Top Ten Atari Games

aum Put out a request for ten all-time favorites on the Ataris 2600 and 7800. I've been thinking more than usual about my childhood, lately, and I'm all too happy to oblige.

For the record, I got my Atari 2600 Christmas Day, 1982. I got my Atari 7800 a month or so after Christmas, in 1988. I played the Atari 7800 religiously until Christmas of 1989, when I got a Sega Genesis. The Genesis was sold in 1993 and I went without a video game system until 2002, when I got a GameBoy Advance. That, and the GameBoy Advance SP I picked up in Taiwan, I traded in early this year for DS. I've never regretted owning any of the above units, I'd have had it no other way.



Defender--I've heard a lot people talk shit about the 2600 port, comparing it to the arcade. Personally, I grew to love the game on the 2600. I played this one with my uncle Jack quite a bit. I still remember the night he brought it over to our house.

Now, believe it or not, in those days my whole family actually sat down around the television set and played games together. It didn't look like one of those Atari posters, though. My old man would twist off a few, him, my mom, Jack and Mom would all be smoking, and my sister and I would be whaling away at each other with pillows when it wasn't our turn.

You piloted some kind of aircraft over a city. You could go up over the playing field and be in hyperspace. . . you would protect the little civilians down in the city. If the flying saucers swiped too many of these immobile, flashing rectangles, the city vanished and you found yourself in Mutant Land. The first time I played it, my uncle had the remote control at the ready. As I lost my last city dwelling yob, he cranked the volume for the classic Atari bodily-function blast of sound to indicate that you fucked up. Undoubtedly one of my greatest video game playing moments.

Berzerk--On the weekends, I was allowed to stay up pretty late. Every authority figure from my family, that is, everyone older than me, was fine with me staying up way late. I watched a lot of UHF Late Night movies. I wasn't allowed to watch television alone. When everyone else went to bed, it was time for me to go to bed. One night, my parents were out and Mom stayed with my sister and I. We built fort blankets and watched movies on VHS. Mom fell asleep on the couch, and Andrea crashed. The dog crashed over in the corner. I put all of the lights out and started playing Berzerk at two a.m. and thinking I was getting away with something. This is a mindless seek and destroy game that always kept me entertained. I've never tired of these kinds of games.

Yars' Revenge--The main idea was to blast or eat your way through some kind of shield, and then charge up your cannon, and hit the enemy target while the defenses are down. There was some little drone chasing you all around the screen while you went about your business, and occasionally the target would fire on you. The game was incredibly easy to learn and impossible to stop playing. The action was fast and smooth. A creepy, buzzing hum was the soundtrack to all of this. . . one of the most effective video game soundtracks that I've ever heard.

Combat--This came with the 2600, along with Pac Man. Pac Man was alright, but when I had a friend around, or my sister or my dad was up for it, this game couldn't be beat. I would play it on my 7800 when I had friends over. A simple game. The controls could be a bit sluggish and awkward, at times, but the level design and wide array of options always kept this one on the top of the shelf. Played this game for a long time.

Xevious--I wanted a 7800 for Christmas back in 1987. I guess my family made a lot of calls. My uncle did a lot of driving around. I was even told, one cold December morning, that it wasn't likely I'd be getting one because no one seemed to have any in stock. I was asked, several times, if I was SURE I didn't want a Nintendo Entertainment System.

I remained loyal to Atari. And besides, I thought all of the talks were bullshit, anyway. They were just trying to throw me off.

Christmas morning came and. . . no 7800. I was convinced it would turn it up at some point, that day. I went to bed thinking someone was going to tell me the joke was over.

But I got the games. Xevious was one of them. The screenshots won't do it justice. The sprites had up to four or six colors, and the screen would fill up with tanks, ships, discs, plates, missiles, bombs, explosions, fire. . . There was a lot of stuff happening on one continually scrolling screen and NO SLOW DOWN OR FLICKER WHATSOEVER. It wasn't until I had a Genesis that I really appreciated this game.

Super tight controls, too.

This is an arcade port from Namco.

Dig Dug--For the 7800. You'd get a little flower for every level you cleared. You'd get a big flower for every ten levels you cleared. I once got big flowers running across the entire screen. The was the last time I ever played Dig Dug. Before hand, I had played it in the arcades. Quite a few times. The home version was just as satisfying. Another truly great game from Namco. Got this one for Christmas, too.

Tower Toppler--You're a frog. You have an ice gun and a submarine. You are expected to climb to the tops of towers and activate a self destruct sequence that brings the tower down, down, down. Then, you jump in your submarine, net shrimp, and then harvest them. Try cooking up a backstory for that one while you play through. Smooth animation and scrolling. Very smooth. The Atari 7800 could handle some things better than the NES and SMS. 3D effects was one of them. The other being flushing the screen with multicolored, moving objects. This game had it down. Lot of fun, too. The puzzle-action game has been waxing in popularity, nowadays. Good thing.

Mission Impossible--You run around an underground stronghold, collecting puzzle pieces from computer terminals, couches, lamps, bookshelves and chairs. . . You would also play a sound-pattern recognition game for puzzle pieces. . . You'd put these pieces together and get a code that would disarm a nuclear weapon of some kind.

I could never beat the damn thing, and I would go back again and again. . . searching and re-searching every last one of these damn rooms. . . I gave up eventually.

Some years ago, when I found out that such a thing as "retrogaming" existed, I looked Impossible Mission for the 7800. . . I wanted to know what the ending screen looked like. I doubted there was one, but I wanted to be sure. I learned that, due a programming error, one of the pieces was missing from the game, making it, truly, an Impossible Mission and cementing it into place as one of top ten favorite Atari games.


Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns--I put this one up last because, hands down, it's my absolute favorite pre-16-bit. No sweat. This one gets the pole position by a country mile and I'll say here, for the record, it beats most 8-bit games that I've ever ever played.

You won't find better graphics on a 2600, you won't find better sound on a 2600 and the only 7800 game that tops it in terms of sound is Ballblazer.

The music. . . The game had a full soundtrack, about four different songs. . . music when you died, music when you grabbed hold of an item, music when you were running around, music when you were flying on a balloon. . . it was everywhere and it was pretty damn catchy. Games without music, ever since, seemed lackluster.

The graphics were based on two cel animation and some of the sprites actually had four colors. The background, for most screens, was black, but the color scheme was sweet and the the layout of the caverns provided for some sweet, uncluttered runs.

At bottom, this game is a simple platformer and, for the most part, that's been the genre of video games I've had the most love for over the years. . . for my money you still can't beat a 2-D sidescroller. Revenge of Shinobi, Sonic The Hedgehog, Metroid, any Super Mario. . . If I've played these games ravenously, and played them well, and followed them all these years, it's probably due to Pitfall II.

I got this game in the second grade. . . sometime after Christmas, and played it and playued it and finally beat it a year later. I went back and played though it again and again.

It was the vastness of the caverns that kept me coming back. . . I was always hoping that I'd find something that I'd missed.