SkyTheOtherGal
1978
i fw the judge dredd lookin ass dude on the cover drivin his super chasemobile through circuit city.
gameplay is decent for what it is, though it's less of a race and more of a gunfight in a maze, and your "chasemobile" looks more like a wizard hat sniffing its way around the corners.
gameplay is decent for what it is, though it's less of a race and more of a gunfight in a maze, and your "chasemobile" looks more like a wizard hat sniffing its way around the corners.
1979
here's a fact i bet u never heard before. did you know that... tame impala... is just one guy...?
Adventure is a horror game. Those fucking duck dragons have filled me with existential dread since I was 6 years old. Moving thru walls as they please. Flickering in the corner of your eye for a moment before disappearing like some creepypasta bullshit. And then one eats you, and that's it. No GAME OVER text, no flashy effects or sounds. You just sit there in its translucent stomach pushing at the sides to no avail even though you already know. Unrelated, but have you watched Nope? It's a great movie.
Terror aside, Adventure is still very fun to navigate through. Its simple formula of labyrinths and items is so beautifully streamlined and creates so many interesting moment-to-moment scenarios that I'm surprised Atari didn't try to make 50 more of these. There's no need to hook up a second controller to manage your inventory, if you see an item just pick it up, and put it down when you're done with it. And thanks to clear, iconic sprites and well-thought environmental placement, you can intuit the purpose of every item the game throws at you without having to check the manual. It doesn't sound that impressive talking about it now but it surprises me how many Atari games in the years following seem to have evolved backwards from this 1979 prometheus.
Everyone say thank u Warren Robinett. He brought a golden chalice into the castle of video game development (and his name into a secret room), refused to elaborate and left. And he's just one guy.
For some reason on my Flashback 6, when I'm holding the sword the dragons run away from me. I don't remember that ever being a thing, and in all of the gameplay videos I've watched that never happens. Is my game cursed??
Adventure is a horror game. Those fucking duck dragons have filled me with existential dread since I was 6 years old. Moving thru walls as they please. Flickering in the corner of your eye for a moment before disappearing like some creepypasta bullshit. And then one eats you, and that's it. No GAME OVER text, no flashy effects or sounds. You just sit there in its translucent stomach pushing at the sides to no avail even though you already know. Unrelated, but have you watched Nope? It's a great movie.
Terror aside, Adventure is still very fun to navigate through. Its simple formula of labyrinths and items is so beautifully streamlined and creates so many interesting moment-to-moment scenarios that I'm surprised Atari didn't try to make 50 more of these. There's no need to hook up a second controller to manage your inventory, if you see an item just pick it up, and put it down when you're done with it. And thanks to clear, iconic sprites and well-thought environmental placement, you can intuit the purpose of every item the game throws at you without having to check the manual. It doesn't sound that impressive talking about it now but it surprises me how many Atari games in the years following seem to have evolved backwards from this 1979 prometheus.
Everyone say thank u Warren Robinett. He brought a golden chalice into the castle of video game development (and his name into a secret room), refused to elaborate and left. And he's just one guy.
For some reason on my Flashback 6, when I'm holding the sword the dragons run away from me. I don't remember that ever being a thing, and in all of the gameplay videos I've watched that never happens. Is my game cursed??
1977
the 2600 thrives on simple games like this, not overly ambitious sportsball attempts. The core gameplay is extremely straightforward, but fun enough that it survives to this day in games like slither.io, and some gameplay variants spice it up. There's even a little drawing minigame, which has some novelty even in its primitive state.
The decision for singleplayer to be controlled with the right controller jack is an odd one, but I guess this is before the whole left-to-right shorthand became canonized in video game vocabulary.
The decision for singleplayer to be controlled with the right controller jack is an odd one, but I guess this is before the whole left-to-right shorthand became canonized in video game vocabulary.
1982
not a high bar to cross, but it's an improvement over the affront to god that is Home Run.
Unlike in Home Run, there's a baseball diamond, there's innings, there's pitching baseballs, and there's even hitting baseballs. It still kinda sucks but it's at least playable I guess.
It took me way to long to realize I was in 2-player and that's why the batter wasn't hitting anything I threw at him. Then, after that, when the batter still wasn't doing anything, it took me way too long to realize I was supposed to input my pitch pattern before throwing (this is why it helps to have the manual at-hand instead of only googling it when u get stuck). Then came the realization that the CPU hits the ball 100% of the time because that's a totally fun aspect of baseball.
Once they hit the ball, you probably won't even be able to pick it up, but even if you do you sure as hell aren't fast enough to throw the ball to a teammate, let alone run after the batter before he gets to base. And God forbid you throw the ball to the wrong guy when you're trying to throw it to your pitcher, because it's gonna take you a while to get things moving again after that.
I don't have much to say about batting because I could not for the life of me hit the god damn ball
Unlike in Home Run, there's a baseball diamond, there's innings, there's pitching baseballs, and there's even hitting baseballs. It still kinda sucks but it's at least playable I guess.
It took me way to long to realize I was in 2-player and that's why the batter wasn't hitting anything I threw at him. Then, after that, when the batter still wasn't doing anything, it took me way too long to realize I was supposed to input my pitch pattern before throwing (this is why it helps to have the manual at-hand instead of only googling it when u get stuck). Then came the realization that the CPU hits the ball 100% of the time because that's a totally fun aspect of baseball.
Once they hit the ball, you probably won't even be able to pick it up, but even if you do you sure as hell aren't fast enough to throw the ball to a teammate, let alone run after the batter before he gets to base. And God forbid you throw the ball to the wrong guy when you're trying to throw it to your pitcher, because it's gonna take you a while to get things moving again after that.
I don't have much to say about batting because I could not for the life of me hit the god damn ball
1977
i was going to say this was probably the coolest shit if u were an 8 year old boy in 1977, but that is also when Star Wars came out
2005
This is Saboteur bitch!! We clown in this muthafucka take yo sensitive ass back to Asteroids
2005
i spent like 7 minutes aimlessly shooting at fish and dying before i realized u can swim down to the next screen, the game got a lot more fun after that
1984
"we have crystal castles at home"
crystal castles at home:
crystal castles at home:
1979
this game keeps kicking my ass 10/10
1989
Breakout but with SAUCE.
Your "paddle" (in this case a little Japanse peasant I guess) controls more responsively and smoothly, and I think there's some strategy to hitting the ball with the right direction and momentum. There's also power-ups, some of which are cool and some which elude me.
Hitting the ball in at just the right angle that it drills through almost all the blocks will never stop being satisfying.
Your "paddle" (in this case a little Japanse peasant I guess) controls more responsively and smoothly, and I think there's some strategy to hitting the ball with the right direction and momentum. There's also power-ups, some of which are cool and some which elude me.
Hitting the ball in at just the right angle that it drills through almost all the blocks will never stop being satisfying.
1976
its breakout, everyone played breakout, your mom played breakout.
For some reason there's like huge input lag so I cant really play it properly. I don't know if its my Flashback 6's fault, the joystick's fault, or if the game is just Like That. Makes it basically unplayable for me.
For some reason there's like huge input lag so I cant really play it properly. I don't know if its my Flashback 6's fault, the joystick's fault, or if the game is just Like That. Makes it basically unplayable for me.
2005
One of those rare cases where the shitty joystick controls actually work with the gameplay instead of against it. Really makes you feel like you're controlling an unwieldy construction crane and lowering concrete blocks down into a flooding dam to rescue your lady love in a high-stakes mission. I kept dropping blocks on the poor girl's head by accident ;o;
I do not know what the items that spawn on the sides do. Especially the numbers, I wanted to try dropping them down onto my score to see if I could add a digit lol. All the items just despawn when you drop 'em tho, so maybe they weren't fully implemented?
I do not know what the items that spawn on the sides do. Especially the numbers, I wanted to try dropping them down onto my score to see if I could add a digit lol. All the items just despawn when you drop 'em tho, so maybe they weren't fully implemented?
1979
i bomba da canyon
1982
Yar. My beloved. I don't know what that Qotile meanie did to u but I will help u kick his ass.
2009
This is a decently fun one. I enjoyed it more than Strip-Off, which was the other Tactical Neuronics homebrew on the Atari Flashback.
It has the same shoot-up style layout as Space Invaders (whatever that genre is called). However it's actually more similar to Yar's Revenge; there's only one enemy instead of a horde, and it's shooting back at you both with regular lasers and with timed bombs. Also like Yar, the enemy is protected by a moving shield that you have to chip away at to create an opening. The movement of the shield and the unpredictable movements of the enemy lead to some frantic and dynamic gameplay.
On top of that, there's a score meter that fills up not only when you hit the enemy (ending the level and moving on to the next one), but also when you break a block of the shield. So you're actually incentivized to leave the enemy alive while you destroy the entire shield for maximum points, and it becomes increasingly difficult both to avoid being shot and to avoid shooting the enemy.
All-in-all a very tightly packed and neatly designed game. The most impressive part to me is that it achieves everything without any lag or screen flickering. A testament both to the developer's skill and to having 30+ years of hindsight on a console's lifespan.
It has the same shoot-up style layout as Space Invaders (whatever that genre is called). However it's actually more similar to Yar's Revenge; there's only one enemy instead of a horde, and it's shooting back at you both with regular lasers and with timed bombs. Also like Yar, the enemy is protected by a moving shield that you have to chip away at to create an opening. The movement of the shield and the unpredictable movements of the enemy lead to some frantic and dynamic gameplay.
On top of that, there's a score meter that fills up not only when you hit the enemy (ending the level and moving on to the next one), but also when you break a block of the shield. So you're actually incentivized to leave the enemy alive while you destroy the entire shield for maximum points, and it becomes increasingly difficult both to avoid being shot and to avoid shooting the enemy.
All-in-all a very tightly packed and neatly designed game. The most impressive part to me is that it achieves everything without any lag or screen flickering. A testament both to the developer's skill and to having 30+ years of hindsight on a console's lifespan.