Tag Archives: Atari A to Z

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Atari A to Z: Typo Attack

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Want to practice your typing skills? There were a bunch of different ways to do that back in the Atari 8-bit era, with one of the most fun being Typo Attack.

Typo Attack is one of several success stories that stemmed from the Atari Program Exchange, where independent, amateur developers could submit their work to Atari, who would publish and distribute it and pay the creators royalties. In several cases, the creators of APX titles went on to become full-time Atari employees — or, at the very least, their games became “official” releases.

Typo Attack is an example of the latter. Enjoy the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Hangman

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The early days of the 2600 consisted of developers trying to figure out what a “video game” really was.

A significant part of this experimental period consisted of adaptations of simple board, card and parlour games. Some proved to work well in the digital format; others less so.

Hangman? I’ll let you be the judge. Enjoy the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z: Rainbow Walker

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Today we pay another visit to a beloved publisher of the Atari 8-bit days: Synapse Software — and one of the company’s most well-regarded games.

Rainbow Walker isn’t an especially original premise — it’s a Q*Bert-style game in which you have to hop on all the squares to change them to the correct colour — but the remarkable thing here is the incredibly slick presentation, featuring a gorgeous 3D effect, smooth movement and some fancy special effects. It’s not hard to see why the game is regarded as one of the finest in the Atari 8-bit’s library.

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

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Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Golf

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Ah, golf. The one sport I can get behind in that it involves minimal physical activity (aside from walking about a bit and occasionally giving a small ball a hefty thwack) and is mostly about being very quiet.

Video game adaptations of the game that spoiled many a good walk have been around for a long time, as it happens, with one of the earlier ones being Atari’s own simply named Golf for Atari 2600.

Let’s go play a round in the video below — meet me in the 19th hole and subscribe on YouTube when you’re done!

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Atari ST A to Z: Knicker-Bockers

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Now hold on a minute… something’s a little familiar here!

Yes indeed; we’ve previously seen Kirk Chaney’s Lock ‘n’ Chase-inspired maze puzzler on the 8-bit Atari A to Z series, but it turns out he also made an ST version! In fact, it’s not entirely clear which one came first, since they’re both dated around the same time.

Hit up the video below to check out how the 16-bit version compares to its 8-bit counterpart — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Frogs and Flies

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Hmm, doesn’t something seem a bit familiar about this Atari 2600 game…?

Of course! Frogs and Flies here is the game that Atari ripped off with Frog Pond. Only Frogs and Flies (or Frog Bog as it was known in its original Intellivision incarnation) is a much better game. It is still a ripoff in its own right, however — in this case of a very early Sega arcade title called, simply, Frogs.

Action-packed tongue fun in the video below! And, as always, don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z: Pole Position

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You don’t just play Pole Position — you FEEL it!

Thus ran the back-of-box blurb for the official Atari 8-bit conversion of Namco’s classic “vanishing point” racer — one of the most important, influential video games of all time. Said conversion was extremely solid, and a big hit for my whole family back in the day.

See how I get on with the world’s most explosive Formula 1 cars in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Around the Network

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Good afternoon everyone! How are you all doing? I’m sweltering in the predictably toasty British summer we’re currently experiencing — and to be honest, I’m actually quite grateful that we’re all supposed to be staying indoors, because I have no desire to go out in that!

I’ve just had a week off from the day job in order to rest, relax and get caught up on a few things. I haven’t got especially “ahead of schedule” on anything, but it’s been nice to just be able to take a fairly leisurely approach to everything and not have to wake up for pointless conference calls that hold precisely zero value to me.

All being well, next week I should have the Evercade retro gaming handheld in my, err, hands, so expect some in-depth, long-term coverage of that device and its numerous games from thereon. In the meantime, hit the jump to find out what you might have missed this week!

Continue reading Around the Network →

Videos

Atari A to Z: Octopus

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Nintendo’s Game & Watch series of LCD gaming handhelds might not be the first things you’d think needed converting to other platforms — but on the occasions when we have seen adaptations of them, they’ve always been a lot of fun.

It helps that their simple gameplay remains somewhat timeless and thus easy to update with slightly fancier presentation without having to make significant changes to the mechanics. So that’s exactly what a group of Polish developers did on 2011: they took on the second of the “Wide Screen” Game & Watch releases, and converted it to Atari 8-bit.

The result is a simple but immaculately presented and enormously addictive little game. I give you Octopus.

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Flag Capture

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Flag Capture is one of those games that looks laughably simple today, but there’s still some good, honest fun to be had — especially with two players.

The concept couldn’t really be much simpler — there’s a flag somewhere in a grid, and you have to find it using both directional and numerical clues. The interesting stuff this game does comes from how this simple concept is twisted in a few different ways — do you find the flag against the clock? Against another player with simultaneous movement? Against another player moving one at a time?

It’s probably not a game you’ll want to spend a lot of time with today, no, but it’s definitely worth a look for a quick bit of fun with a friend!

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