Top Ten Atari 2600 Games with the Most Misleading Game Artwork
So plenty of stuff in the Atari 2600 catalog right? Well the primitive graphics of the Atari 2600 gave way to false sense of hope at times. Which particular Atari games had the most misleading artwork when compared to the actual games?
While this game isn't that bad, it has perhaps the single most misleading game artwork. You see pirates, ships, waves, and flags - very cool stuff! Except the game features absolutely nothing but squares where you have to find the flag by chance, with clues or bombs around. This game seemed to lure people in.
Astronauts! You'd think that this particular Breakout game would have something to do with them, but not really!
What is up with this artwork? It looks way too busy. We see a few engaged humans, a moonscape, planets, and ships in the background. But when you play, there are just two spaceships on an empty background! One of Atari's greatest failures. It's amazing how they marketed it!
I have to wonder if the artwork for this game is supposed to be the inspiration for the stuff in F-Zero because this game sure looked cool in the artwork! But of course, Slot Racers was never a racing game. It was a "move your car and apparently fire shots at the other car" multiplayer game. Very strange that it would end up like this.
You see two civilian people in this game artwork. But not in the game! It seems quite strange to have this kind of stuff on your game if you're not going to show them. This game, of course, is a space shooter like Gravitar or Asteroids.
This is somewhat of an interesting one. Warlords definitely seems to be a medieval-themed game, and the knight on the game cover is quite interesting. However, in the game, even in the arcade version of Warlords, they use shields to deflect the castle-damaging ball. Not swords! So it's quite misleading in that aspect.
Okay, so the four boards you see in this artwork are in the game. But again with the astronaut thing. And what appears to be a cyborg he's against! Very misleading to think this is some crazy action-packed Tic-Tac-Toe game!
This incredibly obscure title makes you think it's got something to do with cool spy stuff and possibly even some action. But it's a strange decoding game that even I couldn't figure out!
All of the Swordquest games pretty much belong here, but I'll put Earthworld since it's more or less the first. The entirety of Swordquest is a third-person dungeon crawl with small mini-games but next to no indication of what to do. It's supposed to be tied in with a comic book, but there's not a lot of real action.
Where's the swordplay? Where's the girl in the game (considering both Earthworld and Fireworld have her in the artwork)? Come on, Atari.
The Atari 2600 version of Breakout features what looks like tennis players on the cover. Strange, considering how Atari had tennis games around the same time more or less.
Mario, Luigi, and Pac-Man appeared in the box art, but despite this, they don't appear in any of the games.
Snake-bricks are a thing in this game, but the game itself does not surround two people. It's about not hitting yourself as you create a path and ensuring your opponent hits something instead.
The actual game cover artwork isn't shown in the image here, but it is extremely colorful, filled with leprechauns, rainbows, and fairytale creatures. It looks incredibly artistic. This same artwork was even reused when the game was renamed "Fun With Numbers."
However, as you can expect, this is an Atari 2600 game, so the gameplay is primitive. It is just one color overall with blocky-looking numbers and nothing truly eye-popping.
Oh, I remember this train wreck of a 2600 title. Kids certainly have fun with the Atari 2600 joystick, but the game itself is like a teenager tried to program a board game. You just do math problems and move spaces, that is it.
The kids on the game artwork are certainly not playing the atrocity that is Math Grand Prix.