in minutes. Pitfall! marked
an important transition from the arcades to home gaming, mainly as it was an
original title and not a port.

Of course sequels followed, not to mention numerous reboots and ports to

other platforms. However, none reached the heights of the original game. The
only notable remake is Pitfall 3D: Beyond the Jungle on the PlayStation, but
mainly for the fact that the main protagonist, Pitfall Harry Jr, is voiced by
actor Bruce Campbell. The game was otherwise a forgettable by-the-numbers
platformer.
 POLE POSITION

Written by Doug Macare

©1983 Atari, Inc.

Pole Position is probably the most famous racing game of all time. Released
in 1982 by Namco, the undisputed kings of the arcade racers, the game was
the first ever to feature a track based on a real racing circuit, Fuji Racetrack.
The game was manufactured Worldwide by Namco except in the United
States where it was manufactured by Atari, Inc. Namco had approached Bally
Midway with two games that year, but they went with Mappy. Pole Position,
however, went on to be the biggest game of 1983, and a huge smash hit for
Atari, Inc.
The game is considered the most important racing game of all time as it
featured many ‘firsts’ that went on to be staples of the genre, even aside from
the usage of real locations. It was the first game to feature a qualifying lap –
something that is very much common in simulation racers, but also in the
actual Formula One sport that the game is based on. The game also kicked off
product placement within games with billboards displaying Pepsi and Canon
in the Japanese version, and 7-Eleven, Dentyne, and Centipede in the
American version. The Namco version of the game also featured ads for
Marlboro and Martini & Rossi which were not included in the Atari version.

Pole Position on the 2600, written by Doug Macare, is a bittersweet affair.

On one hand the main car sprite is a stripped down version of the arcade
original and the rival race cars are crude monochrome blocks, and on the
other hand the road scrolls and curves so perfectly that you are fooled into
thinking it may actually drive just like the arcade version. While the
perception of speed is modeled accurately, the main problem lies in the
game’s difficulty. First of all, it’s too easy to drive in top gear and never
switch to low for cornering. This was a lesson I learned in public at the
arcade, with older patrons mocking my driving skill. There I was thinking
you could just corner at full speed with my foot on the proverbial gas. As it
turns out, in the 2600 version, you could.
The monochrome rival car graphic is a forgivable trade-off for the impressive
scaling to show the cars speeding toward you. This is the other problem with
the difficulty… rivals tended to start in one lane, and appear to zero in on you
as you attempted to pass, causing a crash. You have no break per se, only a
release of the accelerator, so avoiding rival cars can sometimes be a chore.

Hence the love/hate relationship I had with this game. It is really fun to drive,
and the impression it gives of a car speeding along a track really is a step
beyond anything that had come before. Pushing up and down on the stick
changed gears, as did the coin-op machine’s shifter stick, but on the 2600 this
feature is barely necessary. As long as you can avoid the rival cars, you can
happily drive for a long time in top gear. I actually forgot about that feature
when I replayed it recently, and only remembered when I thought of that
oversized gear stick on the stand-up coin-op in my local arcade.

Another slight complaint I have is in the car animation. Again, I stress the
road looks amazing, but the car itself sometimes barely changes at all. A
slight flicker on the rear tires barely gives the impression of movement and
even turning hardly registers. Only over-turning results in a car turning
animation. I would have animated each turn even if just slightly, but I assume
that the blocky presentation of the car made this difficult.

Pole Position has always been one of my favorite games and probably what
got me hooked on racing games in general. I was even such a fan that I never
missed an episode of the ridiculous Saturday morning cartoon show. While it
shared the name, it was more Scooby Doo meets Knight Rider, and didn’t
even feature Formula 1 cars.
 Q*BERT
Written by Western Technologies, Inc.
©1984 Parker Brothers

Q*Bert Qollects Quarters! Something missing from today’s videogames is

character. Nintendo and Sega continue to traipse out their back catalog of
stock characters, so we can be sure of a racing game with a Mario and/or
Sonic theme for the foreseeable future, and platform games of various
qualities from both companies. And occasionally we will get another Jak or
Ratchet, or even a lesser known attempt such as Blink or Tak. But I can’t
really remember the last time a fondly loved character was launched to any
kind of great success. In the golden age of gaming, these characters were
dime a dozen, and I don’t mean that as a bad thing.

Q*Bert was one of those characters that I felt lived beyond his game, proven
by a cameo in the recent release of the movie, Wreck-It-Ralph. I think I loved
the character more than the actual game, surrendering my coins due to the
charm of the attract screen alone.

Designed by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee in 1982 for arcades, it was Gottlieb’s
only successful videogame, being primarily pinball manufacturers. The game
is an isometric platformer where you must guide the titular character around a
triangular shaped play area resembling an M. C. Escher painting, changing
the color of each block that you land on. To clear the level, you must change
the color of each block. Naturally, enemies abound to thwart your efforts
such as Coily, a purple snake, Ugg & Wrong-Way, purple creatures that run
along the cubes, and Slick & Sam, green gremlins that revert your color
changes.

The arcade game was praised upon release for its fast gameplay, awesome
graphics, and great character design. How did the Atari 2600 port stack up?
While not perfect, Q*Bert on the 2600 is a faithful conversion that somehow
works despite the machine’s limitations. The amount of on-screen colors
possibly limits the game’s potential, especially in the display of the isometric
play area. Developers Western Technologies, Inc. used a shading technique
with vertical lines to simulate the sides of the blocks, providing the pseudo-
3D effect necessary. While it does the job, it also causes the screen to look a
little busy, even distracting. This may have been less of a problem on old
1980s TV sets, but on a high-definition screen, it looks messy. Q*Bert
himself is faithful to his arcade counterpart, as are the enemies, although with
the busier play environment, it is a little harder to keep track of all the on-
screen action.

The control method was always a sticking point for some. Although Q*Bert
moves only diagonally, you still push the joystick left, right, up and down. I
never saw this as a problem, personally, and the same control method was
used in the arcade. Some people I knew liked to twist the joystick forty five
degrees so the movements corresponded with the on-screen action, but I
preferred to just get used to it as it was intended. Not to mention the fact that
this control scheme was used in many isometric games such as Knight Lore,
Head Over Heels, and Sweevo’s World (all on Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum).

Q*Bert is a fun little puzzle/platform game and it’s a pity that the character
never developed beyond this original game, despite attempts with sequels and
remakes. The 2600 port is decent but perhaps starting to show its age, both in
concept and graphics. However, it’s still worth another look, even if just to
fall in love with the character again. And as Q*Bert himself would say,
“@!#?@!”.
 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
Written by Howard Scott Warshaw
©1982 Atari, Inc.

I mentioned previously in this book my love of the movie Ghostbusters.

While that particular cinema classic is included in my Top 10 list, Raiders of
the Lost Ark sits at the very top, a shining example of a perfect movie. What
better subject matter to make the very first ever licensed movie tie-in game
about?

Riding high on his success with Yars’ Revenge, Howard Scott Warshaw was
tasked with designing a videogame adaptation of Spielberg’s first Indiana
Jones adventure, which was released by Atari, Inc. the very same year.

The player takes control of Indy in his search for the Ark of the Covenant. To
play the game, two controllers were required… port one selects and discards
items in your inventory, and port two moves Dr. Jones. This control scheme
was unique for the time, and while it was a method for giving the player more
controls than simple movement and a single fire button, it was awkward and
shut out players with only one controller.

The game takes place in Cairo, 1936, and follows the events of the movie
fairly closely. You start in an entrance room and a marketplace, before
blasting a hole to reach the Temple of the Ancients. Two paths await inside
the Temple, each fraught with danger, but both leading to the treasure room.
Artifacts and gold found in the treasure room will come in handy later in the
game.

Next up, Indy must traverse a mesa to reach the Map Room where the
location of the Ark is revealed. Heading south you reach a Thieves Den and a
Black Market. In the Black Market you meet various nefarious characters
such as sheiks and a lunatic, and must collect more items that will assist your
progression in the game, most notably a shovel.

After you gather all the necessary items you must return to the mesa and
jump off using a parachute, a sequence I did not recognize from the movie,
but I won’t fault the game for attempting to connect the disparate scenes
somehow. Eventually entering a small hole where the Ark is located takes
you to the final sequence in the game where you must avoid more thieves
before digging up the Ark. Cue Nazi face melting, although sadly we do not
get a 2600 representation of this final scene from the movie.

Raiders is basically an early example of a genre that is all but dead, the pick-
up/drop puzzler, where you must pick up items and use them to complete
puzzles and progress within the game. Examples of this are Iron Sword on
the NES, and Spellbound on the ZX Spectrum. Modern variations on the old
point and click adventures by Telltale Games such as the Back to the Future
and Sam and Max series are the present day equivalents keeping the genre
alive.

I never played Raiders when it was first released, which is good as I only had
one controller, and the box art doesn’t scream “Two controllers required”. On
the other hand, it’s a shame because I was a huge fan of pick-up/drop
adventure games from an early age and this first Indy game is a great
example of that. The game, much like Howard’s follow-up, E.T. The Extra-
Terrestrial, has an odd design where every screen plays like its own game
and has its own rules. This was a time before months of planning went into
game production, and design documents could be a brief description, if
anything. Although that could be said to be E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’s
downfall, it works quite well in the case of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The game succeeds in making you feel like Dr. Henry Jones Jr. (yes, I’m
determined to show my fanboy love for the character by mentioning every
pseudonym he has over the course of the movies) and focuses more on
puzzles and feats than being a simple action arcade game. I always felt that
while Indy as a movie character could more than handle himself in a fight
(and you know what a cautious fellow he is) he only got into one as a last
resort, preferring to run from trouble than face it. This translates therefore to
the arcade puzzle genre nicely, and HSW shows some ingenuity in getting as
many of the movie’s set-pieces in as possible.

Graphically, it’s a bit sparse. Indy could be the character from Berzerk
wearing a hat, but as we’re decades from anything remotely approaching
realistic at this point, that is to be expected. While the sprite design does
represent on a very basic level what they are intended to be, overall Raiders
doesn’t look that good at all. Some items are larger than the on-screen
enemies, and while that is due to limited graphical power, it is oddly
distracting. Enemies look ok, and chase you around the screen, but even for
1982, the game is no looker.

Like HSW’s previous effort, the gameplay is where the game shines. It is
wholly original, and the character moves fast and fluidly. It’s just a shame
that the graphics and sprite design couldn’t have been handled by someone
more experienced. However, the game was produced in an era when a single
coder did everything from design, coding, graphics to music. So leaving aside
the basic graphics and the odd control scheme, you’re left with a unique and
interesting arcade puzzle game that did a decent job of making gamers feel
like their favorite archaeologist. It’s just a shame that movie tie-ins in the
World of video gaming are almost a guarantee of a shoddy cash-in. After this
fine start, Howard kick-started that trend with his next game, the
aforementioned stinker, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
 RIVER RAID
Written by Carol Shaw
©1982 Activision

River Raid is a top-down viewed vertical scrolling shooter written by Carol

Shaw and published by Activision in 1982. Playing like a cross between
Taito’s Flying Shark (1987) and Capcom’s 1942 (1984), it preceded both
titles by at least two years. Backstory is limited to simply state that you must
fly your jet over the River of No Return, behind enemy lines. What it lacked
in plot development though, it made up for in gameplay.

I am a huge fan of scrolling arcade shooters. I love the entire 1942 series,
Xevious, Time Pilot, R-Type, Gradius, and modern titles like Sine Mora. The
reason I mention all of those is because I can’t help but feel like it all began
with River Raid, and it hasn’t aged badly at all.
Designer and programmer, Carol Shaw, is considered to be the first female
game designer and she employed some amazing technical feats to squeeze the
game into an Atari 2600 cartridge. For instance, the game map is not actually
stored on the cartridge itself, instead it is procedurally generated, much like
how Elite squeezed sixty five thousand unique worlds into 32K for the BBC
Micro. The game map is generated by a random generator algorithm, but as
the seed is hardcoded on the cartridge, it renders the exact same map every
time it is executed. The enemies’ flight patterns rely on a random number
generator to make them less predictable.

You score points by shooting enemy jets, helicopters, tankers and fuel depots,
but unlike later shooters, there is very little enemy fire to contend with.
Although, crashing into enemies or the river bank will result in instant death,
as will running out of fuel. Flying over fuel depots can replenish your
depleting gauge, of course. At first you think the game is quite easy as the
stationary enemies don’t fire back and don’t really seem to be in your way.
The biggest threat at this point comes from crashing into these enemies in an
attempt to beat your high score. Then they start moving in patterns and
everything speeds up… and you crash or hit the bank avoiding an enemy.

I have always loved River Raid. The graphics are small but detailed and
there’s enough color on screen to keep your interest. The controls are refined
and the difficulty level is tuned perfectly. The enemies’ movements are
difficult to predict, but their lack of fire-power gives you just enough of an
edge theoretically. When all your lives are lost it’s this alleged upper-hand
that causes you to press Start for another go. River Raid was addictive when I
was eight, and I found myself playing it over and over again recently.

The graphics are decent and practically free from flicker, and the smooth
scrolling only adds to an impressively coded game. The depleting fuel
mechanic employed in so many of the game’s peers adds a sense of urgency
that can cause you to crash accidentally in an attempt to refuel, only adding to
the compulsion to go for one more raid.

My guess is that the river theme and curious tendency to die when you flew
over land is just to excuse the need to be essentially moving up through a
tunnel, basically displayed in two colors to make the procedural generator
actually work as a game. Regardless, River Raid is brilliant and definitely
recommended for fans of retro gaming. Boxed copies go for as little as $2 on
eBay. What are you waiting for?
 SPACE INVADERS
Written by Rick Maurer
©1980 Atari, Inc.

Space Invaders is arguably the most famous and ubiquitous game of all time.
The home version of this game instantly quadrupled sales of the console and
it’s not hard to see why. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado for Taito in 1978
(although The Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willy claimed to have got a
crippling finger injury playing the game in 1977) it was instantly a smash hit
and actually caused a coin shortage in its native Japan.

Rick Maurer was tasked by Atari, Inc. to write the 2600 port and he delivered
an amazing conversion loaded with extra features. The box-art for all Atari
games usually boasted of thirty or forty game modes, but Space Invaders
managed a whopping one hundred and twelve variations. Moving shields,
multi shots, and two player modes were all available, along with various
other gameplay tweaks. It added a huge amount of replayability to an already
much sought after game.

It’s hard to think of a time before Space Invaders, such was its impact and
importance in gaming history. While the concept has lost some of its luster
due to the massive advances in the genre, it’s hard not to pay homage to the
game that kicked off a massive wave of interest in arcade gaming and
allowed the pastime to flourish. I played the original in the arcade, replete
with color overlay on the screen to fake color in a monochrome game. When
Atari released the game as a pack-in title with their current iteration of the
console, sales went through the roof and the Atari VCS as it was known as
then became the number one must-have Christmas gift that year. So
synonymous was Atari with Space Invaders, I actually assumed for years that
it was their game and IP. It led to some initial confusion when I discovered
that it was in fact Taito’s property.

Thankfully Space Invaders was not a product of Atari’s later attitude toward
buying expensive licenses and worrying little about the quality of the game
itself. As a make or break product for the still-struggling console, an
enormous amount of care was poured into the game’s development, hence the
numerous game modes and options.

Aside from these extras, the game is a somewhat faithful port. Due to the
smaller play area the number of alien invaders has been reduced, with them
moving in six rows of six. The number of shields was reduced from four to
three, and they seem oddly thinner, leaving you less protected. Admittedly,
your craft also seems slightly thinner than its arcade counterpart, so perhaps
parity is met.

The same bug that allowed other games to appear to speed up, with rapidly
accelerating music as the game progresses is evident here once again. As the
invaders are destroyed, they no longer have to be displayed or tracked giving
the processor more resources to move the remaining craft. This upped the
tension as the last invader reaches the bottom of the screen, with the sound
effects seemingly purposefully ramping up the tension also.

While the lines of invaders are all a single color, it’s hardly a major
complaint. Each row has unique invaders, and all sprites are quite faithful to
their coin-op cousins, including the flying saucer that appears as a bonus
opportunity.

Space Invaders is a must have cartridge for 2600 fans, and one I fought hard
to get back in my youth. If only Atari could have continued producing ports
of this high quality instead of rubbish like Pac-Man.
 STAR RAIDERS
Written by Carla Meninsky
©1982 Atari, Inc.

Star Raiders, simply put, was ahead of its time. Along with Adventure, it was
arguably the most unique and original game on the Atari computers and
consoles, and kicked off a genre that is still going today, not to mention was
the forerunner for franchises such as Wing Commander and the Star Wars X-
Wing/TIE Fighter franchise. While it may not reach the same heights as Elite
on the BBC Micro or Starglider on the Amiga, it could be arguably the
earliest example of a Space Sim on a console.

Originally designed by Doug Neubauer for the Atari 8-bit computer line in
1979, Star Raiders was instantly praised for its complex space combat and
amazing graphics. An interesting feature that became a staple of the genre
was the fact that looking at your map did not pause the simulation and you
were vulnerable to attack during this time.

The 2600 version does suffer from weaker graphics and lack of keyboard. To
compensate for the lack of key controls the game shipped with a special
keypad accessory called the Video Touch Pad. While the keypad was
expandable via overlays, no other games supported the peripheral. Another
slightly odder change was in the bad guys’ name from “Zylons” to
“Krylons”. In other words, from nerd homage to legally acceptable.

Other than that, you get much the same game on the 2600 as you did in the
other versions. Starting with the Galactic Chart which divides the game’s
large scale World into separate sectors, you must pick where to warp to.
Following a Star Wars-esque hyper-drive animation, you are placed into a
real time 3D spaceship section viewed from a first person perspective.

Enemies take three forms, all of which would lead to massive lawsuits in
today’s day and age as they more than slightly resemble a TIE Fighter, a
Klingon Warship and a Cylon Basestar, from Star Wars, Star Trek, and
Battlestar Galactica respectively. All enemies will fire back at the player
causing damage. The player can also be damaged from impacts by asteroids.
Some sectors contain your Star Base, which must be protected.

The sense of immersion in Star Raiders was intense when I first played it,
and while that has lessened only due to the advances in the genre to date, it’s
easy to see why it was so important in the late 70s and early 80s videogame
scene. Gone is the score based gameplay, replaced with an actual end goal.
You could beat the game by destroying all the enemy ships in the galaxy.
Only then, or upon death, do you see a score, delivered as a rating.

The targeting computer display in the lower right of the screen allowed for
tracking of enemies within each sector so hunting them down before the
inevitable real-time space battle ensued was a game in itself. It was the first
time I considered moving in 3D space, and I even remember as a little kid
wondering how I could shoot enemies in Space Invaders without considering
at least one more axis… you know, if it was, like, real life.

While the graphics are a step down from their computer origins, they
conveyed the sense of space travel, navigation and fighting quite accurately
and competently. Screenshots alone will never do them justice so if you are
lucky enough to find a copy of the game along with the keypad accessory, I
advise you to buy it. It’s easy to see why Stanford University listed it as the
second most important game of all time in their History of Science and
Technology Collection.
 STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Written by Parker Brothers
©1982 Parker Brothers

Ah, Star Wars. Like many nerds, I have several obsessions in my life and
when George Lucas practically invented the movie tie-in craze, he basically
found a way to roll them all into one. From comics to games, and every piece
of merchandise in-between, I have collected anything Star Wars related
practically my whole life. The item I wanted desperately that kicked this
lifelong obsession off was Parker Brothers official Empire Strikes Back game
for the Atari 2600. Over the years there have been literally hundreds of
official Star Wars video games on every conceivable format, but Star Wars:
The Empire Strikes Back was the very first, and surprisingly, it’s not bad at
all.

Players assume the role of a Snow Speeder pilot – let’s just assume now, as
we did back then that it is Luke Skywalker himself – who must attack
Imperial Walkers (aka AT-ATs) to hold off their assault on the Rebels’ Echo
Base on the planet Hoth. The Walkers can be damaged by shots to the head
and torso, but hits on the legs are ineffective. As the Walker takes damage it
changes color, transitioning from black to yellow, with shades of grey, red
and orange in between. In the Intellivision version, the Walkers required
thirty hits to take down, but in the Atari 2600 version, the player must hit
them forty eight times.

The Walkers, of course, fire back, and the player craft also changes color to
signify varying levels of damage. The player must land their Speeder to
repair it. On some levels, the player can sacrifice themselves by crashing into
the Walker, destroying both it and themselves in the process. Occasionally
the player is granted the power of the Force, which causes the Speeder to
flash and grants temporary invulnerability. The game ends when either the
player loses all of their five Speeders, or the Walkers reach Echo Base,
destroying the shield generator and the base itself. As the game progresses,
the Walkers move faster creating tension and increasing the difficulty
exponentially.

Despite its distinction as the first ever Star Wars videogame, it is also
remarkably good. The graphics are surprisingly large and detailed, especially
in the case of the Imperial Walkers, which are faithfully represented. Even
the Speeder itself, while smaller and less detailed, perfectly gave young
players in 1982 the feeling that they were leading the defense of Echo Base
against the might of the Empire.
It may not be the first game to use a radar-map system (that honor possibly
goes to Defender two years previously), but I found it to be quite unique at
the time, and is a staple of modern games, especially flight based games
where fast scrolling and large playfields required some guidance for
navigation.

Really what made this game so unique was the sense of being there. All
games seek to provide the thrills of actually being the character portrayed on
screen, but Star Wars, arguably more than any other franchise, spawned an
army of kids who jumped around with makeshift light sabers and blasters that
would have given anything to feel like actually being a Jedi or Rebel Pilot.
Most early games required players to fill in the blanks with their
imaginations, especially as GPUs of the time could not render the splendid
3D environments and models that modern gaming platforms can do with
ease. Star Wars fans already armed with active imaginations didn’t need to
stretch them too far with this game. Although limited in gameplay terms, the
game was addicting and led to many lost weeks of my life, humming that
theme tune, and annoying my parents by hogging the single TV in the house.

Hundreds of titles later, I can count on a single hand which Star Wars games
gave me the same thrill. After a prestigious start, many proceeding Star Wars
titles relied mainly on the license itself, and were thrust into several genres
that did not suit the franchise. Only the Rogue Squadron games really
provided the same thrills, being a spiritual successor in many ways to this
original classic.
 TIME PILOT
Written by Konami
©1983 Coleco

Released into the arcades in 1982 by Konami, Time Pilot is a multi-direction

free scrolling shooter, where you must rotate your ship in all directions and
fly through the skies destroying enemies based on various time periods,
ranging from WWI bi-planes, to futuristic aircraft and spaceships. There are
five time periods in total (1910, 1940, 1970, 1982, & a then futuristic 2001)
that you must guide your fighter jet through destroying basic enemies,
rescuing parachuting pilots, and defeating each level’s ‘boss’.

Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto, Time Pilot was originally rejected at the

concept level by his boss who instead wanted a driving game developed.
Okamoto persisted and when the game was a huge success, his boss tried to
claim ownership of the original idea and design. Despite its success in the
arcades, the game was only ported to a handful of consoles, namely the
ColecoVision, MSX, and Atari 2600 in 1983.

The arcade game is another lifelong favorite of mine, and I could play for
quite some time on a single ten pence piece, the price of admission in early
UK and Ireland arcades. I also still play the Xbox Live Arcade version
regularly.

At first glance, the 2600 port appears to be fairly competent. The graphics
look like decent, albeit scaled down, 2600 iterations of their arcade originals.
The scrolling is fast and smooth, and it would seem to be a shoe-in for classic
shooter status. Then I noticed a couple of things missing. Gone are the
parachuters that you must rescue, an omission I could understand if this alone
was the complaint. The more egregious thing missing was the blasting action
that got me so addicted in the arcade. The coin-op throws hundreds of
enemies at you but arms you with a powerful machine gun that tears up
everything on screen. In the 2600 version I found myself chasing the same
enemies around the screen a few times, firing desperately and only being able
to hit them when I was about two pixels away from them. Charging directly
at an enemy who is moving in your direction will result in death because you
can actually crash into them before you can shoot them and destroy them
completely.

This is such a shame, because the controls are actually very good. Sensible
and fluid, pushing up will spin you to fly up, same for down, left and right.
But if you rotate the stick, you can smoothly fly in all eight directions. If you
weren’t armed with a pea shooter the game would be amazing fun. When the
first end of level boss showed up I almost didn’t notice as it was as small as
the regular biplanes of that level (in the arcade the airship is twice as large),
but this again is a minor point, and excusable if the main point of the game
(ie. Shooting enemy aircraft) was actually fun.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Time Pilot though. The arcade game is one of
my all-time favorite shooters and I have loved it on different formats, from
the coin-op original to Game Boy Advance to Xbox Live Arcade. It may be
unfair to compare the experience of other ports on more powerful hardware,
but I do think that the underpowered weapons makes the shooting aspect of
the game feel lackluster.
 UP’N DOWN
Written by Sega
©1984 Sega

Up’N Down, like many games in the early ‘80s, began life in the arcades. It
was released in 1983 by Sega, and then ported the following year to
numerous consoles such as the 2600, Colecovision, and Commodore 64. The
2600 version in particular is notable for its rarity, making it one of the most
sought after cartridges by collectors.

In the game, the player controls a dune buggy that is travelling vertically up
the screen along a pseudo-3D environment that relied on basic shading to
show depth and raised or lowered platforms. Your vehicle moves along a
single path with up and down on the stick controlling the buggy’s speed,
while pressing fire causes it to jump. Obstacles on the road include other cars
which can be jumped over, or landed on for more points.
The 2600 version was of course famous for other reasons. While the arcade
game was lauded for its catchy music, described by Karen Collins in her
book, Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of
Video Game Music and Sound Design, as a “bluesy F-sharp minor groove”,
the 2600 had an irritating warbling that she called “a very unsettling version
based in C minor with a flattened melodic sound”. Most reviews of the time
cited the horrible music and graphics as a negative, but the game was still
recommended based on the fun and challenging gameplay.

The box artwork was also of a much higher standard than other titles at the
time and signified a change in the industry when more money and resources
were being spent on packing and marketing. The same cannot be said for the
in-game graphics, however, which are quite blocky and the color palette is
limited.

I honestly didn’t know much about Up’N Down until recently, such is its
relative obscurity. When I first launched the game I was ready to hate it as the
graphics were a far cry from the bright colors and high-resolution arcade
original. The controls seemed somewhat finicky, and the difficulty seemed
oddly skewed toward masochistic. Thirty minutes later, after realizing that I
had mastered the controls and had been score chasing consistently since
starting the game up, it occurred to me that this was a title I missed out on in
my youth. Sometimes naff graphics only hide a devilishly addictive game
underneath.

Truthfully, the visuals aren’t all that distracting. I had saw the coin-op
version first, and after giving the 2600 port a fair shot, it was apparent that
the game was simply fun no matter how well represented the arcade car
sprites were. Even the controls make sense when you get used to them. Your
car has a certain amount of inertia, and therefore must slow down before
reversing, and speed going forward is variable.

So, don’t let the screenshot put you off. Find yourself a copy of this game and
give it a go. You might discover another forgotten gem.
 VANGUARD
Written by Dave Payne
©1982 Atari, Inc.

Vanguard was one of my early favorite arcade games. I was initially attracted
to the four fire button (one for each direction) setup, along with the multi-
direction scrolling, and synthesized speech that announced the current zone.
When browsing at my local toy store, which happened to have a little shelf of
video games – the only place to buy new titles in the days before game stores
and the internet – I saw the box for Vanguard. Even at this young age I knew
that it couldn’t possibly work. The Atari 2600, like most home consoles of
the time, only had one fire button. How were they going to faithfully handle
the multi-direction firing that was the crux of the entire game? What would
happen when the scrolling changed and you were moving up the screen
instead of just across?
Released in the arcades in 1981 by SNK, Vanguard was the Japanese
publisher’s first color game, and first smash hit in Western territories. A pre-
cursor to games such as Scramble and Gradius, the game required you to
avoid obstacles and background scenery, as well as enemies and their fire – a
first for the genre. When Dave Payne was commissioned by Atari, Inc. to
port the game to the 2600, some changes were going to be necessary.

My expectation was that the player craft would fire in the last direction
moved, common in games at the time (such as Berzerk), but Dave took a
different approach. Instead, your ship just fired all the time, and movements
would cause the firing to switch temporarily to that direction before
defaulting back to firing forward. This meant that you could concentrate on
flying the ship and avoiding obstacles and other craft, as well as their shots,
without having to worry about firing as well. If you were required to move
then fire manually, it would be expected that some of your input could be lost
due to unresponsive peripherals, or just player error, so this does seem like
the most sensible solution.

Sensible or not, it did result in a less interesting dynamic. With your ship
auto-firing, you are left to simply pilot and directing fire which did lead to
some loss of satisfaction. The four-button mechanism of the arcades was a
unique draw, but it did lead to major problems for conversion to home
platforms.
The speech was never going to be included, obviously, and its omission is
hardly a sore spot for Atari owners. The arcade game itself wasn’t the most
graphically intensive, even for that time period, so the 2600 port didn’t suffer
from too much of a downgrade, although the gaudy palette and
overabundance of on-screen colors can be slightly off-putting. However, the
scrolling is quite smooth, and the new zone direction change works well. The
2600 port even included the dwindling fuel mechanic, and the ability to fly
through energy replenishing zones.

If you were not aware of the original game and played the 2600 version you
would have been quite pleased with the twitch shooter that it ended up being.
The play field is a little small, giving it a tight cramped feeling, especially
when the enemy ships like to hover above, below, and beside you all at once.
However, with the ship always firing, total enemy annihilation is only a few
joystick presses away. Vanguard is a fairly decent conversion, and while it
may not have reached the cult status of some of its peers, it definitely
deserves a play through.
 WARLORDS
Written by Carla Meninsky
©1981 Atari, Inc.

I mentioned in the introduction to this book that Warlords holds a special

place in my heart and memories, but not for the reason you may imagine. By
the mid-80s my 2600 was a little worse for the wear. Carts were ripped from
the base and hastily re-inserted by myself and my friends, all in the pre-
double digit age range, leading to wear and tear on the base console, not to
mention the fact that the cartridge pegs which pushed up the circuit board
protector when the cart was inserted had totally broken off, replaced by glued
on plastic. After all this, switching on the power to the console unit resulted
in sporadic success. However, it seemed that I had a “system” which did
indeed work in getting the machine to power on.

Money was in short supply for a young lad growing up in a working class
family in Northern Ireland during the 1980s. Pocket money seemed to be
something I read about in comics or heard about on American sitcoms,
leading my Mother to deny the existence of such things, instead passing them
off as myths. What little money I could actually save up from chores or
helping people out went towards buying new games. Of course, this time
period saw the price of Atari 2600 games fall to a pittance, although
unfortunately they were still out of my reach even at a mere three pounds
sterling (about five dollars, US).

I lived in a village along the North East coast of N. Ireland, and had no access
to game stores, so instead, my Mother who worked in the nearest town would
go to the store, write down the titles, and I would choose one based on the
title alone, sending her the next day with the money to go pick up the game
for me. And so it was that I picked Warlords on name alone.

This was the day that my system, both figuratively and literally, broke down.
I had Warlords in my hand, and inserted it into the machine. I flipped the
power switch on and… nothing. My Atari was dead, and with it, the final title
I ever bought for it going un-played. Despite the heartache at the loss of my
first real machine, and the waste of weeks, maybe even months, of saving for
a game, I knew that the game would be unplayable anyway as it was only
upon receiving the box that I discovered that it would require paddles… a
peripheral that I did not have.
This tale stuck in my craw for years, and as soon as I discovered the wonders
of emulation, the first game I tried out was Warlords. Upon firing the game
up, I discovered that it was actually a multi-player Breakout clone, and
honestly, not a very good one.

The ball doesn’t necessarily follow the laws of physics, instead preferring to
bounce around at sharp angles. It also flickers wildly and travels at a pace
that is much like playing tennis against The Terminator.

Achieving the curving graphic technique is difficult when your sprites are
built from large blocks, and the player bats seem strangely small, smaller
again at different angles. It’s funny how much a gamer in the early 80s was
supposed to use their imagination when comparing the box art to the actual
game. When modern graphics are approaching unprecedented levels of
photo-realism, nine year olds in the 80s had to reconcile that their Breakout
clone was hardly the Dark Age of Camelot that the box art promised.
 XENOPHOBE
Written by Atarisoft
©1990 Atari, Inc.

The more cynical amongst you may be thinking that Xenophobe was only
included to fill out the ‘X’ category, and you would be mostly right. While
being one of only two titles beginning with ‘X’ for the 2600, the other being
X-Man (an adult game unrelated to Marvel’s X-Men comics), Xenophobe is
interesting due to its late-in-life release.

Released in the arcades in 1987 by Bally Midway, and designed by Brian

Collin & Howard Shere, Xenophobe was ported by Atari and self-published
for its own systems as well as the popular machines of the era, such as the
Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64, while Sunsoft handled the conversion
to the NES. An Atari 800/XL/XE version exists as a prototype.
The gameplay involved cities, ships, planets, and star bases that were infested
with aliens, tasking players with the eradication of these invaders before each
area became completely overrun, with a strict time limit in which to complete
your mission. Health would deplete constantly, even when not in combat, but
picking up food items and other collectibles would replenish this.

The main draw of the arcade machine was the display that split the action
across three screens, and allowed for three people to play simultaneously.
Each joystick offered three unique characters only available at that station.
Weapons were diverse, ranging from weaker starting pistols such as a phazer,
to laser pistols, gas guns, and grenades. Naturally, the first feature to go from
the home conversions would be the three monitor display, and in most cases,
the reduction from the number of players from three to two, with a horizontal
split making up for the single screen playfield.

The Atari 2600 port, of course, did not feature split screen co-operative play,
and the player count was reduced to one. By this point, the 2600 was more
than showing its age and was on the brink of being put out to pasture by
Atari. Most ports of the game showed a horizontal split screen display, but
although the 2600 didn’t feature co-operative simultaneous play, it kept the
same screen proportions and simply displayed the game’s name or a “Game
Over” message in a black box that takes up half the screen.
What graphics are displayed in the play area are quite good, the game’s best
feature in fact. The backgrounds are detailed, and the player sprite is
particularly good. Your character controls well and the game clips along at a
decent pace. The only problem is that the game just isn’t good enough to
work on the 2600. Built for single screen arcade ports in the ‘70s, the Atari
2600 wasn’t capable of delivering then-state of the art arcade experiences
come 1990.

With having to kneel to shoot almost anything, combat becomes something

of a chore. This is annoying, and considering the player is armed with a
selection of pea shooters, one of the main points of the game becomes
tiresome quickly.
It’s hard to know how much of a market the 2600 had in 1990, and I certainly
don’t begrudge Atari from continuing to release titles. Far from it, in fact. But
it would have been nicer if it had some original games, maybe even based off
other Atari I.P., instead of attempts to shoe-horn 1990s arcade experiences
into the aging console. Xenophobe would have worked better as a multiplayer
title if it had been a different spin on the arcade game, perhaps translated into
something more like Bomberman, Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, or a
multi-player Robotron.
 YARS’ REVENGE
Written by Howard Scott Warshaw
©1982 Atari, Inc.

I have said this in this book already, and many times in my life, but once
again, Yars’ Revenge is easily my favorite game on the Atari 2600 platform,
and one of my favorite games of all time. Of course, which game is the best
2600 title is purely subjective, but this game simply never gets old for me.

Developed by Howard Scott Warshaw, who is profiled in this book, and

published by Atari in 1982, Yars’, with its grammatically incorrect title, went
on to be a huge hit, both commercially and critically. Beginning life as a port
of the arcade game, Star Castle, technical limitations caused Warshaw to
redesign the game, and develop as an original title.

A comic was released with the game to explain the backstory, although this
was mostly unnecessary as most people at the time cared little for plot.
Gaming had a long way to go before it reached its days of interactive fiction,
and plots that centered on mutated houseflies (the titular Yars) seeking
revenge on the evil Qotile after the destruction of their homeworld of Razak
IV, mattered little to gamers of the time. What did matter, though, was the
unique gameplay that was easy to pick up, and devilishly addictive.

The Qotile were surrounded by a barrier on the right side of the screen that
must be nibbled away by the player until it was exposed. Nibbling on this
shield or flying over the exposed Qotile (while not in Swirl mode) would arm
your Zorlon cannon (you have to love these names, right?) that could launch
a projectile at the Qotile, destroying it with a single shot if your timing was
right. The Qotile had a number of defenses, primarily a homing missile that
followed the player around the screen, although a neutral zone in the middle
of the screen granted you immunity to this persistent threat. The Qotile can
also turn into a Swirl and launch at the player, even if the protective barrier is
intact. A warning is given so the player can retreat to a safe area of the screen
to dodge the incoming attack. Each level ends with the destruction of the
Qotile or the Swirl. The homing missile increases with speed as each level
progresses.

There’s no other way to say it… I love Yars’ Revenge. The colored neutral
zone in the middle of the screen was a technical marvel at the time, and I still
get a kick from luring the missile into it and flying away to take another stab
at the Qotile’s protective shield. Even though the entire game takes place on a
single screen, it just feels like every inch of real estate has been used to
perfection. What’s really amazing is how the game came about in the first
place. From port to original IP, it feels tightly designed, whereas the truth is
that it was built piece by piece without much of a design document at all.
Changes were added constantly throughout development, yet the game itself
does not feel like a “Frankenstein” design project.

The game’s graphics are functional at best, although they are colorful, but
again, this doesn’t matter at all and the gameplay is so polished that you will
find yourself chasing high scores long into the night.

An odd remake appeared in 2011 for Xbox 360 and PC where you played a
humanoid female in a flying exoskeleton with wings, but was largely ignored
due to it being a shallow (albeit gorgeous) rail-shooter. This game was
developed by Killspace Entertainment and published by Atari, and was
considered a re-imagining of the original title. Rail-shooters are the gaming
design equivalent of buying your wife flowers at the gas (or petrol, Euro
chums) station on the way home from work. Avoid this and instead play the
original one more time.
 ZAXXON
Written by Sega
©1982 Coleco

Zaxxon, another game that hopefully needs no introduction, was an arcade

game originally released by Sega in 1982. The game is notable for its
isometric viewpoint, and was the first game to employ axonometric
projection, or in non-geek terms, a pseudo-3D perspective that simulated
three dimensions. It was also the first game to display shadows, used to show
the player ship’s distance from the ground. Another first for Zaxxon was the
fact that it was also the first game ever to be advertised on TV, with
Paramount producing a commercial for $150,000.

Naturally, Zaxxon was ported to everything from the Dragon 32 to the BBC
Micro, with all the usual suspects in between. Most of these versions kept the
isometric viewpoint, but as was the case with many 2600 ports, this would
have to change. Along with the Intellivision port, the 2600 version employed
a third-person, behind the ship perspective, mainly due to the technical
limitations of these machines.

While the arcade version and most ports scroll up and to the right, the 2600
port merely scrolls straight up, so gone is the isometric viewpoint. The
scrolling itself is pretty smooth, and some technical wizardry was obviously
employed in making it work at all, but it’s the game’s first disappointment
that the very point of the game is gone. After all, the name Zaxxon comes
from a combination of “Z” (as in, “Z” axis), and “AXXON” from
axonometric projection, the name for the isometric scrolling effect.

While the shadow showing height off the ground remained, oddly the player
craft changed from a spaceship to a plain old airplane. The height effect does
cause some issues, however. The 2600 could only render solid blocks in a
row, so instead of flying through a hole in the wall, you must fly straight at
the blackened blocks. This takes some getting used to, and I can imagine a lot
of frustrated players giving up before mastering the game. The height of your
enemies also must be taken into consideration when firing at them, and this
seems strangely much more difficult than in the arcade original.

All in all, Zaxxon isn’t a bad attempt. No-one should have expected an arcade
perfect conversion, or even anything close. But, flaws and changes aside,
Zaxxon is quite a showcase of some fancy pseudo-3D effects, and the 2600
processor is literally being pushed as far as it can go. It should be
remembered and recognized for these technical feats alone, and is worth
another spin if you haven’t experienced it yet, or if you were one of the kids
who couldn’t pass that first wall. Aim for the black bricks!
 TOP 10 BEST-SELLING GAMES

Want to know which games were the most popular on the Atari 2600? There
are 13 games all in all that sold, or shipped, at least one million copies. The
numbers for a Top 10 need some qualification. Some of these games would
have been pack-in titles, and therefore wouldn’t be considered ‘bought’.
However, as the draw of a console back then included the pack-in, this list
represents the most common carts people had available.

1. PAC-MAN (1982) – 7 Million

Best-selling video game of its time

2. PITFALL! (1982) – 4 Million

Activision’s early biggest hit, decades before Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater,
and Call of Duty

3. ASTEROIDS (1981) – 3.8 Million

Best-selling Atari 2600 game prior to Pac-Man

4. MISSILE COMMAND (1980) – 2.5 Million

Notable for beating the more-famous Space Invaders, released the same
year

5. SPACE INVADERS (1980) – 2 Million

First game ever to sell a million cartridges

6. DEMON ATTACK (1982) – 2 Million

A huge seller despite Atari suing the game’s developer for similarities to
Phoenix

7. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) – 1.5 Million

A huge seller despite being considered one of the worst games of all time
 8. ADVENTURE (1979) – 1 Million
Kick-starting an entire genre proved lucrative, even back in the ‘70s

9. ATLANTIS (1982) – 1 Million

Space Invaders meets Missile Command equals another early hit for Atari
and Imagic

10. COSMIC ARK (1982) – 1 Million

The only sequel on the list and was a follow-up to Atlantis

Special mention must go to the other three Million+ sellers, KABOOM!,

MEGAMANIA, and RIVER RAID, all coming in at just over 1 Million.

My Personal Top 10 List

1. YARS’ REVENGE
2. ASTEROIDS
3. JUNGLE HUNT
4. BERZERK
5. ADVENTURE
6. RIVER RAID
7. BATTLEZONE
8. COMBAT
9. STAR RAIDERS
10. MOON PATROL
 Check out other titles available from Downtime Books!
www.downtimebooks.com

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The A-Z of the Commodore Amiga

The A-Z of the NES

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