Atari: 80 Classic Games in One Review

NuMetalManiak What the heck is this? Reviewing something that has lots of games? Surely. They're all simple arcade or Atari 2600 games. I relived my childhood just finding the CD-ROM with this. Too bad the colors are very mixed up on my Windows 7 machine. But hey, at least the games are still playable somewhat. This disk contained several arcade games and about 80 or so 2600 games. I'll review them all individually, but they will be short.

Arcade games:

Asteroids: Classic game, simple premise.
Asteroids Deluxe: Takes Asteroids, straps on shields and other things, and makes it better. This kinda doesn't make you want to play the original Asteroids though
Battlezone: Never got into it. Control is slow and I usually die without knowing.
Black Widow: A strange game this. Enemies invade a spider's web and it shoots them with bullets. Kinda cool.
Centipede: Classic, plus fun to shoot the mushrooms.
Crystal Castles: Pretty cool, you're a bear in a maze, avoiding monsters and picking up gems. Very arcadey in that sense.
Gravitar: I love the premise and the control, the game is piss hard though.
Liberator: Like Missile Command (see below) times 4. Awesome space-made arcade game.
Lunar Lander: I really don't know how this game works, sorry.
Major Havoc: Like two different games in one. Rail shooter + maze aspect, this one is fun.
Millipede: Takes Centipede and greatly enhances it.
Missile Command: The classic Tower Defense game.
Pong: No comment needed
Red Baron: A weird vector shooter. You can barely see your own shots though.
Space Duel: A two-player coop version of Asteroids and my personal favorite arcade game in the set. Lots of fun to shoot different things with a partner, or by yourself controlling two ships (and there's a game mode for that!)
Super Breakout: It's Breakout with different modes and a bit more replayability
Tempest: I mentioned this game before. It's a fun shooter game where you are inside shapes taking down hostile aliens. Very clean design.
Warlords: The four-player castle defense game. It's hard to keep up against the fast fireball though.

2600 games:

3d Tic Tac Toe: Because Tic Tac Toe is boring, they made four 4x4 boards, stacked on top of one another, and have several winning combinations. Rather hard to keep up.
A Game of Concentration: Boring game, just flip cards until you match.
Adventure: The original adventure game. Hard as hell on any mode besides the first.
Air-Sea Battle: LOADS OF FUN. Lots of game modes, shooting down ships is never more fun.
Asteroids: The 2600 version of asteroids has quite a few game modes, making it better than the arcade version in my book.
Basic Programming: I'm taking computer science classes and I still don't understand how this game works.
Battlezone: Again, not into Battlezone much. This one is ugly too.
Blackjack: Not a gambler.
Bowling: Top-down bowling game. Meh
Breakout: The classic brick destroyer. What's fun is the Breakthru mode where the ball goes through the wall at breakneck speed.
Canyon Bomber: A strange one. Two game modes, and an AI that really is accurate.
Casino: Again not into gambling. Blackjack is put into this game also for some reason.
Centipede: No real major mode changes besides a "children's mode" which makes the spider not kill you.
Circus Atari: Hilarious game, I love it
Codebreaker: No idea how this one works either.
Combat: CLASSIC 2600 game. Good combat modes. PLAY IT!!!
Crystal Castles: Don't like the 2600 version of the arcade game, it's way too hard.
Demons to Diamonds: Interesting game, shooting proper color demons. Can be fun.
Desert Falcon: Bleh, stuff kills me here without warning.
Dodge 'Em: The AI in this game is an ASS and I can't stand this one at all.
Double Dunk: A fun basketball game.
Flag Capture: Very simplistic game, kinda weird, but I played it a lot.
Football: Quite simple for a (American) football game. I like that I guess. The fact that there's three football games though is pretty strange though.
Fun With Numbers: I'm not in preschool.
Golf: This game is retarded. The golfer swings like a loony and the ball never goes where you want it to.
Gravitar: Some pretty unique game modes in this version of Gravitar, like one where you have a whopping 100 lives at the start. I played this one and liked it more.
Haunted House: Didn't play it much. The really spooky part about this game is that your character is just a pair of eyes.
Home Run: The most simplistic (and only one that actually worked) of the three baseball games.
Human Cannonball. Hilarious game, especially the little "OUCH" graphic when you miss.
Math Grand Prix: Again, save the easy math for preschoolers. Also, this board game has unnecessary things in it that make me not like it at all.
Maze Craze: TONS of game modes, and maze combinations. You can have the speed changed, the squares hurt, kill, or be killed, and the maze be invisible. This is an excellent 2600 game, although it's two player only.
Millipede: Pretty much the same as the arcade version.
Miniature Golf: Thankfully not as bad as the other golf game. The control is awkward though.
Missile Command: More fun on the 2600 version!
Night Driver: I didn't play this one much, and it's an odd one. Just one car, driving down a road, avoiding obstacles whenever possible. Control was pretty hard.
Off The Wall: A Breakout clone with powerups. That basically means its an Arkanoid clone..
Outlaw: A mostly two-player game, two characters try to shoot each other. Quite fun, but the hitboxes of things are a bit too big.
Quadrun: Really HARD game to master, and takes a while to figure out. Catching your own shots so they don't disappear plus catching the guys so the white bar doesn't disappear. Hard to play, almost impossible to master.
Radar Lock: A fun shooter, pretty hard after the first level though.
Realsports Baseball: This game is broken. BROKEN. You can't seem to pitch a certain type of ball other than the intentional ball, because you always throw to one of the basemen. It doesn't work well at all.
Realsports Football: Another football game, with less uglier sprites.
Realsports Tennis: Well, a game that let's you name your characters. That's intriguing. The game plays rather well too.
Realsports Volleyball: An alright volleyball game.
Sky Diver: A two-player only game. Gauging wind and parachute timing can be hard. Hilarious noise if your character dives into the ground, although you lose points for doing that.
Slot Machine: Boring
Slot Racers: Also boring, but the novelty of cars shooting square bullets at each other is silly. Cool mazes too.
Space War: A two player deathmatch game with Asteroids ships. Very plain and uninteresting.
Sprintmaster: An actually cool racing game!
Star Raiders: Based on some comic. Too complicated a game for my taste.
Star Ship: A bit simple, with space ambience and shooting random things down. Quite cool though.
Steeplechase: Pretty easy to win this one. It's okay.
Stellar Track: A Star Trek ripoff of sorts. It's boring for me because I don't like text-only games.
Street Racer: Lots of game modes, lots of fun.
Submarine Commander: An addictive game for me. Timing is everything.
Super Baseball: Like Realsports Baseball, BROKEN. Don't play it.
Super Breakout: Pretty much similar to the arcade version with kinkier sounds.
Super Football: Quite complicated football game, but it's the neatest.
Surround: Two player battle Snake of some sorts. Pretty cool
Swordquest: Earthworld: The only Swordquest I completed, using a guide of course. Apparently the Swordquest games are tied to a comic I've never heard of. The game has you moving through rooms with Zodiac symbols, getting and giving items in rooms and playing little minigames sometimes.
Swordquest: Fireworld: This time every room has a little minigame in order to get items. Not too fun. The rooms are based off the tree of life.
Swordquest: Waterworld: The sounds annoy me in this game, and I don't really care that much about the minigames or the structure (based off seven centers of chakra).
Video Checkers: Yay, checkers, not
Video Chess: I have better fun with the Chessmaster video games than this.
Video Olympics: 2600 version of Pong, plus other random sports with Pong paddles! Lots of game modes, lots of cool stuff. I like this game.
Video Pinball: It would be more fun if there were more flipper action. Too bad the ball bounces sharply off everything. Fun sound effects though and rather addictive.
Warlords: A much less refined version. Plenty of game modes though.
Yars' Revenge: Freakin' classic. Kinda hard to figure out though. Once you figure it out it's definitely an awesome game.

Comments

Wow - bobbythebrony