datafry

Before I begin the review I will note that I posted this to the Atari IO 7800 forum first. I've essentially copied and paste it here so it doesn't follow the same formatting exactly as my other reviews. But I feel that it reflects my thoughts well and I don't want to rewrite it to say the same things.
Also, I'm attempting to take my own screenshots instead of using Google image search.  I plan on going back and replacing all the other screenshots eventually. But since I play on real hardware and a CRT no less, it's difficult. So bear with me, and if you have advice please let me know!
So please keep that in mind, and without further delay, the review!
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Some say the strength of the 7800s library is in its strong conversions of early arcade classics.  Games like Ms Pac Man, Food Fight, and Asteroids we're considered the best ports of their time, and some even prefer them to this day.  Others refer to the fantastical and crazy later releases like Ninja Golf, Basketbrawl, or Midnight Mutants being the true highlights of the library. But the truth may live somewhere in the middle, and there you'll find Venture for the 7800.
Venture is the latest release from Peter Meyer and Video61, and I believe it to be their best yet. I went back and played the 2600 version as I waited for my game to come in the mail, and I took notes of what I would like to see improvement on. Of course their was graphics and sound, but I also felt that the player was too slow and ill equiped to meet the games challenge. I also wanted to see more variety in gameplay by using additional rooms or modes. But I could understand if adhering exclusively to the arcades visions was the intent. So how did they do?

Graphically I feel that they did a fantastic job, with a slight caveat.  It may sound silly but the title card and the options menu looks really good!  There's something about it that conveys quality to my eyes. After you make your selections your shown what is essentially the interlude screen that plays before and after each map and lost life. Our hero Winky (yes that's his name) and usually a hallway monster run across the bottom of the screen with the treasure both collected and yet to be presented above. This all looks great. 
And the rooms themselves look great with an improved Winky sprite from the 2600 version, with bow equiped and all. The monsters are varied and easily identifiable. Everything looks great but I want to bring up the map screen. Here the rooms you have yet to enter have clearly marked doorways and are outlined. Rooms you've conquered turn solid, which is nice, and the hallway monsters look good. But Winky is represented with a dot. Simple but effective to me, but I could see some wondering why a smaller smiling face wasn't used here. Again, this is a small nit-pick but I thought I'd mention it. 

The sound rests solely on the back of the TIA chip and they did well with it. I like all the music and tunes that play. I also like the sound effects but a few have the tendency to play in fast repetition and I'm sure some people wont enjoy that as much. It becomes a little annoying after a while when hearing it play over ad over, but in my opinion it's really not that bad. But repeating sound effects aside, I really appreciate the music.  I have to say it feels great to nab a treasure and barely escape a room with that familiar tune playing you out, like you Indiana Jones or something. 
In my opinion, gameplay is where the biggest improvement over the 2600 version needed to be, and they mostly nailed it.  You have 3 difficulty options before you start, and 2 control options of how you shoot. You can either move freely and shoot wherever you happen to be facing, or you can lock the direction your facing by holding down the shoot button and then spin freely when you release the button. Both methods work fine and it should just come down to your preference. I prefer the free move and shoot where you happen to be looking mode myself. 

You can also choose between arcade mode that includes the 3 maps and 12 rooms I expected, the XL XE challenger mode with 4 maps and 16 rooms, or the exclusive 7800 challenger mode with 5 maps and 20 rooms!  I would recommend the 7800 option myself, as there is enough variety that even playing deep into the game and at high level loops it still feels fresh. But the XL XE map is by far my favorite, and the new 7800 map pales in comparison. That's not to say it's bad, but the bar was set very high with the XL XE map.  
Winky's movement is responsive and shooting works great. Sometimes shooting at angles resulted in situations where I felt I should've got a hit or a bullet was blocked that I didn't think should've been, but never to the point where I felt frustrated or wanted to call bullshit. The gameplay is solid and there is a good challenge in each room, with each having their own identity. In later loops of the game, the maps have more enemies and traps added, and the hazards move quicker. It results in a solid and fair challenge...most of the time. 
I do have to say that I did get frustrated and have to call bullshit when I enter a room just to have a monster spawn almost on top of me. That I didn't like. It seemed to happen the most in he Vampire room of the new 7800 map, And I didn't like it.  But that's really my only gameplay complaint. And it didn't happen all the time.  That aside, I feel that you get a lot of game in this package and it plays great!

So the 7800 version of Venture made all the improvements I wanted to see from the 2600 version. Graphics and sound?  Check. Faster and better gameplay?  Check. More maps and rooms to add to the replayability?  Check. I see this as an easy recommendation, and Peter and Video61 should be proud of Venture. It retails for 39.99 and I think it's well worth the asking price. Great job guys!
Graphics 7/10
Sound 6/10
Gameplay 8/10
Fun 7/10
Value 9/10
Overall 8/10 Great!

I want to take an opportunity to add some basic information to my blog about how I grade games. I've been using a 10 point scale, but I feel that explaining the scale helps people understand my thoughts better. Other websites or reviewers might use a similar numeric grade but it means something different to them. So here's the scores and what they mean:
10 Perfection!  If a game or an element of a game gets this, than I found absolutely nothing to complain about. It's top tier for the 7800!
9-8 Great! Usually this grade means that it's done well. I might have nit picks, but when it comes down to it the game (or game element) is done well. 
7-6 Good!  This usually means that a few flaws are present, but it doesn't hinder the game at all. You can find enjoyment here!
5-4 Bad! This is the other side of the good coin. There are a few flaws present but they hinder the game from reaching it's potential. Some people my be able to look past these flaws, but most wont. 
3-2 Awful!  This mean that there is something really wrong here. Hardly anybody will find enjoyment with this and it should be avoided except by collectors who need everything. 
1 Literally Broken!  I reserve this score for something that literally doesn't work. The NTSC version of Impossible Mission being unbeatable due to a glitch is an example of something broken. 
So those are the grades but what are they applied to?  Well I look at five main aspects of a game and then give an overall score. In general I find the average, but every category doesn't have the same weight. Let's explain more as we break down each category:
Graphics: This is what you look at. Some games look good and some don't. But this category doesn't carry a lot of weight for me in overall score. Looks isn't everything after all.
Sound: Obviously what you hear. The music and sound effects are here. The 7800 is known for having terrible sound, and this can easily be fixed by muting the TV (usually).  So this carries the same weight as graphics. 
Gameplay: This is how the game plays. It factors in how the controls feel, how responsive they are, how the levels are designed, and how equipped you are for the challenge. This is petty important to me.
Value: To me, this means whether or not your getting your money's worth. If a game holds my attention for a long time and it has a lot to do, then that's good value to me. If it makes me want to replay it a lot, well that counts too. This is just as important as gameplay.
Fun: Fun trump's everything to me. This carries the most weight. In my opinion, a game can look and sound great, play great and have a lot to do. But if it's not fun then what is the point?  
Hopefully this helps explain why my scores are the way they are. I thought it would be important to have a grade key available, so I'll point to this entry in the future.  So I might give a game low scores for graphics and sound, middling scores for gameplay and / or value, but a high score in fun and give it a good overall. This is usually due to the weight of each grade, but they are split out so you can see what's important to you and adjust accordingly. Well that's it for now!
Thanks everybody!

Matt Reichert is the expert on Atari prototypes, and he maintains atariprotos.com, a website dedicated to documenting these unfinished and unreleased games. His thorough research and detailed game reviews are important to the Atari community, and impressive. The origins of the original Aquaventure prototype are a bit hazy.  It is thought to have been discovered by a collector at a flea market in central Florida in the mid 1990s.  Eventually, this collector brought the prototype to a gaming gathering where it was dumped and distributed along with several other Atari 2600 prototypes among collectors.
By the late 1990s Aquaventure had made its way into the hands of many collectors, but it kept a relatively low-profile.  It wouldn’t be until its inclusion on the Atari Flashback 2 console in 2005 that the game would reach a wide audience.
Two other copies of Aquaventure surfaced in the early 2000s, both having the exact same code as the prototype found in Florida.  In 2003 a slightly earlier prototype was found in the collection of a former Atari programmer. This earlier version has not yet been made public and any differences present in this version are currently unknown.
Aquaventure has never been spotted on internal Atari memos or status reports from the early 80s, so it has been a challenge to determine who was responsible for programming the game.  For many years it was assumed that programmer Gary Shannon wrote Aquaventure during his short tenure at Atari.  I first credited Gary, along with developer Tod Frye, with the development in my article about Aquaventure on atariprotos.com in 2008.
I was able to interview Gary more recently, and he made it clear that he was not the original programmer:
“I had just come to Atari from Sega (coin op "Gremlin-branded" games) and was very new to the 2600, so I was definitely not the lead programmer and did mostly grunt work behind the scenes.  After that I worked for a few weeks on another failed 2600 game, Miss Piggy's Wedding, which never got off the launching pad at all.”
Tod Frye also shared some of his thoughts with famed programmer Howard Scott Warshaw when asked about his involvement with Aquaventure:
“I actually spoke with Tod about it this morning. He looked at the screens and had no recollection of having worked on it.”
When asked about the possibility that he may have only been involved with writing the kernel for the game (the core of the game that controls the display and game functions), Tod mentioned that this was possible.  From a conversation he had with Atari historian Marty Goldberg:
“It looks a lot like a kernel tech of mine… I made my kernel tech freely available.  Probably the most widely reused kernel tech ever.”
This new information means that while Tod Frye may have programmed the kernel for the Aquaventure, and Gary Shannon did minor updates to an already existing code base, the identity of the original programmer who was responsible for the majority of the code remains unknown.  
The search continues, we will have an update soon. In the meantime, if you know anything contact Atari through one of our social channels.
View the full article on the official Atari® XP website

Matt Reichert is the expert on Atari prototypes, and he maintains atariprotos.com, a website dedicated to documenting these unfinished and unreleased games. His thorough research and detailed game reviews are important to the Atari community, and impressive. Gamers today are accustomed to long elaborate credit sequences, but what they may not know is that sharing the names of the individuals who created games was not the norm.  Until the mid 1980s, most games were only credited to the company that published them. In a fast growing market, studios wanted to make it more difficult for competitors to poach talented programmers by keeping their identities hidden. This practice is why we don’t know exactly who conceived and programmed Aquaventure, along with many other titles from the early 80s.
Understandably, this practice was not appreciated by programmers and it caused a fair amount of friction within studios at the time, including at Atari.  This conflict over the issue only increased as video games became more popular, and individual programmers began to achieve a level of prestige among their peers. 
As the industry grew, and new studios formed, this practice began to change. Activision, formed by a group of ex-Atari employees, was one of the first and most prominent studios to begin crediting individuals, and their names appeared in-game on title screens and in the user manual. The creators even provided tips and tricks for playing their games in the manuals. 
It wouldn’t be until 1983 that Atari changed course and started crediting programmers on game boxes and manuals. By most accounts, the turning point was when programmer Steve Woita threatened to walk unless he was given credit on his new game, Taz.  
There was one wonderful upside to the struggle over recognition -- the invention of the easter egg. An easter egg is a hidden message or feature in a game that has to be discovered by players. While extravagant easter eggs are common now, they were rare in the early years of video games. Easter eggs were usually simple because memory and cartridge space for games was very limited. The most common form of easter egg revealed the programmers name or initials when a certain joystick or button combination was input.  These button combinations were usually quite complex so they could not be uncovered by accident. This practice was not encouraged by the studios and publishers which led some programmers to bury their name or initials in the game code.  Ironically, as easter eggs became popular, Atari started embracing them and encouraged programmers to add them to their code.
There is some question about what game should get credit for having the first easter egg. One candidate is an Atari arcade game.  In 1977, programmer Ron Milner hid the words “Hi Ron!” in the Atari arcade game Starship 1.  The method for uncovering this easter egg was complex, and required timing that was difficult to pull off, so it remained hidden for over 40 years. 
The first easter egg on a home console was supposed to be on the short-lived Fairchild Channel F.  In the game Spitfire (released in August, 1977) the player could trigger the words “Done By Michael K Glass” to display on the screen by inputting a series of forty eight numbers using the four game option buttons. Unfortunately for Glass, changes to the Channel F cartridges made his easter egg impossible to trigger in the consumer release of the game. It was only accessible in some in-store demo units, so it was not until much later that players could appreciate his easter egg using emulation.
Recent evidence suggests that Spitfire may have been available on the Channel F starting on April 15th, 1977.  If accurate, it would predate the Starship 1 easter egg  by almost four months.  The debate may never be resolved, and many people want to disqualify Spitfire because home users could not actually trigger the easter egg. 
The first Atari 2600 game to become widely associated with an easter egg was the 1980 release Adventure.
Even though the industry started credited programmers in the mid 80s, the tradition of adding hidden names to games continued into the 90’s.  Over time, easter eggs have evolved into a wide variety of inside jokes, new game options, extra levels, and even references to other games. 
View the full article on the official Atari® XP website

Q:  What is the most popular tourist attraction in the entire state of Oregon?
A:  Amongst many natural wonders in the state, Multnomah Falls is the winner
My wife and I left our home early this morning to beat the crowds and visit the falls.  It's about 50 miles east of Portland...about an hour away down the scenic Columbia River Gorge.  The Gorge was created in one of the last ice ages 10,000 years ago by the tremendous water flows of the Missoula floods.  The falls are 620 feet tall with a very difficult trail that goes all the way to the top (we ended up going about half-way up).
What's different for us locals who have been here 100 times is that a lot of the forest is gone or thinned out -- a result of the wildfires the last few years. 
The view from the parking lot:


The historic lodge:

Majestic falls:


From the bridge, you get a spectacular view of the upper bowl, and also quite wet from the spray.


And the view from above isn't too bad:

We had a very nice time and drove on to the beautiful town of Hood River after for lunch and sight seeing.