My goal was to spend an entire day playing the Atari 2600, without stopping (read Part 1 here). It was now past noon, I had played over forty old games, and I would now kill you for ten minutes on Super Mario Bros.
A-Team
1:29 pm The one and only iconic image the Atari could actually have managed, and here's what we get.
It took me thirty seconds to make a better one:
but then again, I've actually seen the A-Team, unlike the makers of this "Mr T's disembodied head versus the Riddler on LSD" nightmare.
With horrible Pavlovian programming that proves the programmers actively set out to murder joy, you only hear the real A-Team theme when you die. There's also the unique control scheme where you can fire in every direction, but have to move in that direction to fire, meaning you face-ram everything you're trying to kill. And in stark defiance of 80's reality, when B.A. headbutts something, he's the one who gets hurt.
Until this moment, "Not being jealous of idiot children from twenty years ago" wasn't something I took major pride in.
Adventure
2:04 pm I'm finding it increasingly difficult to think, and I can't tell if it's through boredom, or because this devil box has reverted my brain to its seven-year old neurons, and they can't handle their drink. But I can tell you that Adventure was so far ahead of its technology it was like trying to break the fourth wall with smoke signals, and this incredible extension far beyond the norm made it playable for a whole five minutes.
Gorf
2:47 pm Ah, the 80's, when copyright infringement meant "Hah, just try to find which nondescipt shed we're making these in!" Gorf rips off both Space Invaders and Galaga, the only original idea being a level which turns shoot-'em-up into the fantastically less fun genre of shoot-it-up because the Atari could only handle one bullet at a time.
I assure you, you're having more fun looking at this than I did playing it.
3:37 pm Most of these games are as simple as chopping your fingers off with a butcher's knife -- technically easy, but the more you do it, the harder it gets to continue. They even know that, which is why about 10% of them start automatically when the machine is turned on -- they knew they couldn't rely on kids actually pushing the button to start the game. Others don't bother to stop the game engine when you die, it just grinds on without you for a while to demonstrate exactly how important "player" was in the game design, and you have to hit "reset" to start again. Which feels like putting your hand back on the stove after washing the burn in kerosene.
Lord of The Rings
3:45 pm I swear I will never again mock a movie conversion.
Actually, scratch that. Sure, this might turn the LOTR epic into an endless green "Which way is up" simulator, with dozens of empty screens in the worst "try to make it look big" gimmick outside of text-adventure color codes (and if you don't know what those are, well done on not wasting your life and graph paper), but come on. Nowadays they can make full 3D Iron Man games that still suck! Just for that, I'm going to play this game for another ten minutes.
3:55 pm That was a mistake. I'm re-enacting "Flowers for Algernon" with only an Atari here. I hope I can still write or work my phone after this.
Ghostbusters II
3:56 pm Continuing the "screwing up movies" theme, I played Ghostbusters II. That word "played" is a not just a lie, it's a scientific impossibility.
This cartridge is a daring attempt to make sure the game would be worse received than the film. The first level is where Ray is lowered down the shaft to the river of slime, and the second level could be a cinematic battle where you handbrake turn the Ecto 1 through an Army of Stay Pufts because you'll never see it. The sprites take up a quarter of the screen and the whole things's as maneuverable as a grandfather clock. Add ghosts which ignore your fire and tridents designed specifically to take advantage of your uncontrollable swinging, which the programmers did because they hate you, and you've got a game that's as much fun as "Rubbing Rick Moranis while actually listening to him."
Millipede
4:15 pm Yaaaay!
I appreciate this game more than oxygen, and I loved it the first time (back on my MSX when it took five minutes to load from tape). The fierce joy people feel for retro games is now explained -- every playable game was a like finding a diamond in a the waste outflow pipe from a slaughterhouse. Most of these games are why people think all games are just stupid time-wasters, because back then they were, because back then they were built by those people's parents.
99% of everything released back then was built by people who thought it was stupid trash for idiot children, so whenever someone who actually cared about games got into the business -- presumably by accident, because the companies certainly weren't looking for them -- the results stand out like someone who shouldn't be shot at an American Idol audition. Millipede is one such game, and it's the only reason the article continued at this point.
Earth Dies Screaming
4:30 pm As well as having the most badass title of any game ever, Earth Dies Screaming is proof that it was possible to have graphical gimmick games even when the "graphics" could have been carved from wooden blocks without any loss in quality.
Earth Dies Screaming features an amazing (for Atari) 3D movement where you can roll your tank all over the world. It starts off awesome, until you realize the whole game is really in that little green box at the top, and the enemies move so much faster than your ability to aim that you only hit them when the game decides you should. Eventually, the only one dying screaming in this game is you.
Encounter at L5
5:15 pm This game makes the incredible breakthrough of "Space Invaders where you can fire diagonally." Unfortunately they lacked the second, more important breakthrough of "How to make Space Invaders not suck when you can hide in a corner and fire diagonally."
To repeat: I just played a game that ruined Space Invaders. After this, I'm going to retire to a log cabin in Amish country, only to be brought back by the government for one last job when the Earth is threatened by the Electronic Death of Joy.
Pitfall
A game which rocks so hard specifically because everything you've played before that was worse than a sandpaper massage. It's a pure classic, from the badass musical sting every time you grab a rope -- which never stops being cool -- to the part where you recreate the worst Bond stunt of all time, except it's now awesome.
There's always the option of risking the underground path, which is randomly blocked when the computer feels like being a prick. This choice gets easier when you realise all games from this era feel like being a prick, all the time.
What makes Pitfall fun it that it's actually possible to play it well -- which isn't true for most of these games. Most were utterly random, making it impossible to succeed, but they were created in an era when "playtesting" was like a blind clown trying to juggle diamond-encrusted chainsaws -- ridiculously optimistic and far too expensive for the developers. Back then, "playtesting" meant making sure the program didn't actually crash for the first ten seconds, because after that it'd be the same thing repeated endlessly.
This is by far the most fun I've had all day. Of course, I don't mean actual fun -- if I had a kid who played this more than once, I'd take them to get their head examined. Not even by a doctor, I'd get a zookeeper to check it wasn't a monkey that escaped through a mercury spill.
The game starts with a twenty-minute time limit, and I couldn't play this game for twenty minutes if the reward was a blowjob. You don't need to put up with that much bullShakespeare to get a blowjob.
5:27 pm I am so bored I might actually die. It would only take one more thing to finish me off.
Skateboardin'
5:27:01 pm Oh no.
When a game has enough radical 'tude to replace G's with apostrophes in its own title, that's the gaming equivalent of black-and-yellow-stripes which make a rattlesnake noise.
The point is to find and jump off 30 ramps over a variety of near identical screens, a common trick back when games decided to be "big." Too bad no one ever put anything on all those screens. If you can navigate this place without falling into a coma, well done on working out how to get a ball of string into an Atari, Theseus. Also, can I have the string, because I've decayed to the mental level of a cat.
Conclusion
The only reason companies have to go to other countries to exploit child labor is because they couldn't get the "Atari Goggles" project to work. Even the dumbest kid won't fall for that Huckleberry Finn crap, working because you tell them it's a game -- but if it's electronic and beeps with a number they'll work at the dumbest, most pointlessly repetitive task in the world like their lives depended on it.
I'm off to play Team Fortress 2 and hope I don't die of cognitive shock.
If you enjoyed The Atari 2600 Overdose Experiment, please check out The Alcopop Experiment, in which Luke McKinney tries to find the tastiest alcoholic soda pop on the market.
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