Atari 2600 Reviews U-Z

Vanguard can be fun if you have a reliable arcade-style joystick. This shooter introduced several original concepts to the world of arcade games, including stages that scroll in different directions, the ability to shoot in four directions at once (!), and invincibility power-ups. But perhaps its most significant innovation was the "continue" feature, which let you pay another quarter and pick up where you left off. Like it or hate it, the continue feature caught on in a big way. This Atari 2600 edition of Vanguard attempts to incorporate the same features but comes up a bit short. For one thing, it doesn't do a good job of simulating the dual joysticks of the arcade game. In this version, pushing the joystick in any direction not only fires in that direction but moves your ship slightly. Holding down the fire button lets you move quickly but halts your firing. Typically players will rotate the joystick rapidly to maximize their firepower but gradually meander around the screen. It really hurts your arm after prolonged play. Atari half-heartedly addressed this problem by supplying the option of automatic forward fire, but that makes the game entirely too easy. Vanguard isn't much to look at, and even the rainbow colors can hide the horrid blockiness of backgrounds. Vanguard does have a nice variety of stages, each of which brings its own unique style of play. The zones scroll horizontally or vertically but not diagonally. The "stripe zone" is the most interesting, with two different paths and two sets of adversaries. The "bleak zone" features floating snakes that you can "dock" with for big points. The trick is to shoot the snakes just before docking, so you can collect the points for killing them (you can only do this three times). Vanguard's most disappointing stage is the "gond" (remember the commercial? "Luther kills the gond!"). This blocky rainbow snowman is supposed to be the "boss", but all you do is shoot him in the face. It's hardly a challenge and definitely anti-climactic. The second level features the same set of stages, only harder and in a different order. Vanguard isn't a great shooter, but it's certainly original, and it'll give your arm one heck of a workout. © Copyright 2004 The Video Game Critic.

I love the art on old Atari cartridges. The labels feature artistic illustrated collages that suggest the game is about ten times more sophisticated than it actually is. It's easy to visualize games like Asteroids and Football, but what about Video Chess? Atari found a way. The picture has chess pieces superimposed over checkerboards, along with some colorful circuits that suggest a mainframe computer (circa 1965). There's also a guy reaching for a chess piece, and you know he's smart because he's a balding middle-aged man with a beard (and he's wearing a white buttoned-down shirt for Pete's sake!). Although it's a technical marvel for its time, Video Chess has not aged well. The chess board consumes about half of the screen, and the small pieces look awful. The orange pieces are a pixelated mess, and the white ones look like stacks of horizontal lines. The interface for moving pieces around is slow and awkward. While the CPU is calculating its turn, the screen flashes random colors, instantly sending epileptic players into violent seizures and convulsions. Depending on the skill level, the CPU can take anywhere from seconds to hours to calculate its next move! On the hardest level (7) the CPU can take up to 10 hours between moves! Hell, you could be playing this God-forsaken game for months on end! Adding insult to injury, it's a proven fact that the CPU will actually cheat on occasion! How pissed off would you be if it pulled a stunt like that after three long months of intense gameplay? Is there anyone who could appreciate the bad graphics and glacial pace of Video Chess in 2009? I'm not sure, but it would help to be stranded on a desert island. © Copyright 2009 The Video Game Critic.

The name "Walker" elicits some bad-ass images. Walker Texas Ranger. AT-AT Walkers from Empire Strike Back. JJ Walker (Dy-no-mite!). Okay, scratch that last one. But still you can imagine my disgust when I turn on this game to see a clown on the bottom of the screen. He looks so creepy with that blue hair and baggy red polka dot pants! Layers of cars pass above, suggesting perhaps a Frogger (Parker Bros., 1982) clone? Dream on! No, this freaky clown only needs to traverse the blank gray area on the bottom. Those colorful graphics are nothing but a facade! Nothing stands in your way on the first screen, but subsequent screens feature one or more police officers. Big deal - you easily leap over them with the help of poor animation and bizarro physics. As is often the case in video games you'll move faster by jumping than running. The gameplay is pure garbage but the graphics might be the best I've seen in a bad Atari 2600 game. The first screen offers a skyline of buildings with trees, cars, and pick-up trucks cruising by. Next is a bright pink prairie scene with birds in the sky and cattle from Stampede (Activision, 1981) running across the open plains. The third screen offers an appealing beach view with sailboats, balloons, and whales shooting water out of their spouts! That's followed by a desert with helicopters and scorpions from Pitfall (Activision, 1982). And it keeps going! Next is a mountain scene with galloping horses and smiling clouds. The finale looks pretty dazzling as a red curtain raises and a flashing film strip runs across the top. It's a shame Walker's gameplay is a complete afterthought. The only challenge is how the time limit for reaching the right side gradually reduces, until eventually it's physically impossible to cross the screen. Walker barely qualifies as a game but its eye candy was enough to make me sit up and take notice. Note: I'm told the strange colors are a byproduct of the ROM conversion from PAL to NTSC format. © Copyright 2019 The Video Game Critic.

Let's get one thing straight: Warlords is the best four-player game ever invented. Period. It looks a little crappy you say? Okay, I'll give you that. Even back in 1981 I was less than enthused about the graphics. But this game is far more than the sum of its parts. Each corner of the screen holds an oddly-shaped "knight" (use your imagination) surrounded by a chunky wall. Using a paddle controller you move a shield around the perimeter of your fortress, protecting it from a firewall that you can either catch or deflect. The ball tends to destroy chunks of bricks, and as holes appear the action becomes more intense. The last knight remaining wins the round, and the first player to win five rounds is the victor. The dynamics of this game are sensational, as new alliances are constantly being formed and disbanded. Naturally players tend to gang up on whoever is winning. From round to round your neighboring warlord can go from being a helpful ally ("you're my boy, blue!") to a bitter rival ("kill that blue bastard!"). Trash talking is pretty much mandatory. Even when a player is eliminated from a round, he can still affect the outcome. By carefully positioning his "ghost" shield, he can deflect the ball enough to facilitate new angles for the remaining players. It could be a bug in the game for all I know, but it really adds a new dimension. In fact, it's the game's quirks that make it unpredictable and exciting. Warlords offers 23 variations, but the CPU opponents are pretty dumb, and variation 1 (four players) is all you really need. Often imitated but never matched, this universally-loved game is the king of multi-player mayhem. © Copyright 2010 The Video Game Critic.

Although technically a "hack" of Venture, Wolfenstein incorporates enough new elements to make it feel like a completely new game. This only vaguely resembles the original Castle Wolfenstein (Atari XE, 1983), where you would stealthily move from room to room while collecting items and shooting Nazi guards. You begin the game as a dot in a maze, attempting to avoiding wandering guards. These "guards" are decidedly abstract, taking the form of circles with gun symbols on them. Upon entering one of the four rooms in each level, the screen changes to a close-up view. Guiding a circular face (who doesn't look very happy) around the room, you must retrieve an item while avoiding (or killing) three deadly creatures. Your nicely rendered adversaries include rats, spiders, dogs, scorpions, guards, or robots. Initially you're armed with a knife, which functions like a gun with extremely short range. Upon locating the gun, you'll be able to shoot the length of the screen, but your ammo is limited. Fallen enemies transform into skull and crossbones, which in turn can be shot, effectively killing the thing twice (sorry, you only score once). Unlike Venture, creature remains are not deadly to touch (thankfully). If you find the game too easy, try the "A" difficulty, which is substantially faster and more challenging. It will make you think twice about trying to "clear out" every room. There's an impressive title screen depicting a lighted castle, and the nicely-illustrated, glossy instruction manual will get you really psyched up about playing the game. Wolftenstein VCS deserves more credit than your typical hack, leveraging a mediocre game into something fun and exciting. © Copyright 2007 The Video Game Critic.

I never really saw the attaction of this slow, Aliens-inspired arcade shooter. It's claim to fame seemed to be its unimpressive split-screen design. Still, it's always interesting to see how any game translates to the Atari 2600, and Xenophobe doesn't look too bad. Each stage begins with a cut-scene of a shuttle flying between two extremely chunky spacecraft. In single-player mode you're playing on the top half of the screen, moving from room to room. Your character is rendered in three colors (not bad) but his movements are stiff. You can duck to shoot low and jump to hit tentacles hanging from the ceiling. In the center of each room you'll find a weapon or a bonus item like a floppy disk. Weapons tend to have limited range and most creatures require multiple shots. The aliens are blocky monstrosities, some of which like to latch onto your leg. Others will "clam up" into a bowling ball shape, making them impervious to anything but grenades. Grenades are in short supply however and you need to hit an alien dead-on to kill it. When out of ammo you can still punch with your fist, which looks like a tiny blinking pixel. It seems super lame but if an alien is in your face, you can rapid-punch the crap out of it like Bruce Lee! Each room has distinctive scenery like maps, torpedos, and mainframe computers. There are multiple floors to clear out, requiring you to take an elevator. The elevator looks cool with its lighted shutters but it can take forever to show up! And you thought the elevator in Keystone Kapers (Activision, 1983) was bad! Once you've eliminated the aliens (or the ship is overrun) you're automatically transported off the ship. A lot of times the game said "ship clear" even though I'm pretty sure I left a few bowling balls lying around. Xenophobe seemed respectable until I tried the two-player mode and wondered why only one player was on the screen. Consulting the manual, I discovered Xenophobe has the most ass-backward concept of split-screen ever - one in which players alternate turns! The manual has the nerve to say "Xenophobe's split-screen lets two player move independently." How is the split-screen facilitating that exactly? It only serves to limit the action to half the screen! The box claims "You can even work on different levels at the same time" which is patently false. Xenophobe is passable as a one-player game but the two-player mode is a complete and total sham. © Copyright 2016 The Video Game Critic.

I first reviewed a rough Xevious prototype back in 2002, but recently a nearly-finished version was uncovered. Better yet, some kind soul took the time to fix a few of its minor bugs, resulting in a pretty kick-ass shooter! The gameplay is classic Xevious all the way, enhanced with gloriously blocky graphics only the Atari 2600 can get away with. As one of the first vertical shooters ever, Xevious lets you blast enemies in the air while bombing targets on land. The scrolling landscape is constantly changing and there are interesting "crop patterns" on the ground. One distinguishing feature of the series are the cool square slab obstacles that rotate end over end. The sound effects are also faithful to the arcade. Your ship resembles an upside-down V. Holding in the button lets you fire rapidly and pressing it deploys a bomb. Enemies in the air are typically rotating discs that can ram you if you don't shoot them first. On the ground you'll target pyramid-shaped fortifications and it's fun to reduce them into pixelated rubble. The game gets extremely tough when the roving tanks appear on the battlefield and unleash streams of missiles. Your bombsight and bombs are represented by yellow dashes, and rough animation makes it hard to aim them with precision. Xevious gets a little overwhelming when the screen gets chaotic. I felt like this game was going to cause my system to overheat. There's even a flying saucer boss for Pete's sake (which I can't figure out how to beat). Like the arcade version, Xevious is just plain hard. Fortunately after your game is over you can continue right where you left off. Xevious is a genuine classic and I'm glad to see this 2600 version managed to retain the spirit of the original. © Copyright 2015 The Video Game Critic.

The first time I laid eyes on Zippy I had flashbacks to a character I saw walking the Ocean City boardwalk last year. Some guy was dressed up like Olaf (the snowman from Frozen) in a really cheap and shabby-looking costume. He was a sad sight to be sure, but you couldn't help but laugh. Zippy is like that. He's is a third-rate knock-off of Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis, 1991). Brent and Scott described Zippy as "barely playable" and they're not wrong. The controls are erratic and sometimes unresponsive. The stage designs aren't conducive to high speed thrills. Platforms tend to be too short to gain enough momentum to make the next jump, and Zippy's tendency to skid before stopping usually sends him plunging into the abyss. The fluctuating speed of the game makes it really difficult to perform basic jumps and nearly impossible to perform precise jumps. You can call it buggy and frustrating, but there's one thing you can't deny: this is Sonic the Hedgehog for the Atari 2600. Let that sink in for a minute. The game contains four "zones" from the original game, each with the correct harmonized music. The stages incorporate all the key elements of each zone, including collapsing bridges, bumpers, switches, breakable walls, power-ups, and yes, even loops! Red springboards catapult you to the upper reaches of each zone, where you later "fall back" into the lower area. There's a brief audio/visual pause when moving between the two planes, but still! Each zone features it own set of distinctive robotic enemies, most of which Sonic fans will instantly recognize. The action is relatively fast and certainly retains that Sonic flavor. There are bonus stages, boss encounters, gems to collect, and a big bold title screen. Wow, just wow. The words "tour de force" come to mind. Despite its obvious flaw this Sonic translation far surpassed my expectations. If only the controls were better. I was able to make substantial progress in the game but only if I took it slow and played it safe. Once you learn how to compensate for the controls Zippy is challenging and rewarding. The music is remarkable but disjointed, stopping and starting is an erratic manner. Zippy the Porcupine may not live up to its lofty ambitions, but it stands tall as a fascinating homage to one of the greatest video games ever made. © Copyright 2016 The Video Game Critic.