Tag Archives: video games

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: The Upper Reaches of Apshai

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We return once again to The Temple of Apshai Trilogy for Atari ST, this time to explore the first “expansion” section: The Upper Reaches of Apshai.

The Upper Reaches of Apshai is noteworthy in that it takes a rather more light-hearted and experimental approach to the game’s core dungeon crawling; it has you picking berries and cleaning up rampant tomato patches rather than battling your way through vanilla-scented ant-men. And the Atari ST version is a great way to experience it!

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

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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 Football is, like its 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 to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Retro Select, Videos

Retro Select: Short Circuit

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Ocean Software were rather well known for their licensed movie tie-in games — some of which were better (and more creative) than others.

This video game adaptation of Short Circuit, which was exclusive to 8-bit home computers, is one of their more inventive titles, combining a significant adventure game component with a possibly unbeatable arcade-style segment. The exact implementation varies a bit from platform to platform, but today we’re having a go at the 128K ZX Spectrum version!

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

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: The Temple of Apshai

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The Temple of Apshai and its later Temple of Apshai Trilogy “remaster” are best known as 8-bit titles, but the latter actually got a port to Atari ST in 1986 — by Westwood, no less.

The ST version is, as it turns out, pretty good. It not only incorporates all the classic gameplay into a friendly GEM interface, it also includes all the room descriptions from the Book of Apshai into the game itself, making for a much more convenient way to play.

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

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Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Action Biker

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Sponsored video games are nothing new! One of the earliest I ever came across was Action Biker by Mastertronic, supposedly developed in collaboration with KP Skips, the melt-in-your-mouth prawn cocktail flavoured corn snack.

KP Skips had a mascot named Clumsy Colin, who was the main star of Action Biker, and the game challenged you to control Colin as he attempted to find all the bits for his bike and then compete in a drag race. It’s an early “open world” game of sorts, and is a bit of a “love it or hate it” affair — particularly when it comes to the music. Oh, the music.

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

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Atelier Mysterious

Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey – Mix and Match

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While, as the name suggests, a significant part of Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey is about Firis going on her journey of self-discovery, it is still an Atelier game — and as such you’ll be spending plenty of time crafting items.

Atelier Firis doesn’t completely reinvent the alchemy mechanics from Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book, but it does feature some new twists on the formula established in that game. Once again we have the series’ classic “bung everything in a pot and see what comes out” base combined with some almost puzzle game-esque mechanics — and the result is an enjoyable, satisfying alchemy system.

Get your apron and your stirring stick, then — it’s time to take a closer look.

Continue reading Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey – Mix and Match →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Super Challenge Baseball

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And you thought we were done with sports games! Nope, there’s a few more… only a few more though, including a couple from Mattel’s “M Network” label, where they ported Intellivision classics to Atari 2600.

Super Challenge Baseball for Atari 2600 is a port of the Intellivision’s Major League Baseball, a game which paid up for the MLB license and then didn’t use any player names, likenesses or team names. You can understand why they dropped the licensing for subsequent rereleases. It’s a two-player only game, so I recruit my long-suffering wife to suffer some more with me.

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

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Retro Select, Videos

Retro Select: Mad Nurse

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Ah, the Spectrum. Legend of the 1980s gaming scene in the UK — and the mortal enemy of Atari fans like myself. Unfortunately, the fact that fanboyism goes all the way back to the earliest days of gaming means that I missed out on a lot of interesting games back in the day — that changes now!

The first of an occasional dalliance in the ZX Spectrum’s library on Retro Select is Mad Nurse, a simple but enjoyable arcade-style game released on Firebird’s £1.99 budget label. It was described as “one of the sickest games ever released” by Computer & Video Games, and involves dead babies. So that’s fun!

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

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Screaming Wings

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Screaming Wings for Atari 8-bit was an excellent clone of Capcom’s arcade classic 1942, complete with loop-the-loops, a Lockheed Lightning under the player’s control and some satisfying gameplay.

Screaming Wings for Atari ST, meanwhile, is probably one of the worst shoot ’em ups on the system, since it abandoned almost everything that made the 8-bit version good and instead produced a steaming pile of pap whose only real redeeming feature is its use of digitised sound effects.

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

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Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Zenji

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Zenji for Atari 8-bit is an early Activision game I’d never heard of — I’m surprised, since I thought I’d stumbled across all of their work from the early days of video gaming at one point or another.

I’m doubly surprised, since Zenji is a really good game! It’s a fun puzzler where certain elements will feel familiar to fans of Pipe Mania and its numerous imitators, but with its own distinctive twist that makes it stand out as something truly original.

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

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