The absolute worst game(s) you played/bought for the A8

[andylama]

I loved Journey to the Planets. I still have kind of a soft spot for it.

 

True about it being kind of homely and having very little replay value, but it was a fun puzzle game with some truly weird (in a good way) design concepts.

 

I got my money's worth out of it, back in the day.

 

I agree with pretty much every other game cited in this thread. One wonders how that stuff got funded/published/distributed in the first place!

 

The 8-bit port of Star Wars was maddeningly terrible.

[DanBoris]

I remember buying a really bad Berzerk knock off that I can't remember the title of. It was done in Basic and used a redefined character set in the normal text mode so everything moved in these big character sized jumps. It was really horrible.

 

... Just looked through Atarimania and found it, Intruder Alert by Dynasoft. I fired in up in an emulator and it's actually worse then I remember it!

Edited August 19, 2008 by DanBoris

[+remowilliams]

This actually has to be the worst 'game' ever sold for the A8. It was called 'Disk 50' here in the states and sold on floppy. To say that it was mind meltingly horrendous would be a vast understatement. It's actually a compilation of 'games' but - 'play' Barrel Jump if you want the full effect, it pretty much says it all about this pile of crap.

 

Selling this should have been punishable by flogging.

[carmel_andrews]

The Parker brothers A8 vgersion of Star Wars was easly miles better then the later Domark/zeppelin version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved Journey to the Planets. I still have kind of a soft spot for it.

 

True about it being kind of homely and having very little replay value, but it was a fun puzzle game with some truly weird (in a good way) design concepts.

 

I got my money's worth out of it, back in the day.

 

I agree with pretty much every other game cited in this thread. One wonders how that stuff got funded/published/distributed in the first place!

 

The 8-bit port of Star Wars was maddeningly terrible.

[Fire Button]

I guess what makes us edge towards the 'absolute worse' are games that are attractive in terms of graphics and sound but are accompagnied by atrocious game play. Which makes them actually worse than games that look and sound bad to begin with.

 

Does anyone remember Electra Glide? It's a typical race-against-the-time game with what the techies call a mode-7 screen as we are used to in most racing games (Pole Position, Pitstop). It has lots of impressive eye-candy: the title screen shows a smoothly waving English flag, while you select a difficulty level by location - an outline image of England, Australia or the USA, that morphed into the other as you changed the selection. The game itself doesn't look bad either, with nice use of display lists to force a few extra colors. And uncommon for productions from that era, there's actually some catchy in-game music playing during the race.

 

You start in a tunnel. There's a simple clock on your dashboard that counts down. Before it hits zero, you must reach the next tunnel. Obviously, there are obstacles on the road, but none of them are actually cars. Instead there are pools of water (slight dip in speed) and rotating pyramids (?), bouncing balls (??) and an overhead plane that buzzes in to drop pillars on the road (???) that on collision bring you to a full stop. Evading is a matter of trying to see, from the distance, on which side of the road the obstacle is - and then drive on the other side.

 

Sounds doable, right? It would be, if the game would not be so hideously unfair.

 

The balls for example bounce on the left and the right side of the road. When it's at its top, it decides which part of the road it will take. Passing them unharmed is mostly a matter of luck. In addition, objects are placed on the road even in sharp bends - there is no way to spot them until you hit them. And to top it off steering in Electra Glide feels like speeding on glazed roads - which is especially frustrating in the narrow tunnels, where the slightest touch of the walls brings you, again, to a full stop. To further annoy you, each collision also restarts the music, carefully allowing you to grow a deep-felt hatred for what is essentially a good game tune. I've never actually heard it finish. And it's no use to remember all the obstacles and plan a route for the next runs. Even though you've selected a particular country to race in, the road is not at all fixed - it just seems to bend left and right at will. The objects are thrown on the road randomly as well. In fact, I've never noticed any difference in the settings I chose.

 

But the most EVIL thing about the game is that the length of the lap is dependent upon whether or not the current set of obstacles has been dropped. The plane for example easily takes a few seconds, which means that if the power of random gives you two planes in a lap, you'll end up with less extra time than otherwise. Unbalanced object throwing made it possible for me to race a perfect lap and still run out of time before reaching the tunnel. Game over.

 

After playing this disaster, I've contacted government to advocate a death penalty for horrific game design. This was denied, but since some countries have adopted the game as an instrument of torture, forcing people to play it is now officially in conflict with the Geneva conventions.

Edited August 19, 2008 by Fire Button

[Rybags]

Elektraglide is well known here.

 

Nice eye-candy. Shitty game to play. Makes you feel like throwing the joystick through the TV.

[abbotkinneydude]

The Parker brothers A8 vgersion of Star Wars was easly miles better then the later Domark/zeppelin version

 

Strongly disagree.

[Allas]

@Fire Button :

 

Elektraglide is a extraordinary game. Some people can wait other cars on the game, but the idea and concept is fun for sure. It's a pity that English software never was prepared a NTSC version, EG only is playable on PAL systems. Take the emulator and test with PAL configuration and you will see how easy is elektraglide to reach the second tunnel.

[urborg]

I wonder what do you all think of "007 Living Daylights". In my opinion it is another piece of crap. Nice graphics, music, but game is very disapointing . You can shoot enemies or even use some special weapons, but it is pointless, because to end level you have to just come to to end of the screen. There is no way to avoid shots of the enemies, and you get nothing for shooting them, so only thing you have to do is to rush as fast as possible to the right, till you reach the end. Faster you do this - less hits you get. You have to also jump over the stones, barrels or other obstacles, which is not as easy because agent react with some delays. So the best way is to pull joystick upright and hold in this position until you reach end of the level. Agent will be going right and jumping all the time.

Edited August 19, 2008 by urborg

[carmel_andrews]

Living daylights was programmed by the same team as Green Beret...and i heard that that was a cack game

[+remowilliams]

Elektraglide is a extraordinary game.

Agreed, it is a great game in PAL. It's too bad I didn't know what the issue was back in the day when I was ready to chuck my A8 out the window trying to play it on NTSC.

[Fire Button]

@Fire Button :

 

Elektraglide is a extraordinary game. Some people can wait other cars on the game, but the idea and concept is fun for sure. It's a pity that English software never was prepared a NTSC version, EG only is playable on PAL systems. Take the emulator and test with PAL configuration and you will see how easy is elektraglide to reach the second tunnel.

I didn't have so many troubles reaching the second tunnel, more the ones that came afterwards. The problem is, I had PAL. Back in those days, too - NTSC is hard to come by on the European side of the pond.

 

So that practically means you all think the game is great and that I simply suck as a gamer?

[Noelio]

To the ones mentioning the COSMI titles... Have to agree there though I sort of liked aztec challenge.

COSMI are actually very alive and well these days with what I like to call "pulp software" titles, everything from print shop type things to puzzle games etc.

 

Nice to see survivors from back in the day!

[FastRobPlus]

To the ones mentioning the COSMI titles... Have to agree there though I sort of liked aztec challenge.

 

The sin was to give it the same name and box art as the awesome C64 game. If you already had seen the C64 version, then bought the Atari version expecting to get the same game, you would have been very pissed off.

 

I was very pissed off.

 

Still, I was out the money and had no choice but to play the game. It grew on me.

 

My nomination for wors game is this

You have the Atarimania team to blame for rescuing the only known copy from a failing tape. Not even Game-a-Vision would have released this commercially.

[Noelio]

To the ones mentioning the COSMI titles... Have to agree there though I sort of liked aztec challenge.

 

My nomination for wors game is this

You have the Atarimania team to blame for rescuing the only known copy from a failing tape. Not even Game-a-Vision would have released this commercially.

 

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

That's like taking a kid's PSP and giving him only a stick and a bucket for a week.

 

Oh that's a bad bad game!!!

I second your nomination.

[+remowilliams]

I second your nomination.

Nah, that game is too good looking.

 

I have to give the edge to my previous nomination - Disk 50 / Barrel Jump

 

 

[Fire Button]

My nomination for wors game is this

You have the Atarimania team to blame for rescuing the only known copy from a failing tape. Not even Game-a-Vision would have released this commercially.

Wow. A short muck-up in BASIC as a commercial release? If this sold, I could have been rich.

 

It reminds me of another BASIC Break-out game that I once typed in from some Atari magazine pages, although that one actually had blocks to clear. The thing was, the ball always moved in 45 degree angles, and no matter how you hit it with the bat, it always bounced with a perfect straight 90 degree corner. It turned out that the only thing you could do was make it follow its predetermined path - which, as it turned out, was unable to clear certain blocks because it just never got there.

 

Whoever made it never tested it by finishing the very first level of their game.

[Nukey Shay]

BASIC was very big in the early days

 

IIRC Ken Williams wrote Mystery House in under a week...sold 'em by the thousands. Ahh...if only I'd had owned a computer back in 1979!

[carmel_andrews]

Disk 50....wasn't that by cascade, they had the same games on cassette 50

 

Also, Adventure int'l released a small range of cassette games at £1.99, i think 2 of the games were called Earthquake and Mountain Shoot (i think they might have been written in BASIC)

 

Wasn't they ever an NTSC version of Electraglide released...I think the issues could relate to the game's heavy use of graphical timing issues...hence the prob's with playing the game on NTSC

Edited August 20, 2008 by carmel_andrews

[Rybags]

PMSL.

 

I think Rear Guard was about the only decent BASIC game ever commercially released - although it did utilize a healthy amount of Asm code.

[gtkakega]

but yes... the Cosmi titles were crap... kind of low quality basic games (add Super Huey).

 

i remember buying 'Forbidden Forest' at Zellers with my hard earned newspaper delivery dollars... i think i used the disk as a frisbee

[Nukey Shay]

PMSL.

 

I think Rear Guard was about the only decent BASIC game ever commercially released - although it did utilize a healthy amount of Asm code.

 

Telengard, Dragon's Eye, Mar Tesoro, Ultima (Alakabeth), Galactica (Galactic Empires), Artworx Strip Poker...I can think of quite a number of BASIC-only titles that have had very successful runs. The language was quite suitable if the game doesn't have a lotta heavy action.

 

<insert quip regarding Strip Poker here>

[Fire Button]

Oh, I don't doubt the possibilities of BASIC as a language to make commercial games in... After all, a game player couldn't care less how it was done if it's fun.

I was just surprised that someone tried selling something that most 12-year old kids at the time would have done better. As a side note, it would make an interesting topic to see what commercial successes - or at least, releases - there have been in BASIC.

 

Most of them cheat anyway, applying strips of assembly for the fancy stuff.

 

On the topic of Cosmi -am I the only one who actually enjoyed Forbidden Forest? It had its quirks, sure - waiting for the animations to finish kind of takes the pacing away, but I thought the game had a strangely mesmerising, nightmare-like feel to it. And the baddies really freaked me out.

Edited August 21, 2008 by Fire Button

[Tezz]

A friend of ours (who worked in the games industry) back in the time when it was current made his own version of Forbidden Forest based on the better C64 version as he was disapointed with the A8 release. I remember it was a pretty close recreation and certainly much better than the release. I'm not in touch with him any more however and the copy I had has been lifted from my collection and never returned. I'm still looking through my disks whilst imaging them all so hopefully I will come across it to upload it here.

Edited August 21, 2008 by Tezz

[www.atarimania.com]

I have to give the edge to my previous nomination - Disk 50 / Barrel Jump

Do you have an original disk image for that shitfest? We only have Cassette 50, not the US release.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com