Reviews from

in the past


Combat 1977 | Atari
emulador Pc

1-interacción: 6.4
2-mundo/apartado artístico: 7
3-concepto: 7
4-puesta en escena: 6.4
5-narración: -
6-sonido/apartado sonoro: 6.2
7-jugabilidad: 5
8-historia: -
9-duración/ritmo: 6.7
10-impacto: 6.7

7
7
6.7
6.7
6.4
6.4

40.2/60pts

67 promedio

Played (with a friend) as part of Atari 50.

Honestly? Not bad, for a 2600 game. Obviously your enjoyment of this is entirely predicated on finding someone who will play an Atari 2600 launch title with you (thanks, @saturday), but the tank game is perfectly competent. Bare-bones, yes, but it plays better than the 2022 Quadratank also in this collection (which probably says more about Quadratank than anything, but still). Plane games aren't as good, but they're still kinda novel for a couple minutes I guess. Really nothing here if you're trying to play it solo, though.

Very simple with clunky controls, but it works.


(Atari 50)
tfw you're trying to try out every game but there's no singleplayer mode

Hold up, this is actually pretty good for an Atari game. It's a game where you battle your friends with tanks and planes, and there are plenty of different modes you can try to mix things up. Yes, it may be simple, and it has that Atari weirdness you would expect, but I think this would be a fun game to play with friends. You know, if I had any.

Game #123

One of the earliest multiplayer shooters that while simplistic, is still a fun way to pass the time with a friend.

Has potential to be a fun game, but why the hell is there no singleplayer mode?!

Considering this was packed in with every Atari 2600 back then felt like a decent offering something every console should always do. The 27 video games claim is a bit of a misnomer as it's really a few different variations of the modes with different vehicles that act different but shoot the same. Playing this with your friends and family in the late 70s must have been an wild experience. It is in fact "Combat".

Battle Royale Atari

combat on Atari. with the tanks. with the planes too. 27 video games of combat for Atari. There’s tanks and you shoot the tank. there’s planes and you shoot the planes. It’s combat. For Atari. Tank spins, plane spins. it’s combat.

The bad ass thing about having siblings is that this game becomes actually playable.

However, the best version of Combat is 100% the plane dogfights. Those two puffy clouds hanging out in the middle of the screen while you cruise around in a shapeshifting biplane or jet trying to blow your little brother's plane from existence the most times... family bliss, am I right?

For a game that came with the console and is as old as I am, it is pretty decent in a number of ways. The tank and plane sounds are pretty solid, the explosions are fine, and the shooting noise is... the same for every vehicle, but at least isn't a laser. The rotating tanks and planes are a little wonky, but the terrain is good and the colors are... classic Atari.

Cheap and fun, it's worth a SHOT. hahahahahahahahaha.

Review from thedonproject.com

I have 27 physical copies of this

Fucked up that there was no violence throughout human history until this game was released.

And here we are with what I consider to be the best of the initial Atari 2600 titles. This was the one that actually came with most 2600 consoles from the launch until The Shittiest But Also Best Selling Pac-Man took its place so for people who got in pre-Pac Man and Space Invaders boom this was probably the first Atari game they even touched. And Atari smartly made sure it made a good impression before people realized most the rest of the dross they could buy were math equations or hangman.

This also might be why Combat is going to be one of the rare times that the contemporary opinions were actually more muted than the modern consensus. At the time Combat didn’t get an outsized reaction, but as the years turned into decades this is one of the early games that people - myself included - still think has obvious value and stands out as a multiplayer title, and I fully agree.

Its actually a combo of a few popular Atari games, namely Tank and Jet Fighter, and unlike some of the other ports from these couple years it retains the vast majority of what made the arcade versions good. Because it borrows from a few different titles the different variations all actually feel unique instead of just an attempt for the marketing department to put a big number on the front of the box. I also have to give it credit for not even bothering with a half-assed single player mode and a terrible CPU opponent. This is multiplayer only bay bay, and for my totally-didn’t-keep-up-with-productivity-since-the-70s money its pretty close to being the gold standard of multiplayer shooters at least until after T H E C O L L A P S E happened and Japan took over the gaming industry for good.

Yes, this is just a compilation of 1v1 games to play with another person, two of which is pretty much identical in layout.

But this being a launch title for the Atari 2600, I was more fascinated by how the cartridge itself works directly with the hardware. Game selection wasn't made through a menu screen, but programmed onto the cartridge and controlled by analog switches on the front of the console. It's this "reverse arcade board" design for integrating video gaming into households that actually blows me away, for a time in the late 70s evolving from simple toys to a more interactive medium. This goes for other 2600 titles of course, but this being one of the earliest. It's pretty ingenious.

Also, I have no idea why they have inverted flight stick controls for the biplanes, but standard controls for the jets.

how do you rate Combat? I sincerely have no clue how the fuck you'd even rate this game, so I'm gonna play it safe and go straight down the middle

An alright game. For the time, incredibly well coded in 2K of code. Nowadays, best in parties, especially as a drinking game.

Retro Yearly List #3 [1977: Combat]

For a game released in 1977, this is pretty well made, I can imagine the good reception by the players since at the time they were having fun with simple games like Pong and Breakout, it truly brings the real experience of the 1x1 using cool stuff like tanks and planes, must have been pretty fun playing it with your friends.

This game is stupid but it can be kinda fun because of said stupidity

there's two big points i want to make off the bat about combat, which i feel is generally snubbed in discussions of historically important atari games -

1. combat was born into a world where pong was the dominant form of Electronic Television Game. but take your pong ball, snatched from the gentlemans sport of choice, and try blasting it through the barrel of a tank or a biplane's gunner and see if that doesn't shake things up. the combat here is obviously meant to be horrific warfare but the early limitations of programming for the 2600 (mainly in terms of visual & auditory presentation) leave your tanks feeling more like little creatures, squealing and groaning and spinning violently when hit. at the time this all must have been very unnerving

2. video game consoles used to for family entertainment and not for you lonely saps. i can't deny that the game being two-player only makes it a bit difficult to work with in 2023 but why judge it by those standards when its perfectly novel and sick within its own context. one can only imagine how thrilling it must have been to unwrap your brand new sleek wood-grain gaming rig in 1977 with the most gnarly looking launch title you'd ever seen up to that point. no more sticky plastic overlays of state capitols that peel off the tv screen for me mom, im going to WAR

another point worth mentioning is that you're not just getting one game here, you're getting a whopping 27. of course these are just different variations on the tank and biplane game modes but theres a lot of nuance to be found in there. the wall-bounce modes and the invisible tank mode are probably the most popular for good reason, both being very simple but novel twists on the base formula. we dont even have invisible tanks yet in real life

so overall i think combat is an understandably frustrating but still very worthwhile game that i very much appreciate knowing its place in history. the guys who made this were beating their heads against the wall trying to figure out how the fuck to make those dudes on your screen drive around and shoot each other, be grateful. its the 2600 launch title for gods sake...

This game is an OK distraction. Not super fun these days, probably good way to settle arguments tho lol

When you think "multiplayer Atari game" you think COMBAT, and this game is always a treat to play, and come back to, with simple controls... or tank controls.

The game is a fun 1 v 1 where you and a friend fight within your tanks, very simple and fun and iconic.
Love Combat! Played this on Atari 50 Collection

Pretty rudementary, but certainly a decent value for a pack-in game with all the different modes.

This shit has no right going so hard. The tanks are slow and methodical, and the way you canc urve the shots makes the otherwise limiting 8-way movement into a tactical choice, and makes for some really unpredictable kills. If you go far enough into the level select, though, you get to the plane dogfights which are a whole other game on top of it. Bullets still curve, and you still are limited to 8 directions of movement, but the constant motion makes this a much more exhilarating, if perhaps more frustrating, mode. The two clouds in the center of the stage in particular make for some of the most panicked and unpredictable encounters of the era. An obvious highlight for the 2600.


Eu já tinha jogado antes e não dado muita bola. Mas revisitando agora, motivado pela Curiosidade Histórica(tm), consigo ver porque ele é lembrado com tanto carinho pelo pessoal realmente oldschool. Enquanto muitos dos títulos de lançamento do Atari VCS não são melhores do que projetos de alunos de ciência da computação que acabaram de entrar na faculdade e estão aprendendo os primeiros passos numa linguagem de programação além de "Hello World", Combat é, sem rodeios, um jogo, com game design, mecânicas peculiares que podem ser dominadas e um ludismo que vai além do básico, com modos criativos como "suas balas ricocheteiam" ou "você e seu inimigo estão invisíveis até atirarem". Em terra de cego, que tem um olho é rei - e numa janela de lançamento em que certos jogos eram literalmente matemática, Combat é um verdadeiro clássico.

A game made only for two players that contains a couple different games to play 1v1. There's nothing to do if you don't have friends that want to spend time playing Atari 2600 launch titles with you. Hope you do!

Rating: 2 - This game is mediocre; it's okay and fails to spark interest

A decent Atari two players videogame.

I used to play this with one of my younger half-brothers when I was a kid. I loved that you could toggle the types of maps to fight in and the aircraft iterations were fun enough, even if duplicating the aircrafts just resulted in more objects on screen and not more targets (the bullets had to line up to hit all duplicated targets to count).

The real fun was the base mode because shooting your opponent around walls in a limited time period to rack up points was mildly addictive, especially with no visible timer on screen to let you know how long you had left.

A decent game that is a reasonable 6/10, regardless of nostalgia.