The best example of gameplay loops I can think of. A very relaxing game when played in isolation, the loop of exploration > rewards > level > clear enemy camps > items > conquer > explore is genius in simplicity and multifaceted in execution, and all the factions offer at least one good reason to play them. Add in some depth in regards to what heroes, upgrades, build orders, etc. are necessary for matchups and maps and you get a very simple to understand yet intricately mechanical strategy game, which is the best you can ask for. HOTA is a much welcome expansion, seamlessly integrating with the base game, at this point it's pretty much a stark upgrade over the base game, though balance is still inherently wonky.

People reviewing this recently are most likely reviewing the emulated version on Atari 50. And yeah, I respect that compilation as a museum collection but its nearly impossible to replicate this game outside of that original setup. One player sits in the cockpit and drives the front wheels of the truck while the 2nd player stands behind them looking at the screen over their head and controls the rear axle. Nothing else like it and a CPU can't replicate a person because your constantly blaming one another for the crashes. Great fun. Played at Funspot in NH.

Some of my favorite games to look at from this long ago are ones like this that had people at the time saying how bad the graphics were. Usually I just think its funny because the difference between good and bad graphics during the early eras of gaming are so negligible that its amusing that people still had revulsive reactions to some of them, but in Street Racer’s case its pretty justified.

Even by Atari 2600 standards, which considering this was a launch title in 1977 weren’t even technically set yet. Like this was Atari’s standard up to that point and people still went ‘eyyeuuch.’ One of the reasons this ends up not being in the basement of the 70s Atari titles is that it gave the player a ton, relatively, of different gameplay options. The titular game mode sees you just racing upwards in your sort of car and trying to avoid other sort of cars while scoring points for not mashing your sort of cars together, then there is Slalom, self explanatory, Dodgem which is similar to the default gameplay except instead of sort of cars they are sort of obstacles and you actually leave the bottom of the screen, Jet Shooter, which turns you into a sort of helicopter to shoot at sort of jets, Number Cruncher, which gives you points for running over numbers, and Scoop Ball which has you picking up square balls to put in receptacles. I can’t say any of them are worth playing now or anything and it looks like total shit but its a four player game with multiple gameplay modes, what a bang for your buck this must have been, even in the three years before the economy became permanently destroyed.