An all-time classic for Atari 8-bit today, from the man who would go on to give us the Civilization series: it’s Sid Meier’s F-15 Strike Eagle!
This was one of the earlier military flight sims out there, and set a lot of conventions in place for future titles in the genre. At the same time, it managed to maintain a healthy degree of arcade-style accessibility, making it a pleasure to play whether you were a true propellerhead or someone just craving a bit of explosive action.
The fact that the Atari 2600 was still alive and kicking at the end of the 1980s is nothing short of astonishing… and the ambition of some developers at the time was admirable.
Secret Quest, a very late release for the platform, was an attempt to provide an action-adventure experience similar to Nintendo’s classic The Legend of Zelda on the 2600. Far from being a straight clone, however, it actually ends up being an interesting and enjoyable game in its own right.
Yep, yep, we’re definitely scraping the barrel a bit for “Y” games on Atari ST now. There are a lot of public domain adaptations of Yahtzee left to go… and not a lot else. So I hope you like dice.
As adaptations of the classic “poker dice” game go, the one we’re looking at today is perfectly competent, particularly when considering it was freely distributed. It would have been nice to see a multiplayer option and perhaps some more fancy bells and whistles, but as a means of enjoying Yahtzee solo on your computer, it does the job perfectly well!
Shoot ’em ups arguably didn’t really enjoy their golden age until the 16-bit home consoles, but that didn’t stop game developers for home computer platforms having a damn good crack at the genre.
The Extirpator for Atari 8-bit is an impressive example, featuring some slick parallax scrolling, some interesting enemy formations and a decent sense of structure. While there are areas that the genre refined considerably as the years went on, this is definitely a valiant effort for 1988.
Our exploration of Atari Flashback Classics continues with Sea Battle, a game originally intended for release on the Atari 2600 in the early ’80s, but which never saw the light of day until 2000.
Sea Battle, like many of the other M Network releases for the 2600, is a port of an Intellivision game, but by the time it was due for release the marketing people decided that a strategic game for two players only based around naval combat wasn’t the most marketable thing in the world, so they shelved it.
The unusually named XOR from Atari promises a game with no random elements, and a focus on logical thinking rather than twitch reflexes.
One could also describe it, as someone did to me the other day, as a curious blend of Boulder Dash and heraldry, in which the main obstacles to your success will be fish and chickens. Yes, it’s a rather odd game — but if you enjoy some tricky puzzles it’s worth a look!
While The Temple of Apshai is the most well-known of Epyx’s “Dunjonquest” games, there were actually quite a few games released under this banner.
Not all of them were massive, sprawling affairs intended to be played over the long-term, either. The Datestones of Ryn is a great example of this, offering a short, twenty-minute quest with a fixed player character and a rather arcadey focus on high scores and replayability.
Back in the early ’90s, people were just getting to grips with falling block puzzlers such as Tetris and its numerous imitators.
Which makes it quite a shame that Save Mary, an interesting and original twist on the formula, never made it to release back in the day — because it’s a really fun puzzler. Still, at least we can enjoy it today as part of Atari Flashback Classics!
The public domain and shareware sector of the 8- and 16-bit era was often a great place to find unofficial adaptations of popular board, card and TV game show formulae.
Today’s Atari ST game is a great example of this, providing a solid (if graphically unremarkable) adaptation of the classic game show Wheel of Fortune for two or three players — and including all the tools you need to build your own custom puzzles, too.
We take them for granted today, but scrolling platformers were quite an unusual sight back in the early ’80s.
One fun example is Cosmi’s Caverns of Khafka, a game developed by Aztec Challenge creator Robert T. Bonifacio. While the game is by no means perfect — it has some fairly severe issues with collision detection at times! — it’s a fun treasure-huntin’ adventure that is worth a play or two.
