One of the oldest video games out there is the old “Star Trek” game that people used to play on mainframe computers. Like many other mainframe games, this was ported to home systems in various forms over the years.
One of the most surprising ports of this game came in the form of Stellar Track for the Atari 2600, a surprisingly impressive and full-featured version for a platform not best known for its text-based games. And if you enjoy boring people with retro game trivia at parties as much as I do, you can also tell them that this was one of just three 2600 games that was exclusively sold at Sears through their Tele-Games label.
If you like flashing lights, boy do I have the game for you. If you have a problem with flashing lights, maybe steer clear of this one.
Llamatron for Atari ST is one of the legendary Jeff Minter’s many takes on classic arcade games. This time around, he sets his sight on the classic Robotron, which was already a fairly psychedelic experience filled with pulsing colours and flashes of light, but Llamatron takes all that to a whole other level.
The Atari 8-bit community is still alive and well — and many of the folks involved with it are just as active today as they were back in the good old days!
One mainstay of the community for all these years is Paul Lay, who put together some fabulous machine code games as type-in listings for Page 6 magazine all those years ago, and is still putting out top-notch software for the platform today. Here’s Runner Bear, programmed with the intention of being the first Atari 8-bit game of 2020.
Sometimes, as we’ve seen numerous times on this series already, the simplest game concepts really do work quite well. And such is the case with Steeplechase for Atari 2600, one of three games to be exclusively distributed through Sears’ Tele-Games label.
Offering simple, easy to understand horse racing action for one to four players, Steeplechase is a fun game to bust out when you have friends over and can’t be arsed to explain anything that needs more than one button. This also makes it an ideal fit for those people in your life who claim not to “do” video games.
Do you like pixel-perfect jumping and dodgy hitboxes? Then you’re gonna love this pretty platformer from Millennium and Logotron!
This is one of those games that I remember seeing screenshots of back in the day and thinking it looked really cool thanks to its console-style visuals. Gameplay-wise, it’s not terrible — but be prepared for plenty of frustration as you battle your way through 50 screens of precision platforming!
Sometimes, you just want to raid a pyramid. Because it might have treasure in it, of course! That’s Yucatan Sam’s thinking, anyway; somewhere in Quintana Roo are riches beyond his wildest dreams.
Quest for Quintana Roo is a peculiar action adventure game in which you explore the aforementioned pyramid in the hopes of tracking down some mysterious stones that will open the way to great fortune. It’s become known as a somewhat obtuse game where it’s not super clear what you’re supposed to be doing, but it can be figured out with a bit of effort!
Mattel’s M Network label was set up so that Mattel, makers of the Intellivision, could have a piece of the Atari pie while also working on their own console.
Star Strike, released through the programme, is a port of one of the Intellivision’s most successful games; the original version sold around 800,000 copies in a single year, which is a huge amount for the time. Sadly, the 2600 version is… well, let’s just say it’s not quite as good as the source material.
While Ubi Soft is regarded as one of the big corporate publishers these days, with much of their work consisting of annualised, creatively bankrupt titles, back in their early days they were beloved for their creative releases.
Jupiter’s Masterdrive for Atari ST is a great example. It takes the top-down racing game and adds a futuristic spin — and the result is a highly playable game that is a lot of fun to challenge, even today. Just watch out for those boats — they’re tricky to handle!
Early takes on the racing game genre often seem quite primitive by today’s standards — but some of them still had some ambitious ideas.
Epyx’s Pitstop for Atari 8-bit is a good example. While its game structure is fundamentally flawed if playing solo and its racing action is nothing special, it was the first game to not only incorporate pit stops as part of a race, but also to allow you to take control of your pit crew and actually perform the pit stop yourself.
Before Star Raiders, there was Star Ship. And it’s… umm… not quite as good.
That said, when you consider this came out in 1977 — a time when no-one really knew what a “video game” was, let alone what a “first-person perspective space combat simulator” might look like — then they didn’t do all that bad of a job considering the limitations of the hardware.
