Convincing Atari games

[Garwor]

Interesting topic. I think I've thought about this on a number of occasions but never really put it into words. Towering Inferno, Cosmic Ark, Berzerk, Fantastic Voyage, Pitfall I and II... those always made me forget I was looking at a bunch of blocky crap.

[Syzygy1]

Interesting topic. I think I've thought about this on a number of occasions but never really put it into words. Towering Inferno, Cosmic Ark, Berzerk, Fantastic Voyage, Pitfall I and II... those always made me forget I was looking at a bunch of blocky crap.

See my latest post on the thread "My own stories for games" for my experience with Fantastic Voyage. Haha. RIP. (really though it's not funny, because I have a huge crush on him)

 

Anyway Earth Dies Screaming and Solaris are very fun I imagine both are a space mission done by Cyborg from DC and assisting him is Lum from Urusei Yatsura. Just Cyborg and Lum flying through spaces discovering new planets and cracking codes, solving mysteries. That should be a series.

[Syzygy1]

Ooh and Laser Gates because I feel as I am Swayzak the virus invading a system ahahahaha

[Syzygy1]

Porky's pulled me in. It yanked me really. You don't mind having to repeat a certain screen over and over and over and over again. It's Hi def.

Those were the days when teen comedy movies got their own video games. Why not a Ferris Bueller or American Pie video game? Haha

 

Ooh and sorry to go off topic but of course why didn't Cyborg of The New Teen Titans have his own game? THAT WOULD'VE BEEN CONVINCING TO ME NO MATTER HOW SHIT IT WAS

[Flojomojo]

Ooh and sorry to go off topic but of course why didn't Cyborg of The New Teen Titans have his own game? THAT WOULD'VE BEEN CONVINCING TO ME NO MATTER HOW SHIT IT WAS

Teeny Titans (and its sequel) is a great Pokémon type game, featuring Cyborg, definitely not shit.

 

SOLARIS is very convincing, immersive, deep, fun.

[Syzygy1]

Teeny Titans (and its sequel) is a great Pokémon type game, featuring Cyborg, definitely not shit.

 

SOLARIS is very convincing, immersive, deep, fun.

TTG. Enough said. I'm talking about the ORIGINAL Cyborg from the 80s, as featured on my avatar.

[Flojomojo]

Well don't we have a narrow one track mind?

[Syzygy1]

Well don't we have a narrow one track mind?

If one was a fan of Cyborg back in the 80s, chances are they'd also like Atari 2600, arcades, ColecoVision, Pac-Man, Defender, Breakout, all those video games. And also be obsessed with Lunar Lander and modems (looking at you Keatah.)

[christo930]

When you were a kid and played the 2600, what games looked convincing? The point of the 2600 was to use your imagination as all the graphics were blocky blobs. (Except for Solaris. Solaris was awesome.)

 

I can say that all the Star Wars games are convincing (look at the commercial for the port of the arcade game), and also that I'm uneasy when I play Adventure and Haunted House as I hate bats (although the point is to use your imagination - maybe I can see them as the not-scary-at-all bat enemies from the Mega Man games). The prototypes are extremely fun to let your imagination run wild - the McDonalds game has ONE screen and yet I imagine a Japanese Ronald McDonald flinging hamburgers everywhere while screaming "RAN RAN RUU!"

 

For short: Atari 2600 games are a wonder exercise in imagination. What games are convincing to you and have the most potential for using your imagination?

 

 

Actually, I thought this was a kind of disappointing aspect of the early 80s gaming. I don't recall any book tie-ins. I didn't have a Colecovision, but it would have been nice to have played Tarzan. As it was, I tried to think of Jungle Hunt as Tarzan, but it wasn't really the same. Though they did often include a back story, they should have included longer stories. Those back stories were usually a paragraph if that. It would have been cool to include like a 10 page story to really pique the imagination.

 

Though I have grown to love many of the 2600 classics, the biggest involvement of my imagination when I was 12 playing my Atari was imagining that the game was anything like the arcade game it was supposed to be! A lot of the games I liked in the arcades either never came to the 2600 or in some cases, when they did, they played (really, looked) nothing like the arcade version. Star Castle was my favorite of the early era and that never came. I remember seeing Defender for the first time and I was like "that doesn't look anything like Defender!" I was very happy when Star Gate came out though. I'm surprised they never had a Nibbler release.

[Syzygy1]

For games like Fantastic Voyage and Towering Inferno you could always watch the movie. Hell in High Score, which I'm still plotting out even though the effing script is gone for the time being and IDK when it will be back, there's a part I recently came up with where Tiffany tries out Fantastic Voyage and then the lady who works at the game store tells her about the movie; upon finding out Tiffany hasn't seen it, the lady shows it to her and Tiffany realizes the movie is better than the game. ("I liked the inner ear part; why wasn't that in the game?")

I know Megaforce has made me want to watch the movie; looks Crazy Awesome.

 

I'm writing my own stories for games again, for all the games in my collection, minus the licensed titles of course. They star a hot disco era black guy of the Cyborg variety (meant to be a stand-in for him haha), his crew, his friends, people he comes across, etc. Basically my own DC Comics title. Maybe I can actually make a comic out of it.

[Syzygy1]

Well, I've just made my stories about Cyborg and the Titans for the time being. I've got Galaxian where Starfire enlists the Titans in helping a reformed Blackfire fight against a hostile alien race, Fantastic Voyage where Raven shrinks the Titans and takes them inside Cyborg's body to defeat a blood clot in his brain, one about Robin I haven't applied to a specific game yet (guest starring Batman), and Centipede where the Titans have to fight radioactively-mutated bugs atop Cyborg's head, utilizing STAR Labs technology to shrink.

[+RichG1972]

Interesting topic. I think I've thought about this on a number of occasions but never really put it into words. Towering Inferno, Cosmic Ark, Berzerk, Fantastic Voyage, Pitfall I and II... those always made me forget I was looking at a bunch of blocky crap.

Speaking of Cosmic Ark, I seek the version of it where the starfield can be turned off with the tv type switch

[Rom Hunter]

Enduro, Pitfall II, Space Shuttle, Starmaster

 

[mbd30]

Cosmic Ark and Earth Dies Screaming are darn impressive games and certainly feed the imagination.

 

 

I was thinking Cosmic Ark. The ark itself, the meteors and the planet surfaces all look very nice. The different aliens also gave a sense of progression that was rare with Atari 2600 games. You wanted to get a little further in order to see what the next aliens would look like. I know that they eventually loop but I never got that far as a kid.

[Keatah]

I used to have drawings of what the Ark would look like inside. The holding area for the aliens. The control center & bridge. Stuff like that.

[Place Logo Here]

I must have always had quite an imagination, as I cannot recall a game that did not draw me in. For even the lamest and least competent efforts, I still suspended my disbelief (like watching any movie) and put myself in the world of the game.

 

Related to this, I always wondered what was beyond the accessible areas of the game. Then there was a Tron light cycle homebrew a few years back that had an easter egg running with that notion. Words cannot express the excitement I felt the first time I escaped the game grid.

[Syzygy1]

I used to have drawings of what the Ark would look like inside. The holding area for the aliens. The control center & bridge. Stuff like that.

You remind me of myself.

[CreeB]

Fantastic Voyage. It's hi def. ?

[Beerbarian]

Battlezone's sense of a 3D spatial battlefield (ableit in a horizontal only plane) was very immersive to me as a yongster.

Even though the radar is very simple, it's that visual window and audio cue into the world beyond/behind your view screen.

The animation of the tank tracks and audio rumble of the tank engine were simple yet effective, and the player's tank destruction animation by way of a convincing camera transmission breakup I always thought was a stroke of genius, and fits perfectly with a game mechanic that you were remotely controlling a tank in a futuristic war scenario.

I think the manual paints a different picture that you have found an old tank in a museum, but I always imagined a more furutistic Tron-like situation (like the arcade version - and yes I know that predates Tron).

It's also more convincing that you have a stock of remote control tanks that you restart into, rather than the more abstract 'death and respawn' of a living being (ones' self!).

 

Berzerk was also thrilling and convincing to me. The frantic running animation of your character translated well from the arcade version, and the robot enemy animations and their square shoulder strance always reminds me of the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

 

Most (but not all) Atari 2600 arcade ports I had played early '80's aged 8/9 were my first experiences with those games before I got to see their arcade originals when I got that a bit older.

[Mr SQL]

On 6/30/2020 at 11:21 AM, Beerbarian said:

Battlezone's sense of a 3D spatial battlefield (ableit in a horizontal only plane) was very immersive to me as a yongster.

Even though the radar is very simple, it's that visual window and audio cue into the world beyond/behind your view screen.

The animation of the tank tracks and audio rumble of the tank engine were simple yet effective, and the player's tank destruction animation by way of a convincing camera transmission breakup I always thought was a stroke of genius, and fits perfectly with a game mechanic that you were remotely controlling a tank in a futuristic war scenario.

I think the manual paints a different picture that you have found an old tank in a museum, but I always imagined a more furutistic Tron-like situation (like the arcade version - and yes I know that predates Tron).

It's also more convincing that you have a stock of remote control tanks that you restart into, rather than the more abstract 'death and respawn' of a living being (ones' self!).

Great description! BattleZone was different, a surreal 3D trainer with a realistic feel like modern gaming out of place in the 2600 library -

 

Check out The Bradley Simulator for the interesting history on this game

 

[keithbk]

The more difficult levels of Haunted House were nerve-racking and were definitely scary... the sounds, the darkness; as a kid, this game made me nervous just thinking about playing.

[waynel]

Haunted House.
 

It took me a while before I could play that in the dark. Now I know that a blacked out room is the best way to play that game. 

[Zonie]

Nobody has said Superman! Yet?

 

[Unbeliever]

Here's my list:

 

Laser Blast-for the incredible laser effects and when your ship gets hit

Pitfall-very good looking game, smooth play, and good sound effects

Berserk-Simply great game play, despite the lack of voice. 

Stargate (Defender II)-Everything from the sound to the graphics and smooth game play

and lastly,

Ms. Pacman-Excellent coin op conversion with different mazes and excellent sounds.