Game of the week: Atlantis for Odyssey 2

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: Microsurgeon for Intellivision

During the Golden Age of home video games in the early 1980s, the Atari 2600 was king. But it's main competition, Mattel's Intellivision, was no slouch and even offered better graphics and often better gameplay. Into this mix stepped Imagic, a third-party game maker.

Imagic initially had games mainly for the Atari 2600, and some great games they were. Imagic has often been compared to Activision in its quality of graphics and gameplay for Atari 2600 games. But Imagic also made games for other systems, including the Intellivision.

Of the several Imagic games made for the Intellivision, Microsurgeon was the most unique.

In Microsurgeon, the player operates a tiny ship that flies around inside a human body. The ship's objective is to go around healing the body, but attacks from white blood cells sometimes put a halt to any medicine the ship could deliver. It was generally best to operate within the body's arteries, as the ship was more safe there.

Sort of a maze game, but also an educational game, Microsurgeon is one of the earliest video games with a focus upon health. It was ported to a Texas Instruments computer and a few other systems, and it earned all kinds of awards for innovation back in 1982 and 1983.

Most importantly, it was a lot of fun to play, and still is today.