Tag Archives: sports games

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: John Lowe’s Ultimate Darts

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Darts! One game, one hundred yen. I’ll try it once. Except it wasn’t one hundred yen, it was twenty quid, and it offered quite a variety of different darts-related experiences for your money.

Darts video games have never really taken off, aside from as minigames inside other games (hence theΒ Shenmue reference above) but for a while a number of developers tried to make them work. John Lowe’s Ultimate DartsΒ for Atari ST, brought to us by Gremlin Graphics, was a solid effort — and presents far less risk of accidentally impaling the cat or puncturing a loved one than real at-home darts.

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

Atari A to Z

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Super Football

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What happens when you give the guy who made Star Raiders the task of making an American football game for Atari 2600? You get the best damn American football game on the Atari 2600, that’s what.

Here’sΒ Super Football,Β a game that I was dreading playing until I discovered that it was the work of Doug Neubauer, a guy who really knows his stuff when it comes to both technical mastery of the Atari 2600 and designing great games. And he only went and did it — he made an American football game for the Atari 2600 that IΒ actually enjoy playing.Β Wonders will never cease!

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

Atari A to Z

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Super Challenge Football

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Sports games, sports games, will I never be free of sports games? Apparently not, as we’ve got another one today. This time it’s not actually all that offensive, however — though it’s still a two player-only affair.

Super Challenge FootballΒ is, like itsΒ Baseball counterpart, an adaptation of an Intellivision game for the Atari 2600. Unlike most American Football games, this game allows you to program all your linesmen individually, making for a somewhat more understandable game for American Football newbies like myself.

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

Atari A to Z

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Super Baseball

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People complain these days when a sequel is too similar to its predecessor.

Count yourself lucky you didn’t fall for Atari’s 1988 release of Super Baseball, then, which is actually just a very slightly tweaked version of RealSports BaseballΒ from the early ’80s. Complete with all the flaws of that original version, plus a pretty much impenetrable difficulty wall in single-player mode.

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

Atari A to Z

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: RealSports Soccer

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Yes, it’s yet another RealSports game! We’re nearly done, though. Hang in there!

This time around, we take a look atΒ RealSports SoccerΒ for the Atari 5200 which, like its American Football counterpart, offers a somewhat more realistic, in-depth experience, perhaps at the expense of some accessibility. It’s still a much more approachable game than either incarnation ofΒ RealSports Football, however!

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

Atari A to Z

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: RealSports Soccer

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In real life, I despise soccer, or “football” as we call it over here. But there have been a number of soccer games over the years that I’ve rather enjoyed — and RealSports Soccer for the Atari 2600 is one of them.

The reason for this is that RealSports Soccer for the Atari 2600 resembles real soccer on only the most superficial level, and is instead simply a highly enjoyable video game, particularly if you have the opportunity to enjoy it with a friend or two. Its mechanics, which make no logical sense from a “realism” perspective, make it a ton of fun — and I can attest from personal experience that this is a game that can produce genuine howls of laughter that stem from genuine enjoyment.

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

Atari A to Z

Evercade A to Z, Videos

Evercade A to Z: Side Pocket

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I am bad at pool. Real pool, that is. But also video game pool. Although I am marginally less bad at video game pool than I am at real pool.

Data East’sΒ Side Pocket, seen here as part of the Data East Collection 1 cartridge for the Evercade, at least makes the experience of being bad at video game pool pleasantly entertaining by providing a smooth jazz soundtrack, some pretty ladies and a series of completely unreasonable trick shots with which to challenge yourself. Plus no onlookers who have had a few too many pints laughing at your incompetence. Ideal.

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

Atari Lynx Collection 1, Evercade

Malibu Bikini Volleyball: Beach Body Ready

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Dear old Atari. They captured lightning in a bottle in the early days of video games with the 2600, then struggled to recreate that sort of success ever again. It certainly wasn’t through lack of trying on the tech front, though.

The Atari Lynx was one of their more impressive efforts, providing the first 16-bit handheld gaming platform with a backlit colour screen, hardware scaling and distortion. It even had a decent selection of games for it, but as was always the case with post-2600 Atari, its marketing was a complete disaster and as such the system remains largely forgotten by most gaming enthusiasts today.

Except for the folks behind the Evercade, of course, who have brought us not one but two collections of Atari Lynx titles for the diminutive retro gaming platform. So let’s take a look at one of the games from theΒ Atari Lynx Collection 1Β cartridge and see whether or not these forgotten titles have anything to offer to the modern gamer!

Continue reading Malibu Bikini Volleyball: Beach Body Ready →

short;Play, Videos

short;Play: Tee Off

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If you’re unfamiliar with various takes on sports games over the years, you might not think that “arcade-style” is a descriptor one could readily associate with golf titles.

But there have been numerous great examples of top-notch arcade-style golf games throughout gaming history. And one of my absolute favourites of all time isΒ Tee Off,Β a game put together by little-known Japanese dev Bottom Up and published by Acclaim. Not only is it a super-fun golf game, it has a fantastic soundtrack that sounds like something out ofΒ Sonic Adventure,Β as well as a full-on second game mode based on “gate ball”, or Japanese croquet.

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

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: RealSports Football

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If it was not already painfully obvious from previous dalliances with digital adaptations of the sport, I do not “get” American Football. I get the basic idea, but I do not understand the execution at all.

This is made particularly apparent byΒ RealSports FootballΒ on the Atari 2600, a game which, to someone like me, appears to amplify all of the most obnoxious things about the sport while stripping out anything even vaguely enjoyable about it. Your mileage may, of course, vary if you are already a football fan — but if you were hoping that a 2600 football game might be a good means of learning the ropes before graduating to theΒ MaddensΒ of this world… think again!

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

Atari A to Z