Retro Roulette #88: Vanguard (Atari 2600, 1982)
This week’s installment of “Incredibly Misleading Atari Art” goes like this:
I feel like this sort of artwork only serves to set players up for disappointment. I mean, just look at what the arcade flyer for this game is like:
About 80% of this flyer has absolutely nothing to do with the game. I don’t even know what’s going on here, but I think I want to be Laser Eye Beard Man when I grow up.
Anyway, Vanguard was an early-ish release for SNK (the Neo Geo folks) that hit arcades in 1981 and made its way to the Atari 2600 a year later. It’s an early entry in the “shoot things until they die” genre, which I think accompanies basically all games now (and, regrettably, also real life).
I’m gonna warn you that my 2600 seems to be having some real video issues, but I assure you the game looks a bit better than this in real life:
The Atari version of the game is a relatively solid recreation of the original, as far as these things go - you have to make your way through a bunch of auto-scrolling areas (both vertical and horizontal, which is cool) while dodging a series of weird looking enemies who don’t like you. This eventually ramps up in speed and difficulty, but the basic idea never really changes. It feels a lot like a prototypical version of Gradius or R-Type - while it’s certainly a lot simpler than those, and there aren’t really any upgrades or the like, the idea is generally the same.
My biggest gripe with this one is the controls - while you can both move and fire in four directions, you generally have to use the same joystick for both. This means you can only fire in a direction in which you’re moving, which isn’t always ideal. There are a few different other configurations (which are controlled by the 2600′s difficulty switches), but they all have similar issues. Isn’t awful, per se, but it’s hard not to imagine how well it would work as a Robotron-esque, twin-stick shooter.
There isn’t a lot of music in this version of Vanguard, but what’s there is rather interesting. When you pick up a temporary invincibility power up, it plays a version of a piece of music from the 1980 film Flash Gordon, which was composed by none other than Freddie Mercury. Why they chose this, I have absolutely no idea. On a similar note - in the arcade version, the first music you hear when you start is Jerry Goldsmith’s theme to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which would go on to be used as the TNG theme. So when you think about, it Vanguard is really just a prequel to this:
The 2600 version of Vanguard is also, according to reviews at the time, the first home video game ever to have a ‘Continue’ option. I can’t say for sure that that’s actually true, but it wouldn’t shock me. Considering the variation of the levels and the amount of progress there is to be made, this is a really welcome addition. It definitely made it so I played this a lot more than I would have otherwise. I appreciate a game that, well, lets me play it.
Overall, I was impressed with Vanguard. It’s a good amount of fun, and it offers more variety than a lot of the games of its time. If you enjoy retro shoot-em-ups, I’d definitely recommend checking this out as a cool piece of the genre’s history. The 2600 version won’t set you back more than a few bucks, and the arcade version is available on modern consoles by way of the very cool SNK 40th Anniversary Collection.
I’m going on a big vacation starting next week, so Retro Roulette will also be taking a two week hiatus. When we come back in mid-October, we’ll be looking at an NES game whose title seems like it can’t possibly be real. I look forward to seeing you then!