Tag Archives: retro games

Atari A to Z: Atari Basketball

Basketball is another sport I know next to nothing about, but I know more about it than I do baseball, in that I understand how to win and what the players on the court are actually supposed to do. Therefore, I am much better equipped to comment on Atari Basketball than I was for Atari Baseball.

Atari Basketball is a simple one-on-one affair in which you and another player or the computer square off against one another and try to score more baskets than the other. That’s… pretty much it, really, but there’s something about this game that makes it surprisingly addictive.

I think it’s the controls — the original arcade machine made use of a trackball controller, which translates quite well to modern analogue devices. I can imagine a game against another human opponent getting rather frantic when standing up against the original machine — but it’s still fun here when played on the sofa with a wireless controller, or even on the go with the Switch in handheld mode.

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Atari ST A to Z: Shanghai

Any time you undertake a project like this, you have to accept that some elements of it are just going to be less of a “spectator sport” than others.

Such is the case with today’s Atari ST game, the not-much-to-look-at-but-fun-to-play Shanghai by Activision, an adaptation of Mahjong Solitaire that makes use of the ST’s built-in graphical user interface GEM as the foundation of its aesthetic. This was not at all an unusual approach back in the day, and is akin to more modern PC games running on Windows 95 and beyond making use of a windowed interface and standardised Windows controls. Not the most beautiful look, no, but perfectly functional — and a lot more intuitive to those who perhaps don’t play a lot of games.

Compared to more recent adaptations of Mahjong Solitaire, Shanghai is fairly limited, but it nonetheless remains a pleasingly relaxing, Zen sort of experience. Once you figure out how to read the screen properly, that is…

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Atari A to Z: Xevious

“Are you devious enough to play Xevious”? Well yes, yes, I am, particularly if it’s an apparently unreleased prototype of indeterminate origin for my favourite 8-bit home computer system.

Namco’s Xevious is a defining influence in the shoot ’em up genre, so of course there were plenty of home ports for a variety of systems. One that never quite made it to market, however, was the Atari 5200 version, which was subsequently ported by some helpful soul to play on standard Atari 8-bit computers. (This was not a huge leap, really, because the 5200 was basically an Atari 8-bit with a horrible controller and no keyboard.)

While questionable as to whether or not it’s “finished”, it’s certainly a competent enough port that I had a good time with, so take a look!

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Taito Essentials: Volfied

Mid to late ’80s Taito were good at a lot of things, but one thing they were particularly good at was iterating on an established formula and bringing it more “up to date”.

Probably the most famous example of this is Arkanoid, a game which took the incredibly simple concept of Atari’s Breakout — hit ball with paddle to destroy bricks, repeat until screen clear or player displays sufficient incompetence — and enhanced it with “enemies”, powerups and a wide variety of different levels.

Well, as Arkanoid was to Breakout, so Volfied was to Qix. At least this time around they ripped off their own game…

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Around the Network

Another week over. Hooray, I guess?

To be absolutely frank, I haven’t had an amazing week in terms of general personal and mental wellbeing, but I won’t bore you with the details here — that’s what my exclusive daily blog for Patrons is for! (Among other things, obviously, please don’t get the impression it is nothing but Pete is Sad posts.) But, as always, my various ongoing projects have helped bring me a certain degree of joy and distract me from the general bleakness of late January that everyone seems to suffer under the weight of.

That’s a nice uplifting way to start, isn’t it? Let’s check out what you might have missed this week, and maybe we’ll all feel better afterwards.

Continue reading Around the Network

Atari A to Z Flashback: Atari Baseball

I don’t… really play sports games. I don’t generally like them, I don’t generally understand them and I am certainly not good at them.

However, I have discovered over the course of the last few years or so that late ’70s/early ’80s sports games are about on a level I can understand for the most part, since the games simply weren’t capable of playing host to complicated mechanics or rules that you’d have to understand the actual sport to be able to fathom.

My time with Atari Baseball may have ended in crushing defeat, but I didn’t hate the experience. In fact, I can see this being quite fun in its original double-sided incarnation, facing off against a fellow player across the top of the cabinet. I suspect I’d still suck, though.

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Pete Plays Dragon World: The Real Treasure is Love

And now the epic conclusion of the Dragon World saga!

Back when we played this in the classroom, you were doing really well if you made it to Part 2, which wouldn’t allow you to even start playing without a password. (“ogweb”, if you’re too lazy to deal with Part 1’s nonsense)

Part 2 takes you on a surprisingly unforgiving treasure hunt through the aptly-named Town of Treasures… so let’s see if we can find something to make all dragonkind happy!

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Pete Plays Dragon World: A Friday Night Well-Spent

If you’re British and of a certain age, you probably have… well, if not fond memories of the BBC Micro, then certainly memories of it.

A fixture in classrooms across the whole nation, the BBC Micro played host to a variety of software packages, many of which were specifically designed to be used in the classroom.

One specialist of such software was 4Mation, best known for a funny little quasi-educational adventure called Granny’s Garden. But I have much more vivid memories of one of their lesser-known works…

Continue reading Pete Plays Dragon World: A Friday Night Well-Spent

New Game Plus: Five S – Project Zero #12

This is it! This is what it all comes down to… what I’ve been training for.

Will that tortuous Nightmare mode playthrough of Project Zero, along with finally clearing out that pesky ghost list, prepare me for a long-overdue S-rank clear of any of the missions in the game’s Battle mode? Will my epic battle against that dead guy in that one closet have all been worthwhile?

Find out on today’s episode of New Game Plus, only on MoeGamer. And, err, YouTube.

Continue reading New Game Plus: Five S – Project Zero #12

Atari A to Z: Rick Dangerous

The “masocore” platformer, in which you learn by dying repeatedly in seemingly unfair circumstances, has become particularly popular in the age of Let’s Plays and streaming.

The reason for this is that, although playing the damn things tends to be rather frustrating, they’re quite entertaining to watch. And their reliance on puzzle-solving and memorisation make them quite a distinct experience from more conventional platform games and action adventures.

Here’s the Atari ST version of Rick Dangerous, developed by Core Design (of Tomb Raider fame) and published by Telecomsoft imprint Firebird in 1989. Oh, boy, it’s irritating… and yet I found myself trying again and again and again… Waaaaaaaa!!

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