Classic Video Gamers

Video game of the week: Killer Bees! for Odyssey 2

2012-01-09T02:12:00.005-05:00

The Odyssey 2 home video game console, also known as the Videopac outside the U.S., had a decent following in the early 1980s, but it was never the most popular system. A large part of that had to do with the system's lack of strong graphics and sound, but that meant the creators for the Odyssey 2 games had to work all that much harder to make stronger gameplay.

To that end, such unique games as Killer Bees! came about.

The player controls a swarm of bees in an arena. The bees attack robots, which slows down and eventually can destroy the robots, leaving behind a tombstone where the robots died. The most dangerous enemy? Another swarm of bees, and they fly around quickly trying to attack the player's bees. One by one, the player's bees are picked away, and once there are no more bees for the player, the game ends.

For today's gamers, this might sound a little silly and overly simplistic, but for the early 1980s it was actually a pretty decent game. Unfortunately, the Odyssey 2 was never shown a lot of love by consumers and collectors, and such games as Killer Bees! never caught on big time.

While the graphics for the Odyssey 2 were never great, here they are quite sharp, bright with no blurring. The sound is simplistic, as well, but it's appropriate for the system and the time period. The controls are excellent.

The game speeds up slowly, adding to the tension, and while Killer Bees! might not be a game you would want to play for hours and hours, it is a nice little game that can give you a short break.

Killer Bees! was truly a different game for its time period, and deserves to get a little notice for its uniqueness. Collectors of retro video game systems could do far worse than to pick up a copy of Killer Bees!

Video game of the week: Discs of Tron for arcade

2012-01-02T04:33:00.011-05:00

In 1982, Walt Disney Pictures released a movie called Tron. Since then there have been a ton of video games based upon the movie, and there has been a sequel film only released in 2010. While the original movie and the sequel did alright at the box office, and they have their cult followings, neither has been a huge success with the general viewing public. Still, the movies live on in part because the original was one of the first films to really tackle the subject of video games, part of the plot being about real humans becoming part of a computer world and taking part in actual games.

Like I said, there have been lots of Tron video games, both in the arcade and for the home console markets, as well as for computers. But of them all, my personal favorite has to be Discs of Tron.

Discs of Tron was not the first Tron video game. That honor goes to a game simply titled Tron, which was popular in its own right and not a bad game by any means. But Discs of Tron, to this day, has the best action and continual gameplay of any of the Tron games.

In this game, the player controls the Tron character in a world of video games. Specifically in this game, Tron moves around on a giant floating circle in an arena while using flying discs as a shield and as a weapon to defeat his enemies.

The first level of the game is fairly easy, with Tron moving around on one circle while facing one simple enemy. But as the game progresses, Tron must move around on more circles simply in order to survive the barrage of enemy discs, bombs and other attacks coming his way. Sometimes there are shield in the center of the screen, these shield making it more difficult for Tron to hit his target, but also making it more hard for the enemy combatants to attack Tron.

The control system for this game was quite complex for its time. The main controller was a large joystick with two buttons, one a trigger and the other smaller on top, but the player also had to use a dial for Tron to aim his attack discs. By today's standards that's no big whoop, but in the early 1980s this was considered complicated gameplay. Still, it wasn't anything a gamer couldn't figure out, and the complexity of the controls actually added to the fun once you were familiar with them.

There were at least a couple of different cabinets for this game. One was the traditional cabinet in which the player could just walk up and insert his or her quarters. The other was a cockpit cabinet in which the player could sit down within the cabinet for play. It seems I've seen a couple of smaller table cabinets, but my memory might be playing tricks on me.

This game is still popular today, and if you search online you can probably find a few free versions of it to play.

Anyway, Discs of Tron is my all-time favorite arcade game. It was fun, exciting, had great graphics and sounds, and could offer hours of play. For only 25 cents. You can't find that nowadays!

Video game of the week: Centipede for Atari 7800

2011-12-26T05:04:00.009-05:00

In the early 1980s, vertical shooting arcade games were all the rage, with Space Invaders being the godfather of the genre. One of the most popular of such games was Centipede, released by Atari in 1980.

Centipede was in many ways like a lot of shooter games of the time. The player controlled an object at the bottom of the screen that blasted away at objects further up the screen. But Centipede was a bit different. For on thing, it wasn't a science fiction or military game. The shooter in the game is a little head, sometimes referred to as a garden gnome, that blazes away at centipedes, mushrooms, spiders and other crawling critters. In another way Centipede was unlike most vertical shooters of the day in that the villains (ie. the targets) weren't all the same, but each moved in a different way and posed different dangers.

All of this combined with great gameplay and solid replay action created one of the more popular arcade games of the early 1980s, and many still remember and even play Centipede today on computers or on one home gaming system or another.

But back in the early to mid-1980s, most of the home gaming consoles didn't have all that great of graphics. Most of the home versions of arcade greats just didn't match up to the originals.

Atari combated this by releasing its Atari 7800 system, initially in 1984 but to a wider audience in 1986. One of the first 13 games released for the Atari 7800 was Centipede.

Finally gamers could play arcade quality games at home, and the Atari 7800 version of Centipede did not disappoint. This game wasn't exactly like the arcade version, but it was pretty darn close. The graphics were bright and solid, and the gameplay was almost exactly the same as the arcade game.

The biggest difference was in the controls. Centipede in the arcade was played with a trackball, while the Atari 7800 used joysticks. This could be alleviated to some extent by hooking up an old Atari 2600 trackball to the 7800 (yes, the Atari 7800 was compatible in nearly all aspects to the 2600), but it still wasn't quite the same.

One place the 7800 version of Centipede improved upon earlier versions of the game was that two players could play the game at the same time, so you could sit down with a buddy and blast away for hours.

Truly, the Atari 7800 version of Centipede is one of the best home versions that can be found of the game. If you are a doubter, give it a try.

Video game of the week: Mouse Trap for Colecovision

2011-12-19T04:23:00.010-05:00

It's often difficult for some people to imagine nowadays, but there was a time when the greatest fun one could have was running around a maze while eating dots and being chased by some kind of monsters. Of course I'm referring to video games from the early 1980s, but I'm not necessarily meaning the great maze classic of that time, Pac-Man.

No, I'm talking about another great arcade maze game, though it's not as well known today as is the famous yellow guy who runs from ghosts. I'm talking about Mouse Trap.

Mouse Trap was fairly popular during its time, released in 1981 during the height of the maze craze in arcades. It was so popular that Coleco ported it to three home gaming consoles of the time, the Atari 2600, the Intellivision and, of course, the Colecovision.

Of all three ports, the one for the Colecovision is probably best remembered today, mainly because it was the version closest to the arcade experience.

The Colecovision Mouse Trap featured solid, colorful graphics that were darn near equal to those of the arcade game. Also, because the Colecovision joystick and controls generally allowed for more types of gameplay than did other joysticks for other consoles at the time, the Colecovision Mouse Trap's gameplay was nearly identical to that of the arcade version.

The basics of this game are quite simple. You're a mouse running around a maze eating up cheese, your goal being to eat all the cheese without being caught by a cat or the occasional hawk that shows up. To help your mouse, you have multi-colored doors you can open and close in a bid to escape your foes or to block them off. Also, there are bones usually near the corners and if you eat one of those your mouse turns into a dog that can temporarily put the bite on the cats, though the hawk can still take out the dog. Another helper are teleportation squares in the corners; go to one of them and your mouse instantly jumps to the "IN" square in the middle of the screen, though this isn't always helpful because sometimes cats are hanging out there.

As mentioned, the Colecovision version of Mouse Trap is quite close to the arcade game, which is to be expected because the Colecovision console was known for solid graphics. Gameplay is pretty much the same, but it can take some getting used to which buttons to hit on the controller, and Mouse Trap has a lot of buttons needing pushed, one for each of the three differently-colored doors, one for activating the bones, etc.

All in all, this version of Mouse Trap is true to the arcade classic and should be in any retro gamers collection. It is still fun to play today.

Video game of the week: Video Pinball for Atari 2600

2011-12-12T03:05:00.005-05:00

Since 1978 there have been several games from the Atari company with the name of "Video Pinball," but the one that usually comes to mind for gaming fans is the 1980 cartridge released for the Atari 2600 home video game console.

The Atari 2600 cartridge simulated a pinball game on your television screen, and it worked quite well. Admittedly it was not much to look at with that dominant but flat blue coloring and the blocky graphics, but it was a thrill to play and even include an onscreen ball that followed the physics of a pinball, bouncing and rolling around the screen. Everything else you would expect in a pinball game was also included, such as bumpers, flippers, spinners and a shooter.

Playing with a simple joystick and only one button to push might appear to make this a tough game to play, though it was anything but. Moving the joystick left and right controlled the flippers, while pulling the joystick back and hitting the button would launch the ball from the shooter onto the playing field. Also, once the ball was in play, the player could nudge the ball on the screen by holding down the button and jiggling the joystick; however, too much of that could lead to a tilt, and tilting meant a dead ball and a dead screen, ending that ball's round.

Extra points could be scored by taking out some diamonds at the top of the screen, and extra balls could be earned by your ball hitting the onscreen Atari symbol several times. With a little practice, a player can keep a single ball going onscreen for a very long time, practically forever. Learning the tricks of nudging were quite important for longevity of play.

Though Video Pinball doesn't look like real pinball, one of its best aspects is it is easy to learn and not too difficult to master, all while having great replay possibilities. More than 30 years later, this is still a favorite game of many Atari 2600 enthusiasts, so much so it has been released for modern PC computers, the XBox 360, and even the iPad and iPhone.

Video game of the week: Castlevania for NES

2011-12-05T03:29:00.006-05:00

In 1986 gamers across the globe were called upon to face the wrath of no other than Dracula himself. Armed with a trusty whip, and other weapons picked up along the way, gamers by the thousands ventured into the depths of the vampire counts castle, ready to wage war against chambers and halls filled with the evil Dracula's monsters.

Sound familiar? It should. For anyone who has spent a lot of time gaming over the last quarter century, the Castlevania series should be commonplace. Not everyone has played the original game, and not necessarily even the dozens of games and ports that came later in the series, but all gamers should at least recognize the title and the basic game background.

The original Castlevania was released by Konami in 1986, and it hit big in 1987 when it became available for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

The year in the game is 1691, and players control the character Simon Belmont, who is descended from a long line of vampire hunters. Simon's job? To enter that castle and do away with Dracula.

Along the way, players face vampire bats, monsters, deadly pitfalls and a host of bosses, each one tougher than the one before. Special weapons and a few other helpful items can be picked up along the linear landscape that makes up the castle. Altogether there are six levels, each one ending with a boss fight.

The music from this game is quite classic, and stands up well today. The graphics are a little bit more iffy by today's standards, but they still compare well to the arcade graphics of the time and are much stronger than those of other mid-1980s consoles such as the Atari and Intellivision, perhaps even being a little stronger than the graphically-superior Colecovision.

Gameplay also holds up well all these years later, with relatively simple controls that allowed for a lot of fun without having to think too much about what your hands are doing.

This classic game has been ported to other consoles and computers time and time again over the years, and every so often a new game in the series is released. The original Castlevania game was quality in and of itself, and it showed the potential that was to come. Decades later, I'm honored to get to play this game from time to time.

Video game of the week: Armor Battle for Intellivision

2011-11-28T05:49:00.004-05:00

It seems everywhere you turn nowadays there is a military video game. You get to blow up armies. You get to blow up terrorists. You get to blow up ... heck, most times you get to blow up dark near anything. But in the early days of home video gaming, there were not a lot of options if you wanted to play a military game.

Most games were pretty simplistic back then, at least by today's standards, and military games were no exception. In 1977 Atari came out with the game Combat for its 2600 console, and it proved quite popular, especially since it was one of the first nine cartridges released for the 2600. The game was somewhat fun, but the graphics were plain and block and the colors were boring. Then in 1979 Mattel released Armor Battle for its Intellivision home gaming system.

Armor Battle has its drawbacks, but it did accomplish one big thing: It had fantastic graphics. Keep in mind I'm talking about 1979 here, so when I say fantastic graphics, I mean for the time period. Actually, I'd say the graphics for Armor Battle were ahead of its time for home systems by at least a year or two.

The graphics for this game actually looked like tanks, and the random backgrounds actually showed trees and buildings and roads. The colors were bright but not painful to the eye, and the sounds did their job.

One big problem right off the start was that Armor Battle was a two-player only game. That's right, you had to have a friend along if you wanted to play. No computer enemies here. For some reason the Intellivision folks thought two-player only games would be a big hit, so many of the console's early games are set up that way. How wrong they were.

As with several of the more complex Intellivision games, it took some getting used to the complicated controls. But once that was figured out, Armor Battle could be tons of fun to play. One of the unique features at the time was you could have your tank drop land mines.

Another great thing was that it took three hits to destroy your tank, so you could be a little daring because you didn't have to worry about getting wasted with that first shot. You could play one round, with your tank taking the mentioned three shots, or you could keep playing a whole game, which ended when either you or your enemy had been hit 50 times. The computer kept track of the scoring, and one game could last for a good long time, a half hour or so. Hey, a half hour of gaming was a long time in 1979.

Video game of the week: Zaxxon for Colecovision

2011-11-21T04:33:00.006-05:00

When Sega released Zaxxon to the arcades in 1982, it had a huge affect upon gamers' expectations of graphics. Colorful but two-dimensional graphics had been the norm for a couple of years at least, but now Zaxxon brought along isometric graphics, basically giving the gamer three-dimensional graphics thought of a relatively rudimentary sort. Zaxxon was the first game to bring isometric graphics, and those graphics remain popular today in many games, including Diablo and Fallout.

Zaxxon was popular enough that versions for the home consoles of the time were rushed to market. Unfortunately, at first Zaxxon did not transfer well to the home systems. Because of limitations of the consoles, the versions of Zaxxon for the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision, the two most popular home systems of the very early 1980s, could not be produced with the isometric graphics. Which meant Atari and Intellivision players were stuck with a 2-D version of Zaxxon, and to be honest it did not look very much like Zaxxon.

In 1983, there would be a quality version of Zaxxon for the Atari 5200 system, but that was a year away.

What were true Zaxxon fans to do?

Buy a Colecovision.

Yes, Coleco released the Colecovision in August of 1982, just in time for its improved graphics to take advantage of such a game as Zaxxon.

For the first time, home gamers could play Zaxxon away from the arcade and it actually looked and played like Zaxxon.

If you're not familiar with Zaxxon, the game's plot in similar to many arcade games of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The player pilots a ship across a screen while blowing away enemy ships, rockets and other potentially dangerous objects. The big difference is the viewpoint, that three-dimensional isometric view. Whereas before most space shoot-em-up games had a flat view, in Zaxxon it looked as if you were flying an actual spaceship through space and across the top of an enemy mother ship or base.

If the player made it far enough, he or she actually got to duke it out with Zaxxon itself, a giant enemy robot.

If not for the Colecovision, it's possible this awesome game might not have made it to the home market until years later.

As for the Colecovision version of Zaxxon, it plays much like the arcade version. The basic gameplay is the same as are most of the levels. It might take a few tries to become familiar with how the Colecovision controls work with the Zaxxon game, but it's not all that complicated.

Zaxxon was a classic arcade game, and rightfully so. This game was also quite popular for home consoles, and the Colecovision had a lot to do with that.

Video game of the week: Realsports Baseball on Atari 5200

2011-11-14T04:47:00.000-05:00

In the early 1980s, if you mentioned sports video games and Atari in the same breath, you were usually laughed at. The Atari 2600, despite being one of the best-selling home gaming consoles of all time, just didn't have quality sports games, at least not early on.

In 1982 Atari released Realsports Baseball for the Atari 2600. This won over some fans, but it still wasn't quite enough.

Then in 1983 when the Atari 5200 system was released, lots of sports gaming fans had high hopes. And they weren't disappointed.

Soon after the 5200 was released, Atari also put out a 5200 version of Realsports Baseball.

This game had everything. Line scores. Nine different complex pitches. Base stealing. Solid graphics. Great sound, including umpire's calls. You name it, this game had it.

In my opinion, not until the mid-to-late 1990s when graphics improved tremendously on gaming systems, did a better baseball video game come along.

But before then, there was Realsports Baseball for the Atari 5200.

As many owners of the 5200 can attest, this gaming console did not have the easiest of joysticks. In fact, the Atari 5200 had clunky joysticks with buttons on the side that were sometimes hard to push and a keypad that was just about useless. This did not make for ease of play when dealing with more complicated games, which Realsports Baseball was at the time.

Still, once you got used to the joystick and could figure out all its little quirks, Realsports Baseball was a thrill to play. It seemed like you could control just about everything on the field, and you could, or at least you could control each and every player (with a little help from the computer, of course). Also, controlling the pitches and the batters is a highlight of fun in this game.

As a little added bonus, you could also play against a friend, which could double the fun.

Game of the week: Scarab of Ra for Macs

2011-11-07T04:56:00.010-05:00

1987. Ah, the good old days. Guns 'N' Roses was just hitting big. Nintendo was at the top of the video game market. Spider-Man hadn't yet been cloned (at least not that we knew of then).

A couple of other things happened in 1987.

For one, Apple released its Macintosh SE personal computer, which was a big improvement over earlier Macs and quite a popular computer for the next decade or so even though Apple stopped making the SE in 1990. Sure, the SE was a dull gray and had a bulky mouse, but it came with its own hard drive! Yeah, doesn't sound like such a big deal now, but it was back then.

Another thing that happened in 1987 was a little company known as Semicolon Software released a Mac game for shareware. That game? Scarab of Ra.

Scarab of Ra, by today's standards, was quite the simple game, but it was also a load of fun.

The game was a first-person maze game in which the player clicks on the screen to travel through increasingly difficult mazes in an ancient Egyptian pyramid that has been unveiled by shifting sands in the desert. The gameplay is turn-based, meaning the player has only so much time to move, the amount of time depending upon the level of play. The player starts the game with some food and a lantern, but other goods can be found within the mazes, some of those goods important to continuing and completing the game.

To end the game, the player has to find three objects, the Staff of Ra, the Scarab of Ra, and the Crown of Ra. Once those objects are found, the exit door is revealed to the player.

There is a map available to the player, and this is important as the game grows more complex. Also, it is important to scour through each level before proceeding to the next level because important items might be left behind, and you can't go back to earlier levels.

Also, the mazes on each level are randomly generated, so no game of Scarab of Ra is ever exactly the same as one played earlier.

There are dangers to be found within the mazes. One of the worst is the mummies, which can sap your strength, even kill you. Other dangers are monkeys, which can steal some of your gear, and poisonous snakes. There are also lions hiding around some corners, and you don't want to run into them. Traps also can be found from place to place, and they can be deadly.

If you like simple video game fun and don't mind old-fashioned black-and-white line graphics, Scarab of Ra could be just right for you. Finding an old Macintosh computer to play the game can be difficult, but Scarab of Ra can also be played on Macintosh emulator software. And don't forget to go to the Semicolon Software site to download your own copy of Scarab of Ra.

Game of the week: Halloween for Atari 2600

2011-10-30T05:47:00.015-04:00

In 1978 the world was introduced to serial killer Michael Myers in the first Halloween movie by John Carpenter. Since then, horror movies have never been the same.

But unless you are a hardcore retro gamer, you might not know that in 1983 Wizard Video came out with a Halloween cartridge for the Atari 2600 home gaming console, perhaps the most popular gaming console of all time.

What was great about the Halloween game was that it actually could be quite scary. Yes, by today's standards the graphics are a bit hokey, but the gameplay kept you on the edge of your seat.

The plot of the game is relatively simple, as most games were at the time. The player controls a babysitter who has to escort children to safety within a house. There are two floors to the house, making the screen look somewhat like Pitfall!, with doors and windows throughout. That's the easy stuff. The hard part? Oh yeah, Michael Myers is stalking you throughout the house.

Just like in the movies, Myers sometimes shows up out of nowhere, popping out of doors or from the side of the screen. He is slow, so you can outrun him usually, but you never know just when and where he is going to show up. To make matters worse, sometimes the lights go out in the house, which leaves you in the dark with no way to know where Michael will show up next.

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while the player's character can find a butcher knife and attack Michael with it, which is a nice touch. Keep an eye open for the gory graphics, which are sort of laughable today but were creepy back in 1983.

The gameplay here was excellent, and an added bonus was the awesome theme music from the Halloweenmovies. Every time Michael shows up, the Halloween music can be heard.

With the actual holiday of Halloween coming up, you might consider buying this game as a gift if you have a hardcore retro gamer in your family or among your friends. But good luck, because this game is a rarity. Still, it can be found on eBay from time to time, though it might cost you a little money.

Game of the week: Lady Bug for Colecovision

2011-10-24T04:17:00.007-04:00

In the early 1980s, Pac-Man brought fame and fans to the world of arcades like no game before had done, being a bigger hit than even the famed Space Invaders. This meant lots of quarters were being plugged in at the arcades, and other companies wanted to get in on the action. To that end, the company Universal Games in 1981 released its own maze game, Lady Bug.

Unfortunately, Lady Bug was not a hit at the arcades. Today it is mainly remembered among the home gaming market for its popularity on the Colecovision console, though there was also a version of the game for the Intellivision system made by Mattel.

It has been remarked by more than a few fans of the Colecovision system that the games for it were as good as those of the arcade, and that sometimes the Colecovision version of a game was better than that of the arcade. This is the case with Lady Bug.

In Lady Bug, the player controls a lady bug around a maze on the screen. There are other insects out to eat the player's lady bug, and to help with this there are several doors that can be opened or closed to block off the enemy insects, much as doors could be opened and closed in such games as Lock 'n' Chase and Mousetrap. The main object is for the lady bug to eat all the dots in the maze, just like in Pac-Man.

To spice things up a little, the lady bug can also eat bonus letters and bonus vegetables which help to build up the score by adding multipliers. When a vegetable is eaten, all the enemy bugs on the screen will freeze for a short time, allowing the lady bug some freedom. Also, the player needs to watch out for skull icons on the screen, as those are deadly to the lady bug, but they can also temporarily kill the enemy bugs and send them back to their little home in the center of the screen.

The action of Lady Bug is fairly commonplace by today's standards, but in the early 1980s it was a somewhat complicated game, at least compared to more simple maze games, the most logical comparison again being to Pac-Man. There was a lot going on on the screen, and it was not always easy to escape from the enemy insects. Still, this complexity is what made the game fun for a lot of fans who found other maze games too easy or too staid.

The Colecovision version of Lady Bug has gameplay at least equal to if not better than that of the arcade game. The graphics also are quite strong, though I personally think they are just a little weaker than the arcade version. The sounds here are excellent, especially the background music that seems to follow around the onscreen lady bug.

Lady Bug was one of the most popular of Colecovision games, and if you are a fan and/or collector of this system, you need to have at least one copy of the Lady Bug cartridge in your home gaming library.

Game of the week: Zaxxon for Atari 5200

2011-10-17T05:12:00.007-04:00

In 1982 when Sega released Zaxxon to arcades, the game was an immediate hit with gamers, and this was well deserved as this was such a groundbreaking arcade game. Of course by today's standards Zaxxon is no big deal, but in 1982 it was the first game that most gamers got to experience in some sort of three-dimensional environment, even though the 3D effect in Zaxxon is actually only a simulation.

Zaxxon was so popular that there just had to be a home version of it for the most popular console of the time period, the Atari 2600. Unfortunately for many fans of the game, the Atari 2600 version was a let down. Though the 2600 game was fun to play in its own way, the graphics were flat and had none of the edge of the arcade game.

But then something else happened in 1982. Atari released its new Atari 5200 home gaming console, which had much better graphics than the 2600 console.

Soon after the Atari 5200 was released, a version of Zaxxon for this console also was released.
And suddenly many fans were quite pleased.

Back were the isometric graphics and bright colors that gave Zaxxon much of its thrill. Back was the awesome gameplay of lying a small ship over top of a gigantic enemy ship while avoiding crashing into objects and shooting at enemy missiles and ships. Even the big boss robot was there at the end of the stages, just waiting to be blown to smithereens by avid Zaxxon fans.

Zaxxon was back, and it was well worth the wait.

The only real problem with the Atari 5200 version of Zaxxon is the same problem with many Atari 5200 games: The controllers just aren't that great. Still, you could get used to that to some extent, or you could be new, second-party controllers.

Either way, Zaxxon on the Atari 5200 was a blast to play, and still is if you have an old Atari 5200 sitting around.

Game of the week: Dr. Mario for the arcade

2011-10-10T05:58:00.011-04:00

With the popularity of Tetris in the mid- and late 1980s, every video game company in the world suddenly seemed to be putting out their own puzzle games. Nintendo came up with Dr. Mario, which initially grew popular on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the GameBoy, and still later on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

What few gamers seem to remember, however, is that there actually was an arcade version of Dr. Mario, sometimes called Vs. Dr. Mario. The "Vs." was added to a number of Nintendo games, both in the arcade and for home consoles, that could be played head-to-head, player against player on the same screen.

Dr. Mario was never one of the major arcade titles, though it did garner success in the console market. But however one played Dr. Mario, it was an intensive but fun game.

The object of the game was to destroy viruses. How the player did this was by dropping colored pills onto the colored viruses. The colors had to match in a row of four for the virus to be killed. The colors were red, yellow and blue. So for each screen there would be so many yellow and red and blue viruses, and the player had to line up the colored pills to kill the viruses.

Sounds a little crazy, and it was at faster levels. As things sped up, it became more and more difficult to get the right colors on the pills to match up with the appropriately colored viruses. Remember Tetris at those really fast levels, with the blocks plummeting from above seemingly as fast as bullets? That's how fast Dr. Mario seemed at times.

After the player killed all the viruses on the screen, he or she moved on to the next screen where there would be ever more viruses to kill. Believe me, the difficulty level rose fairly quickly.

If you are a hardcore arcade buff who likes to find the more obscure titles, keep an eye open for Dr. Mario. I think you'll find a game you might enjoy.

Game of the week: Q*bert for Odyssey 2

2011-10-03T04:06:00.008-04:00

The glory days of the arcades, mainly the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, was full of colorful characters. You had the likes of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, just to name a couple. Then in 1982 the company known as Gottlieb came out with a new arcade game called Q*bert which featured a little, round orange character with big eyes, a funny-looking nose, and little legs but no arms.

Q*bert became quite the hit game in the arcades, so much so the Q*bert character became recognizable to much of the world. Eventually there were sequel games to Q*bert, and even an animated cartoon show for a while.

If you're not familiar with Q*bert, it's a fun little game. The player controls the Q*bert character as it jumps around on a pyramid, and each time Q*bert lands on top of a cube that is part of the pyramid that cube changes color. The goal is to get all the pyramid's cubes to be a particular color. Sounds like a simple game? Don't worry, because it gets more complicated. While jumping around on this pyramid, Q*bert has to dodge balls falling from above, monsters who chase after him and a snake that spring around all over the board. Two floating discs, one on either side of the pyramid, allow Q*bert an opportunity to temporarily escape its foes by taking Q*bert back to the top of the pyramid and away from immediate danger.

It was a great, fun game, though for some gamers it took a little getting used to the controls because the joystick was made to have Q*bert jump at angles and not move directly left or right nor up and down.

Because of Q*bert's popularity, the video game was ported to many of the home gaming consoles of the early 1980s, including the Magnavox Odyssey 2, which also went by the name of the Philips Videopac outside of the U.S.

The Odyssey 2 never sported that many third-party games, meaning games made by companies other than the creators of the Odyssey 2, but there were a handful. The company Parker Brothers released some games for the Odyssey 2, and Q*bert was one of them.

The version of Q*bert for the Odyssey 2 was kind of a mixed back for gamers. It had all the elements of the arcade game, including an introduction scene that explains how to play and some decent sounds, but the graphics just weren't all that good, at least not compared to the arcade game and most of the other console versions. Immediately noticeable is the fact the cubes on the pyramid don't like like cubes, but more like flattened squares. Then there's the colorful discs on the sides of the pyramid; here, they're not very colorful. The graphics for the Q*bert characters itself are passable, though nothing special, as are those for Q*bert's enemies.

Fortunately, the quality of play for the Odyssey 2 version of Q*bert was quite strong, much like that of the arcade version. And it helped that the Odyssey 2's joysticks were of the eight-direction variety, making it much easier than more stiff joysticks (such as those with the Atari 2600) in controlling Q*bert as it bounced around the screen.

Overall, I'd have to say Q*bert for the Odyssey 2 was fun to play, but I wish it had had better graphics, though admittedly graphics were not a strength of this home gaming system.

Retro video game console quiz

2011-09-26T05:59:00.001-04:00

What was the very first cartridge packaged with the Atari 2600 console?
By what name was the Nintendo Entertainment System known in the Middle East and Asia?
In what year was the Colecovision released to consumers?
What was the name of the company that developed the Intellivision?
The Vectrex console came with a built-in game. What was it called?
What is the full name of the Atari 5200?
In what year was production of the Super Nintendo discontinued?
What was the original price for an Atari 2600?
The Atari 7800 had its own games, but it could also play games from what famous home video game system?
What is the all-time best-selling video game for the Atari 2600?
What is the name of the company that made the River Raid game?
Who was the actor and writer who famously appeared in several Intellivision TV ads during the early 1980s?
A famous comedian and actor first appeared before TV audiences in a 1982 advertisement for the Pitfall! video game. Who is he?
How many colors could the Colecovision make use of?
The Sega Genesis was known by what name outside of North America?
What was the name of the first ever Star Wars video game?
Who made it?
For what console system?
In what year?
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was a 1991 game initially released for what home console gaming system?

Go here for answers to the quiz.

Answers to home video game quiz

2011-09-26T05:36:00.001-04:00

For questions to this quiz, go to this link.

1. Combat
2. The Family Computer (or FamiCom)
3. 1982
4. Mattel (or Mattel Electronics)
5. MineStorm
6. Atari 5200 SuperSystem
7. 2003
8. $199
9. Atari 2600
10. Pac-Man
11. Activision
12. George Plimpton
13. Jack Black
14. 16
15. The Mega Drive
16. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
17. Parker Brothers
18. Atari 2600
19. 1982
20. NES

Game of the week: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for NES

2011-09-26T04:46:00.004-04:00

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were hugely popular in the late 1980s. These mutant heroes got their start in comic books, but in 1987 a cartoon television show really kicked off the career of these turtles. Soon there were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) lunch boxes, action figures, and kinds of other merchandise. So it was a natural that a video game would come along in the franchise.

There would eventually be more than 20 TMNT video games made, but the very first one came out in 1989, created by Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

The objective of the game was to control one of the Turtles while on a mission to save the Turtles' friend April from the villainous Shredder. After a cartoon-like opening scene that explained who each of the Turtles were, the player's character traveled around an overhead map. The action began when the player's character went down a manhole into the sewers beneath the streets.

Down in the sewers, there were all kinds of enemies to fight. Your basic goons. Giant spiders. Fire monsters. And lots more. To help in the battle against these monstrosities, every so often your Turtle could pick up some special weapons.

Unlike most arcade games of the time period, instead of having the usual three lives, here the player gets four lives, one for each of the Turtles. So, if you played this game enough, you would likely get around to playing all four of the Turtles.

There are six main stages to this game, each ending with a boss.

The graphics were decent, but in my opinion not quite the best the NES had to offer. The action was smooth for the most part, but sometimes there was some flicker during heavy combat scenes. One highpoint of the TMNT game was the sound, which was full of great music.

This game proved popular enough that in 1990 it was ported to numerous computer systems at the time. Also, Nintendo Power magazine named TMNT the 1989 Game of the Year. Today, this game is still around, available on the Virtual Console for the Wii.

Game of the week: Turtles for Odyssey 2

2011-09-19T04:07:00.005-04:00

As soon as the Namco and Midway companies released Pac-Man to the arcades in 1980, maze games suddenly became a huge craze. To cash in on that craze, other companies began to put out their own maze games.

One such game was Turtles, by Konami and Stern and Sega. Turtles was never a very popular arcade game. In fact, I only ever remember seeing one of them, and that was at a bowling alley in the mid-1980s.

However, Turtles was one of the few arcade games to be ported to the Odyssey 2 home gaming console made my Magnavox.

Turtles had simple graphics and simple rules. The player moves a mother turtle around a screen while trying to collect baby turtles and then take the babies to a house that appears randomly on the screen. The main problem with this is there are beetles trying to kill the mother turtle. In self defense, the mother turtle can drop bombs which will temporarily stun the beetles.

Sounds simple, and it was. But it was still a decent game. My biggest complaint was that the maze was too simple. Even the maze in the original Pac-Man was much more complex.

The Odyssey 2 version of Turtles, however, really stretched the capabilities of this home gaming system, so much so that it was almost like playing Turtles in the arcade. Graphics were never a strength of the Odyssey 2, though the colors were always bright, but for Turtles they really stood out, looking a fair amount like the arcade version's graphics.

The Odyssey 2 also had available an expansion module called The Voice, which allowed for some speech and extra special effects sounds. The Voice added quite a bit to the Turtles game, mainly through music that sounded quite like the arcade music for Turtles.

Now, all that being said, keep in mind I'm talking about very early 1980s home video game technology. To be perfectly honest, by today's standards all of this was garbage. But for the early 1980s, the graphics and sounds and gameplay for the Odyssey 2 version of Turtles was pretty good. Not great, put pretty good. There were worse games, but there were also better. Still, Turtles on the Odyssey 2 always held a special place for me because the arcade game is so rare (at least in the U.S.) and because the Odyssey 2 had so few arcade games ported to it.

Game of the week: Super Mario World for SNES

2011-09-12T06:02:00.009-04:00

If you ever owned a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), there's a pretty good chance you've played the game Super Mario World.

How so?

Super Mario World was the game that originally came packed with the SNES when you bought the console.

And what a game it was!

Though somewhat similar to earlier two-dimensional platform games of the day (early 1990s), Super Mario World was so much more. Which should be no surprise as this was the fourth video game in the Mario franchise (not include the Donkey Kong franchise games).

The plot is fairly simple. Brothers Mario and Luigi team up with a baby dinosaur named Yoshi to help save Princess Toadstool and the other dinosaurs from the evil King Koopa Bowser.

The player picks to play either Mario or Luigi, then leads his character through maps upon maps of various lands in search of the princess and to halt Bowser and his buddies. The running through levels and jumping around that can be found in earlier games is here, but from time to time there's also the potential to fly.

At first glance, Super Mario World appears little different than earlier games in its genre, but that's simply not true for two reason. First, the worlds here are quite in depth and go on and on and on. Second, the gameplay is awesome, featuring unique foes that are challenging but not unstoppable.

Super Mario World's popularity has remained strong throughout the years. Not only has this game earned constant high ratings among critics, but it has also been re-released in different versions and has been ported to modern gaming systems.

Great games like this are why the Mario franchise keeps on going and going.

Game of the week: Galaxian for arcade

2011-09-05T05:28:00.002-04:00

With Space Invaders from Taito and Midway being such a huge hit arcade game upon its introduction in 1978, other companies soon wanted to get in on the video game action as well. One such company was Namco, and to enter the arcade universe this company launched a shooting game known as Galaxian.

At a quick glance, Galaxian would seem to be little more than a clone of Space Invaders, but it was much more than that.

For one thing, Galaxian was the very first video game to use full RGB color for all of its graphics. That's right! Color! Ooooo. Ahhhh.

Of course Galaxian had the typical approaching alien horde that the player had to blase out of the sky with his or her own attacking spaceship across the bottom of the screen. Still, there were noticeable differences from Space Invaders. For one thing, these alien attackers didn't just slowly crawl down the screen to attack. They did do some of that, but every so often several of the alien attackers would dive bomb down on the player's ship.

Galaxian was also one of the earliest arcade video games to include a musical background. And not only did this game use RGB colors, but it used them well, giving the player an eye-popping background of stars in space that actually twinkled and changed colors. Those colors were also bright to the eye, and stood out well on the screen perhaps better than any other game that came before.

Galaxian was hugely popular in the arcades, so much so that it ended up being ported to just about every home gaming console and computer console in the early-to-mid 1980s. Even today there are many home ports of Galaxian for modern gaming systems and computers.

Also, Galaxian was so popular that several sequel games were based upon it. The most popular of these games was another arcade hit, the classic Galaga, which expounded further upon the alien-shooting arcade genre.

Game of the week: Space Invaders for Atari 5200

2011-08-29T05:24:00.005-04:00

When the Atari 5200 home video game console was released in 1982, the Atari corporation was hoping their new system would be just as popular as their classic Atari 2600 system had been. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. The Atari 5200 was never that popular of a console with game fans, which was unfortunate because the system had decent graphics for the time period and a good number of great games.

One of those great games was the Atari 5200's version of the arcade classic game Space Invaders.

By the time 1982 rolled around, Space Invaders had been in the public eye for quite a while. Plenty of new games, and better technology, had come along. So what could Atari do to spruce up this arcade classic?

Well, most notably, lots of color was added. The attacking aliens come in a variety of different colors, and even the space shields that protect the player's gun at the bottom of the screen come in varying bright colors. But colors are nothing special, right?

Okay, so you want more changes. How about fast shooting? Or maybe even missiles you can guide? Those are just a couple of the changes that were possible in the many different skill levels and variety of play the Atari 5200 offered for its version of Space Invaders. There were many other possible ways to play as well.

The action here was quite a bit faster than the arcade and other versions of Space Invaders, so gamers had to be on their toes to rack up a high score. The sound, too, is superb and quite eerie in that the sound of the approaching aliens grows louder and louder as they near the bottom of the screen.

All in all, it's still Space Invaders, just with a touch of panache. If you you own or want to own an old Atari 5200, do yourself a favor and get the classic that is Space Invaders. It's still fun to play all these decades later, and it's a proper addition for any serious retro gamer's collection.

Game of the week: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness for Macs

2011-08-22T05:26:00.007-04:00

Long before modern gamers were playing World of Warcraft, an earlier generation of video game fans was introduced to the fantasy world of Azeroth in 1994 through the real-time strategy game Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

That original Warcraft game was a solid vehicle, but the series from Blizzard Entertainment really showed its potential and shined with the game's sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, available for both PC platforms and Macintosh computers by 1996.

This game was basically a campaign war game and had several different modes. The player could enter campaign mode and play either as the orcs or the human forces against the opposing side run by the computer. Also, the player has an editing tool to create his or her own maps and can then go to war on those maps against the computer.

Gameplay consisted of a single player mode or a mode for multiple players, in which case the player could go online and face off against other opponents. Despite this game being more than 15 years old, Warcraft II still has a sizable following online that consistently battles against one another.

Combat might be the main function of this strategy game, but it is not the only one. Players also have to spend quite a bit of time building up their resources before they can go to war, or during the middle of a war. This includes cutting down trees for wood and digging into mines for gold. Then the wood and gold is used to build buildings and troops.

The main difference between this game and its predecessor is that Warcraft II allows for battle on water. Yep, you can build your own ships and send them off to war against the enemy. That being said, there were several other cosmetic changes from the original Warcraft game, the most noticeable one being a better user interface.

Warcraft II did well with reviewers of the mid-to-late 1990s, and it was popular among gamers. It's popularity was enough for Blizzard Entertainment to release multiple add-on packages for Warcraft II as well as the eventual creation of many sequel and related games. Just think, without Warcraft II there might not have ever been a World of Warcraft.

When comparing the PC and Mac versions of this great game, there is little difference in actual gameplay, though a slight edge might be given to the Macs of the time for slightly better graphical capabilities.

Game of the week: Ms. Pac-Man for Atari 7800

2011-08-15T05:11:00.003-04:00

Everybody loves Ms. Pac-Man. It's a great game to play. You've got much of the great action from the original Pac-Man arcade classic, plus you've got even more. New levels, new mazes, new intermissions, it's all there.

And the popularity of Ms. Pac-Man proved in the early and mid-1980s that it was an obvious choice for porting to home gaming consoles, of which there were many. One of the best at-home versions of Ms. Pac-Man was the cartridge for the Atari 7800 system.

The Atari 7800 came out in January 1986 as Atari's then latest bid at re-taking over the video game world after the crash of the gaming market in 1983. Unfortunately Atari would never regain the spotlight as it had in the early 1980s with its 2600 system, but the Atari 7800 was still a decent gaming system on par in many ways with the more popular Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) of the day.

Ms. Pac-Man was one of those games that showed just how good the Atari 7800 system could be.

The 7800 version of this arcade classic was about as close to the original as it could be. All the action was there, as were the bright colors, the maze gameplay, the ghosts, the story intermissions, the prizes that were the fruits, etc.

If one wanted a home version of Ms. Pac-Man that was faithful to the arcade original, you couldn't do much better than the Atari 7800 version of the game.

There are a couple of notable differences between the 7800 Ms. Pac-Man and the arcade version. First up, the player starts with five Ms. Pac-Mans instead of just the three the arcade version offered. So, this would seem to make the 7800 version a bit easier. But hold up there. The 7800 version of Ms. Pac-Man is actually faster than the arcade version, which will make the game harder! So, in my opinion, it about evens out. Why the game makers decide upon these minor changes is a mystery to me, but the changes don't much effect the fun you can have.

Game of the week: Kick for arcade

2011-08-08T05:44:00.005-04:00

In 1980, the company Midway had a huge arcade hit game on its hands when it distributed the Namco game Pac-Man in the United States. Everybody knows Pac-Man. It's more than just a video game. It's an icon.

But the folks at Midway obviously wanted to keep going with their success. To that end, they came up with more arcade games.

One of those was Kick, also known as Kick Man or Kick-Man or Kickman. Um, which title should be use for this arcade game? Who knows? Different versions of the game have different names on the screen and the marquee at the top of the machine. Personally, I prefer Kick-Man because that was the first incarnation of the game I ever saw in an arcade back in the day, though apparently the original name was the simple "Kick."

Kick-Man was never a very popular game, despite the fact it featured the famous Pac-Man.

With Pac-Man involved, you'd think this would be a maze game, right? Wrong.

In Kick-Man, the player controls a clown on a unicycle who goes back and forth at the bottom of the screen. At the top of the screen are rows upon rows of red, yellow and blue balloons, and every so often a Pac-Man will be floating among the balloons. The balloons will fall, pretty fast after the first couple of screens, and the clown can't let the balloons hit the ground or the player loses one of three clowns. On the first screen, the clown has a pin atop his head which he can use to pop the balloons; on subsequent levels, the clown must catch the balloons on top of his hat.

To give the clown a little extra help, while on the unicycle he can kick, sending any near falling balloons back up into the air.

Past the first stage, when the balloons must be caught on the clown's head, those balloons can pile up pretty quick. The stack of balloons on the clown's head keeps growing and growing until it can almost touch the top of the screen, which makes it nearly impossible to catch any more of the balloons. That's where Pac-Man comes in handy. When the clown catches a Pac-Man on top of his head, the Pac-Man will eat all the balloons stacked there. Also, every once in a while the clown will stop momentarily the pop the balloons on his head, but this doesn't happen often enough, so players shouldn't plan on this happening.

Due to the lack of popularity of this arcade game, it was never ported to any home gaming consoles or computers, which is a shame. This would have been a perfect game for the Atari 2600, with simple graphics and simple gameplay.

Game of the week: Excitebike for NES

2011-08-01T05:57:00.015-04:00

After finding some success on the Famicom home video game console in Japan in 1984, Excitebike was released in 1985 on the North American version of the Famicom, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

At the time, Excitebike was a step forward for racing games. For one thing, it wasn't just a simplistic race around an oval track or along a first-person view of the road. Excitebike offered bike racing that included plenty of obstacles, some worse than others, but also allowed the player's bike to do some limited stunts, basicaly jumping up high (which might not seem all that awesome today, but in the early-to-mid 1980s this was pretty exciting for a racing video game).

Basically, the player competes against other bikes along a variety of tracks. The object, of course, is to win. Barring that, the player wants to at least come in second or third place, and to move on to other races and other tracks.

One of the unique features about this game was that it allowed player's to design their own tracks. You could go in and place obstacles wherever you wanted, then play on the track against the computer or friends. The created racing tracks could even be saved on a special cassette recorder, but this machine was, unfortunately, only available in the Japan market. Still, today, through the Virtual Console, these racing tracks can be saved onto the Wii's memory.

Over the years, Excitebike has proved quite popular, and understandably so since the gamplay is quite addictive and holds up well over time. In 1985, an arcade version of this game was released, known as vs. Excitebike. This game has also shown up on several modern and semi-modern gaming consoles, often as a bonus game to unlock. There have also been a couple of sequel games on more modern systems, such as Excitebike: World Rally, which is available for the Wii, and Excitebike 64 for the Nintendo 64.

Game of the week: Basketbrawl for Atari 7800

2011-07-25T05:58:00.009-04:00

More than a decade before hit video games like NBA Street were on the market, there was a little-known game called Basketbrawl for the Atari 7800 home gaming system.

Basketbrawl was released in 1990 for the 7800, then later in 1992 for the Atari Lynx system.

It's a shame this game was not better known, because it had a lot to offer.

First up, Basketbrawl has solid graphics for its time. The Atari 7800 home video game system, which was released in 1986, was really pushed to its graphical limits on this game. The graphics here are just as good as those of any Nintendo NES game of the same period. Colors are bright, action is not choppy, and the action on the screen lines up well with the controls.

Then there's the actual gameplay. This is where Basketbrawl truly shines.

At the beginning of the game, the player gets to pick from one of six basketball players to control for the onscreen game. Each of the basketball "brawlers" has various strengths and weaknesses, and it can be fun trying out each one.

Then the games' player can choose between playing one-on-one basketball or a two-on-two game. You can play against the computer or go up against a friend.

An extra fun bonus are the power-ups in the game. These can give the player's character more punching power or extra speed.

Did I say "punching power?" Yes, I did. Why do you need punching power? Because while you can try to play Basketbrawl as a straight-up, regular basketball video game, it's really more than that. It's also a fighting game.

Yes, your character can get slugged in the middle of going up for a shot. But the fun thing is that your character can slug right back, even go for cheap shots.

So, if a basketball battle on a neighborhood court sounds like a blast of time to you, then you should probably check out this game for the Atari 7800 home gaming system. And don't forget that those classic Atari 2600 games can also be played on the 7800.

Game of the week: Boxing for Intellivision

2011-07-18T05:47:00.005-04:00

In the early days of home video games, there unfortunately were not a lot of great, realistic boxing games. But in 1981, Intellivision came out with a game simply titled Boxing that was quite realistic.

The graphics for Boxing were only fair, but they were still better than some other boxing games of the day and at least they weren't awful graphics. The sounds, too, were decent.

Where this game truly shined was in its realism.

Yes, despite sub-par graphics and sound, this was still a relatively realistic game.

First off, you had your choice of six different boxers, each with different strengths and skill specialties.

Also, you played a total of 15 rounds, each round being 90 seconds long. That's pretty real for a sports video game from 1981.

Another piece of realism here were the controls. The player used the disc on the Intellivision controls to move his or her fighter around the ring on the screen, but more importantly the number pad (with an overlay) was used to spectacular effect by offering multiple different types of attacks and defenses.

The match is won the traditional way. The player has to either knock out the opponent or win by scoring more points. The computer, of course, decides upon the points, but it always seemed pretty fair to me.

Boxing has proved popular enough over the years that it has been re-released for today's gaming audiences on the Intellivision Lives! game and in Microsoft's Game Room.

Game of the week: Atlantis for Odyssey 2

2011-07-11T05:23:00.008-04:00

The Odyssey 2 home video game console from Magnavox, known as the Philips Videopac outside of the U.S., never was the most popular of systems. Which is probably why there were never a lot of third-party games for the Odyssey 2.

However, the company Imagic, popular for its Atari 2600 and Intellivision games, did make a few cartridges for the Odyssey 2.

One of those games was Atlantis, which had been popular on the Atari 2600 and to a lesser extent on other computers and gaming consoles.

Atlantis is sort of like the arcade classic Missile Command, but then some. Personally, I've always like Atlantis more than Missile Command because it's an easier game to play and actually more fun, at least in my opinion.

Gameplay consists of defending the city of Atlantis from attacking alien ships and missiles and bombs that zoom across the screen above. The player has control of two guns at the bottom of the screen, one in each corner, and must protect various buildings in Atlantis from being destroyed. An extra bonus is the player gets a smart bomb to use every so often, and this destroys all the enemies on the screen at once.

The game starts off pretty easy, but speeds up until the action becomes quite frantic. This is one of the better games for the Odyssey 2, and collectors should definitely seek this one out.

The screen has bright, vibrant colors, as is common for this system, and the sounds are pretty good. Unfortunately, the graphics are only fair at best, not even being as strong as those of the Atari 2600. Still, what this game on the Odyssey 2 lacks in graphic capabilities, it makes up for in actual gameplay, which is tons of fun.

Game of the week: Donkey Kong Junior for Colecovision

2011-07-05T06:03:00.004-04:00

In 1981, Nintendo had a huge smash hit on its hand with the arcade game Donkey Kong. So it was a natural that the company would want to further benefit from that success, which it did in 1982 by released in the arcade classic Donkey Kong Junior.

There were some basic similarities in play between Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior, but the sequel game brought new ideas to video games by adding more climbing elements, brighter and more colors, etc.

Donkey Kong Junior proved popular enough on its own that home versions of it were made for many computer systems and gaming consoles in the early 1980s. Over the years many have considered the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version of Donkey Kong Junior to be the most superior home port of the game, but the Colecovision port also has its fans.

Gameplay was relatively simple by today's standards. The player controls a baby Donkey Kong Junior who attempts to climb to the top of a screen to save his dad, Donkey Kong, from the clutches of Mario. Donkey Kong Junior, the character, has to climb vines, avoid traps, and keep on the move to finally reach the top of the screen. Once the main character saves his dad at the top of the screen, he advances to a new, more challenging screen with new challenges to overcome. Donkey Kong Junior can score extra points by touching hanging fruit.

The Colecovision version of this game was true to the arcade original. The colors are bright and superior in variety to the original Donkey Kong arcade game. The gameplay is solid on the Colecovision version, as are the graphics, and both are downright close to that of the arcade game Donkey Kong Junior.

As an added bonus to fans of this game, Donkey Kong Junior was made into a cartoon on the Saturday Supercade television show that aired on Saturday mornings from 1983 to 1985.

Game of the week: Gremlins for Atari 5200

2011-06-27T05:20:00.005-04:00

Steven Spielberg is known for his many hit movies, one of which was the 1984 film "Gremlins" about cute, furry critters that could be turned into scaly, nasty monsters if they eat food after midnight.

This film was so popular it just had to have a video game. Right?

Atari ended up getting the rights to make a "Gremlins" game, and the company did a good job, in 1986 releasing the game on the classic Atari 2600 system and on the newer Atari 5200.

Unfortunately, by this time the video game craze had bottomed out and this "Gremlins" game never had the opportunity to become a hit. Still, "Gremlins" was a lot of fun to play and it had quality graphics on the Atari 5200.

Gameplay seems simple at first, but it can become quite frantic. The player's character is in a room with several of the cute, fuzzy Gremlins. About the room are pieces of food and puddles of water. If the cute Gremlins eat the food, they turn into the monster Gremlins. If any Gremlin touches the water, it splits into two Gremlins. The player's job is to gather up the good Gremlins and place them into a container, or to use a sword to kill the bad Gremlins. There is a timer of sorts. The player has to accomplish his or her tasks before six in the morning, or at least try to survive until then because the bad Gremlin monsters can kill you.

It's easier said than done, especially at higher levels when furniture and other items have randomly spawned about the room and get in the player's way.

Still, loads of fun can be found here, and with practice comes skill at the game.

The Atari 2600 did not have quality graphics, but that's not unusual for 2600 games. The Atari 5200 version of "Gremlins," on the other hand, had fantastic graphics equal to many arcade games of the day.

In years to come there would be other video games based upon the "Gremlins" movie and it's 1990 sequel, "Gremlins 2: The New Batch," but these early ones by Atari are still great to play.

Game of the week: Mechwarrior 2 for Macs

2011-06-20T05:55:00.006-04:00

The year is 3057. You are a warrior for either Clan Jade Falcon or Clan Wolf. Ahead of you lies the Refusal War in which you must pilot a BattleMech against your enemies. The future of the galaxy depends upon you, soldier!

Yeah? Who cares?

Let's get to shooting and blowing up stuff! Because that's what the MechWarrior games are really all about.

And MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat won't let down fans of the BattleMech genre. There's tons of combat and explosive action to be found here.

I have to admit right up front that back in the early-to-mid 1990s, I preferred Apple's Macintosh computers for gaming because they had better graphics. PC play has caught up today, but back then, the Macs ruled.

Which was on reason I preferred to play MechWarrior 2 on a Macintosh. Better graphics.

There is a complex background story to this game, and it does come up from time to time while playing, but for the most part you can just sit back and enjoy riding along in a gigantic bi-pedal tank that's sort of like a robot while you get to blow up stuff and shoot stuff.

At the start of Mechwarrior 2 you are given a choice of which of two clans to join, but either way you will face 16 missions ahead of you. The first mission or two are relatively straightforward and relatively easy, but the missions get tougher and tougher, as does the action!

This game will not bore you, I promise. Each mission is different and has different jobs needing done, and you'll have a variety of Mechs to drive as well as you'll face a variety of enemy Mechs, too.

The controls can get a little complicated because there are so many buttons to keep track of on your keyboard, and each one is important, but one of the cool things about this game is you can set up your own controls, and there's an option for quite simple controls, basically just pointing and shooting with a little movement.

The graphics are superb for the time period, perhaps the best 3D computer game graphics from the mid-1990s. And the sound is quite awesome as well; not only are the explosions and Mech noises quite believable but the musical soundtrack by Jeehun Hwang is excellent, quite militaristic in places.

So, if you're an old-school Mac gamer, you've got to get this game. You'll be doing yourself a favor.

Enjoy!

Game of the week: 10-Yard Fight for NES

2011-06-13T05:14:00.010-04:00

Most gamers back in the early 1980s were stuck with sub-par sports games for the most part. The few sports arcade games were awful. Even the giant of home gaming systems at the time, the Atari 2600, had sports games with blocky graphics and weak play. The best of the lot was probably provided by the Intellivision console, but the games for that systems weren't the strongest, either.

Then in 1983 the Japanese company Irem released the arcade game called 10-Yard Fight.

10-Yard Fight was not the greatest game of all time, not by any means. But it was one of the first arcade games in which the gameplay was actually somewhat like the real sport it was based upon, in this case being American football.

There was actually a time limit to the game. There were even halves. The player could play at different levels, from high school to college to pro to playoffs to Super Bowl levels. Also, the player got to control the offense. And while there weren't actually different plays to run, the player could control the quarterback by having him run the ball, pass the ball or toss off the ball.

I know, I know. It doesn't sound like much. But believe it or not, this was a giant step in sports games, especially football video games.

This game proved popular enough, however, that in 1985 it was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). And the truth is, the NES version is actually better than the arcade version.

How is that possible?

One major change was that players could actually play the defense as well as the offense. This was a huge addition to the game. It also didn't hurt that the graphics for the NES 10-Yard Fight were as solid as those of the arcade game, and it included all the sounds and gameplay that came with the original.

So, for a game that was never a massive hit at the arcades or in home gaming, 10-Yard Fight had a lot going for it, and it holds its place in video game history. If you're a collector of retro games, especially NES games, you might want to give this one a try.

Game of the week: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600

2011-06-06T06:16:00.006-04:00

Every Star Wars fan, whether young or old, remembers the battle scene on the ice planet Hoth in the film The Empire Strikes Back. There were rebels on the ground fighting against giant Imperial Walkers, commonly called AT-ATs, but there were also rebel pilots such as Luke Skywalker taking to the sky in snowspeeders to take the fight directly to the enemy.

It is an awesome scene. For its special effects and its drama.

When the film came out in 1980, the video game craze was just beginning to peak. So it only made sense that there would be a Star Wars video game. Right?

Of course it did.

And the very first Star Wars video game was Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back for the Atari 2600 home video game system.

Released by Parker Brothers in 1982, the game was a scrolling shooter in the tradition of the classic Defender arcade game. The player controlled a snowspeeder that flew around the sky over Hoth while shooting at approaching Imperial Walkers. The trick was to hit the body of the Walkers because shooting the legs did no good. Also, every once in a while a flashing spot would appear on a Walker, and if the snowspeeder could hit that spot it would destroy the Walker in one shot.

But the Walkers didn't just stand by and let the snowspeeder shoot at them, no no. The Walkers shot back. Generally it took more than one shot to down a snowspeeder, and the player could temporarily land a snowspeeder for repairs. Still, there often wasn't time to land because the Imperial Walkers were headed toward the rebel base, and if they reached that base the game was over and the player lost.

As was common with many Atari 2600 games, there were lots of different difficulty levels for this game, some quite tough. This almost made Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back like having multiple games in one cartridge.

This game proved popular enough that in 1983 there was a version of it made for the Intellivision home video game console.

Game of the week: Carnival for Colecovision

2011-05-29T05:59:00.005-04:00

Remember the old days when you and your favorite girl strolled down to the arcade, you plopped down a dime, picked up an air gun and blasted away at toy ducks, rabbits and bears?

No. Maybe you're not old enough. Heck, maybe none of us are old enough.

But a bunch of us are old enough to remember the arcade video game Carnival, by Sega, that came out in 1980 and featured simple arcade shooting. It was a video game in which you controlled a little gun at the bottom of the screen that shot at rows of toy animals at the top of the screen, and you had limited ammunition.

Sound boring? It wasn't. Even with simple graphics and simple gameplay, Carnival offered lots of enjoyment.

Which is one reason it was ported to the major home video game consoles of the time, the Atari 2600, Intellivision and the Colecovision.

To be fair, with a game like this, they all looked and played pretty decently on the home systems. And why not? There weren't any overly fancy graphics and the game itself isn't complicated.

But still, as was common back then, the Colecovision had the best quality graphics and sounds, making Carnival for the Colecovision most like the arcade experience. And this was important to a lot of gamers back in the day when many home ports looked, and sometimes played, nothing like the arcade versions of the games.

Also, the Colecovision had everything the arcade version of Carnival had, including the bonus stages between each main stage. In these bonus stages the shooter got to shoot a bear that kept going back and forth on the screen.

All these years later, Carnival is still fun to play, especially on the Colecovision. Don't let all those new-fangled, modern graphics fool you. Graphics aren't everything. Sometimes solid gameplay is more than enough for hours of entertainment.

Game of the Week: Commando for NES

2011-05-22T06:32:00.005-04:00

You are a lone soldier facing off with limitless hordes of enemy soldiers. Your terrain is the jungle and desert. Your weapons are your rifle and grenades. How long can you survive?

That's the basic gameplay for Commando, the 1985 hit arcade game from Capcom.

The game proved so popular that ports were made to just about every home gaming console and computer system of the time, including the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, PC and most importantly, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Now, there have been so many different ports of Commando, I would be a fool and a liar to say that I've tried them all. I haven't. But I have tried about a half dozen of them, and of them all, I have to say the version for the NES is the best and the one closest to the arcade games in graphics and gameplay.

The game itself is pretty straightforward. You play a soldier who is dropped off by a helicopter, then you scroll vertically up the screen while shooting at enemy combatants who come at you from all sides except directly behind. Your gun has unlimited ammo, which is great, but you also have a limited supply of grenades you can use to take out several enemies at one time.

The game comes in stages, and at the end of each stage you come up against a fort where tons and tons of enemy soldiers come piling out at you. Defeat them all to move on to the next stage of the game.

One of the few problems with the NES version of Commando is trying to shoot diagonally. It can be done, but the control pad for the NES lends itself more to straight right, left, up and down movement.

Game of the Week: Super Dodge Ball for NES

2011-05-15T06:21:00.004-04:00

It was never a huge hit in the arcades, but believe it or not there was an arcade video game about dodge ball in 1987. It was originally released in Japan, and titled Super Dodge Ball when it reached the United States.

The game must have had some success, at least in Japan, because Nintendo decided to import a version to its huge mega-hit home video game console of the time, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Super Dodge Ball is entertaining, but it does take some getting used to how the game plays and the control system.

Like real dodge ball, there are two teams of multiple players that try to smash to smithereens the other team. In Super Dodge Ball each individual member on a team has their own health meter, and once they get hit enough and the health meter reaches zero, that member of the team is trashed.

There's a lot of action here, as the player can toss the ball back and forth between players on his or her team, and the player can have team characters jump and duck and even catch a ball that's thrown at them.

One letdown is that the graphics are only fair, which is disappointing because the NES was capable of solid graphics.

The worst part of this game, however, is that a player's control of team members alternates all the time, and this is confusing. Still, a player can get used to it and learn to use it in his or her strategy.

If you want to play a different kind of sports video game, Super Dodge Ball is worth giving a try. And if you're a collector of retro NES games, you should probably check out Super Dodge Ball.

Game of the Week: Super Off Road for SNES

2011-05-08T02:16:00.001-04:00

If you like the idea of jumping into a pickup truck and racing against some good buddies around a bumpy dirt track while avoiding bales of hay and sharp turns, have I got a video game for you.

It's called Super Off Road. And it is a-w-e-s-o-m-e!!!

Or at least the Super Nintendo version is, and that's the one I'm most familiar with, though I have played the original arcade game some, it titled Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road.

This is a fairly basic game. You race around a dirt track in a truck. As long as you keep winning or coming in one of the top three spots, you keep playing. If you lose, you're done.

Though basic, it's not a simple game. It'll take a while, but you have to get used to the odd physics in the game. Your truck won't always do exactly what you expect it to, especially when it's being bounced around by bumps and hills. Extra fun can be had when you use the turbo boost to give your truck that little extra something to win a race.

The graphics here are quite solid, being darn near arcade quality. The sounds, too, are quite superb and appropriate with engines running and background crowd noise.

As a nice little extra bonus, between races you can take your winning earnings and use them to spruce up your truck.

Super Off Road was popular enough that it got ported to other video game consoles of the time, the early 1990s, such as the Sega Genesis.

Game of the Week: Popeye for arcade

2011-05-01T00:16:00.009-04:00

By today's standards, the Popeye arcade game is a relatively simple video game. The player controls Popeye, the sailor of cartoon fame, who climbs around the screen while trying to catch falling hearts, musical notes or letters from his girlfriend, Olive Oyl, who is at the top of the screen. Working against Popeye is the evil Brutus and the Sea Hag; while the Sea Hag only appears on the edges of the screen and throws bottles at Popeye, Brutus can roam the screen and try to punch Popeye or jump and long on Popeye or throw bottles at Popeye.

There are three levels to the game, and each level is complete once Popeye catches all those hearts, notes or letters. The first level takes place at some docks. The second level occurs in a city. The third level is aboard a ship. Each level is more difficult than the one before. After the third level, the game starts over at the first level, though gameplay has been sped up.

Despite all the troubles Popeye faces in this arcade game, he does have some help. Most notable, there is one can of spinach per screen, and once Popeye grabs the spinach, he becomes invincible for a short while and can punch out Brutus. But Brutus isn't down for the count, and returns shortly. Popeye also has a few opportunities for extra points.

While Popeye was popular enough in the arcades, it wasn't quite a huge smash hit. Still, it was popular enough that it was ported to all the major home gaming consoles of the period as well as to many home computers. Some of the most memorable versions of this game were the ports for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System, the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Colecovision, and even for the Odyssey 2. Of all the home versions, the one for the NES is generally considered the best and the one most like the arcade game, but that only makes sense because Nintendo was the original creator of the arcade game as well as, obviously, the NES.

Recently, a version of this game has been released for cell phones, with several additions, including a new level.

Despite the years, the Popeye arcade game has stood the test of time and is still a fun climbing game to play.

Game of the Week: Defender for Atari 5200

2011-04-24T00:01:00.006-04:00

Fans of retro video games are familiar with the Defender arcade game from Williams Electronics that was a hit in 1980s. Most are also familiar with the Atari 2600, especially as it was the king of home video game consoles in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But not so many people are familiar with the Atari 5200, the home gaming system Atari released in 1982. The Atari 5200 had better graphics than its 2600 cousin, but it never caught on well with consumers.

Still, the Atari 5200 had some cool video games. Including its ported version of Defender.

One thing that makes Defender on the 5200 so great is that the graphics are darn near the same as the arcade Defender, which is a good thing since Defender had sweet graphics for the time. Also, the sounds are the same as the arcade game, which is another good thing.

Most importantly, the gameplay itself is quite similar to the arcade Defender, and this is important because Defender is a video game in part dependent upon its controls and its gaming scenario for its awesomeness. Of course the controls here are different because the Atari 5200 utilizes a joystick with multiple buttons as compared to the six buttons and joystick of the arcade Defender, but once you become familiar with the 5200's joystick you won't have any problems with play.

Just like the arcade Defender, you control an onscreen spaceship that shoots at aliens while rescuing humans on the grounds. Also, like the arcade version, your ship can use warps and has a limited supply of smart bombs that destroy all the enemies on the screen.

Still, the biggest problem with Defender on the Atari 5200 are the controls themselves. The 5200 joystick just isn't very good. Yes, you can get used to it, but it still sucks compared to other gaming controls of the day, including the Atari 2600 joystick, and even the Intellivision and Colecovision controls. So, if anything takes away from the enjoyment of this game, it's the sub-par 5200 controllers.

Game of the Week: Defender for arcade

2011-04-17T00:26:00.005-04:00

In the late 1970s and 1980s, there were a lot of shooting arcade games that involved blowing invading aliens out of the sky. Space Invaders, anyone? Remember Galaga? Most of those games seemed pretty similar, and could possibly bore a gamer after a while.

But then in 1980 the pinball wizards from Williams Electronics decide to make the move into the arcade game business, and they did so with style. The company's very first venture into the arcades was with a game that has become a classic, Defender.

What made Defender so different? It was just another game in which you shot aliens out of the sky, right?

Not exactly.

Most alien shooting games at the time were modeled after Space Invaders, meaning the player controlled a ship at the bottom of the screen that shot at advancing aliens at the top of the screen.

Defender wasn't like that. In Defender, the player controlled a spaceship that could fly all over the screen horizontally while shooting at aliens, but not like Asteroids where a player could go anywhere. In Defender, the player's ship could go left and right, the screen scrolling along with the ship, and the player's ship could go up and down but there was ground beneath that prevented the ship from scrolling down and a monitor at the top of the screen that prevented the ship from going up. Many have called Defender the very first scrolling shooter game, and there's a lot of truth to that; at the least, if Defender wasn't the very first scrolling shooter video game, it was at least the first popular scrolling shooter.

In some ways it is surprising that Defender was such a popular game. For one thing, it's a pretty complicated video game for the time when it was released. There's a lot going on on the screen, and the player has a lot to keep track of. Also, the controls were quite complex, featuring a joystick and five buttons.

Five buttons!?!

Yep. That doesn't sound like anything special today what with all the multi-button game controllers for home consoles, but back in 1980 most video games only had one joystick and maybe two buttons, sometimes only one button or no buttons.

To gamers of the day, Defender looked somewhat intimidating. But once one got familiar with Defender, and that didn't take long, it was soon evident how much fun this game actually was.

Defender shined in part because of its complexity. Few other video games had that at the time, and it made the player think and think fast. It also didn't hurt that Defender had great graphics and great sounds.

Defender became so popular that there were a number of sequel games based upon it, even a pinball game. And of course Defender was ported to just about every computer and home video game console of the time. Defender is even available for today's computers and home gaming systems, usually on a greatest hits collection disk.

But not only did Defender have sequels and home ports, but it basically created a whole genre of video games, the scrolling shooter. Tons of other games have been based upon the style of Defender, from Chopper Commander back in the 1980s to modern scrolling shooters such as Sonic Rush.

One last historical note about Defender: This game was originally developed by Eugene Jarvis, one of the more famous video game creators. Jarvis not only lead the team that came up with Defender, but he also created such famous games as Robotron 2084 and Smash TV.

Atari games now available for iPad and iPhone

2011-04-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

Would you like to have ALL of the classic Atari arcade games and Atari 2600 games at your fingertips?

It's easy enough nowadays with the release of the Atari's Greatest Hits app for the iPad and the iPhone. If you're interested (and you should be), head on over to iTunes and get this app.

But first, how about a preview of this new Atari app? Check out the video below to see all the amazing games (and there'e a lot of them -- including nearly every Atari 2600 game) available for the iPad and iPhone.

Game of the Week: Space Invaders for Atari 2600

2011-04-10T01:43:00.001-04:00

Has any video game ever been more played, more emulated or more ported than Space Invaders? Maybe Pac-Man, but I'd say it's a close call.

More than perhaps any other video game, it was Space Invaders that truly kicked off the gaming craze in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There have been sequels of the game, pinball games, all kinds of apps and ports, online versions ... you name a computer, gaming system, cell phone, just about any modern type of technology, and there's probably a version of Space Invaders made for it.

But all that got started back in 1980 when Atari released its ported version of Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 home video game system, the king of home gaming systems at the time and for several years to come.

The Atari 2600 has been lambasted often because of lousy graphics, but here it works just fine. What can you expect, however, since Space Invaders is a pretty simple game graphically? The gameplay, too, was pretty much the same as the arcade version, and the sound isn't that different.

Some fans of retro games even find the 2600 version of Space Invaders better than the arcade version. How is that possible? Well, this Atari game had color, which Space Invaders initially did not have in the arcades. Also, the Atari version offered 112 different versions of Space Invaders, including movie shields, different-sized shields and much more, though admittedly it was still basically just Space Invaders.

Perhaps most importantly, the Atari 2600 Space Invaders game is historic for video games. Did you know it was the very first official home port of an arcade game? It's true. Also, the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders has been called the first killer app video game.

So, not only was the arcade game Space Invaders groundbreaking, but so was the Atari 2600 version. And most importantly, both versions of the classic game provided years of fond memories for kids growing up in the early 1980s.

And is still fun to play today.

Game of the Week: UFO for Odyssey 2

2011-04-03T00:23:00.008-04:00

If you sit down to play the video game UFO on a classic Magnavox Odyssey 2 home system, it's impossible not to make comparisons to the arcade hit from Atari, Asteroids.

Much like Asteroids, the player controls a ship that floats around in space while shooting at enemy spacecrafts. The first noticeable difference between UFO and Asteroids is that in UFO your ship has a force shield that not only can protect your ship from attacks, but can also be used to take out enemy ships by running into them.

Admittedly, the graphics aren't that great, but they're also not the worst there are, especially considering the time period when the Odyssey 2 was originally available, the early 1980s. Most of the enemies attacking you are simply circles or X's, and even the toughest bad guy, a flying saucer that comes by from time to time, isn't much more than a straight line.

Still, UFO is a challenging but fun game to play. Much like Asteroids, the longer you play, the tougher the game gets. One cool thing, or at least I though so, was that with a little practice you can fly your ship in one direction while shooting in another, allowing you to blow away the enemy while escaping.

Also, as with all Odyssey 2 games, the colors here are exceptional and the sound fair. Overall, I'd say the gameplay is a touch above decent, though not quite unique or extraordinary.

Retro gaming buffs will want this game for their collection.

If you are in or from Europe, you might remember the Odyssey 2 under a different name, the Philips Videopac.

Game of the Week: Tron for arcade

2011-03-27T05:53:00.013-04:00

In 1982, Walt Disney Productions released a movie about video games called Tron. Of course a movie about video games had to have video games about the movie, right?

To that end, over the next couple of years there were a half dozen or so Tron video games released, several for the Atari 2600 or Intellivision home video game systems, but a few for the arcades as well.

The arcade game Tron was the first to reach the arcades, released by Bally Midway in 1982, which would be followed up in 1983 with the arcade masterpiece Discs of Tron.

Tron was a popular game, so much so that Electronic Games magazine awarded it with Coin-Operated Game of the Year.

And why wouldn't this game be popular? It had fantastic graphics, at least for the time, as well as solid sounds and bright coloring. The gameplay was awesome, some of the best of the time, with unique controls of a joystick with a firing button and a radial dial.

Perhaps best of all, Tron was actually four games in one. Each round, the player got to pick the order in which to play the four mini-games. In one of these sub-games, the onscreen character shot at electronic spiders. In another game, the character played a game somewhat similar to Breakout, here the character having to shoot away colored bars in a tower. In still another mini-game, the player controlled a tank that roamed a maze shooting at enemy tanks. And in the last game, the player drove a light cycle around the screen while leaving behind a wall in hopes of destroying an enemy, computer-controlled light cycle.

It was all great fun. And still is awesome today.

There were four styles of cabinets for the original Tron, with most gamers being familiar with the regular arcade version. There was also a smaller arcade version and a cocktail table version. Most rare, however, was a sit-down version that was something like climbing into a race car.

With the release of the new Tron: Legacy movie, hopefully these older arcade games will get a chance to shine again, because they deserve it.

Below are images from the game.

Game of the Week: Qix for arcade

2011-03-20T00:20:00.002-04:00

In the early 1980s, arcades were dominated by three types of games: maze games such as Pac-Man, climbing games such as Donkey Kong, and space shooting games such as Space Invaderss.

But there were a handful of games that were different from all the rest.

Like Qix.

Released by the Taito America Corporation in 1981, Qix was unlike anything else in the arcades at the time. It's a bit difficult to describe the gameplay of Qix, but I'll give it a shot. At the beginning of each level, the screen is sort of like a big, blank drawing board. Upon that board the player has a small diamond-shaped marker that can be moved around the edges of the board. The object is for the player to use that marker to draw lines across sections of the drawing board, and if successful then those sections will be filled with colors. This sounds quite simple, and it would be if it weren't for the fact there is a "Sparx" bouncing around the screen, and if it touched the player's marker while the marker was drawing a line, then the player lost a "life." There was also the deadly "Fuse" roaming around the edges of the screen, and the player's marker had to avoid the "Fuse," as well.

Over the last several decades, Qix has never died. It sported several sequel arcade games, including Qix-II Tournament and Super Qix and Twin Qix, and it has been ported in one form or another to just about every computer system, home gaming system and handheld system there has been. The most modern version of Qix is a version known as Qix++ for the Xbox Live Arcade.

Video game links

Arcade game of the week: Ms. Pac-Man

5 Classic Pinball Games

Game of the Week: Galaga for Atari 7800

2011-03-13T00:12:00.013-05:00

In the early 1980s, Galaga was one of the most popular arcade video shooting games in which the player controlled a spaceship that shot attacking aliens out of the sky. There were a lot of games like this at the time,Space Invaders having kicked off the trend in the late 1970s, but Galaga stood out because of its bright colors, decent sounds and excellent gameplay.

Because of Galaga's popularity, of course there had to be versions of it made for all the hit home video game systems of the time. Of course there had been a version of Galaga for the Atari 2600, but the 2600 wasn't known for great graphics. Atari might have tried for another Galaga with the Atari 5200 gaming system, but the 5200 didn't catch on with consumers, thus Galaga for that game was never released, probably never even attempted.

But then, soon after the crash of the video game market, Atari tried to jump back into success with its Atari 7800 system which had great graphics and even allowed for play of Atari 2600 games.

Unfortunately, by 1986 when the big push with the 7800 was tried, Nintendo was already taking over the home video game market with its NES (Nintendo Entertainment System).

Still, despite its short-lived lifespan on the shelves of stores, the Atari 7800 home video game system had some awesome games.

One such game was the home port of Galaga.

Admittedly, the graphics weren't exactly perfect with the arcade version of Galaga, but they were darn close. The colors were vibrant, the sounds were good, and most importantly, the gameplay was excellent. To truly experience the Atari 7800 version of Galaga at is finest, the toughest setting for the game needed to be utilized.

For serious collector's of retro video games, an Atari 7800 is a joy to have, and no true collector of the 7800 should not have their own copy of Galaga for that system.

Game of the Week: Popeye for Odyssey 2

2011-03-06T00:19:00.002-05:00

The Atari 2600 was the hot home video game system of the early 1980s, but there were plenty of other systems, including the Odyssey 2 from the Magnavox company.

The Odyssey 2 was never a major hit in the United States, but it had solid success in Europe where it was known as the Philips Videopac G7000. This European success lead a handful of companies to make and/or port games for the Odyssey 2, including Popeye from Parker Brothers.

Popeye had been a pretty popular arcade game in the early 1980s, so popular that a port was made of it to just about every computer and home video gaming system of the time. There was even a small tabletop version of Popeye. The game was based upon the popular cartoon series of Popeye the Sailor.

The Odyssey 2 never had the greatest of graphics, often not even as good as those of the Atari 2600, which was a system commonly lambasted for not-so-great graphics. But the Odyssey 2 did have bright, vibrant colors and decent controls.

Popeye for the Odyssey 2 was guilty of simple, blocky graphics, as well. But it did have the bright colors as well as decent sound and quality gameplay.

Was Popeye ever a favorite of Odyssey 2 fans? It's hard to say since the Odyssey 2 was never the most popular of systems. But being that Popeye is one of the few games for the Odyssey 2 not actually made byMagnavox, someone at Parker Brothers must have seen the marketability potential.

Game of the Week: Rampage for arcade

2011-02-27T01:47:00.013-05:00

By 1986, most video game fanatics thought they had seen it all. You had your maze games, your shooting games, your sports games, and everything in between.

Then the company Bally Midway put out a game about monsters tearing apart cities. The title? Rampage.

In Rampage, the player controlled one of three monsters, either a giant lizard, a giant ape or a giant wolfman. Your goals were simple. You roamed around a town and climbed buildings to tear those buildings apart. Of course those pesky little humans were there to try and stop you, which they would attempt by throwing dynamite at you or shooting you with their tiny little guns or sometimes a big tank. There were a few other dangers, as well, such as you could accidentally electrocute yourself if you grabbed a power line within one of the buildings, and sometimes if you ate something it might not be good for you.

Oh, yeah, speaking of eating ... you got to eat people, too. While climbing a tall building, you could bash a hole in a wall and reach in and pull out some poor bastard to munch away on.

All for only 25 cents.

Yes, long before the likes of today's violent video games in which you could work out your own personal frustrations (I'm looking at you, Grand Theft Auto), there was Rampage.

And coming out relatively late during the early days of video games, Rampage had solid graphics for the time, as well as good sound and decent gameplay.

My only complaint was that I felt the games didn't last long enough. See, once your giant monster took too much damage, the monster would revert into a small, helpless human and then would slink away off the screen. Still, for 25 cents, what can you expect?

Rampage has proven to be a popular franchise ever since its release. Not only has it been made available on nearly every home video game system and computer system and handheld gaming system known to mankind, but there have been several sequel games, some for the arcades and others for computers and home gaming systems. A couple of the more popular sequels have been Rampage World Tour and Rampage Through Time.

10 sites for retro video game fans

2011-02-26T11:39:00.002-05:00

The Video Game Critic
This website has been around for more than a decade now. It's a pretty basic site, but there's lots of information. Most of that information involves reviews of classic video games, though there is a growing list of reviews of more modern games. Also included are screen shots of each game reviewed, and that can be quite helpful in jarring the old memory. One great thing is these reviews are not by just one person, but by many people, and you might want to become a member of the site so you can post your own reviews.

Tomorrow's Heroes

Looming large since 1997, Tomorrow's Heroes is one of the oldest sites on the Web pertaining to classic video games. There is a lot of information here, and retro fans could spend hours pouring over all of it. You'll find a lot of information about the old Atari systems and games, but there's also a lot about the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). There's even quite a bit about comic books and poker. And there are links to where you can buy some of your favorite classic games.

Classic Video Gamers

This blog has been around for a little more than a year now. It's purpose? Each week it spotlights a different retro game. Some weeks the game of the week will be an arcade classic, another week it'll be a Super Nintendo game, or an Intellivision game, or an Atari game, etc. The list goes on. Also, sometimes there will be other articles related to gaming, and there is a growing list of retro video game links.

Label Maker 2600

A fun site! Remember the labels on the older Atari 2600 video game cartridges? Well now you can create your own labels. You get to insert your own art and your own text, and then the site will digitally on screen create the label for you. You can then save the labels, even print them out if you want.

Classic Gaming Expo

Despite the fact our favorite retro games are getting along in years, there is still a huge fan base for these games. How big a fan base? Big enough that for more than a decade now there has been an exp just for our favorite classic games. There are always lots of arcade games, set-ups with console play, live music, food, and much more. Also, there are usually a few people available who worked in the gaming industry back in the day.

Intellivision Lives

Are you a fan of the Intellivision gaming system from Mattel? If so, this is the official website for Intellivision Productions. Not only can you find out lots of cool info about classic Intellivision games, but you can also find out how to play those games on modern gaming systems, handheld, consoles and even on the iPad. Check it out!

Odyssey2 and Videopac

Or maybe you have fond memories of playing the Odyssey2 from Magnavox back in the day. For those outside the U.S., the Odyssey2 was generally called the Videopac. On this site, you can join up to take part in forums about this classic gaming console, and you can learn about the system and its awesome game.

VirtualNES

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is one of the most popular gaming consoles of all time. So if you have great memories of the NES you'll probably want to check out this site, which hosts legal emulator games for the NES. Lots of classic games are here.

Atari2600.com

Who could forget the Atari 2600, the gaming system that launched a whole fad, or at least brought it to popularity. But there's more than just information about the Atari 2600 here. There's tons of info and links for just about every classic gaming console. There's also an online store for buying retro games and gear.

Colecovision Zone

Ah, the Colecovision. What would be a retro gaming list without mention of the classic Colecovision. This particular site has tons of info about the Colecovision, games for the system, links, etc. Enjoy!

Video game links
20 Classic Arcade Games from the Early 80s
10 Classic games for Intellivision
10 Classic games for Atari 2600

Game of the Week: Space Hawk for Intellivision

2011-02-20T05:49:00.000-05:00

Space Hawk for the Intellivision home video game system was kind of an oddity. In many ways it was like the popular Atari arcade game Asteroids, at least in that you're floating around in space while shooting at comets and meteors and alien spaceships flying by. But Space Hawk was unique in that the player didn't control a spaceship, but instead controlled a spaceman in a suit with a jetpack on his back. This might appear like a minor difference, but back in the early days of video games, it seemed like a major change.

Another thing about Space Hawk was that you could teleport your character around when he got into trouble.

The graphics for this game were somewhat simple, but they were typical Intellivision graphics, which meant they were pretty strong when this game was released in 1981. Atari might have been king of the home video games back in the early 1980s, but there's little argument the Intellivision system generally had better graphics.

The sound was somewhat bland, but the gameplay was excellent and quite exciting.

There was one problem within the game, however, and that was that at random times your character might be teleported to another spot in space. It didn't happen often, but it happened just enough to be confusing and somewhat annoying when it did happen. Actually, according to the website Intellivision Lives, this teleporting problem was a technical flaw with the controllers that could not be fixed. So, after looking into the game's code and realizing the teleport problem couldn't be fixed, an addition was printed in the game's instruction manual basically saying that this random teleportation was intentionally part of the game. Genius!

Anyway, Space Hawk was a fantastic game and the Intellvision was an awesome system.

Game of the Week: Donkey Kong for Atari 2600

2011-02-13T01:05:00.005-05:00

In the early 1980s, it seemed every company was making it big in the arcade business. Nintendo wanted to do the same thing, and how did they do it? They released on the market a game known as Donkey Kong.

Immediately Donkey Kong was a smash hit. It was the first popular platform game, meaning a game with jumping and climbing, and it included plenty of lovable and/or interesting characters.

Of course fans of video games wanted to be able to play Donkey Kong at home, and since the Atari 2600 was the most popular home video game system, it was a natural that Donkey Kong would eventually find it's way to the system.

Coleco was the company who gained the rights to release home game versions of Donkey Kong, and they wasted no time putting out a version of the game for the Atari 2600.

Unfortunately, some gaming lovers were less than impressed. The graphics for the Atari version weren't nearly as good as those of the arcade game, and there were only two different screens as compared to the four in the arcade game. Fans weren't completely disgusted, as they would be with the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, and fortunately most of them realized the at-home systems of the day were quite limited compared to the arcade games.

Personally, I think Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 is a pretty solid game in its own right, and it's held up decently over the decades. Sure, it's not the same as the arcade Donkey Kong, but it doesn't have the worst graphics I've seen for a 2600 game and it does have pretty good sound and excellent gameplay.

If you're a collection of retro video games, you deserve to have an Atari 2600. And if you have an Atari 2600, you've got to own a copy of Donkey Kong by Coleco. Why? Because it's a classic game on a classic system.

Game of the Week: Frogger for Atari 2600

2011-02-06T03:12:00.007-05:00

Back during the gold age of video games, mainly the early 1980s, one fantasy of all fans was to have the home version of a video game be as close as possible to the arcade version of the game. This rarely happened, though some games were better than others.

Also, the Atari 2600, the best seller of all the home video games systems back then, didn't offer the strongest graphics in the world. This made it even more difficult for fans to get a home version of a game that was equal to the arcade version.

There are even legends of horror about games for the Atari 2600 that were so little like their arcade cousins. The most famous culprit in this mess was the Atari version of Pac-Man, which many fans hated because it was nothing like the arcade Pac-Man.

But every once in a while there was an Atari 2600 version of a game that was quite like the arcade version. Such a game was Frogger, the cartridge released by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600.

Frogger for the 2600 had pretty good graphics, though admittedly those graphics were not as strong as the original arcade graphics. But the sounds for the Atari version were quite impressive, and on par with the arcade Frogger.

Most importantly, the gameplay for the Atari version of Frogger was downright dead-on that of the arcade game. And that arcade experience was what many gamers wanted at home back in the day.

Was the Atari home version of Frogger perfect? No, but then few Atari 2600 games ever were, mainly because of generally sub-par graphics. But one has to keep in mind the technology level of the time, and the Atari had a lot going for it in terms of the number of games available for it and often in gameplay.

All these years later, Frogger for the Atari 2600 still stands up well, and it is a common game owned by collectors and fans of the gaming system and the game itself.

Game of the Week: Tron Deadly Discs for Intellivision

2011-01-30T00:19:00.007-05:00

In the early 1980s, Disney put out a movie called Tron. It was about being trapped inside a video game world. Considering how popular video games were at the time, you would think this movie would have been a huge hit at the box office.

It wasn't.

In fact, it pretty much tanked. Though, to be fair, Tron the movie does have a loyal following to this day, though it's not yet had major mainstream success. Maybe that will change when the sequel movie, Tron: Legacy, hits the theaters next month.

Anyway, before the original movie came out, the folks at Mattel worked out a deal with the Disney folks to make a bunch of games for the Intellivision, Mattel's home video game system, and to release those games about the time the movie was released.

Well, unfortunately the games were about as much success as the Tron movie, though some of them were darn good games.

One of those darn good games is Tron Deadly Discs.

It's kind of difficult to explain the gameplay, but I'll try. You play the Tron character from the movie, and you are being hunted onscreen by evil computer-generated warriors. Your only weapon is a throwing disc which can take out enemy warriors but can also be used to block, and thus temporarily destroy, the throwing discs of your opponents. You face three enemies at a time, and after you take one of them out, a new one will be added to the group so that you're pretty much facing three enemies most of the time but not all of the time. Also, you can open doorways at the top, bottom and sides of the screen which will allow you to jump around to the opposite side of the screen. Every once in a while those doorways are closed up by a Recognizer, a giant flying robot-looking thing, but with some skill and luck you can take out the tough Recognizer before it completes its job.

The game keeps going and going until all your lives are gone. If you are good, a game can last quite a while, which is impressive because the more enemy warriors you kill, the tougher they get.

The graphics here are quite plain by modern standards, but they hold up nicely when compared to the graphics of the time. The colors were bright, but a bit simplistic. The sound is sparse, as it was with many home video games of the time, but what sound there is is appropriate for play. The gameplay itself is where this game really shines, because it's awesome to toss around your disc and watch enemy warriors be disintegrated.

All in all, I think this Intellivision game stands up well to time. I still play it today, and still find it tons of fun.

Game of the Week: Lock 'N' Chase for Intellivision

2011-01-24T00:36:00.000-05:00

Lock 'N' Chase was originally an arcade game released in 1981 by Taito in the U.S. and Data East in Japan. It must have been a popular enough arcade game because there were several ports of it made to home video game systems, including the Atari 2600, the Apple II and eventually even the Nintendo Game Boy.

But after nearly 30 years, I've yet to run across a Lock 'N' Chase arcade game. I've never seen one. And back in the golden days of video games of the early 1980s, I spent tons and tons of time in arcades because my step-dad worked in an arcade and I got to play thousands upon thousands of games for free.

Odd.

Still, I did have Lock 'N' Chase at home for my Intellivision home video game system, and it was a blast to play.

It was basically another maze game, thanks to the popularity of Pac-Man, but in this one you played a robber on the run from the police. The object is to collect all the coins (dots) on the screen before the police can catch up to you. To help the robber, he can close doors between himself and the police, and with a bit of luck can trap police between two doors. Also, special items appear in the center of the screen from time to time for bonus points.

This is perhaps my all-time favorite home maze game, specifically the Intellivision version. It had quality sounds which were fun, solid gameplay, and great, brightly-colored graphics, at least for the time period.

Sometimes it was a bit difficult to move the robber character exactly where you wanted him, but that was mainly due to the disc-like controls of the Intellivision. Still, once you became familiar with the Intellivision controls and its quirks, you were good to go.

Lock 'N' Chase was so much fun on the Intellivision, I have to rank it as one of my favorite games on the system, easily in the top five.

Game of the Week: Pitfall! for Atari 2600

2011-01-17T01:45:00.006-05:00

Back in the early 1980s, the Atari 2600 was the top selling home video game system on the market. But one of its weaknesses was graphics. The 2600 often did not have the greatest graphics for its games. But then along came companies such as Activision and Imagic, made up at least in part of former Atari employees, and suddenly the Atari 2600 had some great games with great graphics.

One such game was Pitfall! by Activision, which came out in 1982.

What was the goal of Pitfall! The player controls an onscreen character known as Pitfall Harry through a jungle while search for 32 treasures. Along the way, Harry has to swing on vines over the heads of crocodiles, jump over scorpions, avoid falling into bog pits and avoid all kinds of other nastiness. And toughest of all, Harry only has 20 minutes to find all 32 treasures.

Believe me, that was no easy task.

One of the great things about Pitfall! was that it was the first really popular Atari 2600 game to have solid graphics for the time period. Sure, that little image of Pitfall Harry on the screen was still a little blocky, but that was better than most former Atari 2600 images of characters which were often just big dots. There wasn't a ton of sound to Pitfall!, but that was uncommon for the time, though there was some and it wasn't too bad. The game play was easy enough.

But I have an admission to make. I never finished a game of Pitfall! all the way to the end. Why? To be honest, I found the game to be a bit tedious. By no means was it the worst Atari 2600 game I played back in the day, but it seemed all Pitfall Harry did was run and jump and swing. Plus, in my opinion, it didn't help that the game had a definite ending. Back then, games generally went on as long as the player could save enough onscreen characters. Plus, being only a 20-minute game, it wasn't as if Pitfall! was going to keep my interest all day long.

But really, I did enjoy Pitfall!, it just wasn't my favorite game.

Here's a bit of trivia for you: Do you know what comedic movie star got his start doing a television commercial for Pitfall! in the early 1980s? If you don't know, take a look at the video below.

Game of the Week: Night Stalker for Intellivision

2011-01-10T01:43:00.006-05:00

Night Stalker was a shooter game. You ran around a maze shooting at robots before they shoot you, all the while trying to avoid spiders and bats (because they can freeze you temporarily on screen) and grabbing more bullets for your gun.

Simple enough. Right?

Admittedly, Night Stalker for the Intellivision home video game system was pretty easy. But only in the lower levels. The higher your score went, the tougher the robots became. And the last thing you wanted was to face off with a bunch of robots when your gun is out of ammo.

So, simple game. Lots of fun. It was the early '80s, so what more could you ask for?

How about being creeped out? Night Stalker by no means is the scariest or creepiest game ever made, but for the early 1980s, it was pretty spooky. How? I mean, come on, it was just a bunch of blips on the screen, right? Well, yeah, but there was that spooky heartbeat sound that was always playing in the background. No matter what happened, that heartbeat kept beating and beating and beating. It was enough to drive you bats. Or shatter your nerves.

But you had to keep a cool head. There were robots to kill, after all.

Night Stalker was always one of my favorite games on the Intellivision, and it proved popular enough that it was ported to several other home gaming systems and computer of the day, including the famous Atari 2600. Here's a piece of trivia for you: The version of this game for the Atari 2600 was not called Night Stalker, but was labeled Dark Caverns. However, in 1989, some years after the golden age of the Intellivision, a PAL version of Dark Caverns was released and it was called ... you guessed it, Night Stalker.

Game of the Week: Astrosmash for Intellivision

2011-01-03T03:33:00.006-05:00

Astrosmash is one of those classic Intellivision games that fans will always remember. At first Astrosmash seems somewhat like Space Invaders; after all, you're controlling a cannon moving across the bottom of the screen while shooting at objects higher on the screen. But the resemblance ends there. In Astrosmash, the player's cannon not only shoots at alien spaceships, but also has to shoot at meteors falling from the sky, spinning objects in the sky and yes, the alien spaceships.

In a way, Astrosmash was sort of a mix of Space Invaders and Asteroids. Funny enough, Astrosmash started off as the Intellivision rip-off of Asteroids, but the creators of the game decided upon a game that was more different. Why did they do that? Well, potentially to avoid any legal hassles with Atari, the owners of Asteroids. But also because they found Astrosmash to be more fun than the original Asteroids clone they'd made.

And boy am I glad they went with Astrosmash as it is, because it's a fantastic game. Besides, for the Intellivision there was eventually the Space Hawk game, and it was quite a bit like Asteroids in many respects.

Despite looking to be a relatively simple game, Asteroids had some unique properties. For one, as the player progressed in the game, it got harder. Okay, that's not so special. Lots of games do that. But few games allow for the game itself to actually get easier if the player isn't doing so well. Guess what? Astrosmash does that. Cool!

Also, there's a hidden game within the Astrosmash cartridge. What is it? It's the original Asteroids clone game that Intellivision never used. How do you get it? Well, it's quite difficult and rarely can you get to it on purpose. Basically, sometimes when one hits the Reset button on an Intellivision, there is a bit of a blip or glitch. Sometimes, just every once in a while, when doing this for Astrosmash, that other game will appear. It's almost impossible to do this, however, so good luck trying to get to it.

Game of the Week: Tron Deadly Discs for Atari 2600

2010-12-26T00:18:00.002-05:00

If you are a fan of the Intellivision home video game system from the early 1980s, you've almost had to have heard of the game Tron Deadly Discs. It was an awesome game, pitting the onscreen character against computerized warriors and a giant robot known as the RECOGNIZER.

But did you also know there was a Tron Deadly Discs game for the famous Atari 2600 home video game system of the day? Not only that, but there was even a version of the game for the Aquarius Home Computer system, but that sense because the Aquarius was made by Mattel, the same company that made the Intellivision.

Mattel also made the Tron Deadly Discs game for the Atari 2600, but under its M Network titles, basically Mattel's title for games it made that could be played on the Atari 2600.

As could be expected, the graphics for the Atari version of the game weren't quite as strong as those for the Intellivision, but the Intellivision was generally known to have superior graphics in the very early 1980s. And the gameplay wasn't quite the same, though it was pretty close.

But does that mean Tron Deadly Discs for the Atari 2600 isn't worth playing? Not at all.

There was still plenty of great action as you controlled a character running around a huge arena avoiding enemies and the throwing discs from the enemies. The onscreen character even had a throwing disc of his own and could use it to take out the warrior enemies. Unfortunately, the RECOGNIZER robot doesn't appear in the Atari 2600 version of the game.

Also, to help with strategy, the character can throw discs into doors that appear along the top and bottom and sides of the arena on screen. Once a disc hits a door, the door changes color, and if there's another door opposite that door in the arena, then the character can run through the door and come out on the other side of the arena, sort of like when Pac-Man travels through the tunnel on the left and right sides of the screen to come out the other side.

The graphics here are fair, at least standard for the Atari 2600. And the gameplay is decent, but unfortunately once you've gotten halfway decent at this game it tends to lose a lot of its luster because there are no new elements to add flavor. Of course, that could be argued for a lot of video games from the time period.
If you've got an Atari 2600 sitting around and you like to collect games for the system, check out some places online and do a search for Tron Deadly Discs under the M Network title.

Video game links

How many Tron video games have there been?

20 Classic Atari 2600 Games

Classic Video Gamers, a blog for old school gamers

Game of the Week: Adventure for Atari 2600

2010-12-20T05:49:00.004-05:00

There was a time when video games were pretty much just sports games, shooting games or some variant of sports or shooting games. Action games weren't around yet, and most RPGs were years away.

When was such a barbaric time? The late 1970s.

But into that age came a little game known as Adventure. It came out in 1979 and was made for the Atari 2600 home video game system.

By today's standards, Adventure would be a pretty dull game. Simplistic, blocky graphics. Next to no sound. Gameplay so easy it could be considered laughable.

But that's today. In 1979, Adventure was ... in a word ... awesome!

How do you play? You control a little blip on the screen that goes around castles and through mazes to find various objects that are needed in a quest to find a golden chalice and return in to the main castle. Such objects included a sword to fight off three dragons, keys to enter castles, a magic bridge and a magnet. The basic version of the game could be played in just a few minutes, a long, long way from today's RPG games that sometimes take weeks upon weeks to finish.

Adventure also goes down in history. For on thing, it is the very first video game to include an easter egg. What is this easter egg? In a secret room there are the words "Created by Warren Robinett," who was the creator of Adventure for Atari. How do you get to this secret room? I'm not going to tell! What fun would that be?

Another innovation with Adventure is that it is the very first action-adventure video game!

Being a simple game, once you've played Adventure a handful of times, you've done just about everything the game has to offer. But it's still plenty of fun.

How many Tron video games have there been?

2010-12-19T01:19:00.000-05:00

In 1982, Walt Disney Productions released a movie known as Tron, starring Jeff Bridges. The film enjoyed modest success at the box office, but over the years has gained a huge following. And why not? Released during the height of the arcade video game crazy, Tron was about a programmer who is pulled into a world where video games are reality.

Now Disney has released a sequel, Tron: Legacy, also with Jeff Bridges as one of the stars. Considering it has been almost 30 years since the first Tron movie, will Tron: Legacy still be able to find an audience? So far the critics are mixed, but with all the fanfare the film has built, and the awesome graphics its trailers portray, Tron: Legacymight be the start of a new film and video game franchise.

But over the years, there has to some extent already been a Tron video game franchise. There have been a number of official Tron video games going all the way back to the early 1980s and up to today. Just how many Tron games have there been?

Let's count and take a look back.

Tron (1982)

Bally Midway released this arcade game in 1982 right before the release of the Tronmovie by Disney. This one set the stage for many future Tron games in that it the gameplay actually includes more than one different sub-game within the overall game, and one of those sub-games here is a light cycle game, and light cycle games have been somewhat popular ever since. Besides the light cycle mini game, there is also a sub-game in which the player has to shoot out colored blocks in a rotating tower, a game in which the player takes on enemy tanks in a maze, and a game in which the player takes on electronic spiders. The player can choose in which order he or she wants to tackle each of the mini games.

Tron: Deadly Discs (1982)

In 1982, at the height of the home video game market, the toy company Mattel was lucky enough to land the Tron franchise for home video games. Unfortunately, the movie wasn't a huge blockbuster at the time (despite its later huge following), so this didn't help game sales. Still, Mattel put out some great games based upon Tron. This is my personal favorite, originally made for the Intellivision home video game system by Mattel, though shortly thereafter Mattell released a version for the Atari 2600 under its M Network titles. As far as gameplay, basically you control a character who runs around an arena while zapping enemies with your throwing disc. Your character can also use the disc as a shield to block discs thrown by the enemies.

Tron: Solar Sailer (1982)

This was another home video game released by Mattel for the Intellivision system, and it was one of only four games that utilized the Intellivoice module for the Intellivision, basically an external component that added voice sounds to the game. This was never a very popular game, and if you ever play it you'll see why; it seems kind of fruitless as you travel through grids while avoiding spiders and tanks, and then when you get to the end of the grid you just go on to another grid.

Tron: Maze-A-Tron (1982)

This was the third and final Tron home video game Mattel made for its Intellivision system. Basically, you run through a maze while trying to avoid enemies who are after you. Not a great game, but not awful. It had fairly decent graphics for the time, but then the Intellivision system was known for its graphics back in the day.

Adventures of Tron (1982)

Mattel also made this game, but not exactly for its Intellivision home video game system, but for the Atari 2600 home video game system. How did this happen? Well, this game was supposed to be a version of Maze-A-Tron for the Atari 2600, but once this game was finished it was totally different from Maze-A-Tron. What to do? Mattel released it anyway, even though there technically wasn't a version of this game for their own home video game system. This is kind of a climbing game in which the character moves up and down levels while collecting items flying at you.

Tomytronic Tron (1982)

To my knowledge, this is the only handheld or tabletop video game every made for the Tron franchise. The company Tomy released this game in 1982. This was another Tron game that was more than a single game, but several games in one. Here, there were tree games, a light cycle game, a disc combat game, and then a game where you take on the master computer.

Discs of Tron (1983)

This one was another arcade game, and my favorite of the arcade Tron games. Bally Midway released it. The play would seem fairly simple, you playing a character who jumps around on screen while throwing discs at an enemy while avoiding discs he throws at you, and play is simple for the first couple of screens. But then things begin to change. Walls pop up. Your enemy starts throwing grenades. Some of those grenades actually begin following you around on screen. And much, much more. An awesome game.

BeamWars (1992 - unofficial)

Polaris Software released this game initially as shareware for Macintosh computers. It's a pretty simplistic (by today's standards) light cycle game. It is now available as an app for some cell phones. This game, or other ones very, very similar to it, has been introduced under other names, including Beamtron, but it's basically the same game.

Ricochet (2000 - unofficial)

Ricochet is actually a multi-player mod for the first person shooter video game Half-Life. It's actually an official mod, and it's obviously based upon the world of Tron. How so? It's a death-match style game visually, and even somewhat in gameplay, similar to Tron and some of the Tron video games. Characters jump around on platforms while trying to take one another out with throwing discs. The colors and graphical styles of the game are also quite reminiscent of Tron.

Tron 2.0 (2003)

Tron 2.0 is meant to be a sequel of sorts to the original Tron movie. It is basically a first person shooter game, initially available for PCs from Buena Vista Games, though later MacPlay released a Macintosh version. Also, a version of this game was ported to the Xbox and the Game Boy Advance under the name Tron 2.0 Killer App.

GLtron - 0.70 (2003 - unofficial)

0.70 is the most recent version of this game, though there were some earlier versions. As is obvious from the graphics, this game is based upon the light cycle duels of the Tron universe. GLtron is on open source computer game available for PCs as well as Macintoshes. If you think you've got the right stuff, go check out the official websiteand join in the fun.

Armegatron Advanced (2004 - unofficial)

This is the most recent version of a computer game originally known only as Armegatron. What is it? Yet another light cycle game based upon Tron; apparently the light cycles are popular, what with all this different games based upon that sequence in the original movie. This game is available for a bunch of different kinds of computers, from PCs to Linux to Macs to more, so if you are interested, you can check it out right here. This is a multi-player game, and it's available for free.

Space Paranoids (2009)

In the original Tron movie, there was a video game called Space Paranoids. And now, all these years later (and probably because of the new Tron: Legacy movie that's out), this game actually exists as an arcade game, plus you can play it online, too. It's a first person shooter game, and you would likely recognize many of the graphical elements because they are based upon enemies in the Tron movies.

Tron: Evolution (2010)

Just in time for the new Tron: Legacy movie, Propaganda Games has released Tron: Evolution for the Xbox 360,Playstation 3, PSP and for Windows. This is a third-person game with some combat and RPG elements. There is disc combat to be found here as well as light cycle gaming. Online gaming is available, as is general multi-playing, and downloadables are expected in the near future.

Tron: Evolution - Battle Grids (2010)

This game is pretty much the Tron: Evolution game, but then some. It has been released only for the Wii and Nintendo DS systems, at least so far. I've not checked this game out yet, but from what I here there's more of a sandbox element in which the player can explore the Tron world by traveling on a light cycle or even in a tank.

In conclusion

So, how many Tron video games have there been? It's difficult to say. I counted 15 total, with four of them being unofficial games. Also, there's often more than one version of a Tron game available for computers or as an app, so how does one count those? And then there were also portions of the game Kingdom Hearts andVirtual Magic Kingdom that were based upon the Tron franchise. Do you count those?

I don't know. I suppose it's possible there are a hundred different Tron games if you take into account the different versions of games for different home video game systems and computers and online, etc. But I'll stick with the number 15, because any other games at the least seem to be based upon one of those 15.

Video game links

Classic Video Gamers, a blog for old school gamers

20 Classic Arcade Games from the Early 80s

What was the very first video game?

Game of the Week: Asteroids for the Atari 2600

2010-12-13T01:45:00.007-05:00

In 1979, Atari introduced a video game called Asteroids to arcades.

And the world has never been the same since.

Asteroids was so popular, it seemed everyone wanted to play. And especially because it was an Atari game, it only made sense for the company to create a version of Asteroids for its hugely popular home video game system, the Atari 2600.

For those who might not know, what is the object of this game? Simple. You fly a little spaceship around a screen while avoid getting blown to smithereens by tons and tons of asteroids floating around. To help out, you can shoot at the asteroids, which makes smaller asteroids. Then you have to blow away the smaller asteroids to clear the screen and go on to the next screen, where you do it all over again. Every once in a while an alien spaceship will fly by and take a shot at you, but you can blow those up as well.

Sounds simple, and simplistic. It's not, on both counts.

Asteroids was a ton of fun to play, and it was addictive.

When the game was introduced to the Atari 2600, some fans were concerned that it wouldn't be the same. The arcade version of Asteroids was a vector based game, in layman's terms meaning there weren't a lot of filled-in graphics because everything sort of looked as if it had been drawn to be stick figures. Yes, it sounds stupid, but it was what is was (and it worked and was still a great game). The Atari home system didn't allow for vector graphics, so how would the company pull it off?

Simple. They just filled in the spaces with color. Sure, it looked a little different, but the gameplay was the same and the colored asteroids didn't hurt anything.

The arcade version of Asteroids was popular enough to spawn a few sequels, and it was ported to a few other home video game systems, including modern systems.

Game of the Week: Star Strike for the Intellivision

2010-12-05T01:29:00.008-05:00

In the early 1980s, a lot of kids were fans of Star Wars. A lot of kids were also fans of video games. So what would be better than to bring the two together, Star Wars and video games?

Well, early on there weren't any actual Star Wars video games. What did we do? We played Star Strike on the Intellivision home video game system.

In Star Strike, you controlled a ship flying along a trench of a giant space station. Sounds kind of like the space battle scenes in Star Wars, right? That was intentional, I'm sure. While flying your craft, you also got to shoot an enemy alien spaceships while avoiding being blown to bits by them. There was sort of a timer to this game because you had to defeat all the enemy ships before the space station lined up with your planet and blew it to smithereens. Again, very Death Star sounding.

It was also a lot of fun.

The graphics were pretty solid for the time, but then the Intellivision was considered superior in graphics to the king of home video games of the day, the Atari 2600. The gameplay was pretty solid too; some players gripe about the Intellivision controls, a keypad with a direction disc, but I always found it easy to use. The sounds were fair, but keep in mind this was still relatively early on in the development of video games and sound often wasn't utilized to its full potential; and often that full potential was actually pretty low considering the restraints of the systems back then.

Star Strike has always been one of my favorite Intellivision games, being quite addictive for me. I spent hours and hours playing it, and likely will again someday.

And hey, since the Christmas shopping season is upon us, don't forget an Intellivision and maybe the Star Strike game for your favorite retro gaming pal.

Game of the Week: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for Intellivision

2010-11-29T06:06:00.006-05:00

Back in the early 1980s, during the golden age of video games and possibly of tabletop roleplaying games, it seemed a natural for there to be a Dungeons & Dragons video game. So, when Mattel came along with such a game for its Intellivision home video game system, fans of both type games were more than thrilled.

And the game didn't let anyone down. For the time, the graphics were actually quite good, though the Intellivision always had pretty solid graphics for the early '80s. The sound was also good, and played an important role in the game experience itself.

Also, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game for the Intellivision was different and somewhat complex compared to other games of the time. There was no score. Instead, the player had a goal to reach, a crown to find. But before finding that crown, the player had to find a boat, a hatchet and a key to be able to travel through the land in which the game took place.

Basically, you travel around a map and enter caves to search for the needed items. Your only weapon is a bow and a limited amount of arrows. Fortunately, you could find more arrows laying about in the cave systems, which was good because you had plenty of monsters to face such as bats, spiders, rats, blobs, demons and yes, dragons.

Once you found the crown, you won the game.

It wasn't exactly true roleplaying, but it was one of the closest video game experiences players could find at the time.

And yes, of course, by today's standards the graphics and sound and gameplay don't compare, but they were very good for the early 1980s.

Eventually this game was renamed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain because a sequel game was released, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin, which was a fine game in its own right.

Game of the Week: Major League Baseball for Intellivision

2010-11-23T01:59:00.007-05:00

Baseball. Is there anything for American than this sport? It's even been dubbed America's favorite pastime. It's such a great game, early on it made its way into video games.

One of the best early baseball video games was Major League Baseball for the Intellivision home video game system made by Mattel in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

What made this such a great baseball game? In part, it was the graphics. Of course by today's standards those graphics are pretty lame, but when this game first was available in 1980, it had the best graphics around for a home baseball video game.

Also, the colors were solid, the sounds decent and the gameplay quite strong. The one big drawback? This was a two-player only game. That's right, you couldn't play by yourself. If you wanted to play Major League Baseball on your Intellivision, you had to have a friend or someone play with you. No single player! Which seems almost barbaric by today's gaming standards.

However, the gameplay was pretty realistic. You could steal bases, hit home runs, go for intentional walks, control the batter, control the pitcher, control the fielders ... stuff that's pretty standard nowadays but back then was rare for a baseball game.

This game was so popular, more than a million of them were sold, which makes it the most popular video game ever for the Intellivision system. Of course, it didn't hurt those numbers that this game actually came packaged with the Intellivision.

The popularity of this game was so strong that Mattel actual made a version for the Atari 2600 under it's M-Network titles. You can even find this game available on Intellivision Lives, a modern compilation of Intellivision games.

And just in case you go looking for this game and there's some confusion, it was also released under the title Big League Baseball and, simply, Baseball.

Game of the Week: Ms. Pac-Man

2010-11-16T00:19:00.000-05:00

Following the huge success of Pac-Man in the arcades in 1980, the producer of the game in the U.S., Midway, just had to come up with a sequel game that would be fun for players but also remain true to the original game.

What Midway came up with was Ms. Pac-Man, and it followed through on everything a Pac-Man fan could want. The basic gameplay was still there, as were the bright colors and fun sounds, but there were also new characters, new graphics and, most importantly, new mazes for gobbling up pills and monster ghosts.

Basically, Ms. Pac-Man did the impossible. It improved upon Pac-Man, perhaps the most popular video game of all time. There were more mazes than just the one that Pac-Man had, and each maze came in different color schemes.

Ms. Pac-Man proved so popular, it was ported to many of the home video game systems of the time, including the Atari 2600 and the NES. The game still shows up today in ports to computer systems and modern video gaming systems, and there's even been several handheld versions of Ms. Pac-Man as well as small, tabletop versions.

If you're a fan of classic arcade games, you just about have to love Ms. Pac-Man. It's such a simple game, sending a yellow Pac-Man with a red ribbon around to munch on dots, that you just have to love it.

10 classic video games for Atari 2600

2010-11-11T01:18:00.002-05:00

Yars' Revenge

The most classic Atari 2600 game there ever was that wasn't also an arcade game. Yars' Revenge was what this home gaming system was all about, hours and hours of flying a metal bug around a screen while it eats at an electro force field.

Pac-Man

Everyone hated Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 because it was nothing like the arcade game. But looking back all these years later, I think that's a little unfair. Yes, it was not the arcade game, but it still wasn't a bad game in and of itself.

River Raid

You're flying a fighter jet along a river while blowing up any planes, helicopters, ships and more! River Raid byActivision was just about as much fun as you could have with an Atari 2600.

Zaxxon

This is another game that is disappointing when compared to the arcade version, but it was still a pretty decent game, sort of like a science fiction version of River Raid with not-so-great graphics.

Donkey Kong

A classic arcade game for a classic home video game system. It wasn't the same as the arcade version, but they never are. Still, it had solid gameplay, decent colors and graphics, and decent sound.

Frogger

With action quite similar to the arcade version of this game, it's no wonder Frogger for the Atari 2600 is still common among collectors and fans of the system. Decent graphics and strong sounds, as well.

Adventure

This game made video game history on multiple levels. It was the first action adventure game. It was the first sort-of RPG game (thought not really). And, most importantly, it was the first video game ever to feature an easter egg. But I'm not telling what it is!

Asteroids

With the exception of some color changes, the Atari home version of Asteroids played pretty much like the arcade version, thus securing it as a favorite of 2600 fans.

Pitfall!

Activision was such an innovative company when it came to work on the Atari 2600, and their huge hit game Pitfall! is evidence why. This game was one of the first to have truly smooth and great graphics for the 2600, showing that the system actually could have quality graphics and games.

Space Jockey

Not one of the more popular games for the Atari 2600, but Space Jockey had good graphics and colors. If you were in the mood to veg out without a lot of thinking, this was the game for you.

Game of the Week: Space Jockey for Atari 2600

2010-11-09T13:46:00.007-05:00

The Atari 2600 was such a popular home video game system in the early 1980s, there were plenty of companies which tried to cash in on the Atari craze of the time by making games for the system. A number of these games were not all that good, and many fans blame the 1983 crumble of the video game market on the fact there were so many awful games available.

There's probably some truth to that, but the big video game crash had plenty of other factors, including a few not-so-great games by Atari itself.

Regardless, in 1982 along came US Games, a video game company put together by the Quaker Oats Company (yes, you read that correctly). US Games put out 14 games for the Atari 2600, and nearly all of them have been forgotten over the years.

However, one particular game, Space Jockey, has a soft spot in my heart.

I was only 13 or 14 during the time Space Jockey hit the retail stores. Despite mowing lots of yards for cash, I didn't have a lot of money back in those days. Still, I made enough money that I could afford to buy a new Atari 2600 game every so often.

One day I was walking through a K-Mart when I stumble upon a discount bin of Atari game cartridges. And what should I find but Space Jockey! I think it cost me something like $5, so I had to snag it up.

When I got home, I plugged Space Jockey into my Atari 2600 and got to playing. I quickly found out the gameplay for Space Jockey was sort of like an overly simplified versions of the Defender game, so simplified a three-year-old could play it.

Basically, you control a spaceship up and down on the left side of the screen while shooting at tanks, houses, trees, airplanes and balloons coming at you from the right side of the screen. The tanks and airplanes could should back, but still, this was a very easy game to play.

If you were searching for a challenging Atari 2600 game, Space Jockey wasn't it, mainly because it was so easy to play you could keep playing forever and ever without hardly ever getting your spaceship killed. But Space Jockey did have a certain appeal because of it's very monotony. How so? Well, if you were just wanting to veg out some without having to put a lot of thought into the game you were playing, Space Jockey was perfect for that.

Also, Space Jockey did have some positive qualities. The colors and graphics were quite good for the Atari 2600, and though the sounds were simple, they weren't awful by any means.

Retro gamers today can still find used, and sometimes new, cartridges of Space Jockey available for sale in various places online. I've seen prices as low as $2 to as high as $45. I'd go with the $2 price, unless the cartridge is in awful condition and doesn't include the original box and gaming manual.

Anyway, there were far worse games for the Atari 2600 than Space Jockey. This wasn't exactly an awful game, but it wasn't for everyone and it wasn't an awesome game.

Still, I have fond memories of it and enjoyed playing it.

10 Classic games for Mattel's Intellivision

2010-11-06T23:31:00.000-04:00

Click the game titles for articles about each game.

Burgertime

Perhaps my favorite Intellivision game. You make giant burgers while avoiding evil hot dogs, pickles and eggs. Simple, but tons of fun.

Microsurgeon

One of the first ever, if not the first ever, video games having to do with health-related issues. I realize that sounds boring, but it wasn't. Microsurgeon was an awesome game.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Back in the day, this was the only way to play a D&D video game. And it had decent graphics, good sound and fantastic gameplay.

Lock 'N' Chase

In my opinion, this game on the Intellivision is as good as any version of any maze video game I've ever played including Pac-Man. You play a robber who goes around picking up coins (dots) while avoid the long arm of the law.

Astrosmash

Kind of a mix between Space Invaders and Asteroids, Astrosmash was one of the grooviest games around. You could play it for hours and hours. Literally, you could play it for hours and hours. How? Because as you got better at the game, the game got harder, but if you were having a tough time with it, the game got easier.

Night Stalker

That spooky heartbeat sound always in the background made this one of the creepiest games ever from the golden age of video games. And it was awesome! I spent hours upon hours playing this one.

Space Hawk

Seemingly a lot like the hit Atari arcade game Asteroids, Space Hawk offered enough differences to make it a unique game in its own right. And it was a ton of fun to play, too!

Star Strike

Back in the day there were no games actually based upon Star Wars, but Star Strike was pretty darn close. With all that flying and shooting along the trench of a space station, it seemed a heck of a lot like you were flying an X-wing fighter along the Death Star

Tron Deadly Discs

Remember the movie Tron? If you do, then you might also remember there were a bunch of video games based upon this movie about being trapped in a video game. Awesome, awesome game, this one. One of my favorites for the Intellivision. I could play this sucker forever, even after it got pretty tough to play.

Major League Baseball

Great graphics and a lot of fun to play, but the big drawback was you had to have two players. Still, when you could get that other player, this was the best baseball video game in the world back in the day.

Game of the Week: Centipede

2010-11-02T00:55:00.003-04:00

Okay, I admit right up front, Centipede was never my favorite arcade game. I didn't hate it, but I never found it all that fun to play.

Released to the arcades by Atari in 1980, the player uses a roller ball to control a little head-shaped figure at the bottom of the screen while shooting away at mushrooms, centipedes, spiders and more further up the screen.

Like I said, I never enjoy the game all that much, but tons of people did. Centipede was a hugely popular game in the arcades back in the 1980s, so much so that it had a sequel game in Millipede and was ported to nearly every home video game and computing system at the time. There have also been several handheld versions of Centipede, versions to cell phones, even modern versions for home gaming systems. Heck, Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 even has Centipede and Millipede available.

So, obviously, I must be one of the ones who didn't get it. I never hated Centipede or anything like that, because I've definitely played worse games. The graphics were a bit simplistic, in my opinion, but they were bright and equal to most other games in 1980.

I guess I'm saying there were just other games I found more interesting. Still, I've put more than a few dollars worth of quarters into a Centipede game machine over the years, and I wouldn't ask for any of them back.

Whether my favorite game or not, Centipede has more than earned its place among other classic games from the golden era of video games.

50 signs you are an Atari 2600 geek

2010-10-25T17:37:00.001-04:00

You still have your very first, original Atari 2600.
And play it often.
You know how to make games for the Atari 2600.
And do so.
Without getting paid for it.
You actually own a copy of Air Raid.
You actually know what Air Raid is.
You've paid more than $20 for an Atari cartridge on eBay.
You've bought more than 10 Atari cartridges on eBay.
You've sold more than 10 Atari cartridges on eBay.
Without looking it up, you know the differences between an Atari 2600, an Atari 5200 and an Atari 7800.
And you own all those systems.
You remember when the Atari vs. Intellivision debate was as common as today's Mac vs. PC debate.
And you always came down on the side of the Atari.
Even when the Intellivision had better graphics on a particular game.
You once bought a fancy controller for an Atari 2600.
But kept on using the original controllers because they worked so well.
You own a copy of Custer's Revenge. Not for titillating purposes, but because you must have a complete collection.
You understand why Custer's Revenge is titillating.
You refuse to play Atari 2600 games on a computer.
You refuse to play Atari 2600 games on a modern gaming system.
You refuse to play Atari 2600 games on anything but an Atari 2600.
Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 still ticks you off.
But you'd play it anyway.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 still ticks you off.
You hate the NES because it ended Atari's supremacy.
Without taking into account the video game crash of 1983.
Which was soooooo unfair.
You learned BASIC from the BASIC Atari cartridge.
You know what BASIC is.
You almost bought an Atari 400 or Atari 800 because of your 2600.
You did buy an Atari 400 or 800 because of your 2600.
You know what an Atari 400 and 800 are.
And you still have one or both of them.
And you still use one or both of them.
To connect with the Internet.
You blog about retro video games. Specifically Atari, of course.
Cotton swabs, alcohol and Q-Tips are on standby.
When you hear the words "Darth Vader," the first thing to pop into your head isn't Star Wars.
Just the fact you understood that reference should tell you something.
Back in the day, you were a member of the Atari Club.
And bragged about it.
You still have copies of the Atari Age magazine sitting around the house.
You have remote control joysticks for an Atari 2600.
You completed Earthworld.
And Fireworld.
And you have a copy of Waterworld.
You know whether or not the Crown of Life actually exists, and its location.
You know what HSW stands for.
But you hate seeing it because it ends your game.

Game of the Week: Asteroids

2010-10-25T00:29:00.006-04:00

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the golden age of video games, it sometimes felt like every arcade game was about shooting alien invaders out of the sky. Blame Space Invaders.

But one 1979 game from Atari was a bit different. That game was Asteroids. Sure, the player still controlled a spaceship, but the game was different from many others at the time in several ways.

For one thing, Asteroids had vector graphics, which wasn't all that common at the time and never really did become common.

For another thing, in Asteroids the player could fly their ship all over the screen, which was different from a lot of the science fiction shooting games of the day in which the player's ship just moved across the bottom of the screen shooting at things across the top of the screen.

Then there was the fact that in Asteroids the player's man goal wasn't to take out enemy spaceships, though an enemy craft did show up from time to time. No, the main goal of asteroids was basic survival, to blow up asteroids floating around your ship before they could slam into you and blow you up.

With thrust controls as well as a firing button, Asteroids was a little more complicated than most other video games from 1979, but it was also a lot of fun.

Asteroids was so popular that it was ported to many home video games systems, including the Atari 2600 and pretty much every Atari home video game system ever made. Asteroids is still popular today, and versions of it can be found for modern home gaming systems, modern computing systems and often free versions are online. There were even sequel arcade games such as Space Duel and Asteroids Deluxe.

Atari 2600 Label Maker

2010-10-22T14:10:00.000-04:00

Would you like to be able to create your own Atari 2600 labels? Well, now you can, for all kinds of purposes.

Just go to the website Atari 2600 Label Maker, and put in the title you want, an image you might want, and whatever else you think is needed.

These can be loads of fun!

Below are just a few examples of Atari labels I've made.

Game of the Week: Missile Command

2010-10-17T01:13:00.003-04:00

When the arcade game explosion hit in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were a ton of video games in which the player controlled a spaceship or some-such that shot down alien spaceships in the sky. Space Invaders is the grandfather of this genre, but there were plenty of other games along similar lines, such asGalaga.

But then in 1980 along came Missile Command, which at that time was quite the unique game. First off, Missile Command did not have a joystick, but had a controller ball instead, and that was many players' first experience using a controller ball.

And then there was the unique gameplay. Instead of shooting down alien attackers from the sky, the player had to use missile bases to protect cities while shooting down incoming enemy missiles. One a wave of enemy missiles was defeated, then the player went on to the next round of attacks. It might not sound that different from those alien-shoot-em-up games, but the gameplay actually is quite a bit different.

It was also a lot of fun. For me, I never could catch the knack of mastering Missile Command, but I still had loads of fun with the first screen or two that I could get to. I think it was the controller ball that threw me off, because thirty years later I still can't seem to master controller balls and prefer a mouse or joystick for my gaming.

Missile Command is an iconic game from the golden age of gaming, and it has proven so popular the game has been ported to many different home, computer and handheld gaming systems. Missile Command even pops up in new, graphically enhanced versions from time to time on modern home video game systems. But why shouldn't it? It's an awesome game.

Related links
What was the very first video game?
Star Castle nearly forgotten, but great arcade game
Classic Video Gamers, a blog for old school gamers

Game of the Week: Frogger

2010-10-11T03:06:00.000-04:00

Ribbit!

This week I'm taking a look back at the 1980s arcade video game Frogger.

The early 1980s was an awesome time for arcade fans, with new games coming out all the time and the arcades themselves filled to capacity, people waiting in lines to play Pac-Man or Space Invaders or whatever. Then, in 1981 Sega/Gremlin released the game Frogger onto the market.

Frogger instantly became a fan favorite, but it was a bit unusual in that it didn't quite have the splash, the pizazz!, that many other games seemed to have. Frogger had quality colors, but it didn't seem to scream to the players, "Play me!"

Perhaps it was the simplistic controls, or very fact the player was controlling an onscreen frog instead of a space ship or monster or something.

Maybe it was the seemingly simple gameplay. The player controlled a frog that had to make its way across a busy highway without being run over by a vehicle, then the frog had to jump across the backs of turtles and onto logs before hopping into their "home" to end that round. As the game progressed, it became more and more difficult with more and more challenges thrown at the player. The cars on the freeway sped up. The turtles began to dive under water. Eventually crocodiles, snakes and even otters would show up to attack the frog.

It sounds kind of silly when you think about it, but it was a fun game. For me personally, Frogger brings me fond memories because it was the only video game my dad ever liked, to the point he and I used to play the home version on my Atari 2600.

And that's another thing. Frogger has been so popular over the years, it was ported to just about every home video game system and computer system one can think of. Frogger has also had tons of sequel arcade and home games, and every so often now a new game based upon Frogger will appear.

Game of the Week: Zaxxon for Atari 2600

2010-10-04T01:13:00.001-04:00

Arcade enthusiasts were blown away in 1982 when the game Zaxxon was released. Zaxxon was the first arcade game to feature isometric projection, which is basically a fancy way of saying the game appeared to be three-dimensional.

No, the game's graphics didn't pop out from the screen at you, but they did appear in three dimensions. Before Zaxxon, video games appeared flat, in only two dimensions.

Zaxxon was a hit game at the arcades, and since the Atari 2600 was the top selling home video game system at the time, fans couldn't wait for Zaxxon to be ported to the Atari.

Well, as history shows, the Coleco version of Zaxxon that made its way to the Atari 2600 didn't look anything like the arcade version of Zaxxon.

The graphics were flat, two dimensional. For that matter, there didn't seem to be that many graphics to look at. There were relatively few items on the screen at any given time.

Looking back, that should have been expected. It wasn't like the Atari 2600 was known for great graphics. Still, Zaxxon fans were mostly disappointed.

That being said, Zaxxon for the Atari 2600 was still fun to play. Similar to the arcade game, the player controls a space ship flying over an enemy alien base while shooting down enemy ships, satellite dishes and fuel tanks. Of course the Atari version of this game took some getting used to, mainly because of the not-so-great graphics, but once your eye was familiar with everything, you really could play a pretty good game.

No, it wasn't real Zaxxon, but Zaxxon for the Atari 2600 was fun enough that it can stand on its own.

Game of the Week: Zaxxon

2010-09-26T00:10:00.000-04:00

Everyone who was around back in the day remembers the arcade game Zaxxon. It's the game in which the player controls a spaceship flying across a larger spaceship or space fortress of some sort, all while facing enemy craft, missiles and other things. Bumping into objects would also kill the player's craft.

But what everyone really noticed was the three-dimensional effects. See, Zaxxon was the first arcade to feature such, and it looked awesome by the standards of the day. You had great, bright colors, and it all came in isometric projection. You didn't get that in arcade games of the time, at least not until Zaxxon.

If one didn't think about it too much, one might think Zaxxon was just another space shoot-em-up game similar to Space Invaders or Galaga. And there's some truth to that. But the graphic effects weren't the only thing different about this game.

There was great gameplay. If there can be a comparison, Zaxxon is more similar to the arcade favorite Defender, in that the player controlled their spaceship and took the fight to the alien attackers instead of waiting for those alien attackers to come to you, as was often the case in such popular games as Galaxian and the like.

Zaxxon proved not only popular in the arcades, having been followed up by several sequel arcade games, but was also popular for home video game entertainment having been ported to all kinds of computers and home systems, including the Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Commodore 64 and much, much more.

For basic arcade fun with kicking graphics, Zaxxon had to be one of the best.

Game of the Week: Wizard of Wor

2010-09-19T17:44:00.000-04:00

You're stuck in a maze with a laser guns. Monsters are roaming all over the place. You have to shoot them before they can eat you or spit lasers or fire from their mouths to kill you. And once you kill them all, you move onto the next maze. Every so often, an evil wizard will show up to do you in. If you survive long enough, eventually the walls of the maze disappear altogether and it's just you against the monsters in a great big open room.

This was Wizard of Wor, a 1980 arcade game from Midway. You could play it alone, or with a partner.

This video game started off relatively easy, but the longer you played on your quarter (remember when arcade games only cost 25 cents?), the tougher things got. The monsters got faster, and sometimes moved in unpredictable manners. That bad wizard showed up.

It was all great fun, even though the graphics and sounds weren't all that great, even by 1980 standards. The gameplay could be a little stiff, and sometimes it seemed the monsters shouldn't have killed your character when they did, but overall the control system wasn't too bad.

I don't remember seeing a lot of Wizard of Wor arcade games, but one would pop up every now and then. Still, the game has been remembered. It was originally ported for a bunch of early home consoles and computers, such as the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64. But more recently Wizard of Wor was released on the Midway Arcade Treasures 2 game for the Playstation 2.