jtduckman
1977
Can I really be that harsh on a mfin atari 2600 launch title that seeks to replicate a simple gambling card game and nothing else? It's exactly what it says on the box, you want blackjack, you get blackjack. Only in the late 70's will you be able to find a card game that you play with a mfin paddle controller. It's pretty cool that this game supports up to four players though, even if its everyone vs the house rather than everyone vs each other. For the launch lineup this is probably one of the more social games in the bunch. You start with 200 chips and the chip counter resets at 1000 so I initially set that as my goal, but after getting to around 750 and then watching the house completely own me with enough back-to-back losses that I was back at basically square one again did I realize that huh yeah maybe this is why I shouldn't get a gambling addiction. Truly a cautionary tale from the dawn of console gaming that nobody seemed to heed, this game ran so Balatro and gacha games could crawl.
2004
Certainly a game of all time. On one hand, the camera and combat is kinda ass, the game pulls a mario maker and drip-feeds the character creator features through a weird RPG levelling system instead of having everything available from the start, getting new moves for your characters is kind of counter-intuitive and emphasizes not using the custom characters that are the main selling point of the game, and the english dub is so horrible that it completely nullifies some really decent writing and solid gags just from how bored everyone sounds (like bro this isn't even a funny bad bad dub its just a bad bad bad dub). On the other hand though, this game has a really intricate character creator that's simple to use to the point where it really does feel like you can make fully 3D characters as easily as just sketching them out so you can basically make any character to your hearts content in it AND you can unlock THE Reimu Hakurei as a secret character so really let's call it a draw. The game is a pretty standard platformer otherwise and if I had this as a kid i'd probably hella fuck with it and try collecting all the different pre-made dudes. If the game had a bit tighter combat and the voice performers actually gave a damn, this would be some certified kino. (apparently there is an undub so I would certainly recommend playing that over the base english version, I didn't know it existed until it was already too late)
Here are the characters that I made before Reimu basically made everyone else obsolete for the rest of the game
amogus
this was the first thing i made to figure out how the character creator worked, and of course im gonna make an amogus im creatively bankrupt. his stubby legs meant i couldn't use him for shit in combat so i basically gave him psychokinetic elemental powers for puzzle solving purposes and long-ranged combat (until reimu could do a 3-hit combo using all 3 elements)
lostcontrol
This was the second character I made because I needed to make someone simple so I made the fucked up little triangle guy from that one meme. He was my movement guy as his tiny triangular size made him able to dodge enemy attacks and zip around the stage like a lil speedrunner. Eventually I needed a character that could fly to get the reimu card so I turned him into a one-winged angel. The music made him lose control.
jashinchan
Jashin was my first actual challenge to make but she surprisingly came out alright. There's no slithering option for movement so she just instead kind of bounces around but you know i'm cool with that. She was pretty useless at first because her punches did jack shit for damage so I rectified that by arming her and making her the combat character. At first, I just gave her a hastily-made pistol, but decided that wasn't fitting for her character and got rid of it. I gave her instead a battle axe (maybe she borrowed it from Yurine or something) for close range combat and a mega buster for long range combat.
TEST
I had to redo this mfer like 4 different times trying to get a correct hunched posture, making this guy took me an hour. I needed a character with wheels for the speed section of the game and asked my friend who would be the scariest cartoon character to see running at you at a million miles per hour. They said Robotnik from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog would be the scariest, and so it was written. His legs are actually wheels so they spin around and his mustache and asscheeks have jiggle physics. Due to technically being a vehicle, he's technically the only character that Reimu didn't immediately render obsolete. I never learned how to change his name to anything else so hes just TEST for the rest of eternity, truly a lab subject that shouldn't have escaped his confinement
craig
my final character, the only one that isn't based off of some other character or whatnot. Originally he was going to be my combat character as I was like "what if i just make someone with really fucking long arms that just punches people from far away", but then it didn't work because he was slow as balls and I just got jashin to be the combat character anyways. Later on I needed a character with long legs to reach a specific point to get the flying ability early so I added some really fucking long legs to craig in order to get the job done. Completely deformed and experimental, craig is a being whose God has forsaken him. Behind that tiny smile is a pain greater than what anyone could know, and I stay in heaven because I fear what I hath created.
Here are the characters that I made before Reimu basically made everyone else obsolete for the rest of the game
amogus
this was the first thing i made to figure out how the character creator worked, and of course im gonna make an amogus im creatively bankrupt. his stubby legs meant i couldn't use him for shit in combat so i basically gave him psychokinetic elemental powers for puzzle solving purposes and long-ranged combat (until reimu could do a 3-hit combo using all 3 elements)
lostcontrol
This was the second character I made because I needed to make someone simple so I made the fucked up little triangle guy from that one meme. He was my movement guy as his tiny triangular size made him able to dodge enemy attacks and zip around the stage like a lil speedrunner. Eventually I needed a character that could fly to get the reimu card so I turned him into a one-winged angel. The music made him lose control.
jashinchan
Jashin was my first actual challenge to make but she surprisingly came out alright. There's no slithering option for movement so she just instead kind of bounces around but you know i'm cool with that. She was pretty useless at first because her punches did jack shit for damage so I rectified that by arming her and making her the combat character. At first, I just gave her a hastily-made pistol, but decided that wasn't fitting for her character and got rid of it. I gave her instead a battle axe (maybe she borrowed it from Yurine or something) for close range combat and a mega buster for long range combat.
TEST
I had to redo this mfer like 4 different times trying to get a correct hunched posture, making this guy took me an hour. I needed a character with wheels for the speed section of the game and asked my friend who would be the scariest cartoon character to see running at you at a million miles per hour. They said Robotnik from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog would be the scariest, and so it was written. His legs are actually wheels so they spin around and his mustache and asscheeks have jiggle physics. Due to technically being a vehicle, he's technically the only character that Reimu didn't immediately render obsolete. I never learned how to change his name to anything else so hes just TEST for the rest of eternity, truly a lab subject that shouldn't have escaped his confinement
craig
my final character, the only one that isn't based off of some other character or whatnot. Originally he was going to be my combat character as I was like "what if i just make someone with really fucking long arms that just punches people from far away", but then it didn't work because he was slow as balls and I just got jashin to be the combat character anyways. Later on I needed a character with long legs to reach a specific point to get the flying ability early so I added some really fucking long legs to craig in order to get the job done. Completely deformed and experimental, craig is a being whose God has forsaken him. Behind that tiny smile is a pain greater than what anyone could know, and I stay in heaven because I fear what I hath created.
1984
Mechanically for a game on the 2600 this kicks ass, you could have released this on NES with a mild graphical/control facelift and it would have fit in. It's an action platformer with 20 levels to go through of increasing length and complexity. You have an inspector-gadget-ass helicopter helmet that you can use to fly around levels, a laser cannon to destroy enemies, and bombs that you can place to break walls, and there's a power meter that serves as a level timer. My only gripes come from the controls and the level design; I had to pretty much immediately switch to a mega drive controller instead of a 2600 joystick because its really easy to misinput down on the stick and drop a bomb that kills you instantly (i need to buy some new atari controllers ngl...). The way you hover and fly is really weird too in that you have to hold up for like a whole half second before you start flying, and tapping up holds you in place for like a half second if you are falling. Considering the fact that roderick hero over here has a rather swift movement and falling speed, the delay between flying and falling can and will absolutely fuck you up at points. I wish they went for a more like lunar-lander style of physics and momentum system with flight instead of the 3 phases of flying, hovering, and falling that you can slugglishly toggle between. The level designer is also an asshole starting from like level 7 onwards, with levels that know exactly the limitations of your moveset and will capitalize on your weaknesses in a very dirty way. You can't shoot things below you, so there are lots of holes with enemies under them that work as dead ends in a sort. There are also enemies placed precisely where you'd go if you need to charge up your flying ability, and so many holes where your high fall speed will launch you into a block of lava before you can even register what is going on. It's difficult, but in the way of just needing to memorize the whole level layouts to mitigate any of the designers nonsense. The point threshold to become part of the Order of the H.E.R.O. is honestly pretty low at only 75k, which on a decent run you'd get that much by level 13. Honestly pretty crazy to see a game of such solid quality right in the dark year of 1984 between the big Atari Shock and the release of the NES. Makes ya wonder what other games could have existed to expand upon early 80's hardware if everyone didn't panic pull out from the market then.
Definitely an unorthodox game, but considering this games background that's to be expected. You run a blacksmithing weapon shop with your burly mentor figure, forging weapons that various people can use to complete their quests and solve their problems. Forging weapons is done through this strange rhythm minigame where you tap different parts of a molten slab to a rhythm in order to strengthen different stats, but the game really doesn't do a good job explaining how to consistently make weapons with good base stats so it felt like complete RNG as to whether or not the game said I made a dull piece of garbage or a god-slaying masterpiece. Hell, maybe it actually is RNG, who knows.
Rather than outright sell the weapons you make, the shop you run has a weird rental system. Weapons are rented out, and only once your clients clear their quest will they pay you for your services whereas if they fail they both don't give you shit AND lose the weapon you gave out to them. Since weapons level up and grow in stats the more times they are used and successfully return, you definitely want to make sure you assign the right weapons to the right clients or else you might accidentally lose something decent. The weapons are also equipped with the "Grindcast", which is a twitter-like media feed that broadcasts whatever it is that the renters are questing in real time, and it plays all throughout the game (even during the parts where you are focused on something else, which can and will lead to moments where you miss some story beats entirely due to your attention being elsewhere. Maybe if the grindcast was voiced instead of a text log it would have worked better as an in-game podcast but then the rhythm gameplay would be harder and yeah i don't think they really thought that one all the way through). Customers also come in and out of the store as they please, and it gives the game this very passive vibe. Like there's just a lot of downtime as you just kinda work on making and polishing weapons while waiting for the game to send someone in. Or sometimes the game will throw countless random unnamed NPCs at you to rent random shit while you are trying to actually make what you need to make before an actual named important client comes back looking for the weapon you promised them. The pacing is borderline nonexistent and the gameplay almost borders on idle-game territory at points.
The real point of the game though is in its writing. It's clear that the weird rental nature and Grindcast feed system are all in place as a way to keep the player involved with the world and characters despite being confined within the four walls of the weapon shop for the entire game. The game was written and directed by Yoshiyuki Hirai of the Japanese comedy group America Zarigani, so the emphasis is on the gags within the NPCs and the quirks that each of the characters have. That being said, I think that the localization team might have translated some of the gags a bit too literally because the writing felt really dry and the jokes usually tended to fall under a very particular singular sense of humor that I honestly can't even describe in words. A lot of the bits didn't really hit for me, and I honestly can't really tell if that's due to the brand of humor that Hirai has in the first place, the localization team being too direct with their translation, or some combination of both. Even the games ending is a bit that just fell flat on its face to me...
I definitely think the game runs a bit too long for its own good, especially given the downtimey gameplay and flat writing that make the game feel far longer than the roughly 10-hour runtime actually is. Unlike the other Guild games having been developed by established and esteemed developers that have intricate experience on how to make games, this game was made by an entire outsider to the industry and honestly I respect that. Since Hirai has done voicework for other Level5 games I wouldn't be surprised if he got onboard for the project by just pitching this idea for a weapon shop game he thought up some time ago (yet didn't fully think through in a gameplay mechanical sense). You don't really see experimental titles like that from complete outsiders get made very often, stuff like the Mother series, Takeshi's Challenge, Penn & Tellers Smoke and Mirrors, Otocky, etc. Just people that don't typically make games having an off-beat idea and a publisher willing to take a chance on it. Even if the end result might be something that's kinda eh to play and doesn't feel very properly thought-out, I can't hate the ambition and adore how absolutely unique games like this always turn out to be.
Rather than outright sell the weapons you make, the shop you run has a weird rental system. Weapons are rented out, and only once your clients clear their quest will they pay you for your services whereas if they fail they both don't give you shit AND lose the weapon you gave out to them. Since weapons level up and grow in stats the more times they are used and successfully return, you definitely want to make sure you assign the right weapons to the right clients or else you might accidentally lose something decent. The weapons are also equipped with the "Grindcast", which is a twitter-like media feed that broadcasts whatever it is that the renters are questing in real time, and it plays all throughout the game (even during the parts where you are focused on something else, which can and will lead to moments where you miss some story beats entirely due to your attention being elsewhere. Maybe if the grindcast was voiced instead of a text log it would have worked better as an in-game podcast but then the rhythm gameplay would be harder and yeah i don't think they really thought that one all the way through). Customers also come in and out of the store as they please, and it gives the game this very passive vibe. Like there's just a lot of downtime as you just kinda work on making and polishing weapons while waiting for the game to send someone in. Or sometimes the game will throw countless random unnamed NPCs at you to rent random shit while you are trying to actually make what you need to make before an actual named important client comes back looking for the weapon you promised them. The pacing is borderline nonexistent and the gameplay almost borders on idle-game territory at points.
The real point of the game though is in its writing. It's clear that the weird rental nature and Grindcast feed system are all in place as a way to keep the player involved with the world and characters despite being confined within the four walls of the weapon shop for the entire game. The game was written and directed by Yoshiyuki Hirai of the Japanese comedy group America Zarigani, so the emphasis is on the gags within the NPCs and the quirks that each of the characters have. That being said, I think that the localization team might have translated some of the gags a bit too literally because the writing felt really dry and the jokes usually tended to fall under a very particular singular sense of humor that I honestly can't even describe in words. A lot of the bits didn't really hit for me, and I honestly can't really tell if that's due to the brand of humor that Hirai has in the first place, the localization team being too direct with their translation, or some combination of both. Even the games ending is a bit that just fell flat on its face to me...
I definitely think the game runs a bit too long for its own good, especially given the downtimey gameplay and flat writing that make the game feel far longer than the roughly 10-hour runtime actually is. Unlike the other Guild games having been developed by established and esteemed developers that have intricate experience on how to make games, this game was made by an entire outsider to the industry and honestly I respect that. Since Hirai has done voicework for other Level5 games I wouldn't be surprised if he got onboard for the project by just pitching this idea for a weapon shop game he thought up some time ago (yet didn't fully think through in a gameplay mechanical sense). You don't really see experimental titles like that from complete outsiders get made very often, stuff like the Mother series, Takeshi's Challenge, Penn & Tellers Smoke and Mirrors, Otocky, etc. Just people that don't typically make games having an off-beat idea and a publisher willing to take a chance on it. Even if the end result might be something that's kinda eh to play and doesn't feel very properly thought-out, I can't hate the ambition and adore how absolutely unique games like this always turn out to be.
1979
It's a twist on Breakout, though I'm not particularly sure if it twists things in a substantially better or worse way tbh. Instead of having one ball bounce between a paddle you have two clowns bouncing off of a see-saw, and you gotta position things right and account for physics n shit to get good hits. The bricks are balloons now and are now constantly moving, with the line going in a loop constantly. It's cool in the way that you can get a clown stuck at the top sandwiched between two balloons as they keep moving into his bounces, but idk doesn't feel as inherently satisfying as calculating a shot to get stuck in the ceiling in breakout. The physics with the see-saw seem a bit inconsistent to me as well, as most of the bounces I had didn't even really launch the clowns high enough to hit the balloons in the first place. The balloons also repopulate on a per-row basis instead of everything refilling at once when the board is clear, which I thought was weird at first but upon playing the game type that refreshes in the traditional breakout way and being stuck trying to hit that last moving balloon by hoping it just happens to move into my clown ass I realized why they made the default refresh how it is. There are also game types that add extra barriers that move in a row below all the balloons, which add another layer of unpredictability to the game. At the end of the day it's breakout but with a lot of extra moving parts, and those moving parts can make it both more interesting due to the seeming random chaos that can happen while that same chaos can make the game less satisfying and engaging as sometimes you can get a crazy point combo by complete accident. I can definitely respect the thought that went into trying to make breakout more complex, but I don't really think it substantially adds or detracts to the block-breaking genre, it's just different. Despite being a circus game, you wouldn't have to be a clown to enjoy what's on offer here.
gartic phone for linux users
1980
jesus christ activision sure knows how to make tense games for the 2600. On average, this game is like 6-7 seconds long, which sounds pathetic on paper but dear lord getting that time down is an absolute struggle.
So here's why this game is kinda nuts: there's a tachometer at the bottom of your screen. If it goes past 3/4ths of your screen at any time, you blow up and die instantaneously. Pushing the button on the controller is your gas and your gas moves the meter up. Pushing down the left direction on the joystick puts you in a clutch state where the tachometer is so sensitive to gas that pretty much holding both the button and left at the same time at any point is a death sentence. Releasing left after pressing it down brings you up a gear, where you go faster with a slower tachometer. Basically you need to do as close to frame-perfect button presses and joystick inputs/releases as you feasibly can, and if you do it right, you get a good time, and if you do it even slightly wrong you either die in a horrific car explosion or get a shit time that brings great dishonor to your drag racing career. The manual's challenge of getting under 6 seconds to join the World Class Dragster Club is no simple task either. Considering the frame-perfect theoretical perfect time is 5.57, there's a shockingly small margin of error to join that prestigious, 40-years-defunct club (and if you say you've gotten a 5.51 before, you are a liar!). It took me dozens upon dozens of attempts to be able to just barely squeeze out a 5.94 that I swear to god felt like luck as I did the same thing I usually did for a good run, I just must have happened to have pressed the buttons at a more optimal time. Though I guess since the game is only 6 seconds long on a good run those dozens of attempts was still only like 20-30 minutes of grind. I felt like I spent more time waiting for the starting countdown to finish (or prematurely exploding by failing to properly feather the gas during the countdown as a way to get a good start) than actually racing, which is kinda eh but it is what it is.
It's certainly a deep and thought-out game that has a high skill ceiling to work up towards for sure. With how much frame-perfection is emphasized here, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a game to sew the seeds of speedrunning or just general high-level gamer tech to the still-blossoming Atari gamer crowd. But it does mean that this game is definitely geared towards that certain type of player, so if you aren't into personal time attack grinds there's pretty much less game time for you in this game than the time it took you to read this whole ramble in the first place. Fascinating!
So here's why this game is kinda nuts: there's a tachometer at the bottom of your screen. If it goes past 3/4ths of your screen at any time, you blow up and die instantaneously. Pushing the button on the controller is your gas and your gas moves the meter up. Pushing down the left direction on the joystick puts you in a clutch state where the tachometer is so sensitive to gas that pretty much holding both the button and left at the same time at any point is a death sentence. Releasing left after pressing it down brings you up a gear, where you go faster with a slower tachometer. Basically you need to do as close to frame-perfect button presses and joystick inputs/releases as you feasibly can, and if you do it right, you get a good time, and if you do it even slightly wrong you either die in a horrific car explosion or get a shit time that brings great dishonor to your drag racing career. The manual's challenge of getting under 6 seconds to join the World Class Dragster Club is no simple task either. Considering the frame-perfect theoretical perfect time is 5.57, there's a shockingly small margin of error to join that prestigious, 40-years-defunct club (and if you say you've gotten a 5.51 before, you are a liar!). It took me dozens upon dozens of attempts to be able to just barely squeeze out a 5.94 that I swear to god felt like luck as I did the same thing I usually did for a good run, I just must have happened to have pressed the buttons at a more optimal time. Though I guess since the game is only 6 seconds long on a good run those dozens of attempts was still only like 20-30 minutes of grind. I felt like I spent more time waiting for the starting countdown to finish (or prematurely exploding by failing to properly feather the gas during the countdown as a way to get a good start) than actually racing, which is kinda eh but it is what it is.
It's certainly a deep and thought-out game that has a high skill ceiling to work up towards for sure. With how much frame-perfection is emphasized here, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a game to sew the seeds of speedrunning or just general high-level gamer tech to the still-blossoming Atari gamer crowd. But it does mean that this game is definitely geared towards that certain type of player, so if you aren't into personal time attack grinds there's pretty much less game time for you in this game than the time it took you to read this whole ramble in the first place. Fascinating!
1981
FUCK YEAH, KABOOM
im biased as fuck, this is easily my favorite game on the atari 2600. Using the paddle controller to catch bombs from the mad bomber is hella addicting, specifically due to just how unrelentingly difficult the game is. You gotta be mfin FAST to get anywhere past level 5, and scoring high is actually a reasonable challenge. Unlike Pitfall and Oink, the other two activision games I hit the manuals target challenge score for so far, getting 3000 points in this game to enter the Bucket Brigade takes a sizeable amount of practice and skill to pull off, where you get that one hot run going and it all just comes together, like shit man it's just satisfying as fuck to play this. It just gets me in that flowstate man where every game over has me immediately reaching for that reset button to play some more. God I love kaboom dude if you have an atari and a paddle controller for it this shit is an on-sight play
im biased as fuck, this is easily my favorite game on the atari 2600. Using the paddle controller to catch bombs from the mad bomber is hella addicting, specifically due to just how unrelentingly difficult the game is. You gotta be mfin FAST to get anywhere past level 5, and scoring high is actually a reasonable challenge. Unlike Pitfall and Oink, the other two activision games I hit the manuals target challenge score for so far, getting 3000 points in this game to enter the Bucket Brigade takes a sizeable amount of practice and skill to pull off, where you get that one hot run going and it all just comes together, like shit man it's just satisfying as fuck to play this. It just gets me in that flowstate man where every game over has me immediately reaching for that reset button to play some more. God I love kaboom dude if you have an atari and a paddle controller for it this shit is an on-sight play
1978
Another "banger with another person, pretty dire on your own"-like. The 2600 probably has a lot of these... There's a big grid of squares and one of them has a flag that two players compete to find. You can actually use the joystick to move around as a cursor to select which square you want to search (take THAT, a game of concentration! I knew you could make a cursor in 1978!), and if it's the flag, you win! If it's not, it's either a directional hint pointing you where it could be, a number hint telling you how far away it is, or a bomb that sends you back to the starting point (owned). It's more classic dumb simple fun that the Atari is good at, and there's definitely enough randomness involved for there to be fun shenanigans like guessing completely right on the first try or being misled to hit a bomb that you were SURE was the flag. The game gives the options for each player to either take turns guessing or have both players go at the same time for a chaotic free-for-all. You can also toggle having the flag MOVE every turn, with options to have it loop around the edges of the screen or bounce off of them to make things harder to find. For the solitary gamers out there though, all you get is a simple time attack where you have 75 seconds to collect as many flags as you can, with no real goal to aim for other than whatever your previous high score was. At least it's something? Definitely worth busting out when it's Atari night for sure.
1977
For the game that comes with the Atari 2600, it's a great way to showcase the real appeal of the system both then and now ngl. The best moments from this console come from the simplicity of the games combined with the social aspect of playing the games with a friend. Combat absolutely fills that role quite well, as the games within are simple and easy to understand (shoot each other) and the selectable game modes and maps provide enough variety to keep things interesting for a long time. While the standard tank mode is fun enough, there's a surprising amount of fun to be had in the tank-pong mode, where bullets ricochet off of walls allowing for insane trick shots, or the sneakiness that comes from Invisible tank, where the only time a tank is visible is when it's firing a shot, allowing for extra strategy as you try to estimate where you and your opponent are (and yet neither player is always perfectly on-the-mark thanks to the stiff controls both players have to deal with). The plane modes are kinda lame tho. If you've never done it before, I'd highly suggest getting a homie, throwin on some music in the background, and just playing Atari games with them while talkin about whatever. That shits always a good time. I'm honestly surprised that this is the pack-in game instead of a safer pick like Pong, but I guess they probably did that to differentiate themselves from the plenty of already-existing dedicated pong machines at the time. Can't say it's one of the best Atari games due to the fact that it's basically useless to the solitary gamers out there, but it's a damn good statement of intent for the 2600.
You know, by 1978 I'm sure they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they never really considered whether or not they should. It's your typical memory-based flip-the-cards-and-get-matches type beat, and while I can certainly dunk on this for entirely being something that's more suited for a mini-game in even an NES game, but this do be like literally year 1 atari stuff so I have plenty of slack to cut in the content regard.
That being said though even in the context of its release I think this game is beaten by an actual deck of cards in a lot of ways. For a console that ships with a controller with 4 directions and a button why the hell would you go with needing a proprietary number pad controller to dial in which cards you want to pick instead of like using the joystick as a cursor and the button to select? The single player mode is entirely player-driven when it comes to goals; the manual doesn't even have anything like "try for a score under 10 to be a real Atari Concentration Camper!" or whatever, you just match pictures, and when it's done it's over. There's also a mode that replaces one pair of pictures with 2 wild cards that can be matched with any other card, except for the fact that it doesn't clear both the card the wild card is matching with as well as the card that it's supposed to be matched with, which just leaves you with a dead game at the end as you have two spare cards that cannot match with each other. It makes the wild cards less of an assist feature as they actually just end up being random game-ruining landmines. Very cool.
I get that this game was released in such an early state of gaming that the mere aspect of interacting with your TV to play something normally designed for tabletop play gave this game enough value through novelty, but like there are 2600 launch titles like combat and pong that have way more intuitive and responsive gameplay and control, so even in its time there would be better options to play imo.
That being said though even in the context of its release I think this game is beaten by an actual deck of cards in a lot of ways. For a console that ships with a controller with 4 directions and a button why the hell would you go with needing a proprietary number pad controller to dial in which cards you want to pick instead of like using the joystick as a cursor and the button to select? The single player mode is entirely player-driven when it comes to goals; the manual doesn't even have anything like "try for a score under 10 to be a real Atari Concentration Camper!" or whatever, you just match pictures, and when it's done it's over. There's also a mode that replaces one pair of pictures with 2 wild cards that can be matched with any other card, except for the fact that it doesn't clear both the card the wild card is matching with as well as the card that it's supposed to be matched with, which just leaves you with a dead game at the end as you have two spare cards that cannot match with each other. It makes the wild cards less of an assist feature as they actually just end up being random game-ruining landmines. Very cool.
I get that this game was released in such an early state of gaming that the mere aspect of interacting with your TV to play something normally designed for tabletop play gave this game enough value through novelty, but like there are 2600 launch titles like combat and pong that have way more intuitive and responsive gameplay and control, so even in its time there would be better options to play imo.
1991
holy shit. I just beat Battletoads.
I've seen the web lambast this game endlessly as the game has been showered with the title of "hardest game of all time" from all sorts of people and places on the internet. For years I had just assumed that this would be a game that I would never even think to pass the infamous Turbo Tunnels, much less actually see the ending. It was only when I saw this game cleared on a two-part Game Center CX playthrough when the illusion of this game being impossibly difficult faded. In fact, it looked like a fun kind of challenge! I figured that if Arino could beat this game, so could I, and as such I put it on the "games-to-stream" backburner until the time had come. And boy, did the time come. Roughly 9 hours of grinding later, here we are.
I think the main reason why this game sticks out so much as being so nightmarishly difficult is mostly due to how outwardly hostile the games design tends to be. Memorizing the levels and becoming intimately familiar with them through repetition (and a little bit of trial and error) is the key to being able to progress. Each level honestly stands out from one another well enough to make climbing back to where you were before at every game over not TOO painful in the grand scheme of things. Each of the 12 levels usually has some kind of gimmick or new mechanic to grapple with, like the ropes in stage 2, the turbo tunnels in 3, ice in 4, surfing in 5, snakes in 6, etc etc. Honestly the game does a solid job introducing the mechanics to let you know how things work before cranking the heat up. Graphically this game is really solid on the NES with plenty of quirks and tricks used to give the game some pizazz. It's definitely more of an A-list Rare NES title that contrasts from the licensed shovelware they occasionally made (likely to fund the projects they actually wanted to make like this)
It is still quite a spicy game, so those that are averse to getting your shit kicked in will have a bad time. Honestly the difficulty felt most similar to like middle-echelon Mario Maker levels. Like, the kind of stuff made by someone who is clearly good at games but not like insane person kaizo shit nawsay? Considering the fact that Rare has mentioned their lead designers being good at games and that a lot of difficult NES games are usually products of the developers also being the playtesters, essentially tuning their games for themselves rather than their players and accidentally cranking it up a bit too much, that's likely why this game is how it is. I had to use every trick the US version of the game could allow to finish this; I used the warps to skip levels 2, 4, and 7 while also alternating both players every continue with down+A+B held to get the most possible lives and continues the game offers, and even then I made it out on my last continue. Against games like this though, you really gotta get every leg up on the game that you can ngl, a clear is a clear. The hardest part for sure was the third rat in Rat Race, if you can pass that point you have enough skills to make it through the rest imo. Clinger Winger or whatever tf it was called was a cakewalk ngl, I heard the horror stories about that level and was surprised when I cleared the speeder section on my first attempt. This game is certainly a hot one, but idk it's definitely not the hardest game ever made. I don't even think it's the hardest game I've played, I had way more struggles with getting through stuff like Ninja Gaiden Sigma and God Hand (to their detriment, mind you. Overly hard games suck imo) than with this. The game is still pretty masochist-core, don't get me wrong, but if it was really the hardest game ever, I wouldn't have been able to get here in the first place. A must-play for pain-seekers, but definitely take-it-or-leave-it for the normal folk out there.
I've seen the web lambast this game endlessly as the game has been showered with the title of "hardest game of all time" from all sorts of people and places on the internet. For years I had just assumed that this would be a game that I would never even think to pass the infamous Turbo Tunnels, much less actually see the ending. It was only when I saw this game cleared on a two-part Game Center CX playthrough when the illusion of this game being impossibly difficult faded. In fact, it looked like a fun kind of challenge! I figured that if Arino could beat this game, so could I, and as such I put it on the "games-to-stream" backburner until the time had come. And boy, did the time come. Roughly 9 hours of grinding later, here we are.
I think the main reason why this game sticks out so much as being so nightmarishly difficult is mostly due to how outwardly hostile the games design tends to be. Memorizing the levels and becoming intimately familiar with them through repetition (and a little bit of trial and error) is the key to being able to progress. Each level honestly stands out from one another well enough to make climbing back to where you were before at every game over not TOO painful in the grand scheme of things. Each of the 12 levels usually has some kind of gimmick or new mechanic to grapple with, like the ropes in stage 2, the turbo tunnels in 3, ice in 4, surfing in 5, snakes in 6, etc etc. Honestly the game does a solid job introducing the mechanics to let you know how things work before cranking the heat up. Graphically this game is really solid on the NES with plenty of quirks and tricks used to give the game some pizazz. It's definitely more of an A-list Rare NES title that contrasts from the licensed shovelware they occasionally made (likely to fund the projects they actually wanted to make like this)
It is still quite a spicy game, so those that are averse to getting your shit kicked in will have a bad time. Honestly the difficulty felt most similar to like middle-echelon Mario Maker levels. Like, the kind of stuff made by someone who is clearly good at games but not like insane person kaizo shit nawsay? Considering the fact that Rare has mentioned their lead designers being good at games and that a lot of difficult NES games are usually products of the developers also being the playtesters, essentially tuning their games for themselves rather than their players and accidentally cranking it up a bit too much, that's likely why this game is how it is. I had to use every trick the US version of the game could allow to finish this; I used the warps to skip levels 2, 4, and 7 while also alternating both players every continue with down+A+B held to get the most possible lives and continues the game offers, and even then I made it out on my last continue. Against games like this though, you really gotta get every leg up on the game that you can ngl, a clear is a clear. The hardest part for sure was the third rat in Rat Race, if you can pass that point you have enough skills to make it through the rest imo. Clinger Winger or whatever tf it was called was a cakewalk ngl, I heard the horror stories about that level and was surprised when I cleared the speeder section on my first attempt. This game is certainly a hot one, but idk it's definitely not the hardest game ever made. I don't even think it's the hardest game I've played, I had way more struggles with getting through stuff like Ninja Gaiden Sigma and God Hand (to their detriment, mind you. Overly hard games suck imo) than with this. The game is still pretty masochist-core, don't get me wrong, but if it was really the hardest game ever, I wouldn't have been able to get here in the first place. A must-play for pain-seekers, but definitely take-it-or-leave-it for the normal folk out there.
naw man i can't think of any reason why you should play this, especially over the much superior Basketball that came out much earlier. Like, I respect the attempt to innovate by making it be 2v2s instead of 1v1s, the visuals look more like a basketball court instead of the surface of mars, and you can hear the crowd cheer every time you score, but the added complexity of the team aspect of the game really hurts more than it helps.
The court is like split into two horizontal rows that each team player resides in, and you control them at the same time. You can't have the lower player go in the upper half and the upper player can't go in the lower half, it's like theres an invisible barrier that separates your two players. If the ball lands in the middle of the court, is it in the upper or lower half? Who knows! There's also the added problem of the pass and shoot buttons being bound to the singular button on the joystick, so it's very easy to do one action when you were intending to do the other. Awesome! The CPU obviously has none of these problems, and will absolutely smoke you no matter what difficulty settings you might have the game set to. I would say this might be fun with another player as both people are bound to the same control handicaps, but you know what else is more fun either by yourself or with a friend? REGULAR BASKETBALL PLAY THAT INSTEAD THAT GAME OWNS!!! if this is what real sports are I only care about fake sports.
luckily it's very unlikely you could be in a situation where you could only be able to play this and not regular basketball given the fact that this game was never actually released and as such the only way to play it is through compilation titles, flashcarts, or emulation. As far as I can tell, every title that features this game has the superior regular basketball as an option as well with the one exception being... Atari 50?!?!? What's up with that??
The court is like split into two horizontal rows that each team player resides in, and you control them at the same time. You can't have the lower player go in the upper half and the upper player can't go in the lower half, it's like theres an invisible barrier that separates your two players. If the ball lands in the middle of the court, is it in the upper or lower half? Who knows! There's also the added problem of the pass and shoot buttons being bound to the singular button on the joystick, so it's very easy to do one action when you were intending to do the other. Awesome! The CPU obviously has none of these problems, and will absolutely smoke you no matter what difficulty settings you might have the game set to. I would say this might be fun with another player as both people are bound to the same control handicaps, but you know what else is more fun either by yourself or with a friend? REGULAR BASKETBALL PLAY THAT INSTEAD THAT GAME OWNS!!! if this is what real sports are I only care about fake sports.
luckily it's very unlikely you could be in a situation where you could only be able to play this and not regular basketball given the fact that this game was never actually released and as such the only way to play it is through compilation titles, flashcarts, or emulation. As far as I can tell, every title that features this game has the superior regular basketball as an option as well with the one exception being... Atari 50?!?!? What's up with that??
1983
Neat idea for a game tbh. It's like a twist on breakout where there's your typical rows of bricks but instead of being the paddle under the brick row breaking the blocks with a ball, you are on the blocks side this time around and are trying to replenish the rows with blocks as the computer breaks through them from underneath. If a large enough hole is made that the computer can suck you out of your blocky fortress, then you lose. There's also a 2 player mode where one player gets to be the pig and the other player gets to be the wolf, but I haven't been able to try that mode out due to being a solitary gamer.
I get that they were going for a three little pigs theme by having the walls be made out of bricks plus each pig works as a way to give the player 3 lives, but it doesn't really look like Bigelow B. Wolf is actually blowing away bricks and sucking out the pigs as much as he's some sort of frog-wolf using his long tongue to eat the bricks and pigs.
The gameplay has the same frenetic energy as like having to put tracks over a constantly accelerating train to prevent it from crashing. The main way to stay alive and score well is just to keep pace with placing blocks right when the wolf destroys them, which is certainly easier said than done and eventually becomes impossible as you need to keep moving back to grab more bricks. I'd definitely suggest playing this on the B difficulty where you can drop the bricks from anywhere because on the A difficulty where you have to run up and down there's actually no hope of ever keeping pace with the wolf and you will die VERY quickly. I'd also suggest keeping an alternate controller like a genesis or looser aftermarket controller around because the constant erratic movement you gotta do does not mix well with the standard 2600 joystick. Supposedly if you can surpass 25000 points and send proof to Activision (supposedly on either difficulty, they don't really mention), you get to be an honorary Activision Oinker, complete with commemorative badge. I got around 45k points on my first attempt with B difficulty (A difficulty I died around like the 2k mark I think), so I better be an honorary Oinker, goddamnit. Microsoft better be using some of those 75 billion dollars to make more badges for people so help me god.
I get that they were going for a three little pigs theme by having the walls be made out of bricks plus each pig works as a way to give the player 3 lives, but it doesn't really look like Bigelow B. Wolf is actually blowing away bricks and sucking out the pigs as much as he's some sort of frog-wolf using his long tongue to eat the bricks and pigs.
The gameplay has the same frenetic energy as like having to put tracks over a constantly accelerating train to prevent it from crashing. The main way to stay alive and score well is just to keep pace with placing blocks right when the wolf destroys them, which is certainly easier said than done and eventually becomes impossible as you need to keep moving back to grab more bricks. I'd definitely suggest playing this on the B difficulty where you can drop the bricks from anywhere because on the A difficulty where you have to run up and down there's actually no hope of ever keeping pace with the wolf and you will die VERY quickly. I'd also suggest keeping an alternate controller like a genesis or looser aftermarket controller around because the constant erratic movement you gotta do does not mix well with the standard 2600 joystick. Supposedly if you can surpass 25000 points and send proof to Activision (supposedly on either difficulty, they don't really mention), you get to be an honorary Activision Oinker, complete with commemorative badge. I got around 45k points on my first attempt with B difficulty (A difficulty I died around like the 2k mark I think), so I better be an honorary Oinker, goddamnit. Microsoft better be using some of those 75 billion dollars to make more badges for people so help me god.
1978
Step aside, 2K.
It's Purple Guy vs. Kermit the Frog at a no-holds-barred 1v1 on Planet Basketball, winner takes all. It's incredibly simple, you move and shoot with the stick and button, and all you need to do is run into the ball to steal it from your opponent. You can hold the button down with the ball to aim it at the cost of standing in place, leaving yourself open to stealing, and the game just becomes this frantic scramble to get the ball and throw it in the hoop ASAP before you get cornered and the ball stolen. I've played this occasionally in the past with other people and it's pretty consistently gotten good times out of the multiplayer just for how goddamn simple and goofy the core gameplay is.
I honestly thought this game was like combat in that it was multiplayer only for the longest time, but lo and behold, I found out today that there is indeed a singleplayer mode where the AI plays as Kermit. All I can say is goddamn can this frog ball. Seriously, the computer opponent is no joke, as it has one sole purpose in life; to make sure the ball goes in the hoop under any means necessary. This mfer dodges and weaves around you to get net using constant rapid diagonal movements, and he very rarely ever misses any shots he takes so you gotta just rush his ass and hope that you can steal the ball in the tiny window when he's trying to shoot. Conversely, if you have the ball, you better believe this guy is gonna be on you to steal your ball and IMMEDIATELY go after getting more points before you can even process what's happened. I genuinely wasn't expecting my ass to get clapped so hard by an Atari 2600, but I perservered. The manual states that there's some kind of dynamic AI at play, where the closer the game, the greater Kermit's lust for points becomes. It states that if you can win by a lead of over 4 points, you are a "superior player", and I can confirm that yeah that about sums it up alright. I had to remove my power limiters and do the ol' plug-a-genesis-controller-in-the-atari trick so that I could even keep up with the CPU since dear god the constant diagonals the CPU makes felt deliberately planned in order to make it as difficult as possible to chase with the real Atari joystick. (how the hell do you use that thing comfortably???)
I have learned some tricks up my sleeve though. The top right corner of the court is a safe space that Kermit will just kinda hover around you but not actually steal the ball from you, so if you want to stand a chance, aim for shooting from up there. Conversely, if both players get close enough with the ball, it will erratically vibrate between both players like an atomic particle as both players exist in a state of stealing the ball. Sometimes you can get the AI to be stuck like that in the bottom right corner, so an easy way to become a certified Superior Player is to get an early point lead and then sacrifice Purple Guy to seal away the evil aggression of Kermit the frog by trapping them both through the power of Atomic Balling. I have also discovered that even though the CPU is controlling the second player, pressing the button on Player 2 will still make them jump anyways so you can also use this psychokinetic power to force Kermit to jump against his will, slowing him down so you can make some easy shots. If real basketball had strats like this, I'd be watching ESPN like a drug addict.
It's simple, it's dumb fun, it's fucking basketball on atari. The golden age of basketball games began and ended here for all I'm concerned. Even when times up and the game is over as the system rotates around the attract colors for Planet Basketball, you can keep playing either with a friend or against the AI like nothing changed, there just won't be any points that count. No other basketball game is going to be as dedicated towards balling eternally as this one. If you have the means to do so, definitely give this a try (preferably with a friend). atari games rule
It's Purple Guy vs. Kermit the Frog at a no-holds-barred 1v1 on Planet Basketball, winner takes all. It's incredibly simple, you move and shoot with the stick and button, and all you need to do is run into the ball to steal it from your opponent. You can hold the button down with the ball to aim it at the cost of standing in place, leaving yourself open to stealing, and the game just becomes this frantic scramble to get the ball and throw it in the hoop ASAP before you get cornered and the ball stolen. I've played this occasionally in the past with other people and it's pretty consistently gotten good times out of the multiplayer just for how goddamn simple and goofy the core gameplay is.
I honestly thought this game was like combat in that it was multiplayer only for the longest time, but lo and behold, I found out today that there is indeed a singleplayer mode where the AI plays as Kermit. All I can say is goddamn can this frog ball. Seriously, the computer opponent is no joke, as it has one sole purpose in life; to make sure the ball goes in the hoop under any means necessary. This mfer dodges and weaves around you to get net using constant rapid diagonal movements, and he very rarely ever misses any shots he takes so you gotta just rush his ass and hope that you can steal the ball in the tiny window when he's trying to shoot. Conversely, if you have the ball, you better believe this guy is gonna be on you to steal your ball and IMMEDIATELY go after getting more points before you can even process what's happened. I genuinely wasn't expecting my ass to get clapped so hard by an Atari 2600, but I perservered. The manual states that there's some kind of dynamic AI at play, where the closer the game, the greater Kermit's lust for points becomes. It states that if you can win by a lead of over 4 points, you are a "superior player", and I can confirm that yeah that about sums it up alright. I had to remove my power limiters and do the ol' plug-a-genesis-controller-in-the-atari trick so that I could even keep up with the CPU since dear god the constant diagonals the CPU makes felt deliberately planned in order to make it as difficult as possible to chase with the real Atari joystick. (how the hell do you use that thing comfortably???)
I have learned some tricks up my sleeve though. The top right corner of the court is a safe space that Kermit will just kinda hover around you but not actually steal the ball from you, so if you want to stand a chance, aim for shooting from up there. Conversely, if both players get close enough with the ball, it will erratically vibrate between both players like an atomic particle as both players exist in a state of stealing the ball. Sometimes you can get the AI to be stuck like that in the bottom right corner, so an easy way to become a certified Superior Player is to get an early point lead and then sacrifice Purple Guy to seal away the evil aggression of Kermit the frog by trapping them both through the power of Atomic Balling. I have also discovered that even though the CPU is controlling the second player, pressing the button on Player 2 will still make them jump anyways so you can also use this psychokinetic power to force Kermit to jump against his will, slowing him down so you can make some easy shots. If real basketball had strats like this, I'd be watching ESPN like a drug addict.
It's simple, it's dumb fun, it's fucking basketball on atari. The golden age of basketball games began and ended here for all I'm concerned. Even when times up and the game is over as the system rotates around the attract colors for Planet Basketball, you can keep playing either with a friend or against the AI like nothing changed, there just won't be any points that count. No other basketball game is going to be as dedicated towards balling eternally as this one. If you have the means to do so, definitely give this a try (preferably with a friend). atari games rule