Tag Archives: Atari Flashback Classics

Atari A to Z Flashback: RealSports Baseball

We’re back once again with the RealSports series, and this time we’re looking at RealSports Baseball for the Atari 5200.

While the Atari 2600 version of RealSports Baseball really struggled to provide a convincing game, particularly when played against a computer-controlled opponent, the Atari 5200 fares much better in this regard, offering the potential for a much more complex and interesting game without sacrificing accessibility and immediacy. Plus there’s digitised speech! Who’d have thought it?

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

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: RealSports Baseball

The time I’ve been dreading is finally here — it’s time to run the RealSports gauntlet, with a variety of different sports games for both Atari 2600 and Atari 5200.

To be fair, I’ve actually had way more fun with the sports games in Atari Flashback Classics than I ever thought I would, and part of that is down to the fact that most of them have been designed as fun video games rather than accurate adaptations of the sports. Does RealSports Baseball for the Atari 2600 live up to that description? Well, only one way to find out.

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

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Radar Lock

It is a ballsy developer who tries to recreate the After Burner experience on a machine as humble as the Atari 2600. But Doug Neubauer was nothing if not ballsy.

Radar Lock made use of the same engine he had developed for Star Raiders follow-up Solaris, but transplanted the action from the black void of space to the blue skies of Earth. Radar Lock also ditched the strategic adventure aspect of Solaris in favour of something a little more arcadey, and is a well-regarded game from the latter years of the 2600.

Check it out in the video below — including my repeated failed attempts to understand what the manual is quite clearly telling me — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Race

Of all the genres that have been with us since the earliest days of the medium, racing games have probably been through the most significant changes.

There’s still an undeniable appeal to classic single-screen top-down affairs, though, particularly when they control as elegantly as Race (aka Indy 500) for Atari 2600 does. Originally making use of a custom “Driving Controller” and today mapping excellently to the analogue sticks on our standard joypads, Race remains a fine way to while away a few minutes, whether you’re by yourself or in the company of a friend.

Check out the solo experience in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Quadrun

It’s fun times four with Quadrun, which is one of the rarer Atari 2600 games thanks to its original status as a mail order-only game for Atari Club members.

It’s a shame this didn’t get a wider release, because it’s an intriguing, unusual, experimental and rather fun game once you get your head around its core mechanics, which see you moving around four distinct quadrants of a playfield to dispatch enemies and rescue “Runts” from the dreaded electric toaster grids.

Check it out in the video below, and please subscribe on YouTube for more.

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Pong Sports

Are you ready for the Video Olympics? Because that’s what we’re playing today!

Yes, today’s game from Atari Flashback Classicsknown as both Pong Sports and Video Olympics depending on where you bought it and from whom, offers an array of rough approximations of sports based on Pong mechanics. It’s a simple set of games and there’s almost nothing here if you’re a solo player, but if you’ve got a friend or three to play with there’s a lot of fun to be had here.

Enjoy the competition between me and my wife in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Outlaw

It’s time for the original deathmatch! Outlaw was one of the first games available for the Atari 2600, and it remains a beloved competitive multiplayer game today.

Unlike its stablemate Combat, Outlaw actually also offers a single-player mode. Okay, it’s not a particularly good single-player mode, but at least you can get in a bit of target practice by yourself — something which you definitely couldn’t do in Combat. And, of course, the two-player funtimes still hold up brilliantly today.

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

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Off the Wall

As we’ve previously seen a few times on this series, the Atari 2600 managed to stick around for an astonishingly long time, particularly considering how quickly gaming technology was evolving in the early days.

From about 1986 onwards, Atari decided to try and give the platform a “second wind” by releasing a variety of new games for it. Some of these were developed by Nolan Bushnell’s studio Axlon — and a good example is today’s game, Off the Wall. It’s a take on Breakout with lovely colourful graphics, a few interesting twists on the standard block-breaking gameplay, and a bunch of cool power-ups to collect.

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

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Night Driver

Legend has it that some people will drive all night just to buy you some shoes. Some other people will drive through the night just to try and score as many points as possible.

In Night Driver for Atari 2600, you’re presented with the opportunity to do the latter in one of the earliest examples of the “vanishing point” racer being adapted to a home console. While obviously dated by modern standards — this originally came out in 1980, adapting an arcade game from 1976 — there are some interesting ideas in this one, and if you let it get its hooks in it can be surprisingly addictive!

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

header-4165360

Atari A to Z Flashback: Motorodeo

The Atari 2600 had such a long lifespan that there is a huge difference between games that came out in its early days and those which appeared in its twilight years.

Motorodeo is one of the last games to be officially released for the platform, and it’s an ambitious affair, to be sure. It’s got a rough approximation of physics, it’s got scrolling levels — it’s even got split-screen multiplayer, which was an unusual sight on the 2600.

Some might argue it’s trying to do a little too much for the ageing platform, but it’s certainly a valiant effort if nothing else. Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

header-4165360