Maybe one of the first examples of a risk-vs-reward mechanic in a video game. Fuel canisters serve two purposes. You can either fly over them to gain more fuel which you'll need to continue playing. Or you can blow them up for extra points, though this prevents you from getting fuel. Do you risk destroying the fuel to gather up more points and hop you can fill up when the next rounds come along? Or do you play it safe and try to keep your fuel as high as possible at all times? I'm amazed because this is the most I've thought about anything when playing these old ass Atari games
playing it when i was abt 3/4 yo on the console at my grandparents' house 😭🙏
it still gives such a vibe
it still gives such a vibe
A solid vertical shooter where you can adjust your speed as your work your way up the river, destroying other vehicles and obstacles in your way. You also need to be careful with the fuel depots as you can destroy those as well which gives the game a second layer of complexity. A lack of variety in the obstacles and no other dangers to speak of keep it from being more engaging.
This is one of my earliest childhood memories, and it's a game that ticks "all the right notes" on this console. Since every Atari game plays out like a loop, they could easily become tiresome, but that's not the case here. It's still enjoyable to play every now and then.
This review contains spoilers
Jogava muito esse jogo quando era criança em uma espécie de dvd emulador pro PS2, mas nunca tive a menor ideia do que fazer. Não é fácil e definitivamente não vai chegar num "final" de primeira, mas de fato o melhor jogo do Atari 2600
So it goes, the repeating blunders of pi(lots). I can't help but laugh every time I hit the green & go boom, knowing it's as much a technical choice as absurd design. Believability aside, it's nice to face consequences for mismanaging your velocity & inertia. Just dodging the targets and naught else would get dull, an adjective I simply can't slap on River Raid.
Carol Shaw knew a good role model when she saw one. Konami's Scramble isn't quite as well-recognized today for the precedents it set, both for arcade shooters & genres beyond. Yet she was quick to adapt that game's scrolling, segmented yet connected world into something the VCS could handle. Making any equivalent of a tiered power-up system was out of the question, but River Raid compensates with its little touches. The skill progression in this title really sneaks up on you, much to my delight.
Acceleration, deceleration, & yanking that yoke—combine that with fuel management, plus the scoring rubric, and it's a lot more to absorb than normal for a VCS shooter. I made it to 50k points before feeling sated, having cleared maybe a couple tens of stages (neatly separated by the bridges you demolish), and I could go for seconds. Maybe some extra time & finesse could have added more of a soundscape here, albeit limited by the POKEY like usual. But there's a completeness, the beginnings of verisimilitude in this genre which you only saw inklings of before on consoles. Scramble's paradigm had come to the Atari.
Shaw's coding smarts are all over this, too. From pseudo-random endless shooting, to the play area using mirrored sections to minimize flickering, River Raid pushes its technical tier even beyond the smooth vertical scrolling. Going from 3D Tic-Tac-Toe to this must have felt triumphant. Her later works for Activision across Intellivision & succeeding Atari consoles carry on the pedigree made clear here. Worry not over fears of River Raid's reputation being outdated or unearned, reader. It's a worthy highlight of the 2600 library which I could fire up anytime in any mood.
Carol Shaw knew a good role model when she saw one. Konami's Scramble isn't quite as well-recognized today for the precedents it set, both for arcade shooters & genres beyond. Yet she was quick to adapt that game's scrolling, segmented yet connected world into something the VCS could handle. Making any equivalent of a tiered power-up system was out of the question, but River Raid compensates with its little touches. The skill progression in this title really sneaks up on you, much to my delight.
Acceleration, deceleration, & yanking that yoke—combine that with fuel management, plus the scoring rubric, and it's a lot more to absorb than normal for a VCS shooter. I made it to 50k points before feeling sated, having cleared maybe a couple tens of stages (neatly separated by the bridges you demolish), and I could go for seconds. Maybe some extra time & finesse could have added more of a soundscape here, albeit limited by the POKEY like usual. But there's a completeness, the beginnings of verisimilitude in this genre which you only saw inklings of before on consoles. Scramble's paradigm had come to the Atari.
Shaw's coding smarts are all over this, too. From pseudo-random endless shooting, to the play area using mirrored sections to minimize flickering, River Raid pushes its technical tier even beyond the smooth vertical scrolling. Going from 3D Tic-Tac-Toe to this must have felt triumphant. Her later works for Activision across Intellivision & succeeding Atari consoles carry on the pedigree made clear here. Worry not over fears of River Raid's reputation being outdated or unearned, reader. It's a worthy highlight of the 2600 library which I could fire up anytime in any mood.
Easily the best game ever made for the 2600!
For a game from 1982, River Raid had a mechanical complexity and balance that I wasn't ready for--it blew me away when I first played it as part of Krome Studio's Game Room. It's likely the sole reason I actually have nostalgia for that failed 2010 experiment, and is a big part of why I have a very open curiosity for all of game history, not just the specific systems I grew up with, because I never know what I'm going to discover.
It looks really simple, and in the grand scheme of things obviously it is. You fly upwards shooting enemy craft and bridges, you can adjust your speed to effectively three different possibilities, and you fly over refueling stations so you don't run out of fuel. But it's the mix of these mechanics, and how they feel together, that elevates River Raid beyond a lot of action games in that era.
Some of the interactions may very well be incidental--like being able to shoot a refueling station for points while hovering over it--but it strikes a balance where choices are constantly being made for something that, on the surface, looks pretty chill. The majority of enemies are motionless when they initially appear on screen, and randomly start moving as you approach them. Do you hold back on your speed in the hopes that they'll trigger and you can shoot them safely so they don't run into you? Do you try to speed up to get past them before they're activated?
So many classic action games--even wonderful ones--rely on twitch skills for their thrills, but for such a stupidly old game I was immediately fascinated by the choices I was making on the fly, all the time. It's not a "mental" game really, but it still tickles that part of my brain more than other action titles I really like from the era like Time Pilot. For how slow a run in the game may look, I still come away from it feeling exhausted. And the interactions carry a good deal of weight and feel satisfying to pull off, the small things like shooting a bullet and then moving to redirect it into an enemy vessel in one of the modes [which, again, may be some programming coincidence at the time, to keep the bullet lined up with your craft, but it feels good regardless].
It's both a blessing and a curse because for every River Raid I find by digging through classic computer and console libraries I'm going to come across approximately a thousand "quaint" distractions [at best] that I'll forget five seconds after I stop playing. But I could find another River Raid, so it's still worth it.
It looks really simple, and in the grand scheme of things obviously it is. You fly upwards shooting enemy craft and bridges, you can adjust your speed to effectively three different possibilities, and you fly over refueling stations so you don't run out of fuel. But it's the mix of these mechanics, and how they feel together, that elevates River Raid beyond a lot of action games in that era.
Some of the interactions may very well be incidental--like being able to shoot a refueling station for points while hovering over it--but it strikes a balance where choices are constantly being made for something that, on the surface, looks pretty chill. The majority of enemies are motionless when they initially appear on screen, and randomly start moving as you approach them. Do you hold back on your speed in the hopes that they'll trigger and you can shoot them safely so they don't run into you? Do you try to speed up to get past them before they're activated?
So many classic action games--even wonderful ones--rely on twitch skills for their thrills, but for such a stupidly old game I was immediately fascinated by the choices I was making on the fly, all the time. It's not a "mental" game really, but it still tickles that part of my brain more than other action titles I really like from the era like Time Pilot. For how slow a run in the game may look, I still come away from it feeling exhausted. And the interactions carry a good deal of weight and feel satisfying to pull off, the small things like shooting a bullet and then moving to redirect it into an enemy vessel in one of the modes [which, again, may be some programming coincidence at the time, to keep the bullet lined up with your craft, but it feels good regardless].
It's both a blessing and a curse because for every River Raid I find by digging through classic computer and console libraries I'm going to come across approximately a thousand "quaint" distractions [at best] that I'll forget five seconds after I stop playing. But I could find another River Raid, so it's still worth it.
A base para se jogar os demais games desse segmento de aviões!!! O melhor é que ele tem um final!!! Nunca cheguei, alias kkk
Quando não era Pitfall, era Frostbite ou River Raid.
juego creado por una mujer y de los mejores juego de atari 2600 juego platinado en retroachievements.
River Raid is an early vertical shooter, and it's unsurprisingly rudimentary. You fly a plane down a river and attack enemies. Like Konami's even earlier shooting game, Scramble, you have a fuel meter that slowly ticks down that you'll need to refuel. Notably it was programmed by Carol Shaw, who was able to retire at 35 due to the success of this game.
meu favorito do atari
Fun
Eu era muito criança pra entender o que realmente estava acontecendo, mas era realmente muito divertido ficar jogando River Raid. Um dos melhores do Atari!