Atari 5200 Guy

I remember being four years old and being at the bowling alley with my Mother and discovering Space Invaders for the first time. Years later when the 2600 made its way to our local Wal-Mart, and even had a demo unit set up, I discovered that I could play that game at home. I asked for that Atari machine and that game for a few Christmases and birthdays but never did get it. I did end up with an Atari by 1982 but it wasn't the 2600.
 
Space Invaders was the sole reason why I wanted a 2600, no other game mattered to me at that time. I'm sure I would have enjoyed any other game but Space Invaders was "my" game. I would not see this Space Invaders until after Nintendo dominated the video game market and those "old" Atari consoles with piles of games would show up at yard sales for an average of $10.
 
Space Invaders is the first home port of an arcade game that was licensed. It was also the first arcade port ever made that I am aware of for any home console. While it wasn't entirely just like the arcade it captured everything that made the arcade Space Invaders very likable. It was also a little more forgiving, allowing the player to build and improve their skills with the game. I know of a few 2600 owners during my childhood years talk about wear out a controller or two playing this game alone.
 
Atari's Space Invaders also does something the arcade doesn't...steps it up a few notches by giving creative ways to change the game. Seriously, try some of the other game variations if you never have like enemy fire that not only comes raining down but also in the direction the player's ship is. Do you really want a challenge? Try the variation where the invaders are completely invisible. Be sure to keep your best controller away for a while because the game play can get intense!
 
Space Invaders on the 2600 is a good game. It's such a common title by today's collectors and Atarians that you will most likely see a copy of Space Invaders in their library of games. It is also one of the top 100 game picks by Atari gamers according to Atari2600(dot)com. And for good reason if that is true. This game would easily make a top 10 list in my book. If you are new to the 2600 pick this game up along with it or make sure it is in the collection of games if your 2600 find comes with games. You don't want to miss this game!

Out of all the video games Atari produced it seems that Pac-Man for the 2600 has been blamed, almost entirely, for the start of the video game crash that happened during the early 1980's. It is also marked as one of the worst games made in video gaming history. By now most Atari 2600 owners, new and vets, know what this game is like so there really is no need to dig into how the game play actually is. But hopefully this little blog post will put the game in a different perspective to where the game is not entirely to blame. Yes, for a short while this game will get a bit of the spotlight. At least I'm going to try.
 
As most Atari.IO members here might remember from one of my posts, I received three brand new, unopened, 2600 games for Christmas in 2015. One of those games was an original Asteroids. I opened it up because it felt really heavy and I knew the cartridge and instructions were not that heavy to begin with. Inside was an Atari catalog which was a nice surprise as I love that classic reading material. It gives an idea of what it was like to own the 2600 and what Atari was up to in supporting it. I flip through it and after a couple of pages I landed on Pac-Man. A full two pages! I begin to read it. Almost immediately you can tell that Atari knew this game was not what it should be, let alone who ever wrote the article obviously didn't know how the game was played and what all went on.
 
Allow me to share the article with you. The catalog was released in 1981 and Pac-Man is stated to be released March 1982. Without further ado..
 
"Adopted from one of the most popular video arcade games ever created, Atari's Pac-Man*, which differs slightly from the original, is sure to be a hit in your home."
 
OK. Do you get the feeling here that Atari knew they didn't get this one right from the start? I will admit that they printed a similar thing about Defender in that same catalog and my new copy of Asteroids came with an insert that pretty much said the same thing...but those games were received well by 2600 owners that I am aware of. Carrying on...
 
"In this engaging game, you guide the PAC-MAN around a maze to gobble up dots for points, while dodging ghosts. In the four corners of the maze are special tablets. When PAC-MAN eats one, he changes color and can then eat the ghosts. But he has to hurry and catch the ghosts before he changes color again, or they'll eat him."
 
Did you notice a couple of things here? Atari, or someone at Atari, didn't know Pac-Man very well. The writer of this article first treats PAC-MAN like a thing with "the PAC-MAN...". I will admit that the arcade PAC-MAN had just came out in the arcades but was already well known as just PAC-MAN. That's it. The writer also must not have played the game before because PAC-MAN is not the one that changes color from eating a power pellet, or as they called them, special tablets. The ghosts are. After reading that article there should have been warning signs that Atari didn't not know what they were doing with this game. Now let's plug the cart in and see what we get.
 
Immediately noticeable is the blue maze on a black background from the arcades is missing. What we have on the 2600 is an orange maze on a blue background. PAC-MAN in the game has an eye, and the ghosts, while there is four of them, flicker badly and appear to be similar in color. And missing are the fruits that our lovable character normally gets in the arcade, in its place is a square thing Atari called a "Vitamin".
 
So...is Atari 2600's Pac-Man really to blame for the starts of the crash? I don't think it is so much the game is to blame I believe it was related more to the hype of Pac-Man being released for the 2600 only to be let down by expectations the public had. I mean up until that point the 2600 did do a decent job at some of the popular arcade games. Asteroids wasn't spot on but that was to be expected. The difference in monitor types meant something else had to be done. Space Invaders, I thought, was really well and is one of my favorite 2600 titles. Defender might not have been exact but what was pulled off is good. Missile Command was good, too. The 2600, and its developers, tried.
 
Pac-Man on the 2600, while it doesn't look or sound anything like the arcade, is fun in its own way. Maybe this game should have been given a different name. As well Atari should have had more than one developer on porting Pac-Man to the 2600 and picking the better port for a release. In some respects, the 2600's Pac-Man is OK in my book. I would blame Atari for this one, and the crash, for producing more copies of this game than they should have from the beginning. Only a small batch should have been made to see how well it did. After that they would have known what to do.
 
For what it's worth, Pac-Man on the 2600 is not completely bad and it has survived many decades along with other 2600 titles. As well it is also hard to find a small collection of 2600 games that do not have Pac-Man as one of the games. Play it once in a while and see if you can find things to like about it, while playing it, and see if you, too, can find some good out of it. I did.

Over the past several months I have been discovering Atari 2600 games for the first time...just like those who owned one way back when the machine was the only console on the market. So far I've discovered Solaris and few others I had never seen or heard of before. The 2600 has managed to surprise me again with a rare title known as Radar Lock.
 
Radar Lock appears similar to Sega's After Burner but after a few minutes in the game you get so sucked into the on-screen action that you forget what you are playing on. Wave after wave of enemy aircraft appear on your screen, shooting at you in a fly-by style formation. You constantly find yourself in a banking move just to target them so you can strike them down with your twin gunner or missiles. All the while you are using gun and missile ammo that is limited and have to watch your fuel gauge. Run out of either one and it's curtains for you. If you manage to succeed in finishing off all enemies in a single wave you will get the chance to dock with a fuel plane. Even that can be tricky because now the fire button turns into a boost button. Just like how Star Raiders' Space Stations have to be just right for the player to dock with them the player has to be just right for the fueling aircraft to lower its hose to your fighter jet. Line it up and receive a bonus for the fuel and ammunition you have left. After that you will find yourself on a runway waiting for the next wave to start as soon as you press the fire button on your controller. And a first for me...this game actually uses the TV Type switch for a pause button. Simply slide it to the B*W position to pause (recommend 2600 hardware for this) and slide back to Color to continue where you left off. Pretty cool, eh? It also uses a second controller, like Solaris, for selecting between guns and missiles...up and down for guns and left and right for missiles.
 
Now that you know what the game entails to a degree let's step back in time a bit here. 1989 is the copyright date on Radar Lock. That places the 2600 JR on the shelf along with the 7800 and up against giants Nintendo and Sega. At this time the Genesis should have been on the market as well and Nintendo going strong with the NES and newly released Game Boy (in North America anyway). So here we have the 2600, declared a primitive console by some at the time, doing something it was not designed to do...again! And I thought Solaris was mind-blowing.
 
Radar Lock pushes the 2600 hardware into new territory that is just as mind-blowing as Solaris. The graphics are well done and flicker free, the sound effects somehow don't seem limited to the 2-channel limitations of the TIA processor, nor do the controls, after getting use to the game, feel like a 2600 game. In some ways it almost feels like part of Solaris was used as the basis to Radar Lock...and in a good way. I really never knew that graphics on the 2600 could make tiny dots (check out the radar in the lower right-side of the HUD display and GUNS ammo). This game is impressive.
 

 
I really believe that if gamers in 1989, who owned an NES or Sega system, were more aware of this game they might have purchased it along with a Atari 2600 Junior or Atari 7800 game system. This is one game I never heard of until recently but if I would have known about it sooner, and when I picked up my 2600 Junior with my first paycheck decades ago, I would have purchased it. If you find this game in the wild or online, and you've never had it before, I recommend picking up. If you do pick this up I recommend using a controller where the fire button is on top of the joystick handle to really get immersed into the game. A Kraft Starmaster controller easily comes to mind for that. Any 2600 owner who does not have this game needs to locate it and play it. It's really good.

So I just got this proof image back from a special someone someone working on a special something something! =)
 

 
Waiting for delivery!