• Category Archives Atari 2600
  • Retro Games » Atari 2600

  • Private Eye (Atari 2600)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Private Eye (Atari 2600)

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/169969373374/private-eye-atari-2600

    Private Eye, released in 1983, is one of the more obscure Activision releases for the Atari 2600. You play the role of private investigator Pierre Touche whose primary goal is to capture the criminal mastermind, Henri Le Fiend. There are several crimes that have been committed by this Henri Le Fiend and you must find clues and ultimately the property stolen in the crimes in order to arrest Henri Le Fiend.

    Each crime is a separate mission that plays as a game variation. In each case, you start with 1000 merit points and can lose them when you run into an obstacle or are attacked by a criminal or gain them when you locate an item or capture a criminal. Each mission has a time limit and running into a criminal will cause you to lose any clue or item you have found and then you have to find it again.

    So how does the gameplay actually work? You drive your specially modified Model A around looking for criminals while avoiding obstacles and attacks. When you find a criminal, you can jump up to grab him. He may be hiding a clue or an item. After retrieving the item you have to take it back where it belongs (e.g. a store or the bank).

    Reviews are mixed on this one but it is a unique game worth at least trying. If you are looking for an alternive way to play it vs. a real cart on an Atari 2600, it was also available on Activision Anthology. Activision Anthology was released for a number of systems between 2002 and 2012 including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable.





    Atari 2600 Retro Games 📎and tagged

  • Spider Fighter (Atari 2600)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    ‘Spider Fighter’

    [2600] [USA] [MAGAZINE] [1983]

    • Electronic Games, March 1983 (Vol. 1, #3)

      • Scanned by Jason Scott, via The Internet Archive
      • Illustration by Graham Wilson

    Spider Fighter, released in 1982 for the Atari 2600 (VCS), is a pretty average game for that system. By Activision standards this means it is below average. The game could best be described as a cross between Space Invaders and Centipede and is pretty typical for its time.

    The goal in Spider Fighter is to kill various vermin in an effort to save your fruit crop. Your weapon is a can of insecticide. Graphics are decent and colorful for the Atari 2600 but the sound is mediocre and the game play is pretty derivative. Once you figure out your opponents patterns, it becomes pretty easy (and boring) also. It is by no means a terrible game by Atari 2600 standards but it just isn’t up to what you would have come to expect from Activision which generally produced outstanding games at the time.

    Spider Fighter showed up later on in 1998 for the PlayStation as part of “A Collection of Activision Classic Games for the Atari 2600”. This isn’t a great conversion though as many of the games in this collection were slow or laggy. Since then, there have been various editions of Activision Anthology published between 2002 and 2012 for various systems including Windows, Mac, PS2, Game Boy Advance, Android, iOS and PlayStation Portable. These are much better conversions (or emulations) and are worthwhile alternatives to tracking down and original cartridge.





    Atari 2600 Retro Games 📎and tagged

  • Star Wars: The Arcade Game

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Star Wars: The Arcade Game was how most of the home ports of the Star Wars arcade game were titled. Seems a bit redundant but there’s marketing for you. The original arcade game was an impressive looking (even today I think it looks impressive) vector graphics based space flight combat game. You pilot an X-Wing on approach to the Death Star and then take part in the trench run to destroy the Death Star. The original arcade game was released in 1983 with a large number of home ports to follow later in 1983, 1984 and beyond.

    Initially, Star Wars was ported by Parker Brothers to the Atari 8-bit, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Commodore 64 and ColecoVision. Later in 1987 and 1988 it was ported to the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS based PCs among others. In addition, it was ported again to the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit so there are multiple versions of this game out there for those platforms.

    Today, there’s not really any reason to track down these home versions. Quality varies among the different ports but the arcade original is much better. You’ll have to resort to emulation to play it though as there has been no official release of an arcade perfect home version as far as I know.

    The images above are from a commercial for the original 1983/84 home ports. The version of the game shown is the Atari 5200 version. Except for perhaps the game graphics I think this commercial probably would have been more likely to reduce sales than increase them.

    Star Wars (Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, ColecoVision)





    Atari 2600 Atari 5200 Atari 8-bit Commodore 64 Computer Arcana Retro Games 📎and tagged