Super Breakout for Atari 2600 is one of the best adaptations of the classic block-breaker out there — and much more fun than the arcade version due to its far more reasonably sized paddles!
It also plays host to a spectacularly overblown and completely unnecessary narrative setup. Because when you’re knocking bricks out of a wall, what you really need is some sort of narrative motivation, right?
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It’s the Olympics! Given that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are… somewhat lacking in atmosphere due to understandable circumstances, let’s take a look back at an Olympic games where there were actually people watching.
Eurocom’s Beijing 2008, published by Sega, is an excellent multisports game with a surprisingly substantial offering for the solo player. There’s a ton of variety, there’s character progression and there’s some solid TV-style presentation. If you’re after a fun Olympics game for an older platform, this is well worth your time.
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Time for something a bit different today! The Atari ST plays host to a variety of excellent applications as well as games, many of which are still well worth your time today. So let’s take a look at some of them every so often!
Quartet is a four-channel sample sequencer and synthesiser by Microdeal. It was well-regarded for its ease of use and flexibility, and was used by a wide variety of composers in both the commercial and demo scenes. It’s not hard to see why — a little effort can produce some surprisingly excellent results that are a far cry from the ST’s usual pitiful warblings!
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The Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics may be going on at the time of writing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy some winter sports action from 33 years ago!
Tynesoft’s Winter Olympiad ’88 was a well-regarded release for Atari 8-bit despite its relatively limited number of playable events. Despite releasing Summer Games on the Atari 8-bit, Epyx had decided to eschew the platform for its follow-up Winter Games, so many critics and consumers alike saw Winter Olympiad ’88 as a more than acceptable substitute.
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People complain these days when a sequel is too similar to its predecessor.
Count yourself lucky you didn’t fall for Atari’s 1988 release of Super Baseball, then, which is actually just a very slightly tweaked version of RealSports Baseball from the early ’80s. Complete with all the flaws of that original version, plus a pretty much impenetrable difficulty wall in single-player mode.
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The Atari ST version of Parasol Stars may have been perfectly competent, but if you want the true experience, you should go back to where it all began: the PC Engine version.
Yes, unlike the previous two games in the Bubble Bobble series, Parasol Stars actually originated on a home platform. And that original PC Engine version of this game — available as one of the many excellent games on the PC Engine Mini — is the best way to enjoy this wonderful game. So let’s do just that!
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A lot of people forget that there’s a third Bubble Bobble game — or, as this port puts it, a second Rainbow Islands game.
But Parasol Stars from Taito is very much a thing that exists — and moreover, it got a very competent port to Atari ST thanks to Ocean Software. While the PC Engine original may be a bit smoother and slicker than this one, this is certainly not a bad effort considering how it’s running on general-purpose rather than gaming-specialist hardware.
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I’ve never really seen the point of slot machine games. You don’t win anything, you don’t risk anything and the level of interaction between you and the game is minimal at best.
That didn’t stop lots of developers from putting them out in the early days of home computing, though — and in the grand scheme of things, Mastertronic and Sculptured Software’s Vegas Jackpot for Atari 8-bit is probably one of the better ones. There’s still very little reason to spend your time on this today though!
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Submarine games seem to have fallen somewhat out of favour in recent years, but there were quite a lot of them throughout the ’80s and early ’90s.
The Atari 2600’s attempt to capture the excitement of this subgenre of naval combat came in the form of Submarine Commander, a Sears-exclusive release that cast players in the role of… well, of a submarine commander. How long can you survive against the relentless assault of ships that don’t seem to be going anywhere?
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Every console platform has its mascot. Sonic has Sega, Nintendo has Mario, Sony has… sad murderous lesbians, I guess.
The PC Engine’s mascot for quite some time was Bonk, also known as PC Genjin or PC Kid. He starred in a number of different games, each of which was quite different from the last. His first adventure, seen here, was a solid and creative platformer whose slightly unsettling aesthetic has been quite influential over the years!
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