Atari – Games & Tech with the Sarkologist

Publisher: Nintendo

Designer: Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi

Type: Platform

Platform: Atari 2600

Release Date: 1983

Rating:

Yeah, I really had to comment on how bad the Atari 2600 games really looked, especially since it does happen to be an 8-bit machine, and the games that appeared on other 8 bit machines (cough, c64, cough) were so much better looking. Still, I guess we are still looking at the really early days of the video game era so, well, I guess we can’t expect too much to come from these home machines.

Yet, this game certainly is nothing that you would expect to come from the Mario franchise. All you seem to do is to kill nasties and not even that. There are like three platforms and some nasties appear on them (as well as other rather, well, blocky, objects that I have no idea what they are supposed to be, but they didn’t kill me so I guess that is alright) and you have to knock them off the platforms by jumping into them from underneath, and then jumping onto the platform and kicking them off.

Actually, I do vaguely remember these old handhold games that we would get when we were kids (or should I say other kids would get because my parents never saw the point in forking out money for such things – so was the deprived childhood that I had – and I will point to the fact that that phrase is dripping with sarcasm) and this game was among them. I’m not going to go into details of these games because, well, I’m talking about Mario Bros from the Atari 2600.

Look, the game wasn’t bad, graphics aside, and it wasn’t too hard either. However, I certainly would be expecting anything on the level of other games from the period though, although this was a very, very popular machine.

Anyway, I can refer you to the Wikipedia article for more information on the game, and you can also go to a site called Moby Games, which also has a bit of a write up.

Pacman

Publisher: Atari Inc

Designer: Atari Inc

Type: Maze

Platform: Atari 2600

Release Date: 1982

Rating:

I probably shouldn’t be too harsh on the Atari 2600 considering that it not only is an 8-bit machine, but it was also really really popular. The most common joysticks that I found when I was a kid happened to be the Atari joysticks, not that they were good mind you. In fact, they were pretty bad, and quite prone to breaking. However, let us consider this game, which ironically was the most popular game on the machine.

However, imagine driving a car when your breaks don’t work (not that I would encourage you to test it out because you are likely to cause more damage than to). Well, that is what it was like playing this game.

Honestly, I found that once I sent Pacman in a direction it was really, really hard turning corners because, well, he would just go, and go, and then run into a ghost.

Yeah, controlling this game was an absolute nightmare. Sure, maybe it was designed that way to make the game a little harder, not that I can recall playing it on any other machines, at least in the not too distant past. However, I did attempt to play this game, and it was a nightmare, even if it was simply because I couldn’t make sharp turns, stop, or avoid the ghosts.

Anyway, you can find more about this version of Pacman on Wikipedia, and there is also an entry on Pacman’s very own wiki page. Actually, as a point of note, if you type Pacman into Google, you will find a playable Pacman Google doodle.