Homebreviews - part 13
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
1,596 views
I'm finally catching up on the rest of my Homebrew Reviews. There's a bunch of them this time, and they're all transplants of one sort or another. 
But first... I'm now up to 199 unique 2600 games! (Update - that number has since gone up.)
Isn't it purty? Fun game, too!
I've been looking for a CIB Threshold, and now I have it, thanks to Atarimania75, who is selling off parts of his collection here, here, here and here.
He's got some good stuff in there, including some nice rarities, so check it out if you're missing something from your collection. In fact, I'm tempted to go back and get some more...
But for now, on to the reviews!
A-VCS-Tec Challenge
3/5
A-VCS-Tec Challenge is a partial port of Aztec Challenge, originally written for the Commodore 64. There are two challenges in the 2600 version - the Gauntlet, in which you dodge spears being thrown at you, and the Stairs, in which you run back and forth at the base of a staircase, dodging boulders. Once you get through those two challenges, you repeat them at successively more difficult pyramids. Even though I've never played the original game, the 2600 version still feels like it's missing something: You never get to go inside the pyramid. It's very unsatisfying to just repeat the same two challenges without ever reaching any goal. And, as if added as an afterthought, the Stairs challenge isn't even a part of the game by default - you have to flip the left difficulty switch to A/Expert (misprinted in the manual as B) in order to play it at all. There's an even bigger issue with the Stairs challenge, however: The game won't recognize diagonal positions on the joystick. So if you're dodging back and forth and point the joystick up or down even slightly, you won't move at all.
On the plus side - the graphics and especially the music are first-rate, and nearly make up for the game's other shortcomings. The game is fun to just listen to, and a treat to watch. The designs of the pyramids are excellent, and the player's shadow even changes direction depending on the time of day. All things considered, what there is of A-VCS-Tec Challenge is very good. It's just too bad that there's not more of it.
BLiP Football
4/5
BLiP Football is an excellent re-creation of the classic handheld Mattel Electronic Football game. The object is to move your player (represented by a red blip) across the field, avoiding the other team's blips, until you can score a touchdown. The computer always controls defense, so you and another player must take turns playing offense. For those who have fond memories of those old LED games, the nostalgia factor of BLiP Football will instantly transport you back some 30 years.
The sound effects and graphics nicely mimic the original game, and it's just as addictive as ever. There's still something to be said for gameplay at its simplest, and BLiP Football delivers. While the game itself is faithful to the original, the programmers weren't content to just leave it at that. Besides an option to enhance the graphics, they also added a nice-looking title screen with some of the most wonderfully pretentious music ever to grace a 2600 game - Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" - which runs for nearly three full minutes.
Hopefully, we'll get to see more games in the series, like BLiP Football 2, or BLiP Auto Race. Better still, would be a multi-cart with several BLiP games on it. If you ever whiled away hours playing those classic LED handhelds, pick up a copy of BLiP Football!
Gunfight
4/5
Gunfight got it's inspiration from vintage arcade games like Boot Hill and Gun Fight, and is a major improvement over Atari's own Outlaw. You control one of two gunslinging cowboys, and have to gun down your opponent before he takes you out. One shot will knock his hat off... two will take him down. Take him down seven times, and he'll be six-feet-under. Gunfight offers really nice graphics (although what I thought to be an overhead view of a cattle stampede turned out to be arrows), and a good number of variations, the best of which requires you to reload your gun every six shots (unlike most Western movies). The addition of a computer-controlled opponent is one of the biggest improvements, so you can enjoy it as a one-player game, but it gets pretty easy to beat after a few games. However, Gunfight is best as a two player game, and this is where it really shines. Head-to-head games on the 2600 became few and far-between after the early Atari releases, and it's nice to see another one added to the library. Throw in a 2600-ified version of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire", and you have a winner.
Medieval Mayhem
5/5
In Medieval Mayhem, there are four castles, one in each corner of the screen. Each player must protect their castle from an onslaught of fireballs. If they fail, the King inside their castle will be killed, and their kingdom will be lost. Up to four players use paddle controllers to move a shield around the perimeter of their castles to deflect or catch fireballs. But if you catch one, you can't hold onto it for very long or it will start damaging your own castle.
Medieval Mayhem is a complete re-invention of the 2600 version of Warlords - one of the most highly regarded games for the system. So how do you make it better? Improve the graphics, improve the computer players, add more options, and make it closer to the original arcade game. This is exactly what Darrell Spice has accomplished with Medieval Mayhem. From detailed castles to a feature-packed options menu, better-looking kings and the delightful animation of the dragon and knights, the game looks amazing. But best of all, the gameplay that made Warlords so addictive is still completely intact, but with smarter computer opponents (if you can't round up a few human players), and up to three fireballs on screen at the same time, which adds a whole new dimension to the game. Medieval Mayhem is highly customizable thanks to an excellent menu system, so you can dial in exactly the options you want. There are also a couple of Easter Eggs hidden in the game, one of which will really test how good of a player you think you are.
If you liked Warlords, you'll love Medieval Mayhem. And even if you didn't like Warlords, Medieval Mayhem is such a quantum leap over the original, that you should buy it anyway. Grab yourself a set of paddles, and let the battle begin! Highly recommended!
Phantom II/Pirate
4/5
Phantom II/Pirate actually consists of three games: Phantom II (a port of the Midway arcade game), Pirate, and a hidden mini-game called Wizard.
In Phantom II you're a jet fighter pilot, and must race against the clock to shoot down as many enemy planes as possible before you run out of fuel - but they aren't just going to sit there and let you hit them. They'll dodge and weave, fly under cloud cover, and even lead you into the darkness of night, where they're reduced to a quick blip on your radar. Survive long enough, and you get to go up against a bomber, or dock with a tanker for more fuel, and even battle a UFO. Phantom II harkens back to some of the early 2600 titles, and in a good way. Simple, yet addictive gameplay, with enough game options to satisfy almost any skill level. Even though it's a timed game, there are a couple of variations that will allow you to play for quite some time, including a two-player version where one player must try to chase the other one down. There are a few differences from the arcade game (there's only one enemy at a time, and they don't shoot at you), but the extra game options and addition of the bomber, tanker and UFO more than make up for it. One of the features I especially like, is the option to play the game in black and white. If that doesn't bring on a sense of nostalgia for games of this era, nothing will. Phantom II is perfect for getting that quick gaming fix.
Pirate is an adventure game, where you're marooned on an island, in search of lost treasure. You must find a shovel, avoid (or battle) a ghostly pirate and a voodoo priestess, watch out for snakes, and search for the treasure and escape with it... alive. The island isn't huge (a 7x7 grid), but the location of every item changes each time the game is played. To play the game, you have a window which shows what your character is currently looking at, and an overhead view, which shows the directions that you can move. You explore the island, pick up and use different objects, and must be careful to watch your health. If your health decreases, you can find a plant that will heal you. If it drops too low - your game is over. Sometimes it's too easy to solve the game - where you'll find the shovel, then the treasure, with only a few moves. But other times, it can be quite challenging to finish the game. The graphics are simple, but effective, and do a nice job of establishing the location of a desert island. If you do beat the game, it ends with a nice little cut scene - a rarity in 2600 games. Pirate makes for an enjoyable mini-adventure game, and is a nice diversion from Phantom II because it's so completely different from it. There's a lot of potential here for an expanded sequel, or other adventure games using the same engine. If I had one complaint, is that it can be a little confusing to keep track of exactly where on the island you are. A way to display numerical grid coordinates or a larger overview would have been welcomed.
The third game is more of a puzzle game, where you move a Wizard around the screen, and must open a series of locks in the correct order, to retrieve a part of a magic staff locked behind a wall. If you guess the order wrong, you can keep trying, but an enemy sentry enters the room and starts chasing you around. If he catches you - the game is over. If you can retrieve all five pieces of the staff, you win. This game isn't mentioned anywhere in the manual, and was included as an Easter Egg (it's easy to unlock - just search the AtariAge forums if you need help). It's a fairly simple game with decent graphics, and is completely different from either of the other two games. On the downside, the pace is quite slow, and finding the right order in each room is a matter of trial and error, so there's not much skill involved. But it's a nice bonus, and doesn't hurt anything by being included.
Wolfenstein VCS - The Next Mission
3/5
Wolfenstein VCS is a pretty extensive hack of Coleco's 2600 port of Exidy's arcade game Venture, and inspired by the home computer game Castle Wolfenstein. I've never played the original Castle Wolfenstein, but I've played Coleco's Venture, and this is a definite improvement over that game. The problem is, Coleco's Venture just wasn't that great of a game to begin with. The graphics were minimal, the sounds sparse (none of the arcade game's music was included), and the controls were sluggish. Wolfenstein VCS manages to improve the graphics quite a bit, and adds a few nice gameplay elements, but its origins are still very apparent.
Wolfenstein VCS consists of two views - an overall map of the level you're in, then a close-up of each room that you enter. The goal is to avoid SS guards, retrieve different objects from each room, and escape to the next level. Get through all eight levels to escape from the castle and win the game. There are new layouts and more levels than in Coleco's Venture, and several changes which make the game more challenging in some regards, and less in others. For example, in the map view, you now only have narrow corridors to move through, and no space to go past the SS guards (although you can hide in some doorways). This changes the map view to almost a maze game, and is much more fun and challenging than Venture. On the other hand, when you shoot enemies now, you don't die if you touch them before they disappear. While that may have been annoying at times in Venture, it does lower the difficulty level quite a bit. Perhaps requiring the player to kill everything in certain rooms would have helped restore some of the balance. Or maybe have some rooms where you aren't allowed to kill anything, preserving more of the stealth aspect of the game. One especially nice change is that you start off with only a knife, and have to find a gun and supplies of ammunition to increase your effective killing range. This, more than almost anything, sets Wolfenstein apart from Venture.
The graphics (including a nice title screen) are considerably improved over Venture, except for the player's character, which is still just a big, floating face. I found this to be disappointing, since so much effort was put into giving the rest of the game a facelift, as it were. The rest of the new graphics look very good, and do tie in nicely with the theme of the game, helping to reinforce the story presented in the manual.
Although improved on several levels, in the end, it's still basically Venture at its core. If you like Venture, Wolfenstein VCS is certainly worth getting. If you don't like Venture, this may have enough improvements to keep you playing for awhile, but once you get to the end, you may not have much motivation to play it again, except perhaps to look for the hidden ninth level, which I haven't found yet.
Up next... 
The Professor and... Mary Ann...
(aka "and the rest") 
< Previous
Homebreviews IndexNext >
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
12 Comments
Recommended Comments