This is Super Baseball, the third strike in Atari's trifecta of swings at the ol' ball game. Except it isn't technically a third game, it's actually a patched version of RealSports Baseball, which fixes, some of its predecessor's glaring bugs. Crazy how little has changed in the industry.

Super Baseball actually did fix most of my problems with RealSports Baseball. For one, you can actually hit the ball. You can even control the direction of your hit even if it's a bit finnicky. Pulling the joystick down while you hit nearly guarantees a Home Run (the CPU can still catch it sometimes), so the batting side of the game is very easy to cheese through.

On the pitching side, you can still program the throwing type, but I don't feel like it influenced the ball trajectory as much this time around. The CPU still hits every ball, something I feel could have been addressed with even some very basic RNG. All is forgiven though, because Super Baseball fixed my biggest gripe: you can actually run fast enough to tag the opponent!! And you can throw the ball to a teammate without the entire game taking a shit!!

Forget all the other shit, this is the only playable baseball game on the Atari 2600. I managed to play through a full 9-inning game without ragequitting. Only problem with the game is that it makes an ear-wrenching buzzing sound whenever someone gets outed. Kind of like my transphobic stepfather.

I just feel bad for the kids who were stuck with RealSports Baseball for 6 years (and were still stuck with an Atari in 1988).

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

The boys at Taito were on some other shit with this one (and Tigervision made a damn good port!).
A very straightforward but fun shoot 'em up where you control a submarine. It alternates between two levels, one where you fire up at enemy planes, boats and subs from below, and one where you navigate up through a treacherous cavern and shoot at weird star creature(?) things. The caverns are especially cool because you can adjust your speed.
Minus one star for the INCESSANT sonar ping sound (probably very immersive for its time).

This was actually really fun somehow. the race is long but varied with a host of different obstacles, each one with a unique strategy of avoiding it. the midair rotating of your truck feels like the prototype of a lot of driving flash games i played as a kid on coolmathgames and the app store. the bouncing physics are fun, I can see em being used in some clever ways by someone who's mastered the game.

i cant tell if theres a gameplay difference between tires vs. treads, and the different vehicle types, or if its just for aesthetic (can you even say that for an atari game? especially when the tires are constantly flickering because of console limitations)