nosweargamer

Ep 637: Super Breakout

Ep 636: Breakout

Ep 635: Night Driver

Ep 622: Star Trek: S.O.S.

Time to check out another rare & obscure game for the Atari 2600. Ep 640: Sea Monster

Atari 2600 Paddle Games Month shows that knowing is half the battle with Ep 639: G.I. Joe Cobra Strike

53450 Not quite Justin level, but HEY @btbfilms76, enter me to win! Thanks!

He could of, but outside of Parker Brothers, these were pretty obscure companies. Also, I don't recall the manuals or boxes saying "licensed from" or "Copyright" other company, like is typical when that officially happened. You can see Atari credited both Coleco & Nintendo on their Donkey Kong.

One things for sure: The guy had some programming skills. At least enough to hack existing games and produce 2 new 7800 titles. I would love to hear whoever headed up Froggo in an interview. I saw Froggo games in a bunch of stores in the late 80's, so my guess is he made at least a little bit of money. We also know he paid to advertise in Atarian magazine, which I think was owned by Atari, and had offices by Atari (same city). And by the looks of it, there where 4 more 7800 games in the works.

Thanks Rick. I read through all three and discovered...nothing new. 😔 (except that some people don't realize that the 7800 was profitable enough for Activision & Absolute to make multiple games for) Personally I sticking with the lone wolf, one-man show theory for the time being. The one article mentioned Atari recruited Froggo, but how would they recruit a company that didn't exist until they started making 2600 games in the late 80s? The only way it would make sense to me is if Jack Tramiel convinced a programming buddy to go into business to make games for the 7800. However, Jack seemed content to simply hire other programmers to makes games for Atari to profit on under their own label.

Nice find, but it's so hard to find out what is really true about Froggo. Searching on AA, I found one user who said Sam Tramiel ran it! Then there's another guy who said he wrote and article that included this tidbit: "Sam Tramiel, son of Atari owner Jack Tramiel, once intentionally left the Chairman of Froggo Games to sit in the lobby of Atari headquarters for almost six hours on one occasion in 1988. Having scheduled an appointment to meet with Tramiel, the Froggo chief executive showed up in a timely manor to discuss the development of new games for the Atari 7800 and checked in with the receptionist at the front desk. Tramiel allegedly told his secretary "Tell him I'm busy. He's going to be waiting a long time." The gentleman was even denied a glass of water after waiting several hours to meet with Tramiel. By the time he made it in to meet with Sam, it was late in the day and sources report that he only spent fifteen minutes listening to Tramiel list numerous reasons why the 7800 was not a viable system to produce for, and how it was morally wrong to make video games, before eventually being dismissed by Tramiel, and heading on home for the evening." So far I have heard that Froggo was recruited by Atari, Froggo was ignored by Atari, and Sam Tramiel owned Froggo. I wish I could nail down something concrete.

My favorite is this one I got from a trade from RickR. I really dig this type of Toy's R Us clearance stickers. This one is hanging on my wall!

Yeah, it's sometimes forgotten, but the majority of pre-NES games were programmed by one person, so it wouldn't surprise me if there were some one man NES Games.

Awesome to hear your screename origin story! And now here's a picture of Svengoolie disguised as a normal person!

I haven't reviewed yet, but Burgertime Deluxe is really good for BT fans.

It's unclear if Frogglo licensed the 2600 games, or simply sold them with some minor alterations and figured no one would care. I would love to know more about Froggo, but I simply cant find any supported info on them. It's speculated that Froggo was mostly a one man show with programming know-how trying to make a buck off of the revitilized game market in the late 80s. It actually doesn't sound much different than homebrew sites today that sell hacks and original games.

Wow. A lot of differing opinions on this one. Personally I don't care for 2600 junior at all, but enjoyed DK. However my opinion is flipped for the Intellivision ports. And the people who claim coleco made bad ports on purpose are very ignorant how big businesses work. No business would every want their name to be associated with a bad product, not too mention all the money they would lose developing and promoting it. It was common in those days for competing companies to publish games on each other's systems to make more money. Atari even made a great port of Pac-Man for the Intellivision, one that surpassed the 2600 by a wide margin.

Metroid Fusion on the GBA was pretty solid.

Yes! How could I forget Warlords! I'll also add Joust Tennis Wizard of Wor

Off the top of my head: Basketball Boxing Combat Home Run Ice Hockey Pete Rose Baseball Realsports Volleyball

Ah, nice! I think if that was how the original release was, it wouldn't be such a big deal today. After all, even though DK looks terrible in his game, and gets mocked for it, there isn't nearly the same amount of heat for that game. However, if they changed the colors of the background and girders too much, like they did in Pac-Man, maybe there'd be more complaining about what a terrible port it was.

I really like the look of the Sears Intellivision. Really captures a 70s look. Interestingly, the Intellivision games that Sear published kept the original name, although they had some fantastic artwork variations.

I was pretty young when I first played it, so it could've been that I was really open minded about it. Or maybe sub-consciously I didn't expect 2600 games to look close to their arcade counterparts. Just look at Space Invaders and Donkey Kong. Both looked quite different from the arcade, but I enjoyed them on the 2600. I think the color scheme really hindered Pac-Man. It was too jarring of a difference. If they made the maze lines blue and background black, it may have been better received. Just a thought.

I didn't play it on day one, but I was excited when I finally did. I actually really enjoyed it and thought the sounds were cool. When I got my 7800, I was eager to get a copy. I didn't hear about it's bad reputation until after 2000! So I blame Y2K. I also blame Y2K for E.T. bad rep....

Yeah it's hard to believe now, but the Sears name was a million times bigger than Atari at the start. Since Sears often renamed games and used different artwork, I do feel bad for any kid who got the same game twice on accident! FYI - There were three game that were only published under the Sear Tele-Games label for the 2600: Steeplechase, Stellar Track, and Submarine Commander. I just noticed that they all begin with S, just like Sears...coincidence?