• Tag Archives retrocomputing

  • Atari Football (Atari 8-bit)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Atari Football, also known as just Football and most commonly RealSports Football, is a very early and very rudimentary football video game. I mean very rudimentary. It plays kind of like the old LED handheld football game by Mattel with slightly improve graphics. Limitations include:

    • Players cannot go out of bounds
    • Players cannot fumble the ball
    • No penalties
    • No extra points (touchdowns are an automatic 7 points)
    • No kickoffs
    • Only 5 players per side
    • No punt returns
    • Limited play selection (pass left, pass right, run or kick)

    ..and lots more.

    Despite all of these limitations, for the time it was released (1982), it was probably one of the best sports games out there. RealSports Football was also released on the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It does not appear that much effort was put into improving graphics or anything else for the 5200 and Atari 8-bit versions. Still, if you are looking to give it a try, the Atari 8-bit (and Atari 5200) version does offer slightly better graphics and sound…slightly.

    Obviously, football games and sports game in general progressed very quickly from this point. There isn’t much point playing this game against the computer since there are so very many much better football games out there. However, like many older games, it can still be a blast to play against someone else, at least for short bouts.

    While there are commonly annual sequels to sports games today, RealSports Football had no sequel. There were a number of other games in the RealSports lineup though, including baseball, boxing, soccer, tennis, and volleyball. The images above are from the Atari 8-bit computer version of the game.

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    Atari Football 800 XL XE

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/171413079737/adambernas-atari-football-800-xl-xe





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  • Antic (February 1986)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    antic_vol_4-10_1986-02_printer_power_page_0001

    Source: Antic – Volume 4, Issue Number 10 – February 1986






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  • The Pawn (Atari 8-bit)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Pawn was an adventure game originally released for the Sinclair QL in 1985 by a company called Magnetic Scrolls and then ported to a number of other systems. While the game had graphics on many of the platforms, this was really an interactive fiction or text adventure game. Interestingly, the game used a partial 68000 emulator on all versions of the game, even those that ran on less powerful computers.

    The images in this post are from the Atari 8-bit computer version of the game. This was one of the many versions that had graphics but they were basically just static images that depicted your location. The graphics are essentially optional and don’t really help to solve the puzzles in the game.

    The story basically involves you as a player attempting to escape the fairly land of Kerovnia. There are humorous elements to the game and both the story and the game parser generally received positive reviews. The Pawn was also a very successful game in terms of sales. For instance, The Pawn was distributed by Firebird for the Commodore 64 and it was their second best-selling game. The Pawn also won a number of awards.

    Interactive fiction has certainly become a more niche genre of games but there are still some being made. Up until very recently, there had not been any modern re-releases or remakes of this game. However, a company called Strandgames was recently founded by one of the co-founders and developers of Magnetic Scrolls. In 2017 they recovered the source code, remastered and re-released both The Pawn and The Guild of Thieves (Magnetic Scroll’s second interactive fiction game) and it looks like there is more to come. They are available for Windows, OS X, and Linux as well as Android and iOS.

    The Pawn / Atari 800 XL XE


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