Homebreviews - part 22
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
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Twelve games. Twelve reviews. Two cartridges. It may take me awhile to recover from this one.
Stella's Stocking
5/5
Stella's Stocking is a collection of five holiday-themed mini-games, originally sold during the AtariAge 2007 Holiday Sale. The menu for selecting the games squeezes amazing music out of the 2600, along with colorful graphics and titles that slickly scroll into place. Be sure to listen to the extra songs at the fireplace screen, too. This is one of the nicest presentations you'll ever see on a 2600 cartridge. But how do the games themselves stack up?
Stay Frosty is a platformer where your goal is to keep your snowman from melting by collecting ice and finishing each level before the sun melts you. Complicating things is that in order to complete each level, you must use your snowman to extinguish roaming fireballs. Each fireball will melt you more, requiring you to collect more ice. Can you collect enough ice to stay frosty and move onto the next level?
It seems a little weird reviewing Stay Frosty, since I came up with the concept for it while Stella's Stocking was being developed. Darrell Spice did a great job of programming the game, and it was really exciting seeing Frosty come to life. The main thing I wish we could have spent more time on were the level designs. While there are 32 levels in the game, most of them are too easy to solve on the first or second try. A more puzzle-like approach, where certain paths must be followed, or ice must be collected in a certain pattern to keep from melting, would have added more challenge, especially to the earlier levels. The beginnings of those elements are there - like having to intentionally melt Frosty to fit through certain gaps, or removing an enemy from a platform so it can float upwards to help you reach another area - but I would have liked to have seen more of it. That said, the game is fun to play with appropriately slippery physics, melting effects and a good variety of level layouts. Visually, there's quite a lot of animation in the game: Frosty's face changes expression as he melts, he bounces and leans as he moves, and the sun and fireballs will watch him as he moves around the screen. I'm a little biased since I designed the graphics, but for what it's worth - I think they look pretty cool. It's hard to classify Stay Frosty as a mini-game, since with just a few more tweaks, it could easily be a full-fledged cartridge on its own.
In Tossing Cookies you control Santa's sleigh on a stormy night. His reindeer have gotten loose and you must round them up by tossing Mrs. Claus' Christmas cookies at them. As they're blissfully snacking on them, they slow down enough for you to capture them. Each level has two rounds - the first where you collect cookies, and the second where you toss them at the reindeer. The layouts vary from level to level, with different cloud formations that will impede your progress.
Based on an earlier homebrew - GoSub - Tossing Cookies has the potential to be a really fun game, but the main knock I have against it is that it's just too slow. It feels like you're slogging through thick mud instead of flying, and running into the clouds only slows you down more. This kind of game really cries out for responsive controls and zippy gameplay. Also detracting from it, is that there is no score or progress indicator. You have no idea how far you are in the game, or how well you're doing, so there's little incentive to try to collect more cookies, or capture the reindeer faster.
Elf Dash is a platformer where you must control Holly the elf, and help her collect various objects while avoiding rampaging toys which have run amok. Holly must use elevators to move between the floors of each warehouse and pick up all of the objects and a key before moving on. She can sprint for a limited time - which is extended when picking up the key.
You have unlimited lives in Elf Dash, but limited time. The goal is to complete all warehouses before you run out of time. This takes a little practice, but the real challenge of the game becomes in beating your previous times, and figuring out the quickest way through each level. The graphics are fun, with a nice variety of objects and toys to deal with. Some move erratically, some will fire at you, and figuring them all out will keep you on your toes. The sound effects are sparse, but work well enough. What matters though, is that the game is a lot of fun. The controls are spot-on, and the levels are well-thought-out. It's simple gameplay at its best, and an expanded version of this game could easily stand on its own. It reminds me of some of the better third-party platformers for the 2600.
Grandma's Revenge is loosely based on the novelty song about a certain holiday hit-and-run incident involving hoofed mammals. Now it's payback time, and you have a variety of vehicles at your disposal to exact your homicidal revenge. The game is half Indy 500 and half Death Race. The goal is simple - run over as many reindeer as possible, before running out of fuel or wrecking all of your cars. You have different cars to choose from, various power-ups to help you in your hunt for revenge, and the environment will change to include ice, barriers, and other challenges. There are also a few Easter Eggs - including one that gives you a different way to "Strike Back".
Although the graphics are a little sparse, the sprites are are nicely rendered with multiple vehicles - including an F-1 racer, a VW bug and a snowmobile - and reindeer fleeing for their lives. There are a several game variations to choose from: a two-player competitive mode, where one player is Grandma, and the other is the reindeer; and the option to use Indy 500's driving controllers - which makes the game controls super-responsive. Grandma's Revenge has a certain sadistic charm, makes for a fun mini-game, and it has plenty of options to keep you thoroughly entertained as you mow down entire herds of Santa's flying fodder.
Cold War is a two-player only game, where you control snowmen engaged in a snowball fight. Each player has two snowmen, and the first player to knock out both of the other player's snowmen wins the round. You move a cursor to select which of your snowmen you control (similar to many sports games), and then fire away! The longer you hold the fire button down, the farther your snowman will throw. As the game progresses, you'll have to knock down snow forts that are in your way. First player to win three rounds, wins the game.
Cold War surprised me by being one of those (almost) perfect little two-player games, that doesn't seem like much on the surface, but when you get into it, it ends up being a lot of fun. Since the game is so simple to play, it takes almost no time for someone to learn the game and get good enough at it to have some fun. As you progress into the game, there are snow barriers that add an element of strategy to the game, and you can even use the hats of your dead snow-comrades as shields. My one gripe about it is that once you get into playing the game, it ends too quickly. An option to choose the number of rounds per game (with more snow wall layouts) would have made this fun little game a real gem indeed. Maybe someday we'll get to see an expanded version with more snowmen on each side and more levels.
Stella's Stocking gives you a lot for your money. Even though a couple of the games may have limited appeal, there's a lot of variety here and some really solid game play to be found. The menus are almost worth having on their own cart, the manual (with a pin-up worthy Stella on the cover) is wonderfully illustrated by Dave Exton, and the whole package makes for a great holiday treat.
Sync
5/5
Sync is a collection of seven games based on rhythm, patterns and abstract shapes. Three of the games - Mantra, Jitter 4K and Flow 4K - have support for the AtariVox, which will "sing" along with each of the games, often to humorous effect. The menu system is straightforward and intuitive, and allows easy navigation between all of the games without ever having to reach for the console. The graphics are brilliantly suited to the 2600, and the music throughout the cartridge - from the menus to in-game music - is outstanding. Some of the games even allow you to tailor the music to your liking. (I'd strongly recommend reading through the manual to get the most out of the various options.)
In Mantra, shapes are displayed on screen that correspond to the four joystick directions and fire button. As each series of shapes appear, you must move the joystick and match the symbols according to a rhythm. If you successfully match a series of shapes, they'll disappear. If you don't, they become locked, and must be matched twice in order to remove them. Once the screen is filled with shapes, the game is over.
Mantra is a fun, unique game for the 2600, and in some ways is reminiscent of rhythm games for modern consoles (Patapon, Dance Dance Revolution, PaRappa the Rapper, etc). The game determines the pace at which you can respond, and getting the hang of the rhythm can take a little time (and a really good joystick), but once you get on a roll, the game can really move fast. There are quite a few game options, including several two-player simultaneous modes, a demo mode and a practice mode. The graphics, while simple, are vivid and colorful, and are a perfect example of not needing high resolution to make a great game.
Jitter 4K is very similar to Mantra, except the symbols are less abstracted, and you can respond immediately to the patterns, giving you a little more control over the pace of the game. It has some of the same options as Mantra, but offers a couple of new ones as well. Jitter 4K does have a different feel to it, but it's just as much fun as Mantra, and may be a little easier to get the hang of for beginners.
Flow 4K is my favorite game in this collection, and is one of my favorite 2600 games, period. There is a grid of 20 stacks of bars on screen, and your goal is to clear off these stacks by surrounding them with the correct number of bars in adjacent stacks before a timer counts down. In addition to adding or removing bars, you can slide rows and columns around to better match up stacks. If the entire grid is occupied with stacks when the timer runs out, then the game ends. If there are still open spaces, the timer resets and gives you another chance.
Flow 4K is unlike any game I can recall playing. It's a puzzle game, but one that's played against an ever-accelerating clock. After awhile, it becomes a frenetic action game, driven along by great music which gets enhanced by digital "scat-singing" if an AtariVox is plugged in. Flow 4K is a one-player only game, but there are a couple of different game play modes so you can choose the one to your liking. As with Mantra, the graphics are perfect for this game, and you'd never think of them as being low resolution - they're just the pieces in a puzzle.
Sync's other four games are presented as a set of mini-games, collectively (and appropriately) titled Four.
Jitter 1K is a stripped-down version of Jitter 4K. It plays similarly, but symbols don't become locked if you miss a series of shapes. The basic gameplay is intact though, and it makes for a fun, quick gaming fix.
Flow 1K is a simplified version of Flow 4K. But while in Flow 4K you have to wait for a timer to clear off the bars, in Flow 1K, they're cleared immediately. The pace is dramatically faster in Flow 1K, because the game ends whenever any stack has four bars on it if the timer runs out - not when the entire grid is full. This keeps you constantly in motion, trying to keep track of which stacks are reaching their limit, and trying to keep everything in check. This is the most frenetic game on the cartridge, and plays very differently from it's 4K cousin.
Gate is a shape matching game, where you must place shapes in one column, to match those in another column. The trick is, the column you must match is continually scrolling, and every third time it scrolls by, more shapes are added to it. As you match shapes, they disappear from the scrolling column. The goal is to keep the scrolling column from filling up for as long as you can. Gate is a terrific, fast-moving puzzle game with great graphics and excellent music. There are a couple of different play modes: Arcade Mode - which allows you to keep playing if you mismatch shapes; and Simulation Mode - which doesn't allow you to make any mistakes.
The final mini-game - Here - is yet another unique game, which is based purely on reflexes. The gameplay is simplicity itself - you must press the fire button as an arrow passes over a colored bar. Doing so will cause the bar to be cleared from the screen. Pressing fire at the wrong time will end the game. There are ten bars on each screen, and they're constantly shrinking in size, reducing the amount of time you have to react. Your arrow is always in motion too, although you can change its direction, and choose which bar you're currently trying to clear. This is an almost maddeningly addictive game - in part due to its simplicity (and how easy it is to bring the game to a screeching halt by missing a bar), but also because the music is almost hypnotic. It's very reminiscent of wind chimes, with perhaps some Asian influence. It's unlike anything else I've heard on the 2600, and it helps make Here one of my favorite mini-games.
Sync is a remarkable and unique collection of games for the 2600. While a few of the games are similar, there's more than enough variety to keep you entertained for a very long time, and there should be something for everyone here to enjoy. The pick-up-and-play nature of the games is perfectly suited for the 2600, and the graphics and music throughout really show off what the 2600 can do when games are designed with its strengths in mind. The AtariVox support is a nice addition, although it's a shame it doesn't save your high scores. But that's a minor point, and Sync is very highly recommended, especially if you're looking for something different. With seven games plus variations (including two-player modes), this is a tremendous value, but most importantly - it's just a whole lot of fun.
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