tdstr
1984
Played as part of Atari 50.
Oh, this one sucks. 8-directional movement, which doesn't sound like it's worth mentioning for a pacman clone, but you're not locked to the grid and need to fumble your way around the map trying to hit the hitboxes for all the "dots". The elevators similarly have annoyingly small areas and don't feel like you can stick yourself in them like you can with the arcade one. Maybe the first game in this collection that's invoked an actual face of disgust for most of the playtime here. Wasn't the biggest fan of the arcade version anyways, but it plays like fine art compared to this lmao
Oh, this one sucks. 8-directional movement, which doesn't sound like it's worth mentioning for a pacman clone, but you're not locked to the grid and need to fumble your way around the map trying to hit the hitboxes for all the "dots". The elevators similarly have annoyingly small areas and don't feel like you can stick yourself in them like you can with the arcade one. Maybe the first game in this collection that's invoked an actual face of disgust for most of the playtime here. Wasn't the biggest fan of the arcade version anyways, but it plays like fine art compared to this lmao
2018
Played as part of Atari 50.
Thoughts are mostly exactly the same as the 2600 port, but the visuals are a bit better. Why didn't they enable trackball controls?
Thoughts are mostly exactly the same as the 2600 port, but the visuals are a bit better. Why didn't they enable trackball controls?
1984
Played as part of Atari 50.
Mediocre 2600 port of an arcade game that I'm already not the fondest on. DDT bombs are nice to have but the variety of enemies is certainly overkill here.
Mediocre 2600 port of an arcade game that I'm already not the fondest on. DDT bombs are nice to have but the variety of enemies is certainly overkill here.
2022
Played as part of Atari 50.
40 years later and SwordQuest still sucks, yet again consisting of almost nothing but trial and error. Can't bring myself to hate this one quite as much as the others since it's more responsive and it doesn't suck quite as much to just run around in for like 10 minutes, but it's still pretty bad.
Although, it really does beg the question of how much people woulda fucking loved Flappy Bird if it was released on the 2600, though.
40 years later and SwordQuest still sucks, yet again consisting of almost nothing but trial and error. Can't bring myself to hate this one quite as much as the others since it's more responsive and it doesn't suck quite as much to just run around in for like 10 minutes, but it's still pretty bad.
Although, it really does beg the question of how much people woulda fucking loved Flappy Bird if it was released on the 2600, though.
Played as part of Atari 50.
Least bad Swordquest game so far and it still sucks. Worth negative attention. Only even remotely good parts of this are just bad versions of Frogger
Least bad Swordquest game so far and it still sucks. Worth negative attention. Only even remotely good parts of this are just bad versions of Frogger
The novelty season.
Season's not completely done yet but I'm gonna log this now because not much else is gonna change before it does. This season, maybe more than any other, is one that seems insanely cool on the surface, but which pretty quickly revealed itself to just be a bunch of little novelties stapled together.
Cool new gamemodes, too bad that they're all only interesting for maybe an hour or two each (with Lego Fortnite feeling particularly uneventful and grindy, and the rhythm one being comically expensive for how simple it is).
Cool train, too bad that it's such a minor and inconsequential part of the map.
Cool new map, too bad that most of the locations aren't that interesting or unique, with two different farms, two different swanky coastal areas, and two different swanky mansions. When the most interesting POI on your map is some tennis courts and an unnamed yacht shoved off to the side, shit is dire.
Cool new weapon upgrade system, too bad that all the weapons share the same small pool of options and you're always gonna want the ones that play the most into the given weapon (i.e., snipers are always gonna use the 4x scope, angled foregrip, and larger magazine), with the rest not doing anything to change how you play at all.
It's fine, it's still Fortnite. But in the grand scheme of things it's a pretty bland filler season, which is pretty bad for the start of a chapter, given CH4's was great. Not completely terrible, as the best part of last chapter's map was added in season 2 (the purple area in the southeast), but this is very much a map that I'll be excited for big sweeping changes to happen to, rather than a solid base to build off of.
Season's not completely done yet but I'm gonna log this now because not much else is gonna change before it does. This season, maybe more than any other, is one that seems insanely cool on the surface, but which pretty quickly revealed itself to just be a bunch of little novelties stapled together.
Cool new gamemodes, too bad that they're all only interesting for maybe an hour or two each (with Lego Fortnite feeling particularly uneventful and grindy, and the rhythm one being comically expensive for how simple it is).
Cool train, too bad that it's such a minor and inconsequential part of the map.
Cool new map, too bad that most of the locations aren't that interesting or unique, with two different farms, two different swanky coastal areas, and two different swanky mansions. When the most interesting POI on your map is some tennis courts and an unnamed yacht shoved off to the side, shit is dire.
Cool new weapon upgrade system, too bad that all the weapons share the same small pool of options and you're always gonna want the ones that play the most into the given weapon (i.e., snipers are always gonna use the 4x scope, angled foregrip, and larger magazine), with the rest not doing anything to change how you play at all.
It's fine, it's still Fortnite. But in the grand scheme of things it's a pretty bland filler season, which is pretty bad for the start of a chapter, given CH4's was great. Not completely terrible, as the best part of last chapter's map was added in season 2 (the purple area in the southeast), but this is very much a map that I'll be excited for big sweeping changes to happen to, rather than a solid base to build off of.
2005
Played as part of Atari 50.
Pretty solid for a 2600 game! Being locked to 8 directions is a tad annoying, and the second stage doesn't really work out, but the first and third stages are pretty neat.
Pretty solid for a 2600 game! Being locked to 8 directions is a tad annoying, and the second stage doesn't really work out, but the first and third stages are pretty neat.
1982
Played as part of Atari 50. 2600 version.
Ok, so everything remotely positive I said about this in the review of the Atari 800 version? Yeah, just take all that back. This version is ridiculously slow, and having literally everything reset when you miss a jump and die of fall damage is annoying enough for me to just tap out immediately lol. Just not worth the time.
Ok, so everything remotely positive I said about this in the review of the Atari 800 version? Yeah, just take all that back. This version is ridiculously slow, and having literally everything reset when you miss a jump and die of fall damage is annoying enough for me to just tap out immediately lol. Just not worth the time.
1982
Played as part of Atari 50.
It's a weaker version of both Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, but even as a mediocre version of those two things it isn't bad. That's not to say it's good, either, but it rides the line between being kinda interesting trying to puzzle out how to approach weirdly placed platforms, and kinda boring walking over most of the other tiles.
It's a weaker version of both Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, but even as a mediocre version of those two things it isn't bad. That's not to say it's good, either, but it rides the line between being kinda interesting trying to puzzle out how to approach weirdly placed platforms, and kinda boring walking over most of the other tiles.
1981
Played as part of Atari 50.
Decent concept, but the fire/sprite limit is annoying to deal with since you fire two bullets at once, along with the player ship's stupidly large hitbox and slow and repetitive restocking periods. I know this is a 1981 game and for the time there wasn't a ton to compare this to, but in retrospect it's very primitive and not interesting or historically important enough to balance that out
Decent concept, but the fire/sprite limit is annoying to deal with since you fire two bullets at once, along with the player ship's stupidly large hitbox and slow and repetitive restocking periods. I know this is a 1981 game and for the time there wasn't a ton to compare this to, but in retrospect it's very primitive and not interesting or historically important enough to balance that out
Played as part of Atari 50.
No wonder this never got released. Pretty much entirely unplayable.
No wonder this never got released. Pretty much entirely unplayable.
2024
Novelty game... but it sure as hell is better than whatever the fuck the Doodle God team has been been putting out for the past decade (although that's saying hardly anything).
If you set your goal on making X thing, it's fun for a few hours as you slowly build up fundamentals, which in this are things like numbers and generic media terms like "movie" and "game". Along the way you're pretty much guaranteed to stumble into some stupid and/or funny word combinations which are definitely sold by the tagged emojis, which keeps things interesting enough. You eventually build up enough though that a lot of combinations are trivial if you have a decent memory of what you've made so far (at least good enough to search things up), and the game very quickly loses its luster and gets kinda boring. Which is completely fine given it's a free website on the internet.
If you set your goal on making X thing, it's fun for a few hours as you slowly build up fundamentals, which in this are things like numbers and generic media terms like "movie" and "game". Along the way you're pretty much guaranteed to stumble into some stupid and/or funny word combinations which are definitely sold by the tagged emojis, which keeps things interesting enough. You eventually build up enough though that a lot of combinations are trivial if you have a decent memory of what you've made so far (at least good enough to search things up), and the game very quickly loses its luster and gets kinda boring. Which is completely fine given it's a free website on the internet.
1983
Played as part of Atari 50.
Imagine that if I had grown up in the days of the 2600 this probably woulda been a mainstay. Once you switch on the manual hitting it's pretty fun to rack up a rally, even if nowadays it's pretty simple. Hopefully I can eventually play this against a real player, since the AI is way too good lol
Imagine that if I had grown up in the days of the 2600 this probably woulda been a mainstay. Once you switch on the manual hitting it's pretty fun to rack up a rally, even if nowadays it's pretty simple. Hopefully I can eventually play this against a real player, since the AI is way too good lol
1982
Played as part of Atari 50.
It's, uh, it's fine. Immediately seems pretty bad but once you learn you can wrap around the screen by going the other direction, it's okay. Still has the problem most of these sports games have of being wayyy too complex for a single button and joystick to handle, but it's done decently here. I imagine this is much better versus another opponent than the AI though
It's, uh, it's fine. Immediately seems pretty bad but once you learn you can wrap around the screen by going the other direction, it's okay. Still has the problem most of these sports games have of being wayyy too complex for a single button and joystick to handle, but it's done decently here. I imagine this is much better versus another opponent than the AI though
1983
Played as part of Atari 50.
Fairly novel and weird take on a shooter, but it just doesn't really come together, like at all. Catching your own bullets feels clunky and the extremely slow rate of enemies feels more like doing data entry than playing a video game. Hard to hate but really its only interesting facet is the third of a second of voice saying "quadrun".
Fairly novel and weird take on a shooter, but it just doesn't really come together, like at all. Catching your own bullets feels clunky and the extremely slow rate of enemies feels more like doing data entry than playing a video game. Hard to hate but really its only interesting facet is the third of a second of voice saying "quadrun".