My Top 5 Worst Atari 2600 Games Ever Video

[bigfriendly]

Hello, I hope you all are having a good start to your week. For my list I have the following guidelines. The games I selected have to be from the era when the 2600 was a common gaming console so we are talking late 70s to the early to mid 80's. No newer releases or released home brews from more recent times. I personally had to actually play the game back in it's time when it was relevant to the marketplace. There are plenty of crappy games to choose from but I didn't play most of them back then so I'm not going to include them as options in my list. I'd love to hear what your own worst experiences or disappointments were when you played with the 2600 or any other console from that era. Thanks:) 

Gen-X-Memories Presents Bigfriendly's Top 5 Worst 2600 Games

[BillDMatt]

For punishment for my son,   I make him play the original  Golf.   He usually straightens up after that .   

[bigfriendly]

1 hour ago, BillDMatt said:

For punishment for my son,   I make him play the original  Golf.   He usually straightens up after that .   

If he ever builds a tolerance make him play Skeet Shoot by Apollo Games. He would probably prefer a woodshed spanking to that torture:)

[BillDMatt]

17 minutes ago, bigfriendly said:

If he ever builds a tolerance make him play Skeet Shoot by Apollo Games. He would probably prefer a woodshed spanking to that torture:)

That's hilarious,   I will have to look for that title next time I'm flea marketing.  LOL 

[Pitfall Harry]

I see your video included some real stinkers, but your list really should begin and end with Skeet Shoot by Apollo. Hands down, it is the worst Atari 2600 video game ever marketed. Skeet Shoot

redefines the meaning of the words "minimal" and "horrible".  I could have written that game in 20 minutes with half my brain tied behind my back.

 

-Ben

[bigfriendly]

32 minutes ago, Pitfall Harry said:

I see your video included some real stinkers, but your list really should begin and end with Skeet Shoot by Apollo. Hands down, it is the worst Atari 2600 video game ever marketed. Skeet Shoot

redefines the meaning of the words "minimal" and "horrible".  I could have written that game in 20 minutes with half my brain tied behind my back.

 

-Ben

There are many bad, bad games for the 2600 and I haven't experienced them all but it's hard to imagine something being much worse than Skeet Shoot. Part of my decision was also based on the fact Apollo games actually did advertise in gaming magazines back then. Many of these fly by night companies that pumped out these shitters never really promoted them very much.

[Raiu]

Apollo wasn't exactly a tiny fly-by-night company, but they also weren't very successful.  I remember enjoying Lost Luggage as the joystick-based Kaboom/Avalanche clone that it was, but the company went out of business two months after Lost Luggage was released.

[Tinman]

Great video!

 

I won’t argue with any of your selections there.  However I will note that I played a lot of both Pac-Man and Defender way back when, and I grew to really enjoy Defender a lot.  Despite the graphical issues, it was really fun to play.

[bigfriendly]

14 minutes ago, Raiu said:

Apollo wasn't exactly a tiny fly-by-night company, but they also weren't very successful.  I remember enjoying Lost Luggage as the joystick-based Kaboom/Avalanche clone that it was, but the company went out of business two months after Lost Luggage was released.

I think they started in 1981 and filed for bankruptcy in 1983. 

[BIGHMW]

Hey Apollo did come out with some stinkers but they DID have a (somewhat) successful title that I enjoy every once in a while and that being Space Cavern, addictive as f**k!!! It’s in my top 100 on my Harmony Encore SD card easily.

 

…and yes they DID advertise that title all the time on TV, the commercial is up

on YouTube, it was probably the shining moment in that company’s short 2-year history but nevertheless a very playable and good game at that.

[Living Room Arcade]

Nice video. 

 

I want so much to like Skeet Shoot, but there seems to be something wrong with it.  

 

You can't hit the skeet if...

If you are in the middle and the skeet goes to either side.

If you are on either side and the skeet goes straight up.

 

You only can hit the skeet if...

You are in the middle and the skeet goes straight up.

You are on either side and the skeet goes to either side.

 

Simple though this game may be, I would love this game if it didn't have these flaws.  

[bigfriendly]

1 hour ago, Living Room Arcade said:

I want so much to like Skeet Shoot, but there seems to be something wrong with it.  

 

You can't hit the skeet if...

If you are in the middle and the skeet goes to either side.

If you are on either side and the skeet goes straight up.

That's exactly what Mr. Sherman the gentlemen I was talking about in the video was saying back in 1982-83. He was saying that the game was literally broken and that it was impossible to hit the targets from certain firing positions. There was an old magazine article with the head of Apollo Games someone posted in the forum a while back. In the article he brags about the great sales that Skeet Shoot had. Just imagine the looks on all of those faces when they first played this game. Skeet Shoot is a 4K title that wouldn't have cut it as an VCS original release in 1977 when all of the games were on 2K at the time. And thanks for your compliment on the video. It really is fun to put them together and talk about this old stuff:)

Edited March 16 by bigfriendly

[jerseystyle]

On 3/11/2024 at 2:47 PM, Raiu said:

Apollo wasn't exactly a tiny fly-by-night company, but they also weren't very successful.  I remember enjoying Lost Luggage as the joystick-based Kaboom/Avalanche clone that it was, but the company went out of business two months after Lost Luggage was released.

I think Lost Luggage is a great time. One of my favs, actually.

[+LS650]

18 minutes ago, jerseystyle said:

I think Lost Luggage is a great time. One of my favs, actually.

I know some folks will consider this heresy, but I prefer Lost Luggage over Kaboom!  😆

[frny4x]

I think making this list is pretty easy in 2024.   

 

So, I am an old timer OG Atari player from the 80s.  

 

For a few months, I have been looking at various options to take another look at the games from my youth.  I watched the whole new Atari VCS journey over the past few years, and eventually found all the GenXGrownup videos about all the My Arcade offerings. 

 

I just purchased the My Arcade Gamestation Pro - under the guise of getting it for a couple of children who are now regularly spending time in the household on weekends.    

 

I have to say that, while I Loved my Atari back in the day, I find those games today really underwhelming.  Still, I am enjoying my favorite from the past - Berzerk - while looking out for other games that these children might enjoy. 

So, yeah, I could come up with a worst list pretty easily.   

[jerseystyle]

2 hours ago, LS650 said:

I know some folks will consider this heresy, but I prefer Lost Luggage over Kaboom!  😆

I actually agree with you. As an 8 year old when playing, seeing the bras changed my life haha

[Radio F Software]

Haha, man, Swordquest. I had Earthworld as a kid because I inherited an Atari 2600 and some games both from my parents, who got the console when they got married, and also from my uncle who's a few years older than me. I did not have the manual or comic that came with the game so to me it was just endlessly walking around solving the puzzle rooms and then doing absolutely nothing. I always made sure to get the boots though because I hated the sound effect of the character walking. Now decades later I owe my community on Twitch a marathon of all three (now four thanks to Atari 50) Swordquest games.

 

Also good to see Lost Luggage getting some love in this thread. That is one of my favorite 2600 games! And I agree Lost Luggage is superior to Kaboom.

[Living Room Arcade]

9 hours ago, bigfriendly said:

That's exactly what Mr. Sherman the gentlemen I was talking about in the video was saying back in 1982-83. He was saying that the game was literally broken and that it was impossible to hit the targets from certain firing positions. 

Oh, I see now.  I guess I missed that the first time, but I see it now.  It's at 15:45 in the video.  Thanks.

10 hours ago, bigfriendly said:

And thanks for your compliment on the video. It really is fun to put them together and talk about this old stuff:)

Well, yeah, it's fun to get together with other Atari heads like us and jaw jack about this stuff that nobody cares about but us, isn't that why we all come here!  😁

[Living Room Arcade]

BTW, on my computer, I'm creating an Atari 2600 ROM folder for Stella called "Hidden Gems," and the first two ROMS are going to be Space Cavern and Lost Luggage!  

[BassGuitari]

On 3/11/2024 at 9:51 AM, bigfriendly said:

I'd love to hear what your own worst experiences or disappointments were when you played with the 2600 or any other console from that era. Thanks:) 

Gen-X-Memories Presents Bigfriendly's Top 5 Worst 2600 Games

Believe it or not, I think the only time I was kind of disappointed with a 2600 game was Adventure, of all things. The way the game had been talked up online in the late '90s (when I was getting into classic systems after growing up on NES, Genesis, and PlayStation), I expected it to be bigger. Even a lot of the game world that's there is empty and pointless; there's no reason to explore beyond the direct routes to the castles since there's never anything there (unless the bat is playing more havoc than usual). That's a criticism I still have of Adventure, even though I quickly grew to love the game.

 

Defender is another one I have to admit having had a somewhat confused immediate reaction to. I liked it, but I found it odd that the ship disappears when you fire, and the sort of smudgy look of the laser fire was mildly off-putting as well. It wasn't bad, I just had an idea in my head that it would look different. But like with Adventure, I got over it pretty quickly. Defender is probably one of my Top 5 favorite Atari games now. 🙂

[Avenger75]

Defender is definitively among the 2600 games I enjoy a lot. 

A choice is always subjective, and I can understand some don't like it,  but  this game is sometimes ranked among the best games on the 2600.

In the arcade version, the control of the fighter is quite complicate, and the 2600 version  is more easy to manage. Stargate is the best evolution of the game.

 

Knowing there are dozen of 2600 games that are really ugly are unplayable, I can not consider Defender as being among the worst one.🤔

[bigfriendly]

42 minutes ago, BassGuitari said:

Defender is another one I have to admit having had a somewhat confused immediate reaction to. I liked it, but I found it odd that the ship disappears when you fire, and the sort of smudgy look of the laser fire was mildly off-putting as well. It wasn't bad, I just had an idea in my head that it would look different. But like with Adventure, I got over it pretty quickly. Defender is probably one of my Top 5 favorite Atari games now. 🙂

 

10 minutes ago, Avenger75 said:

Knowing there are dozen of 2600 games that are really ugly are unplayable, I can not consider Defender as being among the worst one.🤔

I appreciate everyone's input. That's one of the things that makes this so much fun to do:)

[christo930]

Defender was not a bad game. What it was is a poor port of the arcade Defender. Stargate/D2 showed what could be done, at least with an extra kb of RAM. Plus, I think Defender was only 4k while Stargate was 8k plus the extra 128 bytes of RAM. It probably could have been much, much better as an 8k game even without the extra RAM. It's actually surprising that they released it as a 4k game. Asteroids also came out in 1981 and was released as an 8k game.

 

 

Pac Man is awful, I agree about how awful it is. But it's really not in the bottom 5.  You can still play it.  It will just never be Pac Man though.  That is where it really falls down.

There is no excuse for some of the badness of pac man. There is no excuse for the terrible colors chosen. No excuse for the up / down tunnel. No excuse for not having mr man face all 4 directions. No excuse for the terrible sound either. They didn't even get the scoring right. I think where all the compromises came in is the marketing dept insisting it be a 2 player game. That eats up RAM because you have to store the dots (plus score, plus level, plus pac men in reserve etc) for both players at all times. With only 1024 bits of RAM, it eats it up. Notably, Ms Pac Man was a 1 player game.

 

With a couple of notable exceptions, the worst of the 2600 games were low end 3rd party games being sold at a discount price.  I think there were some pretty crappy 2k games early on too.

[+LS650]

1 minute ago, christo930 said:

Defender was not a bad game.

I was playing Defender a while ago for the first time in many years, and I actually enjoyed it.  It does play like a reasonable facsimile of the arcade game - it just doesn't LOOK like the arcade game.

[zzip]

17 hours ago, BassGuitari said:

Believe it or not, I think the only time I was kind of disappointed with a 2600 game was Adventure, of all things. The way the game had been talked up online in the late '90s (when I was getting into classic systems after growing up on NES, Genesis, and PlayStation), I expected it to be bigger. Even a lot of the game world that's there is empty and pointless; there's no reason to explore beyond the direct routes to the castles since there's never anything there (unless the bat is playing more havoc than usual). That's a criticism I still have of Adventure, even though I quickly grew to love the game.

I remember seeing Adventure on in-store kiosks in the 2600 heyday, and even then I thought the game looked absolutely terrible even by 2600 standards!

 

But somehow it ended in my library anyway and I ended up getting hooked and my friends and I would play it a lot..    I think in a world where sandbox games didn't exist, Adventure was the closest thing.   You could sit there and do cruel experiments on the bat,  and discover cool tricks like flying through walls with the bridge chasing the magnet,  or you get swallowed by a dragon while holding the bat, and you can fly around the kingdom.   We always found something interesting to try in that game.