Shut Up and Play Yer Atari

For the love of God, man, there are games other than Pifall! Try some of them.

[johnnytenspeed]

Defend the Arcade – With Playing Cards!

Let’s say it’s 1983. You’re at the arcade, about to drop your last quarter into your favorite game when everything shakes. The quarter slips from your fingers, rolls across the fl…

[johnnytenspeed]

Gene Medic – A Homebrew Edutainment Game for the Atari 2600

I’ve always liked being edutained. As a kid I’d keep an eye out for interesting episodes of Nova to watch instead of whatever the family TV would normally be tuned to that night. I even…

[johnnytenspeed]

The Many Identical Faces of Fast Eddie

No ones blames you for not giving Fast Eddie much of a chance. After all, it looks like what you’d get if you asked a four year old to make a Donkey Kong game. Its combination of crude graphi…

[johnnytenspeed]

Snail Against Squirrel for the Atari 2600

Something like 400 games were released for the Atari 2600 in North America during its commercial life. Another 50 or so, at least officially, weren’t. Bizarre games with thought-provoking tit…

[johnnytenspeed]

UFO for the Atari 2600 (Not the Odyssey2)

Remember growing up with an Atari 2600 and being jealous of all your Oddyssey2 friends who got to play UFO! while you were stuck playing Asteroids? Wait, I got that backwards. Anyway, John Reder ha…

[johnnytenspeed]

Arcade Mania – The Board Game That’s Just Like Going to the Arcade

Arcades of the 1980’s were dens of sin and vice. Despised by right-thinking American parents as dark, smoke-filled places that turned wholesome suburban tweens into dope smoking video game zo…

[johnnytenspeed]

Give Me My Pancake! – A DIY Homebrew Kit for the Atari 2600

Homebrew video games have come a long way since they first started appearing in the 1990’s. Not only the games themselves, but the way they’re packaged and sold. Long gone are the days …

[johnnytenspeed]

Obelix for the Atari 2600

Asterix is the name of a very popular French comic that, like many Americans, I have never read. I can tell you that Asterix is the little guy, Obelix is the big guy and they both have Atari 2600 …

[johnnytenspeed]

Monaco GP – My First Arcade Game

Monaco GP is the first arcade game I ever played. I was so young at the time I didn’t even know it by name. It was simply the racing game right inside the entrance to the arcade that was righ…

[johnnytenspeed]

Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600

The first place I saw Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600 was an in-store display sometime in late 1982 or maybe early 1983. By this time my family owned a Colecovision and I’d played the arcade ga…

[johnnytenspeed]

Gigolo and Cathouse Blues for the Atari 2600

Send the kids to bed. These games are for mommies and daddies only. Now for many of you reading this, “adult” Atari 2600 games are old hat, but if they aren’t, open a new browser …

[johnnytenspeed]

Pete Rose Baseball on the Atari 2600 and 7800

Pete Rose Baseball is a game that makes people sit up and say “Wow, I can’t believe this is an Atari 2600 game.” And not just people whose only experience with the 2600 is watchin…

[johnnytenspeed]

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

I’d like to take a moment to remind all of you reading this that E.T. is a bad game. Many of you know this already of course, but a disturbingly large number of you have been insisting lately that it’s a great but misunderstood game.

I understand it. It’s a bad game. There’s absolutely nothing enjoyable about trying to locate the one randomly located patch of grass where E.T. can perform the ability you need in that instance. It’s actually excruciatingly tedious.

It’s absolutely amazing that this game was finished in just five weeks. That doesn’t make it an amazing game. 

[johnnytenspeed]

Mission 3000 A.D.

Hey, I’m back. Thanks for waiting.

Speaking of waiting, how long have you been waiting for Draconian? Like forever, right? I mean, how long can it possibly take to completely redefine what we thought the Atari 2600 was capable of?

So while the rest of you hit refresh every five minutes, hoping this will be the time the finished ROM gets posted, I’m going to be playing Mission 3000 A.D. It’s Bosconian on whatever the opposite of steroids is.

[johnnytenspeed]

To Sign Or Not To Sign

I’d like to take a break from telling you what Atari games to play today and instead tell you what to do with your games when you’re not playing them.

Specifically, should you get cartridges autographed?

To a normal person this is a no-brainer. Getting stuff signed by famous people and/or game designers is cool. To the many collectors out there who aren’t normal people, it’s an outrage.

You see, they’re so obsessed with collecting, they’ve forgotten the things they’re collecting are games. Instead, they’re commodities, with a monetary premium placed on pristine condition as a desperate attempt to justify having no fun whatsoever.

The thing about an autograph though is that it isn’t about the name on the label. It’s about the experience of getting that name on that label. The experience of meeting someone you admire, talking to them, even for just a few seconds, and walking away with a unique memento. That’s worth way more than whatever a collector would have given you for that game before you ruined it.

[johnnytenspeed]

Ms. Snake

Snake. It’s that game pretty much everyone has played at one time or another because it’s been adapted to pretty much everything with a screen. Computers. Cell phones. Calculators. Those things diabetics use to check their blood sugar.

It was ported to the Atari 2600 in the 80′s too, but the few people who weren’t put off by the name Tapeworm and actually bought it were put off by the relentlessly shrill sound effects. Ms. Snake offers a nice, no-frills alternative.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/215913-ms-snake-is-coming/

[johnnytenspeed]

D.K. VCS

Don’t tell Big N, but there’s a sweet piece of eye candy out there for the 2600 that looks and awful lot like a certain Big Ape.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/206497-dk-vcs/