Today’s Evercade game is a cross-platform Atari title — it’s Desert Falcon, which was primarily designed for the Atari 7800, but which also got a 2600 version.
Desert Falcon is an isometric perspective shoot ’em up in which you take control of a majestic bird who has a real grudge against Sphinxes. By collecting combinations of hieroglyphs, you’ll be able to equip yourself with a variety of special powers — or, sometimes, hindrances — to make your task a little more interesting and unpredictable.
Today’s game hails from the latter days of the 2600, and was actually an Atari 7800 launch title.
For one reason or another, Atari 7800 games rarely make it onto these compilations of old Atari stuff — though the Evercade, coming later this year, corrects this oversight somewhat — so we tend to be stuck with the technically inferior Atari 2600 versions.
That said, even the 2600 version of Desert Falcon is an unusual, interesting shoot ’em up with some peculiar mechanics — so it’s well worth checking out.
The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.
