MaximumRD

We go to the next game by selecting the middle pig from the menu. But this is not just any pig. This is the pig, the one and only Miss Piggy, or First Mate Piggy as she is cast. Hogthrob may have been the captain, but it's Miss Piggy who was the real star of the show. Indeed, the cartridge art not only depicts her the most prominently, but the title even reads "PIGS in SPACE starring MISS PIGGY". One could say she was the Seven of Nine of porcine science fiction.
 

 
This game is "Pastaroids". In case you are wondering, the only resemblance to Atari's "Asteroids" is in the title. The gameplay here is more original than for the previous one. It reminds me most of Activision's Freeway. Piggy is caught in the midst of a pasta storm and must spacewalk to the Swinetrek, which is slowly traversing the top of the screen. 
 
Starting at the bottom, she must avoid spaghetti (which travel left) and meatballs (which travel right) to reach the ship before her shipmates abandon her. Well, OK, according to the manual the crew come back for another pass, but either way is entirely within character for these swine. Accomplishing this causes the screen to be filled with more spaghetti and meatballs the next time the game is played. These obstacles knock Piggy down to the lane below, often right into another obstacle, and so on.
 

 
Pressing the joystick button compels Piggy to use her trademark karate chop, which can be employed to destroy oncoming meatballs. Noodles are impervious to all attack, naturally. At the beginning, I was unaware of the karate chop ability, and so, while the first few rounds were easy enough, they quickly became very challenging, and success seemed as much based on chance as anything. Even so, I was once able to complete this mini-game 15 times before expending all my lives. As soon as I discovered the karate chop, the game became much, much easier. If you have extra lives enabled, this is the game you'll go to to restore any lives lost. You don't get as many points as you do with the others, but it is easier and faster to complete than both.
 
Graphically, Pastaroids is not quite up there with the others, but it's not bad. The depiction of Miss Piggy here is a bit crude (and, arguably, without the spacesuit seen on the cartridge she has bigger problems than pasta), but the motion of the Swinetrek tilting side to side like a ship tossed at sea is nicely implemented with five frames of animation. It's the gameplay that is lacking. Depending how it is played, it either feels tedious or frustrating, but never really achieves "fun".
 
However, there is one game left. Selecting Dr. Strangepork gives us "Escape from the Planet of the Gonzoids", or as I like to call it, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boomeray". The Swinetrek is moving up through a passage, and the player must make sure the ship does not come in contact with any walls or projectiles until it reaches the exit. If the corridor seems to pass by too slowly at times (and it will, especially at first), at your own peril you can speed things up by moving to the top of the screen. I won't try to describe what occurs when the ship collides with an object, but it is an unsettling combination of sight and sound indeed.
 

 
The tunnel is always symmetrical, but sometimes divides into two passages. Continuing the game's food obsession, the manual explains that this is a pizza mine and that the Gonzoid robots placed along the walls are throwing deadly pizzas (which once again look like lines... but horizontal ones!).
 
There are places where destroying the Gonzoids is essential for passing safely, but the way to do so is not straightforward. Literally. The ship is equipped with the bizarre "Boomeray" which fires a dot which moves upward, then curves to the left or right (whichever you moved last), and then downwards. The shot cannot pass through walls. The placement of the enemies above the walls is such that the player must take advantage of the curving path of the boomeray to clear the way.This comes with risk: the returning dot can destroy the ship. Offhand, the only other classic game I can think of where you can be damaged by your own fire is Fortress of Narzod for Vectrex (no doubt there are others).
 

 
The progression of difficulty in this game is odd. Each time the game is successfully completed the mine passes a little faster, but also the Gonzoids alternate between firing quickly and slowly. The result is that the second round of this game is easier than the first. After roughly half a dozen rounds, the alternating pattern settles on a moderate firing rate.
 
There is one significant problem with this part of the game: the layout of mine and the placement of the enemies is the same every single time. Had the developers been able implement a bit of variety here, I'm sure the entire package would have a better reputation, but as it is they may have been pushing their eight kilobytes of ROM to the limit. I can't help but think, though, that with a bit of time they could've implemented something akin to River Raid's procedurally generated level design.
 

(I would like to add that Dr. Strangepork gets the short end of the stick through all of this. Being the hidden pilot of Swinetrek here and being omitted from the cartridge art entirely, his only real appearance is on the menu screen. Anyways, we still love you, Dr. Strangepork.)
 


 
So, looking at the whole, we have three games in one cartridge which aren't too terribly challenging and tend towards repetition quickly. That said, I love that Pigs in Space for Atari 2600 exists. That someone looked at one small piece of a favorite show, and figured, "We can make a game out of this!". And I sincerely enjoy the quirky humor and the small graphical touches. Had I been the person who originally purchased it, I might well have been disappointed, but as a collector, I find it's great.

I made RadioPoultry a contributing writer to the Official Atari I/O Blog!

He posted his complete Atari 2600 Pigs In Space review, which you can see here: 

http://www.atari.io/atari-2600-pigs-in-space/

 

Here's some amusing videos:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH76tRLVTQw
 

 

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmapDzXBA70

I never knew this existed until it came up on the 2600 GBG podcast. I still haven't played any of the games yet, but those will be ther first ones I check out, if/when I get a Harmony cart.

At-At Commander built a fort out of the Awesome Trade I got from Rowsdower
(The Detroit Lions card included is playing Hide n Seek....and is currently winning)

Oh NICE one, of all the ways I can play a 2600 cart this method still eludes me lol, so cool I gotta get one someday especially considering my only Intellivision is an INTV II anyways lol. That one looks very clean. Funny both Colecovision and Intellivision got expansions to play 2600 but the good old 2600 was never given ability to play Intellivision / Colecovision, yeah I know it was the less powerful console but just funny how that was. If you had an Intellivision and this add-on you would have been doing pretty damn good I think. 

Here we go.  From Rowsdower.  Three handheld games (have I mentioned I'm a sucker for these?)  And the cool hat.  And a game I haven't opened yet. 
 
Armor Battle needed a clean.  Works great!  Did I mention the Mattel handhelds are my favorites?  Missing the battery cover, but RickR does not care.  A working game = smiling RickR. 
 
Pac Man 2 - needed some cleaning, and the controls didn't quite work.  Repaired that with some soapy water and electrical contact cleaner.  It's actually a lot of fun with an elaborate maze.  For the two game, player 2 controls the ghosts!  How cool is that?  I'll tell you what, playing the 2 player game with only 1 player == the easiest time clearing the maze I've ever had!  Take that "Blinky" -- if that's even your real name. 
 
Dracula - needed the power switch cleaned up, but works great now.  It was hard to take apart because it needed a special screwdriver.  Found the right one if my magical toolbox.  Once you take it apart...there were springs and even a ball bearing to carefully keep track of inside.  This game is totally cool. It has multi-color graphics and some really nice sound.  Rowsdower says it has more than one screen...but it's so dang difficult, I can't get by the first screen!  And check out the "magnified" screen.  It must have the evil power of Dracula...because my camera can't focus on it.  It's really just a piece of clear film kind of bent into a parabola shape.  But cool.  Very cool.  The battery cover is cracked.  Rowsdower temporarily repaired that with a sticker.  I think I'll leave that as-is.  Otherwise, my fingers will end up glued to something. 
 
THANK YOU!

I don't know about all of you, but I'm very fond of the TurboGrafx and the PC engine. I've been collecting for awhile now, but not as long as my Atari era stuff.

What are some of your guys/gals favorite games? If I had to pick just one, I'd say Legendary Axe. I'm mostly a fan of shmups on the system, but Legendary Axe was the game that got me into collecting for the system.

How about you?
 
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

The Frogger port blows my mind to this day.  It just makes the 2600 feel like a whole new machine.

Oh NICE one, of all the ways I can play a 2600 cart this method still eludes me lol, so cool I gotta get one someday especially considering my only Intellivision is an INTV II anyways lol. That one looks very clean. Funny both Colecovision and Intellivision got expansions to play 2600 but the good old 2600 was never given ability to play Intellivision / Colecovision, yeah I know it was the less powerful console but just funny how that was. If you had an Intellivision and this add-on you would have been doing pretty damn good I think. 

I've never used a Supercharger but I always liked the idea of it. And that you could get those CD/MP3 compilations. I thought the games looked closer to the NES or at least Coleco than some of the regular 2600 games that were out at that time.

Starpath Supercharger for 2600.
 
Anyone have one? I don't but hope to someday just for collecting purposes more then anything, will have to wait though until things improve but always found the concept intriguing. So my understanding is the device plugs in like a cartridge and has built in memory (and maybe some other bits) to play more advanced games on Atari 2600 compatible systems? The original games came on cassette I know but various sources has converted them to mp3 so any mp3 playback device could be used instead.
 
I even have most of the games that were converted back to ROM format which I use on my Harmony Cart and yeah the games are pretty impressive, I played Frogger and could not believe the difference! I guess between my Harmony and converted roms there really is not much reason to own an original Super Charger other than the cool factor, well I think it's cool, that's why we love this stuff right? , what you see in this picture is about the only thing I have relating to the device, Stella Gets a new Brain v2.0, these are a collection of the Starpath compatible games on a CD in MP3 format, this was included with something I bought off Atariage a few years back I think, so when/if I do ever get one I can either use a CD player or transfer the MP3 from it and use an MP3 player to load the games.
 
Furthermore there was a collection called Worship the Woodgrain (4 cd's I think) that was a large collection of games converted to audio, over half of which could be played directly through the Supercharger and the other half IF you did some kind of mod to the Supercharger. Well, that is all I know about it through some quick searching BUT please if any of you guys actually own one feel free to chime in, correct anything I have stated as I am sure I am either missing some info or made some errors. Also, anything you like to add as far as what you think about the device, do you think it is worthwhile having and any other relevant thoughts thanks. 
 
 

I wonder how often Henry Thomas is asked to autograph E.T. carts

Oh NICE one, of all the ways I can play a 2600 cart this method still eludes me lol, so cool I gotta get one someday especially considering my only Intellivision is an INTV II anyways lol. That one looks very clean. Funny both Colecovision and Intellivision got expansions to play 2600 but the good old 2600 was never given ability to play Intellivision / Colecovision, yeah I know it was the less powerful console but just funny how that was. If you had an Intellivision and this add-on you would have been doing pretty damn good I think. 

I was going to get one - found a great deal online ($24.99). But they sold it recently so I'm waiting for them to get another back in stock.

The nerve of this kid...
 

Oh NICE one, of all the ways I can play a 2600 cart this method still eludes me lol, so cool I gotta get one someday especially considering my only Intellivision is an INTV II anyways lol. That one looks very clean. Funny both Colecovision and Intellivision got expansions to play 2600 but the good old 2600 was never given ability to play Intellivision / Colecovision, yeah I know it was the less powerful console but just funny how that was. If you had an Intellivision and this add-on you would have been doing pretty damn good I think. 

Play an M Network game on that thing for me!!!

I didn't realize how much Blue I sent you!
BTW, your INTV collection should be growing more any day now...

The No Swear Gamer continues to help my INTV collection grow.

I'm not positive about the dragon, but I believe it is a Game of Thrones thing.  I don't really watch that, so I can't confirm!

Got these from Rows!
Didn't realize Low G is a Taxan game!
BTW, he snuck in the dragon. Any idea what it is from? Neo Pet?

These arrived this week. Thanks Rick!

My cat was a bit concerned until he saw it said SPRAYED and not SPAYED.    Thanks RickR for the Omnivision games.   I will feel up to the ceremonial offering this week sometime. 

Thank you Rowsdower70!