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.

Maybe you've seen the term "TTL" thrown about before, mainly for foundational 1970s arcade games. These pre-integrated circuit boards imposed many limits on creators, from Al Alcorn's team making Pong in '72 to SEGA sending the format off with their impressive racer Monaco GP. But in the years before large-scale ICs became feasible for mass-produced games, why not just stack a bunch of transistors next to each other for old times' sake?

Clean Sweep isn't much of a game beyond its historic significance. The idea of single-player Pong, without a computer to play against, must have seemed absurd back then. Of coursed, the solution was simple: fill the screen with other balls to collect. You work to deprive the play area of its starting flourish, bringing back Pong's negative space as you go. Now the opponent is yourself, both an enabler of on-screen events and the disabler should you fail to reflect projectiles. This makes for a fun experience at first, at least until repetition & self-consciousness set in.

So here's the question: why exactly did this disappear into the annals of '70s game lore while Breakout, its clear descendant, ascended to the pantheon? There's many good answers. Atari had production & distribution leverage outmatching even mighty Ramtek, best known then for their Baseball game. Woz & Jobs' design simply had better physics and kinaesthetics, from the tetchy ball-paddle inertia to the simple pleasures of trapping a ball above the wall, watching it go to work. Most likely, the '76 game just had better timing. Pong clone frenzy was the order of the day in Clean Sweep's time, with Atari's own new products struggling to keep up. Something with more of an identity like Ramtek Baseball would have done better than another space game, or what seemed to the public like a weirder take on solo Pong.

(I find it funny how the other review currently claims Clean Sweep is the clone despite predating Breakout. One could boil either game down to "single-player Pong clone" if they really try. That's a kind of reductive take I try to avoid when possible, even when discussing something this rudimentary.)

If you're intrigued by any of this, download DICE and find a copy of Clean Sweep & other TTL games (like the original Breakout, of course!). I can't think of any arcades that might still own, operate, & maintain this relic today other than Galloping Ghost up near Chicago, sadly. And it's nowhere on modern retro collections for obvious emulation-related reasons. But it paved the way for one of the most significant '70s games, and isn't half-bad to play for a few minutes either.

Copied and pasted from my Dwarfs F2P review because they're the same game:

I initially had to try this game because Killing Floor had kind of a collab? with it where it would unlock a warhammer for the former if you played this.
And then I just said 'fuck it' and went for the completion because why not.

Easy and normal modes are chill. You can probably reach the end with not much difficulty and you will be greeted to a clear map with tons of dwarfs.
Now, insane mode... It's a tickling clock, mostly. Prices to seal off water and lava hazards increase linearly with every block placed, and it's genuinely not reasonable to actually seal them off, so you just put a wall on front of them and hope that your dwarfs don't go around (which they will, so you need to have peak reflexes to deal with it).
Eventually I just had a main group of warriors to deal with the bosses because I can't be managing them on top of the enviromental hazards... but still, it would be just a matter of time until the water/lava becomes unstoppable.

Nothing else remarkable.