Page 1 of 2

2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 6th, 2019, 10:52 am
by VideoGameCritic
I recently had a discussion about these two games with my friends, prompting this pair of re-reviews.

On another note, when I played this game with my nieces and nephews recently they were amazed at the paddle controllers - how smooth and responsive they were. My youngest nephew (who plays games all the time) proclaimed this to be the best game ever!

Oh and I also finally fixed the Warlords screenshot (colors)

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 6th, 2019, 1:29 pm
by Alucard1191
In another thread, Rampart was brought to my attention, and warlords looks very much like that. I remember loving that game so much. Warlords just might be the classic game I need. Of course, I'd need some friends to play it with... all my old gamer buds have gone to different corners of the country. (I'm included in that.) I don't remember Atari's having 4 controller ports, how do you do 4 player on them?

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 6th, 2019, 7:29 pm
by VideoGameCritic
Two paddles controllers share the same plug, hence all four-player simultaneous games on the system use paddles.

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 11:09 am
by Retro STrife
There's not any other version of Warlords besides the 2600, is there? If not, that's amazing to me considering how much arcade games were ported around to home consoles all throughout the '80s.

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 3:53 pm
by goldenband
Retro STrife wrote:There's not any other version of Warlords besides the 2600, is there? If not, that's amazing to me considering how much arcade games were ported around to home consoles all throughout the '80s.

There's a great-looking homebrew version for the Astrocade, War, which got reviewed by the Critic a while back.

I don't know of any other legit ports, though there was a version for the Atari 5200 in development before the crash.

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 4:01 pm
by SpiceWare
My friends complained that the paddle direction feels like it should be reversed for certain players, and I've noticed that too.


Top castles? Toggle the difficulty switches.

Have a chance to check out Draconian yet? ROM's here.

MM manual 2 copy.jpg
MM manual 2 copy.jpg (81.34 KiB) Viewed 2973 times

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 6:33 pm
by Gleebergloben123
Props to the VGC for admitting that Medieval Mayhem wasn't as great as he first thought it was. After I read the review of Warlords and the A+ grade, I was sure to see the same grade, and it was interesting to read the re-review compared to the old review (a great review btw).

I have fond memories of Warlords. In 2008, my two friends, my 7 year old son and I were playing Warlords on the 2600 and had an absolute blast. My friend would jokingly say to my son, "Go to the corner and I'll pass it to you" which my son knew was a joke and found hilarious. We couldn't put the controllers down.

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 7th, 2019, 10:02 pm
by GTS
Retro STrife wrote:There's not any other version of Warlords besides the 2600, is there? If not, that's amazing to me considering how much arcade games were ported around to home consoles all throughout the '80s.


From Wikipedia:
In 2002, a 3D remake of Warlords was included in the Atari Revival pack, which also included the previously released Missile Command and Combat 3D remakes.

A port of Warlords, including a "remix" version, is included in Retro Atari Classics for the Nintendo DS. It allows multiplayer play through wireless.[12] It was released on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade on May 27, 2008, featuring a new special HD mode and Xbox Live Vision Camera support.[13]

The arcade and Atari 2600 versions of Warlords were made available on Microsoft's Game Room service for its Xbox 360 console and for Windows-based PCs in June 2010 and December 2010 respectively.[citation needed] A new version of Warlords was released on PlayStation Network on October 9, 2012, in North America and October 10, 2012, in Europe. It was also released on Xbox Live Arcade on November 14, 2012.[14]

In 2004, Bryan Edewaard developed and published an unlicensed homebrew version of Warlords for the Atari 5200 and Atari 8bit computers named Castle Crisis.[15] In 2006, Darrell Spice Jr. released Medieval Mayhem, a homebrew Atari 2600 game inspired by Warlords.

In 2011, a Commodore 64 clone was released as Space Lords. It features a 4 player adapter.[16]

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 8th, 2019, 4:21 pm
by SpiceWare
There was also Airburst and Airburst Extreme for the Mac. Instead of castles you were on a pile of balloons. The ballons floated around as well, so you had to defend 360°. One of the updates added network support for LAN parties and online play.

YouTube video on it

Screen Shot 2019-10-08 at 3.35.57 PM 2.jpg
Screen Shot 2019-10-08 at 3.35.57 PM 2.jpg (87.47 KiB) Viewed 2858 times

Re: 2019/10/6: Atari 2600: Warlords, Medieval Mayhem

Posted: October 8th, 2019, 4:45 pm
by SpiceWare
Surprise, surprise! AirBurst has been updated and is available in the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store.