The Video Game Critic

With all the Talk of Wii Sports (Consoles have not come with Pack-in games for a LONG time) What do you old timers- er, old schoolers like me think was the best first gen pak-in:

Atari 2600: Combat
Sears Tele-games 2600: Target fun (Air sea battle/ ... I had to include this since I and many got a Telegames system)
Intellivision (all versions) Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack
Odyssey2: Spinout!/Speedway!/Cryptologic

First let me say, if I had included Sears SUPER VIDEO ARCADE with SPACE INVADERS, that would win easily! From this list I pick Target fun as the best, as it had a zillion options, was fun to play, had colorful graphics for the time and most importantley was one OR two player! LV Poker & Blackjack is #2, but only if you like card games. In 1980, the graphics were outstanding! Combat nearly ties for #2, it is a classic, but I would like it more if it had a solo play option. O2's triple cart comes in last. I owned an O2 and four games briefly in 1986, this was one game (I found out the keyboard did not work and had to return it). It is REALLY boring. Speedway is the same as 2600 Street racer with SLIGHTLY better graphics; Spinout is the best but can't touch 2600 Indy 500, and Cryptologic is just a boring word scrambling device. Speedway can be played solo (yawn) the other two are two player only.

So pick YOUR favorites, and if you were from a different era feel free to chime in with your best and worst pack ins (like Sega MS Safari Hunt/Hang On to Nintendos Gyromite/Duck hunt. No contest there, Sega wins...but NES Super Mario beats 'em all!)

i think donkey kong that was packed in with the coleco wins out. later on, the 2600 also included pacman, though it blows chunks. and late in its life, the intv included burgertime, which is probably the best arcade port on the system.

(the 5200 included super breakout... dud)

We had an Odyssey2 growing up, and let me tell you, we spent HOURS on each of the three games on the pack-in cart.  Never had an Atari until recently (like, ten years ago), but PacMan sucked.  Combat, however, was/is great.

We got the Voice module for the O2, and it had a pack-in "game" where you type a screenful of text and it speaks it.  "You type!  It talks!  It's fun!"  I don't know about all that.  It was a novelty, but the most fun we had with that cartridge was making sound effects by typing strange letter combinations.  The Voice also made other games better, because many had support for it built-in.

I'm gonna have to go with Spinout!/Speedway!/Cryptologic! .  Man, Spinout! was an absolute, bona-fied blast.  Not sure how it would hold up today, but my sister and I had oodles of fun with it.

Next generation, Duck Hunt/SMB.

16-Bit Era, Sonic, hands down.  I refuse to believe there was ever a time when anyone got excited about Altered Beast.

Hmmm... Do they even do pack-ins anymore?  Or is it just demo discs?  (I buy all my stuff second-hand now, so they always come with games... but that's not the same thing.)

Combat wins by a mile.  Screw Wii Sports man, Combat is the best pack in multiplayer game of all time.  Now, a 2600 with two sets of paddle controllers, 2 normal controllers, and Combat and Warlords would have been better, but you can't have everything.

[QUOTE=BigOldCar]We got the Voice module for the O2, and it had a pack-in "game" where you type a screenful of text and it speaks it.  "You type!  It talks!  It's fun!"  I don't know about all that.  It was a novelty, but the most fun we had with that cartridge was making sound effects by typing strange letter combinations. [/QUOTE]

Heh, I remember having fun with our old computer's Text-to-Speech by entering really long numbers. "sevenhundredseventysevenoctrifubbirazzafazzabillionsevenhundredseventysevenblaggatabloopyrillionseven..."

..yeah, you get the point. It was an innocent age, nowadays kids would probably entertain themselves by entering dirty words. Or at least, they would if they could pull themselves away from the copy of GTA3 their mother got them for their fourth birthday, inbetween all her letter writing to the government about how video games are evil and are turning children into murderers, and thus must be forbidden by law.

It's a toss up between Super Mario Bros and Sonic for coolest pack-in game ever. The edge might go to SMB because it introduced an exciting new form of gameplay (the modern 2D scrolling platformer) whereas Sonic was just a huge leap forward in graphics.

[QUOTE=Adamant][QUOTE=BigOldCar]We got the Voice module for the O2, and it had a pack-in "game" where you type a screenful of text and it speaks it. "You type! It talks! It's fun!" I don't know about all that. It was a novelty, but the most fun we had with that cartridge was making sound effects by typing strange letter combinations. [/QUOTE]

Heh, I remember having fun with our old computer's Text-to-Speech by entering really long numbers. "sevenhundredseventysevenoctrifubbirazzafazzabillionsevenhundredseventysevenblaggatabloopyrillionseven..."

..yeah, you get the point. It was an innocent age, nowadays kids would probably entertain themselves by entering dirty words. Or at least, they would if they could pull themselves away from the copy of GTA3 their mother got them for their fourth birthday, inbetween all her letter writing to the government about how video games are evil and are turning children into murderers, and thus must be forbidden by law.[/QUOTE]
HA!  Ha I say!  Children today couldn't use a type and talk program because they are all too stupid.  How would it even pronounce "t0tAl PWNage! 133t roxrs 4 ev R!  LOLlololo11111!  chizzle fizzle swish!2222" (Or you know, whatever it is they say.  With their darned baggy pants and hipity hop music).

i think the question was about first gen games, everyone knows that SMB and Sonic were 'killer apps' (hate the term, but it did push hardware sales like wii sports does with the wii). so think pre-NES