For anyone who has ever played any kind of mobile game before, you may or may not be familiar with the “runner” genre of games. These games were pretty simple, where you just simply ran forward endlessly, dodging plenty of obstacles and gaining plenty of items and powerups, while also trying to get the highest score you possibly could. While most of the time, these games are pretty brainless, and they usually have microtransactions up the wazoo, these can be a fun little distraction when done right, hence why they have become one of the most popular mobile game genres. With all that being said though, runner games didn’t start out on mobile phones, as they have been a thing for a very long time, with one of the earliest and more noteworthy examples of a runner video game being with Atomic Runner Chelnov, or just Atomic Runner.

I had known about this game for a little bit now, and I had always wanted to try it out for myself. Not only did it look decent enough to give a shot, but since it was one of the first runner games ever made, I wanted to see how exactly it played and if it held up all the way to this day. So, like I do with all of the games I review on this website, I decided to give it the ol’ college try, and after getting through most of it, I can come to the conclusion that… I cannot fucking stand it. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very unique and interesting game for the time, and one that can be fun in short bursts, but if you actually try to beat the game like I did, you will find the sinister nature of this game that dwells within as a result.

The story is along the lines of your typical comic book superhero plot, which works out well here, given how the game is initially presented to you, and how the story also presents itself (even though it scrolls by so fast you won’t be able to read it), the graphics are good, being good enough for the time that it came out for the arcades, but nothing about the game’s look is really eye-catching compared to other titles, the music is alright, having plenty of decent tracks to accompany you as you run through these stages, but it is nothing that will stick with you afterwards, the control is a little frustrating to get the hang of, especially when it comes to turning yourself from left to right while running, but you can get used to it eventually, and it is good for what it is, and the gameplay is pretty simple, yet innovative for the time, while also being incredibly frustrating too.

The game is a 2D runner game, where you take control of the Atomic Runner, go through seven different auto-scrolling levels, shoot down many of the enemies around you while constantly on the go, making sure to turn around and jumping when you need to, gather plenty of different weapons and powerups to increase your power and range of fire to help against the foes you will face, and take on plenty of bosses that are not part of any running sections, but will still test your running, jumping, shooting, and turning skills. For the most part, it is basically a typical arcade platformer, but of course with the main gimmick of having the player constantly moving at all times. Once again, for the time, this was a pretty neat idea for a game, but that doesn’t make the game any better in my eyes.

This may just be one of the most frustrating arcade games that I have ever played, and this is coming from someone who has played A LOT of hard as fuck arcade games. Sure, a lot of it is stuff that is typical for an arcade game, such as countless enemies being thrown at you, along with level design that can make going through some levels way harder than it needs to, but what adds onto all of this is the fact that you are constantly running. Because of this, you are given little to no time to plan before you are thrown into the fire, which may result in you either getting a lucky run and blazing through the enemies no problem, or, in the most likely of scenarios, you will die over and over and over and over again. It is nothing that is impossible, don’t get me wrong, but with the amount that this game throws at you at once, coupled with the fact that you die when taking only one hit, and you have a game that really shows no mercy on many occasions.

Now, that’s not to say that I completely hated Atomic Runner, because that is not true. I do like a lot of what this game has going for it, with the powerups being fun to experiment with, the feeling of blazing through enemies with a fully upgraded weapon being very satisfying, the movement of the runner being pretty responsive for most of the journey, and of course, the whole concept of the game being one that really is admirable for 1988. But unfortunately, when you take a typical case of arcade syndrome and combine it together with a game that is constantly auto-scrolling, I can’t say that that combination makes for a good time, and it certainly doesn’t make me wanna try to beat it anytime soon.

Overall, despite the fun power-ups you can use and, once again, the concept being inventive for the time, Atomic Runner was just too frustrating for me to really get behind, and it is definitely one of my least favorite games that I have played from Data East’s catalog. I would recommend it for those who are fans of arcade games, as well as those who are familiar with the runner genre, but for everyone else, there are definitely much better runners and arcade platformers that you could try out instead. But hey, if I had to give the game credit for one thing, I can’t think of any other titles that were mistaken for being a parody of the Chernobyl disaster. Slap that on your game box.

Game #432

One of the most unfairly designed action games out there, but the charm of its premise and 'censorship' make it worth the hassle. The original arcade version was very overtly themed around the chernobyl incident, and the process of censoring that out for the genesis remake gave the game a very bizarre tribal aesthetic. The result is some of the best-looking background designs on the Genesis library, alongside a very powerful soundtrack. If you're not down for this game's harrowing control scheme and enemy design, I'd at least recommend watching a playthrough online, just for the style.

I’ve never been an AVGN fan, but there’s one quote from his Ninja Gaiden review that rings in my ear whenever I try something difficult: “Unlimited continues means no Game Over. Game is only over when you make it over!”. It doesn’t just pop into my head when playing difficult games, it can be anything; it’s a recurring reminder that sometimes the only thing standing in my way is a lack of commitment. Mistakes are fine, just take a step back, readjust, then move forward again with a renewed sense of determination. As silly as it sounds, it encapsulates a lot about the basic human condition, of coming up against challenges, and surmounting them even when things feel hopeless.

In Atomic Runner, you can’t take a step back. Literally, you have no way of moving left, it’s a shoot ‘em up platformer where you can only run to the right side of the screen, or stay stationary until the screen scrolls you backwards. So, if you take a step too far towards a hazard, you have no way of correcting that mistake and will die every time. There are also limited continues. I don’t want to imply that this is a slap in the face to the human condition itself…

So I won’t say that. I won’t say that the way Atomic Runner structures its challenges stands against the noblest impulses of mankind, because that would be overly dramatic. In fact, a lot of its difficulty is essentially the same as Ninja Gaiden, where the mechanical complexity is minimal, but the requirement to choreograph your path through a stage is high. You need to know where every enemy is going to spawn, where every uniquely-scripted enemy path leads, whether to go under or over certain obstacles, where bosses are going to drop in, and be able to string all that knowledge together flawlessly. Weirdly enough, this is where the game’s generous checkpoint system actually makes things more difficult. Deaths never revert much progress, which seems like a blessing, but it leads to a lot of lucky breaks and situations where the stage is only cleared thanks to chance. After running out of continues and reaching that challenge again, you might as well have never seen it before, since the circumstances were so different and you never had a chance to learn. It’s almost specifically engineered to ensure you don’t grow from each challenge, not letting you stop to analyze the situation and not letting you practice it repeatedly for future runs. All of this might even be fine if the enemies weren’t so tightly scripted, behaving in ways specific to their location within the stage rather than according to their type. Most of the running robot enemies will sprint straight at you, but some are set to jump from the ground to a platform then back down, some ignore platforms altogether… it’s impossible to know until you just see and memorize each specific enemy, unlike the predictability of Ninja Gaiden’s cast. Combining that with the inability to freely move your character, or even turn around without pressing another button first, makes for a painfully stilted challenge that doesn’t even feel that satisfying to finish.

Of course, I did finish this game, even after reading a bunch of people from all over the internet saying they were unable to do so. To any of you reading this, I would like to assure you that really, this game isn’t worth getting too emotionally invested in. If you hit a wall and quit, it’s not because of you, it’s because the challenge is implemented so poorly, in spite of how cool it seems at first. Again, some people might say that it’s even so poor that it feels like it’s designed to smother humanity’s finest instincts to learn and grow in the face of adversity...

...but of course, I would never say that.

Addendum: This was a game added to my suggestions list by user JaxMagnetic, who recommended it on the basis of “so more people can feel my suffering”. Congratulations, you did it, I suffered just like you wanted. But since the game shows as “shelved” on your page, I still formally absolve you of needing to finish it. It might have the fun music and visual charm of early Genesis titles, but… it’s just not worth suffering for. You’re free now, you can now go play some more Alien Soldier instead.