Tag Archives: Atari A to Z

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Maze Craze

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If you’ve ever called your local bobby to come and sort out some youths in your neck of the woods, only for them to turn up four hours later well after they were actually needed, Maze Craze may provide some explanation.

Apparently coppers like nothing more than getting lost inside randomly generated city blocks with varying degrees of invisibility, desperate to make their way to the exit on the eastern edge of the district before the robbers they’re supposed to be catching actually catch them instead.

Okay, Maze Craze doesn’t make a ton of sense, but since when has that mattered for Atari 2600 games? Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Atari A to Z: Yogi’s Great Escape

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Yogi Bear is, it is said, smarter than the average bear. He was certainly smart enough to find himself in several licensed games for a variety of home computer platforms in the early ’90s.

Here’s the Atari 8-bit version of Yogi’s Great Escape, a platform game that we’ve previously seen on the Atari ST A to Z series already. While technically inferior, the 8-bit version actually plays quite a bit better, with tight controls and clear mechanics that make it surprisingly enjoyable to play.

Enjoy the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Atari ST A to Z: Rana Rama

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Rana Rama is one of those games that most ST owners probably played at some point, since it was distributed as part of the “Super Pack” bundle of software with new STs in 1988. And from there, the rampant piracy of the period meant that the disks of the Super Pack tended to find their way into other people’s hands, too!

It’s an interesting game, though, and had quite an influence on a number of subsequent developers. Notably, its use of “fog of war” to gradually reveal rooms as you enter them inspired Simon Phipps to adopt a similar approach when developing his exploration-centric platformer Switchblade for Core Design.

There’s also some very interesting mechanics going on under the hood. Watch me try and figure things out in the video below — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z: Xirius Defect XXL

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In the mood for a good puzzle? Well, fire up the ol’ Atari 8-bit because I’ve got a right cracker for you today.

Xirius Defect XXL is, as the name suggests, an expanded version of Xirius Defect, a modern Atari 8-bit title developed for the ABBUC software competition. This newer version adds a bunch of new levels, tightens up the mechanics (and the explanations thereof) and is an altogether polished package for anyone to enjoy.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari ST A to Z: Quadron

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So you reckon you’re a Tetris pro, hmm? Well, how would you manage if required to play two overlapping games of Tetris at the same time?

That’s the premise behind public domain release (and game development library showcase) Quadron, a game which takes the classic falling-block action of Tetris into a whole other dimension… and perhaps in not quite the way you might have expected it to!

It’s a mind-frying challenge, to be sure, but there’s definitely fun to be had here if you want to take your puzzling to the next level. Check out the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Home Run

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I live in a country where there have, for most of my life, been fairly strict rules in place saying that advertisers should advertise their own products rather than say how shit their competitors are.

It’s for this reason I always find it rather amusing when I come across titles like Home Run, and Intellivision’s rather mean-spirited attempts to make this game look as crap as possible next to their baseball game.

I mean, okay, Home Run is exceedingly simplistic… but as I’ve discovered a few times previously on this series, that can actually make sports games that I’d otherwise baulk at exploring rather more fun than expected! See the evidence in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Atari A to Z: Vicky

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There were two girls called Vicky in my tutor group at secondary school. One was short and angry, and the other was pretty chill most of the time. My best friend at the time “went out” with the chill one. This game isn’t about either of them.

Instead, it’s about a Viking warrior descending into the underworld to do… something or other involving a bunch of objects that have been scattered around a randomly generated maze. Sadly, it’s all in Polish so that’s about all I can tell you about the context of what’s going on — but it has a very nice intro sequence and is a fun exploration-centric game that doesn’t require any knowledge of Eastern European languages beyond said intro!

Enjoy my experiences in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Atari A to Z: Unicum

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The type-in listing scene for 8-bit home computers gave us some genuinely excellent games — with some even rivalling commercially released counterparts.

Such is the case with the unusually named Unicum, a take on the Arkanoid-style block-breaking formula that many regard as significantly superior to the official port of Taito’s classic to Atari 8-bit.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, “Unicum” is apparently a Hungarian liqueur, though whether or not that actually has anything to do with this game is anyone’s guess. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube for more valuable facts about international culture!

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Haunted House

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It’s time to once again enter the world of survival horror with one of the earliest examples of the genre: Atari’s Haunted House.

Haunted House can be seen as an evolution of the Adventure formula in that it involves navigating a preset map, manipulating objects and avoiding enemies. The twist this time around is that you’re in a spooky old mansion full of locked doors, tarantulas and a rather annoyed old ghost. Oh, and it’s dark. Very dark. Except on the first difficulty level, but only babies play Game 1 on Haunted House.

Check out the action in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari ST A to Z: No Second Prize

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It was an exciting time when racing games moved from sprite-based “fake 3D” visuals to full polygonal 3D — and one gets the distinct impression that a lot of developers found the changeover a blessing, too.

For one, we started to see lots more attempts to simulate the experience of racing things other than cars; and many of these developers elected to explore a more “sim-like” approach, too, taking some cues from the well-established flight simulation genre.

One fine example that I hadn’t come across previously is No Second Prize, an impressively speedy motorcycle racing game. Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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