Sunrise was a blip on the radar of the 2600 library, they appeared, released a single game, and vanished, just like that. Even though they only released a single 2600 game it doesn’t mean they didn’t release others on different systems. They released a few games for the Colecovision, and released ports for their main game Quest for Quintana Roo for several major consoles and home computers of the time, including the Atari 8-bit line and the Colecovision. Sunrise was also responsible for the Cole
The 2600 has several single screen platformers in its library. Some are excellent like Donkey Kong, others are decent but with flaws like Infiltrate or Tron, and others just suck like Miner 2049’er. There is one platformer that I feel doesn’t get enough attention though, and that is 20th Century Fox’s Fast Eddie. If I were to equate the gameplay other games in the library I would have to say it’s a decent mix of Tron and Infiltrate. Graphically the game is nothing special and sound-wise the game
I’ve been trying to rationalize to myself where the rabbit hole that is Atari collecting begins and ends. Of course it begins with Atari themselves, along with the bigger publishers like Activision, Parker Brothers, and Imagic. Here let’s try something… I won’t be able to include all the publishers, but I can try to paint a vague picture of what I mean.
Level One: Everybody knows ‘em. These companies were the most likely to be stocked in all the major electronics retailers.
Atari
Uh… What!?! They made a Chuck Norris game? Wait… Xonox made a Chuck Norris game!?! Well I just gotta play it now… …
… I vastly regret… everything.
So, this game exists. This game was released in 1983, right around the time that ol’ Chuck was gaining mainstream popularity, but he was doing Westerns not Kung Fu flicks (yet), which is what Superkicks would wind up being if it were a film. It’s just a classic case of “we’ve got a license for a celebrity, or other IP let’s just plaster their fac
I like me some Seaquest, it’s just one of those games that is so simple in premise but absolutely masterful in its execution. The premise is simple, collect stranded treasure seeking divers while blasting away sharks and enemy subs who are pursuing them. As the game progresses the enemies come in larger numbers and are more aggressive while divers are fewer and farther between. You also have an oxygen meter that will deplete far too quickly for your liking, you can resurface to fill your meter b
Mythicon was a pool of optimism for success in the videogame market that ran dry quicker than it took for me to type this sentence. These guys were a blip on the radar, they came, and they went and were never seen again. I suppose it is rather remarkable then that so many copies of their games can be found in the wild, perhaps it was due to how Mythicon distributed their games, it seems they were sold in non-traditional retail outlets like grocery and department stores. The prices of the games m
It has been a while since I’ve done a comparison review, and with the acquisition of a certain game it seems that I finally have a good enough pairing to warrant one. Am I the only one who finds the concept of a shooting gallery arcade game to be odd? Or at least one that doesn’t use some sort of a light gun to emulate a real shootin’ gallery, like what you’d see at an actual carnival. It’s convenient then that there were two games on the 2600 that did just that, and that I’ve already mentioned
Battlezone is one of my absolute favorite arcade games, and as we all know when it comes to the 2600 arcade conversions can be rather hit or miss. Battlezone 2600, fortunately, hits it outta the park, it is seriously an amazing conversion. The graphics on display are, at least in my opinion, better than the arcade’s sparse vector lines, it just so full of color and detail that it’s a treat to the eyes. I think Atari borrowed from Activision a bit though since that sunset seems a little bit famil
I’ve been thinking back to my Spacechase review that I posted all the way back in June, it was my second review and I feel it is one of my worst. There is almost no talking about the game itself just me bashing it for being a bad game, and holy crap the second and fourth paragraphs are just one sentence each! That’s terrible! So I think it’s about time to go back and give this review a facelift.
Spacechase by Apollo is an unabashed and shameless copycat of Demon Attack that totall- Wait what
Its Froggo time once more as we look at the packaging their terrible games came in and not the terrible games themselves. If you were going to break into such an antiquated market as the Atari 2600 you’ve gotta have some real head turning game boxes, and did Froggo deliver? Well, no, not really, you need to remember that in 1987 the NES, Master System, 7800, and XEGS, were already on the market and the Sega Genesis was coming out the following year, there were so many other things people would r
Alright… So I promised that I would never review this game a long time ago in my Ghost Manor review but I feel that I now know enough about the game to give it a proper review. Spike’s Peak makes me cringe; I can find zero enjoyment from this game no matter how much I play it. Right now Spike’s Peak is the only Xonox game I have that I’ve yet to review and there is a very good reason for that, because playing this game puts me in a bad mood, so I must approach this game while already in a bad mo
What the hell… Let’s review Combat… This review is neither overdue nor actually expected I was just looking at my game shelf and thought the first six words of this review. Combat is iconic; people who’ve never even held a game controller know about Combat, it is for many people the epitome of the word videogame. Combat was the pack-in game for almost every single Atari VCS up until 1982, with the main exception being the Sears brand consoles that had Target-Fun (Air Sea Battle) as the pack-in t
I feel it’s time to finish this up, the final Data Age game, the only one I have yet to review, Bermuda Triangle. Judging from the model number Bermuda Triangle is the second to last game Data Age produced before going belly up, which is a pity since around this time is when Data Age was beginning to get good. Journey Escape, Bermuda Triangle, and Frankenstein’s Monster are all decent games in most respects, which is quite a shift from previous games like Sssnake and Bugs which are viewed as som
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what to do for my next box review since I’d like to get the more obscure publishers out there before I tackle any of the big names like Atari or Activision. I finally came to a decision though; I would take a look at Zellers boxes since there are few things more obscure for American collectors than something that wasn’t sold in the U.S.
These things scream “BUDGET” I’d say they’re on par with the Taiwan Cooper Boxes in their stripped back budgeted design.
I have created a monster… Perhaps it was the fumes from my previous review but recent circumstances would have led me to this sooner or later. Recently I killed my 2600 as well as one I had gotten that same day at a local game sale, a word for the wise, if you have a 6-switch 2600 DO NOT re-seat the chips it will murder the console. As a test to see if my hypothesis is correct I took a system that was at death’s door, somebody had spilled soda in it and it would only play Congo Bongo and Warploc
After a bit of persistence I finally managed to complete the Data Age collection, that’s right, now I have a copy of every single Data Age Title. This is probably one of the easiest and cheapest publisher collections to finish due to the fairly low number of games released and how common most of them are. The only other publishers I can think of that might be easier to complete are Mythicon, and Vidtec/U.S. Games for the same reasons as Data Age. But… almost every publisher has that one game tha
Wait a second… Wasn’t I supposed to review Video Life from Commavid? Well I was, but I decided against it because there really wasn’t anything to review, all you do is look at the pretty pictures while your ears explode, so I decided to instead replace it with a game that’s not currently on the R10 list but I’m fairly sure will be on it eventually, Red Sea Crossing. It’s odd, isn’t it, that three of the rarest 2600 games are also the only three religious themed games in the 2600 library? It seem
I made an executive decision to skip Pepsi Invaders since it is just Space invaders with the aliens replaced with PEPSI, with infinite lives and a three minute time limit. I've already reviewed Space Invaders, which is basically the same thing, except with those few changes, so I'm just going to skip straight to The Music Machine
I actually have surprisingly little to say about Music Machine, it was sold in religious bookstores alongside the record of the same name, it is likely that to shif
Over here in Madison we have a chain of thrift stores known as St. Vincent DePauls, St. Vinnie’s for short that has a big game sale every six months at one of their locations around the city, I have attended one previously and the one today, and as a collectors you all know how great it is to get good games for cheap. Sadly though, and I hate to admit it, but this St. Vinnie’s game sale was a bit of a bust. I arrived at 8:30, they opened at 9:00, in the freezing cold and wind only to see through
Spectravision was mostly known for their Quickshot brand of joysticks, but that didn’t prevent them from entering the home game market in early 1982. Spectravision released a grand total of eleven games for the 2600 before abandoning it in late 1982, eleven games in a year is quite impressive. They are also one of the rarer companies on the 2600, in that a majority of their catalog is an R5 or above. You can actually track the rough time when the games were released by their rarity, with the ear
I recently had an idea about what to do on Mondays when I don’t write reviews, I want to fill that day with something but I just didn’t know what, until like four minutes ago. As is fairly well known I am a collector of 2600 games, and for most of the time I’ve been a collector I’ve tried to collect my games complete in box (CIB), mainly because it just adds that extra ‘wow’ factor to the collection, and it just makes me happy. I recently realized that I’ve only been focusing on a tiny part of m
Where to even start with this one… Well how about the name? Gauntlet, which in retrospect has caused a lot of confusion over the years, yes there was a Gauntlet on Atari but it isn’t Atari’s Gauntlet, same name different game. Even the company is shrouded in mystery, mainly because I can’t find a decent shred of info on them anywhere, all I really know is that they were a mail-order only company, they programmed three games but only released two, and that a majority of their games exist only as
Gamma-Attack, much like Air Raid, has languished in obscurity and myth for many years until its eventual discovery in 2008. From the get-go this game was set up to have a very limited release, and to truly understand HOW limited we have to briefly take a look at the company that made it, Gammation. Gammation was a one man company out of Ohio that made and sold turbo attachments for the 2600 through mail-order. The only way to get business would be to have ads in the large gaming magazines, and f
As is common with many rare games from the first few generations, they were just one-offs from no-name companies trying to either break into the market, or simply to advertise themselves. I honestly have no idea where Eli’s Ladder falls in the spectrum of one-offs, but as one-offs go this one’s pretty darn good. Eli’s Ladder is a math tutoring game that teaches the player addition, subtraction, and counting, it also came with a console overlay for both six and four switch Atari’s which leads me
We are going to start with the defacto ‘rare’ game in the 2600 library, Air Raid. Very little is known about this cartridge, and it seems that every step taken towards finally knowing who created this oddity leads further down a rabbit hole of craziness, and red herrings. I have browsed through several Air Raid centric threads and it has been suggested that the creators were drug smuggling members of the Cuban cartel, or even participated in slavery. But it seems that the only promising lead has
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