Atari 2600 Games Marathon | Friday Night Arcade

this month everyone will be exploring the universe in no man's sky the procedurally generated space exploration game from hello games the game looks pretty incredible with its colorful graphics and randomly generated worlds you kids these days are spoiled video game space exploration wasn't always this gorgeous but there certainly was a lot of it going back to the late 70s and early 80s the atari 2600 featured a cornucopia of space exploration titles in fact just about every other game had space or star in the title space canyon space cavern space invaders space jockey space raid space robot space shuttle space tunnel space war space chase space master x7 star fox not that one star raiders starship star trek star strike star voyager star wars star gate star gunner and that list doesn't even include non-star space games like asteroids missile command or cosmic arc but the atari space game that i always remember being fascinated with wasn't asteroids or space invaders it was actually this little hidden treasure from activision star master for use with the atari video computer system star master was created by activision considering activision was responsible for several other atari 2600 treasures such as robot tank spider fighter river raid dolphin pitfall and too many other to name it should come as no surprise that starmaster is an impressive feat let's take a look [Music] okay well this is pretty cool the game puts you in the cockpit of a starship and actually gives you a first person perspective you can move around in three dimensions with the joystick let's take a moment to process that this isn't something common in video games from that era whoa that laser blast sound is freaking epic actually all of the sounds here are pretty awesome just the sound of your ship cruising through space is very well done here this is all fascinating but what exactly are you supposed to be doing here you really do need the manual to figure out what's going on let's check out the pilot briefing whoa this is pretty intense for an atari game and these are only the basic instructions there's a whole second manual but we'll get to that later so when you first start up the game you're actually supposed to select your difficulty level before you hit reset you can toggle between four difficulty levels using the game select switch on your atari console this brings up an entirely different screen and wait what okay so this screen is called the galactic chart we're getting serious now folks each of these letters and numbers at the bottom has a function the top letter is the difficulty level e for n sign l for leader w for wing commander and s for star master that's the hardest each of these difficulty levels affects the number of enemies present in the star system as well as how hard it will be for you to evade enemies and meteors along the way once you've selected your difficulty setting hit the game reset switch on your console again and now the game officially begins okay well this looks pretty cool but now what the next step is to plot a course going back to the galactic chart but wait how do you get back to the chart without resetting the game there's only one button on the controller it turns out activision pulled off a really neat trick here you can actually bring up the galactic chart again in game by moving one of the switches on the console the atari 2600 features a switch on the console for toggling back and forth between color and black and white televisions in most games this switch simply makes an adjustment to the brightness and contrast of the game to give you the best picture possible depending on whether or not your television was color or black and white remember that was still a thing in the late 70s however there were a handful of games that utilized this switch in an entirely different and unique way in star master you can use the switch to toggle into your galactic chart while you're in mid-flight this is sort of like the navigational computer in space quest 3 but it's on atari that's pretty amazing when you consider what they had to work with the galactic chart works kind of like a grid the four large dots represent star bases that you have to protect the smaller dots represent enemy ships that you have to destroy you can move your ship's icon around on the chart and once you decide where you want to go push the fire button and then you'll warp to that location on the chart the warp sequences are pretty intense and have their own dangers you have to dodge or destroy meteors along the way to your destination once you get to the enemy's location a notification on your screen lets you know that there's enemies nearby the bottom of the screen represents the ship's computer if it's red there's at least one enemy ship in this sector blue means you're in the location of a friendly starbase that you can dock with and protect green means good to go nothing nearby in this case it's red so we just have to fly around a little bit until the enemy shows up the bad guys kinda remind me of the bird of prey from star trek yeah take that blowing up enemy ships is hugely satisfying and just listen to those explosions just awesome but wait a second this number on my computer readout keeps getting smaller okay so it turns out that's actually your energy reserves basically your fuel if this runs out you're dead in space you can top off your energy by docking with a starbase don't worry it's way easier than landing the plane in top gun there's all sorts of other notifications on your ship's computer as well if you take too many hits certain letters will pop up on your ship's computer essentially like a damage report s means the shields are destroyed and you better get back to starbase asap l means your laser cannons are destroyed r means the radar is destroyed and you can't see where the enemy ships are going to be on the galactic chart w means your warp engines are damaged and your ship will consume twice as much energy when you warp to another sector yeah they thought of that too every time you work to another location an indicator on your galactic chart will show you how much energy it will consume to get there so you do have to put some thought into plotting your course you may need to dock with a starbase along the way and refuel firing your weapons lowers your energy as well this adds to the strategy and survival aspect of the game in a way i've never really seen before on the atari 2600 you're constantly balancing all of your resources just to stay alive but also complete your mission and destroy all of the enemy ships and protect your star bases this whole process gets insanely addictive after just a short while all of these variables also factor into your final score when you beat all of the enemies in a level you can bring up the galactic chart again to see what your score is you get points for the amount of ships destroyed but you also lose points for how long it takes to complete the mission this is calculated by the stardate timer which is always counting up on your ship's computer you're also penalized 100 points every time you dock with a star base if you're going for a high score there is some strategy to balancing all of these different situations throughout your mission and the game rewards you for being able to avoid taking damage and needing to dock with a starbase you also lose 500 points if the enemies blow up one of your star bases that's another thing the enemies are constantly moving around on the galactic chart they can attack a star base even if you're not there if the enemies destroy one of your star bases off-screen you'll still hear an explosion no matter where you are i really don't know how they programmed all of these things going on behind the scenes within the confines of the atari 2600 it really is a marvel of programming the lead programmer and catalyst behind star master was alan miller miller originally worked for atari making games such as hangman surround and basketball but when atari refused to give on-screen credit or royalties for his work on certain games he left atari along with several other all-stars in the industry it's no wonder activision was responsible for so many fantastic atari games with these guys at the helm it turns out there was a significant incentive to get the high score on this game there was a minimum score set as the qualifying standard for each difficulty level if you managed to beat all of the enemies on any of these levels and your score qualifies you could take a photograph of your score on the television screen send the photo of your high score to activision you would receive your very own star master patch there was one for each level having a patch would cement your place in the order of the supreme star master they even included a second manual called the power of the star master with all sorts of helpful tips and tricks to help you get the high score there's even tips on the back of the manual from alan miller himself a supreme star master will have lightning quick reactions keen eye clear head and the ability to remain calm and in control at all times oh [Music] no matter how hard i tried i could not beat this game on the highest difficulty level i'd be curious to know how you did were you ever able to get the high score on this game did you ever send in a picture and get a patch let me know in the comments below hey thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you next time on friday night [Music] arcade this week on buried treasures i'm going to take a look back at another classic from alan miller and activision this time i'm looking at robot tank on the atari 2600 this was made by the same crew that put together star master which i talked about a few weeks ago and there are a lot of similarities this game is uh one of my all-time favorite games for atari it's not as simple as just uh shoot the shoot the bad guys i mean it is but there's a little bit more to it and let's take a look so the story behind this is that it's the year 2019 and enemy robot tanks have invaded the earth and it's your job to commandeer the one tank and take them all out in the wastelands of the earth this game is unique in that similar to star master it gives you a first person perspective which was pretty unique at the time it wasn't something you really saw hardly ever on the atari 2600 a couple of things that always come to mind when i think of this game is the incredible visuals as well as the excellent sound you have to remember this is an atari 2600 and yet these are very immersive sound effects just listen to the sounds as you're driving along in this tank and then the explosions whenever you hit the enemy are just awesome ah can't beat that atari 2600 goodness the visuals are pretty incredible too check out the mountains in the distance i know this is only an atari 2600 game and it's fairly primitive by today's standards but one thing that's really unique here is that you do have a day to night transition so there's a there's a timer in the upper portion of the screen that's always running and it's letting you know what day it is as well as what time of the day that it is so as you're playing the game is transitioning from day to night and during the daytime you can see pretty well but at night time you have to rely on your radar and that's another thing this game has radar that's a pretty complex system for the atari 2600 so you have this radar and it can tell you where the enemy tank is in relation to you now you do only fight one tank at a time so when you shoot a tank another tank shows up you're never in a situation where you have to fight more than one tank at once so in that respect it is a little bit simplistic but there's some other unique things that pop up along the way as well it's not just as simple as the other tank shoots you and you die although that does happen and the effect when you get shot is pretty neat similar to star master you can also just end up in a situation where only part of your tank gets damaged uh star master had different effects where your radar could get taken out or something like that same thing's going on here there's a computer at the bottom so you've got your radar and then there's uh there's four different things that could get damaged throughout your mission so if v gets taken out then your video is going to black out periodically and that's that's really annoying especially when it's night time and you can barely see it as it is c is your canons so when that's damaged your canon won't always fire when you need it to r is your radar and that is uh pretty critical especially at night time because you you just you can't see the enemy without it you you have to have it and t is the treads on the tracks so if that gets damaged then it's very difficult for your tank to move because the the tracks have been taken out [Music] it's pretty incredible when you look at what they came up with given the limited programming confines of the atari 2600 to just you know it's it would just have been just as easy to say okay they shoot you and then you blow up and you're done but adding these little nuances and these little uh different various effects of damage gives it a little bit more real a bit of believability probably the only bad thing about this though is that there's no power ups in the game that you can collect in order to repair this your tank so once your tank gets damaged that's it you once your vision goes out you're you're kind of just out of luck so that's probably my one minor complaint you might be in a situation where it's just as easy to just go ahead and commit suicide and start over the only real power up that the game does give you is every 12 tanks that you blow up it gives you an extra life so that does help out a little bit you know it's not as good as say repairing the tank but it's better than nothing so another crazy thing about this game is that there's not only status effects there is also weather effects that can happen so as the days continue to progress and you get the day night transitions there's other weather effects that can pop up there's fog and that's just about as bad as night you can't see where the enemy is and you have to rely on your radar there's also rain that really makes it difficult whenever the tanks are shooting at you because it's tough to to to maneuver away from the fire there's also a snow effect i i don't know what is going on with the weather in 2019 but it's going from rain to fog to snow tonight today all within a matter of five or ten minutes so it's pretty crazy the snow makes it very slick it's not so bad dodging the enemy fire when it's snowing but it's really tough to get zeroed in on the enemy and actually get a kill shot in whenever it uh whenever it's snowing it's it's pretty tough this is a game that i can just play over and over again i don't know what it is about it it's uh i think it's just kind of the combination of everything i love the sound effects i love the visuals i love the way the the light looks when it's coming up through the mountains it's kind of got this real unique uh look especially at dawn or sunset um it's just kind of a cool color of of orange and red it looks sort of like the way the the light looks in the background for uh chopper command uh with the mountains in the background there and uh it's it's just it's just a lot of fun to play this game is uh is fairly common i don't see it in the wild very often when i'm uh when i'm game hunting i don't really see it in shops that much it's certainly not as common as say uh combat or something like that but it is out there and it's it's really cheap you can get it on ebay for a couple bucks right now so i definitely recommend checking it out if you're into atari 2600 at all and you loved other games like star master and stuff like that and really just about anything from activision this is definitely one you should have in your collection this was another activision game that had patches uh similar to star master and the uh the order of the supreme star master if you took a picture of your high score and it was high enough you could actually get a patch that they would send you a physical patch that you could have robot tank was actually uh something of a clone of another atari game called battlezone battlezone first came out in the arcade in 1980 and then was later ported to the atari 2600 i believe in 1983. the gameplay elements are similar it's a kind of a first person perspective tank shooter the difference was battlezone used wireframe graphics whereas this used actual textures well that's robot tank for you i'd be curious to know if you ever actually played this game and if this was one that you had when you were a kid or maybe you just discovered it recently did you send in a picture of your high score and get the patches and all that cool stuff i'd be curious to know what were some of your other favorite buried treasures from the atari 2600 library hey if you enjoyed the video definitely let me know by either liking the video or you can leave a comment below also definitely subscribe if you want to check out some of my other retro gaming content you can follow me on twitter at fn arcade or you can follow me on facebook there's a link to that on the front page of the channel thank you for stopping by and i hope you have a great weekend we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] welcome back to friday night arcade this week is wrestlemania and in honor of wwf's sorry wwe's biggest event let's take a quick look back at this little oddball nugget that i never even knew existed until recently title match pro wrestling for the atari 2600 [Music] that's right there was a pro wrestling game on atari 2600. this was released in 1987 by the good people at activision although this isn't the earliest pro wrestling game out there pro wrestling came out in 1986 on the nes this is the most primitive console version of a wrestling game that i could dig up unless i missed something there was also a little bit prettier version of title match for the atari 7800 but i'm more interested in the version on 2600 wrestling games in general requires some fairly complex gameplay mechanics so it intrigued me to see just what exactly they came up with and i was not disappointed while the game certainly isn't spectacular or anything i'm always fascinated by how developers find little ways to push the hardware to its limits activision figured out a creative way to utilize the console's select switch here you can toggle between four different game modes two player one on one two player tag team one player versus the computer or a tag team versus the computer's tag team and there's also four different wrestlers to choose from hey that's actually kind of impressive let's check out the manual and see what these guys are all about mad dog this husky redneck vows to chew up and spit out anyone who tries to tangle with him and skinhead that sounds kind of bad mr mean and big chief big chief pow-wow doesn't miss a trick yeah that's not at all offensive to anybody once you get started it's well it's pro wrestling on the atari 2600 there's not a whole lot to say about it the gameplay mechanics aren't half bad though you can pick guys up or bounce them off the ropes it's possible to do a dive off the ropes too both wrestlers have an energy meter too and that's fairly complex for the console considering all they had to work with was a joystick and a button there's actually a lot of mechanics to do here i'm not sure that it all works the way it was intended but by gosh they tried you can even toggle something called muscle mode if you're down or in a bear hub the manual says to jiggle the joystick left and right very fast to increase your chances of escaping the manual also encourages you to try to use less taxing moves such as punches or kicks to try to conserve energy if you're running low since bigger moves take more energy again that's a fairly complex energy management system even if it's clunky as all get out also check out the sounds here specifically check out the crowd noise it sounds kind of cool but it also sounds kind of familiar if you listen closely it sounds like the spaceship engine from another activision title star master it wasn't uncommon for atari 2600 developers to reuse sound effects across their game library but it seems like a little bit of an odd choice when you're slamming your opponent it sounds like your plane just blew up in river raid so is this game worth playing today well obviously you could do a whole lot better on just about any generation beyond the atari 2600 but if you're interested at all in the history of it or just want to see how wrestling games have evolved give this one a look it's not much fun beyond the first few minutes or so especially against the nearly impossible to beat computer but it could be kind of fun if you had some friends to go up against either way let me know what you think did you play this when it came out and what's your all-time favorite wrestling game past or present thank you for watching and we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] the atari 2600 and all its wood grained glory is still one of my favorite gaming memories it was our family's first console i still have the one from my childhood and somehow this thing still works after all these years the games were simple but at the time we didn't know any better programmers also figured out creative ways to make the most out of limited hardware capabilities that i never fully appreciated until today let's take a look at some of my all-time favorite atari 2600 games there's no rhyme or reason to this list other than just that these are the games i grew up playing not necessarily the best ever but the ones i remember and still look back on with fondness to this day the atari 2600 games i loved up next on this edition of friday night [Music] arcade here's one i always loved enduro takes a simple racing concept and does it in a way that's still fun today the gameplay is straightforward enough you play as a race car driving cross country trying to pass as many cars as you can on the first day you have to pass at least 200 cars and then you have to pass 300 cars every day after that what's impressive here is the day-to-night transition it's smooth and the colors of the skyline at sunset look great at night time the cars just look like two headlight dots against a black background and eventually your visibility dips down to about 50 percent there's also snow where the heck are these guys racing the snow affects your steering and in general the controls all feel natural i'm not sure what kind of digital trickery activision used to pull off the 3d effect here but it all just works and it feels like you're steering a race car pressing the button speeds up while pressing backwards uses the brakes and that's really the key to this game i've read some negative reviews about this game citing the challenging difficulty but it's not that hard you can take your foot off the gas and your car will just maintain speed until you break or hit something just find a speed that's comfortable and you're still passing cars at a reasonable rate and you can pretty much coast through each level my favorite thing about this game is the sound it's simple but the acceleration sounds are epic and when it snows it actually sounds like you're driving through snow definitely check this one out if you've never played it before chopper command i played the crap out of this game it's another gem from activision and there's probably going to be a lot of activision on this list you take control of a chopper and have to shoot down enemy planes and helicopters while protecting the black trucks traveling on the roadway below you also have a long-range scanner at the bottom of the screen that shows you how many enemies and trucks are left in the area which is kinda cool the sound effects are just cool from gunfire to the explosions to just flying around it actually sounds like a helicopter the controls are fluid and smooth i feel like your chopper moves and reacts at just the right speed i also love the colors in the background with the setting sun peeking through the mountains you've got unlimited ammo and you get a bonus chopper for every 10 000 points you rack up the graphics are amazingly detailed for an atari 2600 title you can even see the wheels spinning on the trucks below there's also a different firing mode where your chopper apparently swaps out your ammo for 20 foot long javelins sure this is basically a defender clone but it's a really really good one well wouldn't you know it another activision title river raid puts you in control of a jet fighter in a top-down vertical shooter that's surprisingly complex for an atari 2600 game you have to shoot helicopters and aircraft carriers for points as well as bridges to open up the next stage on top of that you have a fuel gauge and this thing gets about as good a gas mileage as a humvee towing a school bus you're tempted to shoot anything and everything but you'll want to watch out for the fuel tanks you can also slow down or speed up by pressing forwards or backwards pro tip slow down when you're flying over the fuel tank so you can maximize your refueling chances the sound effects of the gunfire explosions and the general jet flying sounds are all top notch i mentioned this game was complex and not just for the refueling mechanic as you progress through these stages you'll note that each stage is different it's one of the rare atari games that doesn't take place on just one or two screens which is impressive given the storage limitations of an atari 2600 cartridge activision pulled this off by procedurally generating these elements of the gameplay even though they're the same each time they're not technically stored on the cartridge they're just being procedurally generated by the code every time you play neat huh this one needs no introduction that sounds says it all space invaders dominated the arcades upon its release in 1978 and was later ported to the atari 2600 although the port certainly isn't a perfect replica of its arcade counterpart when i was a kid i didn't know any better this this was just awesome the story here is simple aliens are invading earth with their attack forces aligned in a series of parallel squads slowly descending to the ground in a back and forth pattern and your one chance of stopping them is by taking control of this moving christmas tree that can only fire one shot at a time seems easy enough but there's a catch the more aliens you destroy the faster the remaining aliens become this turns those final seconds of any round into a white knuckle fight for survival as the aliens blitz across the screen if the aliens make it to the ground it's game over regardless of how many lives you have left there are different types of aliens in each row and they all look unique i especially always hated these little bastards but i'm not sure why you do have these three shields that you can hide behind and quite an impressive feat for the 2600 they can take damage from you or the aliens and eventually be destroyed you can make a hole in the shields and fire through them if you like although i always felt like it was easier in the later rounds when the shields just go away completely it gets to a point where the aliens start very close to the ground and you have to immediately start moving and take out the first few rows with your christmas tree only being capable of firing one shot at a time it's actually easier with the aliens close to the ground because you can get more shots out faster since your shots don't have as far to travel i mentioned before the aliens get faster toward the end of the round and being able to lead your shot into where the aliens are headed is a crucial skill especially if you want to take out the mother ship that pops up from time to time it was always a tricky bet trying to calculate in the moment whether or not you wanted to try to get a shot off against the mother ship especially since it was going to be your one shot until your bullet either hits or goes off screen this would be a good time to mention that these atari 2600 games had different variations by flipping the game select switch on the console you could change up different things about the gameplay such as make the shields move give the aliens faster ammo or ammo that moves invisible aliens ah jeez and if you flip the difficulty switch your christmas tree gets all fat this simple but addictive atari 2600 game is still just as fun today to me at least as it was 30 years ago combat i'd venture to guess that everybody played combat at some point you could throw a pile of random atari 2600 cartridges into your closet late two weeks and when you pull them out again there will probably be at least two or three combat cartridges in there still though this game is a lot of fun to play unfortunately it's two players only so i can only show so much recording this by myself but you get the idea two players take control of tanks and try to kill each other my cousin and i used to play this for hours and bragging rights for the night were typically at stake the explosions when you finally managed to hit the other tank are not only satisfying but just a little extra demoralizing for the person who got hit despite its simplicity combat is one of the rare atari games you can play for more than 5 minutes without getting bored because it was all dependent on playing against a human opponent no two rounds were ever going to be the same on top of that this game made clever use of the game select function and there were all sorts of different game options to work with there were different mazes to choose from there was a cool option where you have to do bank shots invisible tanks there were biplanes helicopters and jets too and they all have a little bit of a different sound to them which is neat pro tip after you fire a shot you can sort of steer it by turning your vehicle to the left or right a bit you won't believe it but here's another activision title star master was one of my favorite games the look the sound effects the battles everything about it is so well done i actually already did a full review of this game some time back so i don't have too much to add to that but for the uninitiated here's how this works you take control of a spaceship with a first person pov shooter and you have to defend these star bases against enemy fighter ships your ship also takes damage and there are certain status effects to deal with such as damage to the radar vision weapons and on top of that you can run out of energy you can actually dock with the friendly star bases to refuel and make repairs star master features a star chart and this is pretty slick since the atari 2600 only has one button on the controller star master makes use of the black and white toggle switch directly on the console flip the switch to bring up your star chart and it will tell you where all the enemies as well as all the star bases are located then you can plot a course to that area and warp straight to it that seems simple nowadays but in 1982 that was a big deal and it's a creative way to utilize the extra switches on the console when i was a kid i pulled a console up close to where i was sitting and then having to use the extra switches kind of made it feel like you were in the cockpit of your very own spaceship robot tank here's another one i already did a full review on some time back you take control of a tank and just have to go around blowing up other tanks but it's another first person pov shooter which just seemed so foreign on a gaming console in the early 80s the 3d effect combined with the impressive sound effects really allowed you to suspend your disbelief and made it feel like you were sitting in some futuristic battle tank just like in starmaster your tank can take damage to the radar weapons or vision and similar to enduro there's multiple weather issues you have to deal with such as nighttime snow or fog i realize now this was just a different take on what was already done with battlezone but four year old me didn't have access to the internet i just knew i thought this game was fantastic and i played the crap out of it um well if you could give out an award for coolest box art cosmic arc would probably be my pick featuring a silver foil outline and a sweet picture of a spaceship that looks straight out of battle star galactica this would be a good time to point out that these atari 2600 games often left a lot to the imagination the box art hardly ever matched what the game actually looked like but who cares right the discrepancy between box art and actual game footage was forgivable if the game was fun and cosmic arc is no exception it's something a little different besides just shooting everything on the screen well it's got plenty of that the first part of the game involves piloting the mother ship in outer space while meteors pelt the ship from all directions you fire in each direction by moving the joystick up down left or right as needed but keep in mind you only have a limited amount of energy for your ship's lasers once you've fought off all the meteors mother ship moves down to the planet's surface where you have to pilot a smaller ship and pick up two life forms via a tractor beam while laser beams try to shoot you the life forms are a little different each time you go down to the surface i guess this is similar to the story of noah's ark but just set in outer space you have a finite amount of time to spend fussing around on the surface though it's been too long and an alarm will go off warning you of a meteor about to strike the ship you'll have to get back in time so you can deal with it because i guess you're the only one piloting this thing [Music] if you manage to get both life forms it will top off your ship's energy but if not you'll have to fly back up to outer space and fend off the meteors again before you get another crack at the life form below the game doesn't have lives but every time you get hit with a meteor you lose a little bit of energy run out of energy and the next hit will end the game but hey on the bright side your ship's escape pod still makes it out so at least you didn't die a horrible fiery death check out the moving star field in the background this was done using a bug in the atari 2600 hardware pretty cool huh we've covered a lot of the more complex atari titles sometimes it's nice to sit back and take in some good mindless fun the atari port for asteroids fits that bill perfectly and for some reason i have asteroids on vinyl i i don't know why i have this it's just a thing that you have when you're a guy like me i suppose anyway the game you just fly around and shoot as many asteroids as you can but each time you shoot them they break into smaller asteroids also if you fly around you have a tendency to go floating off all haphazardly as your ship drifts through space that mechanic is cool but for the most part i always try to stay in the center of the screen if things get too hairy you can press down on the joystick to warp into hyperspace it's a roll of the dice if you end up somewhere out of the way or if you end up getting immediately smashed to bits when your ship reappears on the screen it's impressive to see how many different objects can potentially be flying around on screen at once the sound effects are simple but well done from the sounds of the asteroids lumbering through space to the explosions it's all simple but effective also every time you score 10 000 points you get an extra life and it sounds like the smoke alarm is going on after some of the more complicated games we've looked at this is ridiculously simple just score as many points as you can and brag to all your friends well i think that wraps it up for this episode the atari 2600 had a massive library of games and although they weren't all great there were a ton of memorable titles that i grew up with that are still fun to play today i definitely didn't get to all of them in this episode but if you enjoyed this perhaps i'll do a follow-up episode somewhere down the road what do you think what were some of your favorite atari 2600 games growing up do you still revisit atari games today as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade ah the atari 2600 or as we used to call it in our house simply the atari for a lot of gamers of our generation it was our first entry into the home console gaming market and there are certain games that will forever be seared into the back of my brain the one common theme about pretty much all atari games was that they were all pretty basic especially by today's standards but did you know that there were some games that flat out pushed the atari 2600 to its limits in unique and creative ways let's take a closer look at a few standout titles that took the atari 2600 to the peak of its potential on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] pitfall 2 lost caverns was developed by activision and released in 1984. david crane was the lead designer on this game just like with the first pitfall a boy and his blob on the nes and so many other great titles pitfall 2 is a fantastic sequel you play again as pitfall harry tasked with finding your niece ronda a special diamond as well as your pet quickclaw the gameplay is centered around platforming and dodging enemies while you collect treasures along the way for points you can also find these red crosses on the ground which act as checkpoints gone is the time limit and if you get hit by an enemy you lose points as you're carried back to the most recent checkpoint you technically have an unlimited amount of lives as well so there's really no way to lose the game although if you're going for the high score you'll want to try to get it right the first time through graphically it's pretty similar to the first game although there's a cool sunset in the background when you're on the top level in the woods your character animation along with the enemy animations are well done and as detailed as you can want given the hardware there's also a variety of enemies such as eagles bats poison frogs electric eels and scorpions this time around pitfall harry can even swim and check out the wave animations in the water here activision really outdid themselves but the biggest difference is the music that's right it's an atari 2600 game that has actual music not just a steady blast of constant sound effects or a little three-note tune here or there but a full-blown soundtrack that even changes with the situation when you pick up a treasure you get an upbeat heroic tune [Music] there's a steady tune that plays [Music] throughout and if you get hit by an enemy the music gets all depressed [Music] it even plays a completely separate tune when you're riding the balloon [Music] this was an actual piece of music written in 1888 by mexican composer juventino rosas called sobre las olas which when translated means over the waves issue number 46 of retro gamer magazine declared pitfall 2 lost caverns to be the greatest game ever made on the atari 2600 and it's hard to come up with an argument against that it pushes the system to its limit and is just as much fun to play today as it was three decades ago i strongly recommend checking this one out if you've never had a chance to play it before [Music] [Applause] by the time this next game was released in 1986 most gamers were probably helping a certain plumber rescue a certain princess as a result solaris most likely slipped under a lot of folks radar somewhat unnoticed and it's a shame too because this is by far the prettiest game to look at on the atari 2600 console smooth scrolling 3d environments sprites that scale in from the background and a complex warping system allowing you to jump around in different quadrants taking out the bad guys oh yeah and sometimes this happens this game is as fun as it is complex and you'll need to thumb through the manual so you can get a grasp on what exactly is going on it's also a large scale game with several different quadrants to explore and clean out but you'll also have to be mindful of your fuel resorts solaris was developed primarily by douglas neubauer who originally pitched the idea to atari and the plan was to make this a movie tie-in with the 1984 film the last starfighter but then there was that whole video game crash thing and so licensing the rights to the film was scrapped and the project was shelved until 1986. this game can be bought for super cheap like less than 10 bucks on the secondary market so there's no reason not to give this one a try if you're a fan of the atari 2600 tunnel runner developed by cbs electronics and released in 1983. now here's something you don't see every day this is genuine 3d gameplay on the atari 2600. the goal is to navigate your way through a three-dimensional maze all while avoiding these giant monsters called zots movement is done entirely with the joystick and you use the button to bring up the map in the early stages on the map you can see the monsters moving around off screen although in later stages they become invisible if you play on the second variant of the game the mazes are even randomly generated which is crazy to think about given the hardware if you're wondering how cbs electronics pulled off this feed of wizardry it's a result of a special add-on ram plus power chip embedded in the cartridge this adds a whopping 256 bytes of memory to the console it's similar to what the super fx chip did on the super nintendo but it's incredible to think they pulled this off back in 1983 [Applause] take a moment to process what's going on here you're moving around in three dimensions the zots are still moving around the map hunting you even when they're off screen so you can't stay in one place for too long and when you see the zots they actually increase or decrease in size depending on perspective and you may even catch a glimpse of them from the side it's not just a one-dimensional sprite holy crap since you can't shoot the zots i'm not sure if you can technically classify this as a first person shooter but it's definitely worth checking out just to see how far gaming has come since 1983. well look at that another 3d game on the atari 2600 who says you need a modern computer for 3d games huh battlezone developed and released by atari in 1983. this was first released as an arcade cabinet which featured wireframe graphics and then ported to the home console with more of a chunky pixel look the storyline straight from the game's manual reads the year is 1999 and the nations of the earth have declared a worldwide peace plan but there's a problem with the proposed truce a council of military commanders has unleashed battalions of automated weapons into the countryside these aerial fighters flying saucers tanks and super tanks will turn the world into a lifeless landscape unless you can stop it luckily you've discovered an old military tank hidden inside the museum use your joystick to steer the tank as you search for enemy automatons since your electronic periscope only gives you a front view from the tank you'll have to rely heavily on your radar screen to detect the enemy if you see a blip on the radar you need to move fast use your joystick to turn your tank until the enemy appears on the screen press the red controller button to fire your turret gun that's original so if this game looks familiar it's because there were several knockoffs of it including robot tank which i've talked about a couple times already on this channel although i certainly like the look of the graphics on battlezone robot tank is my preferred choice between the two while the gameplay in both games is pretty much identical right down to the radar in robot tank you get weather conditions as well as various status effects for your tank it's not just a one-hit kill for your tank and you can also shoot the incoming missiles from enemy tanks in battle zone there's really no way to get out of the way of incoming fire which do you think is better battlezone or robot tank for racing fans check out pole position developed and released by namco in 1982 it's yet another 3d perspective game where you navigate through a twisting turning track while dodging other vehicles you can shift gears from low to high by pressing up or down on the joystick and the button is your brakes the play control is a little stiff compared to other racing titles such as enduro but overall this is pretty cool and very fast paced the sound effects are pretty neat whether it's the sound of other vehicles whizzing past you or the sound of a collision also check out the scrolling mountains in the background that move left or right as you're steering through the track it's subtle but adds a depth of realism you wouldn't expect on a system from this day this may not be my favorite racing title on the console as that's probably still enduro but pole position is definitely worth a look [Music] last up on the list xenophobe developed and released by bali midway in 1987 this late in the game the atari 2600 was nearing the end of its lifespan and xenophobe ended up being one of the last officially released games on the console so this was another atari port of an arcade game and it's a pretty good one definitely different anyway right out of the gate the music on the opening screen is genuinely creepy the story here is that a space station has been overrun with aliens not those aliens we swear and your mission is to take them out it's side-scrolling action and you can even pick up power-ups along the way such as different guns and even grenades the aliens are all different too there's tentacles hanging from the ceiling these little crawling aliens that grab a hold of you but are totally not at all like facehuggers and then these little guys that turn into eggs and then get bigger over time while you could probably do better to find the nes version of this game you still have to tip your cap to them for pulling off something this complex on the atari 2600 well that wraps it up for this week's episode we didn't get to all of them but this should give you a good start if you want to open up the atari 2600 and really see what she can do what are some other titles that you remember as truly standing out among the crowded pack of atari 2600 games and what are some of your favorite atari 2600 games in general as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade let's get this party started with yar's revenge designed by howard scott warsaw and released in 1982 as with most atari games you're gonna have to use your imagination a little bit with this one the story here is that you're playing as yar yar this giant insect that kinda looks like mothra you're trying to kill this evil kotal monster on the right side of the screen but he's protected by a barrier that you have to take out first there's also this crazy looking barrier called a neutral zone in the middle of the screen the unique look of the neutral zone barrier was created by some sort of graphical glitch accidentally discovered while they were programming and they just sort of went with it you can't shoot through the barrier if you're in the middle of it or on the other side of it the kotal fires a heat-seeking missile that follows you around for the entire round but you're safe if you stay inside the neutral zone the kotal also occasionally does a swirl attack that can kill you anywhere the goal here is to take out enough of the barrier surrounding the coat tile and then get up close and arm your big weapon now this is called a zorlon cannon once you touch the right side of the screen the cannon is armed and pressing the fire button fires the cannon instead of your regular fire attack the cannon locks onto the location wherever you touch the screen so there's some strategy here you're trying to hit the kotal which is always moving albeit in a pattern and you have to make sure you move out of the way so that you don't accidentally shoot yourself yeah that's a thing if you hit the hotel you're treated to a freaking awesome death scene it could have just been a simple explosion but no it's a total ordeal between that and the barrier this game has some fairly impressive sequences even if it's repetitive it's also a lot of fun and requires you to constantly be moving and thinking about your next plan of attack donkey kong developed originally for the arcades by nintendo in 1981 and later ported to the 2600 by kaliko okay okay the colecoport of this game is an absolute turd compared to the original arcade version donkey kong looks like a hot dog sprouted legs the barrels look like cookies and the fireballs on screen too look like gravy boats in fact it wasn't until much later when i finally got a chance to play donkey kong on the real arcade cabinet that i realized those were supposed to be fireballs at all it's a drastically tough sell going from this to this the porch lead programmer gary kitchen mentioned in an interview that the original rom should have been put on at least a 6k cartridge at the time 8k cartridges were available but coleco insisted the game be placed on a 4k cartridge to cut down on manufacturing costs and probably to boost sales of their own colecovision console which had a much better port of donkey kong on it so i guess when you look at it that way they're lucky they were even able to pull this off on the 2600 given what they had to work with but here's the thing four-year-old me didn't know any better or care about any of that i was too young to go to the arcade so this was all i knew it was a game we had i played the crap out of it and i'll always have fond memories of jumping over those gravy boats trying to take out the bridges [Music] ah frogger this is another one of those games that my family just always had on atari and it was a regular in the rotation of games we played it's a simple concept you play as a frog trying to make your way across crowded city traffic and an overly active rushing river to get back to your little froggy base and score points on the way easy enough but there's all kinds of things trying to kill you semis speeding cars snow plows these cars that look like the fred flintstone mobile snakes and when you cross the river you've got speeding logs chomping alligators although you can write on their backs sometimes the alligators even show up in your home base and there were these circles that you can ride on but sometimes they sink so for the longest time when i was a kid i always thought these were lily pads of some sort but the manual says they're actually turtles the red circles are turtles that will constantly float while the blue turtles are ones that may or may not dive down under the water if they dive down while you're riding on them you're sunk on top of all this you've got a timer for each round constantly winding down in the corner occasionally you'll see a white frog moving around on one of the logs the manual says it's actually a lady frog occasionally you'll see a white lady frog hopping frantically along a log if you hop frogger onto her and take her home you'll score bonus points like any good atari game the difficulty ramps up beyond rational playability after the first couple rounds why would that many snowplows move in formation like that the objects on the screen drastically multiply in speed and numbers while the round timer gets shorter and shorter it's impressive though to see how many objects they were able to cram on the screen at once and it actually plays really smooth even when all heck is breaking loose on screen the graphics are simple but the game is still super fun and addictive it's just as easy to pick up and play today as it was 30 years ago [Music] i've been driving cattle most of my natural life and you're telling me i can't handle a stampede not this one buck stampede by activision for your atari game system one of the toughest video games around stampedes more than expert roping and ride it's a test of strategy and skill what uh go ahead [Music] well now listen here partner we're about to rustle up some tar 2600 fun it's stampede developed and released by activision way back in 1981 okay i promise i won't ever do that again this game was written by bob whitehead who also designed one of my other favorites chopper command on the surface the idea about playing as a cowboy trying to lasso up cattle compared to all the other possible video game scenarios may seem a little dry but this game is surprisingly addictive even though i never was very good at it plus when there's only like 15 or 20 titles in your shoebox full of atari games as a kid what else are you gonna play eventually it's gonna make it through your rotation actually though it's quite good there's some strategy involved because your lasso has a very specific range each color of cattle goes at a different speed so you have to think about what order you want to lasso them in and sometimes there's black cattle that are just kind of stuck there you can only miss so many cattle before you die and have to restart the game but you get an extra miss for every 1 000 points you rack up the cattle will also run forward a little faster if you just get behind him and this is an important strategy because since it takes so long to complete a full lasso maneuver you may have to nudge one group of cattle forward and then run back the other way to catch one of the stationary cattle i never got very far in this game but i still played the heck out of it [Music] man when i was like five gremlins was my favorite movie i rented it over and over again from the movie star to the point where finally my parents just broke down and bought it for me as far as i can recall it was the first vhs film i ever owned and i still have that copy to this day and somehow or another gremlins the atari game came to be in our family's possession i can't specifically remember if it was my cousin that owned it or me but we always played it you play as the movie's main character billy peltzer and gameplay is broken down into two screens the first is essentially a rip-off of kaboom where you have to catch the mogwai before they fall into the food and eat it after midnight then these hoagie sandwiches spontaneously turn into cocoons anyway and the second screen is essentially a rip-off of space invaders with the gremlins marching towards you and you have to shoot them lather rinse repeat until the game speeds up the gremlins multiply and you either die or quit still it was fun for what it was and i didn't think the graphics were all that bad when i was a kid the detailed backgrounds were neat looking compared to most atari games i also always thought the sounds of the gremlins marching toward you was kind of cool and ominous [Music] well that wraps it up for this week's episode these were some of my favorite atari 2600 games but what about yours what are some of the games you grew up with and what are some of your favorite games that you perhaps discovered more recently as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade the atari 2600 had a life span that lasted from 1977 until it was officially decommissioned in 1992 which is pretty remarkable considering it operated with a cpu that had a whopping 1.19 megahertz of processing power during that lengthy time frame many ports of popular arcade cabinets made their way onto atari's home console and although the hardware had its limitations some of these ports were still very well done it's atari 2600 arcade ports that were actually fun on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] let's get things started with one of the obvious ones first of all just about everyone knows the port of the original pac-man on atari was bad really bad but they made up for it with the port of mrs pac-man which is actually quite good there are other better ways to play this game in the modern era sure but this was as good as you could have hoped for at the time and it's still very playable today you're still gobbling up little rectangles instead of pellets but mrs pacman's animations are nice the ghosts all behave like they should and it all plays relatively smoothly on the hardware all the memorable sounds from the arcade version are well represented here as well what can you say it's mrs pacman on atari and it's still very playable today just as it was 30 years ago wars it's great in the arcade tie fighters fireballs coming right out here watch the laser towers aim for the tops use the floss coming too fast it's raining [Music] that man's family is still looking for him to this day i hope he's okay star wars the poster child for movies that needed video game adaptions star wars got an arcade release in 1983 that was later ported to the 2600 by parker brothers the home console version is not bad the game goes in three phases to simulate the death star assault first you fight off some tie fighters then you cruise along the surface of the death star taking out gunner towers and for the finale you enter the trench run that sounds like a lot but you can get through the whole thing in about two minutes so really there's not much to it other than trying to rack up a high score but it does get more difficult after the first round okay okay the tower phase leaves a lot to the imagination but the 3d effects in the trench run are quite good for the time obviously there are better star wars games out there today but this is worth checking out just to see how far these games have come in the past three decades i'm going out to inspect the troops yes sir regular change today this is atari missile command millions of people are mad for it in thousands of game centers across the country attention all generals now you can get your own atari missile command video game and practice saving the world in what happens when your nation is in the middle of a cold war with mother russia and there's paranoia about what would happen if one country went nuts and decided to pepper the other country with a bunch of nuclear bombs well that's what atari attempted to find out in 1980 with the arcade version of missile command which was ported to the 2600 a year later you have to defend cities against a never-ending barrage of bombs by firing off these missiles into the air that explode and take out everything around them i always thought this game was ridiculously addictive good fun like any atari game it starts off super chill taking out some bombs not too bad but before long the amounts of missiles on screen at once goes haywire and you're frantically moving the cursor around all over the place the sound effects are fantastic and the game over screen taunts you with nuclear annihilation the trick here is to have faith in wherever you targeted your missiles as your cursor is haphazardly careening across the screen you can't linger in one place too long because odds are the next batch of bombs is coming in on the opposite side of the screen okay in the interest of time i'm going to briefly mention a few titles that i've already covered more extensively in previous videos first up is space invaders absolutely love the port of space invaders on the 2600 and frankly i played it so much as a kid that i enjoyed this version far more than the original arcade version the amount of enemies on screen is just right and the controls are perfect next up is frogger which i just recently covered but it's worth mentioning again obviously this version doesn't look nearly as detailed as the arcade counterpart but it didn't have to it plays smoothly the graphics are simple but effective and the sound effects are great the game is still as addictive and easy to pick up and play as it was 30 years ago [Music] asteroids while certainly not perfect what they did here with the atari 2600 version is impressive having all of these asteroids floating around on screen at once and splitting it into multiple pieces is pretty neat when you consider what they were working with my only gripe with the 2600 version is that it never fails at least once around i end up accidentally pressing the joystick down while trying to turn the ship around which causes your ship to warp across the screen then i end up getting smacked into it by an asteroid and wasting life lastly i have to mention cosmic arc this is still one of my favorite atari 2600 games plus the box art has this cool silver foil wrapping so i mean how could you possibly go wrong the game has two phases first you start off in space blasting meteors before they hit your ship then in phase 2 you descend to the planet below and have to pick up two of whatever species is there i only found this out recently but cosmic arc produced by imagic in 1982 was technically a clone of the 1980 midway release space sap space app was really only the first level of cosmic arc where you're in space shooting off the meteors and it was developed by a different company altogether but what else am i going to have a chance to mention this [Music] okay getting back to business kung fu master developed by irim in 1984 and ported to the 2600 by activision the atari 2600 port of this was recently brought to my attention by a few viewers so thanks for the heads up guys i had no idea this version even existed that's what i love about doing this channel is that a lot of times i end up finding out just as much or more from your feedback as i do from my own independent research so thanks guys i appreciate your help anyway kung fu master is a side scroller where you take control of thomas and you're trying to smash your way through a bunch of thugs to rescue princess victoria who's being held captive in the evil wizards temple there are actually five levels to fight through here just like in the arcade and although the graphics are primitive this actually looks better than a few nes games i've seen the sprites are chunky and very detailed activision used the same voodoo smoke and mirrors to pull off a soundtrack in this game similar to what they did with pitfall 2 utilizing additional chips in the cartridge itself your character even has a life bar and there's also a boss with its own life bar at the end of the stage they had to get a little creative porting an arcade game with two buttons onto a system that only has one button so some of the moves got taken out but still this is pretty cool for its time and the hardware next up rampage now you youngsters out there may be confused and think this game might be based on the movie rampage well believe it or not it's actually the other way around the year was 1986 ronald reagan was president the highest grossing films were top gun crocodile dundee and platoon and dwayne johnson wasn't in every single movie that comes out it was a wonderful time to be alive and it was also when bali midway released the first version of rampage in the arcades up to three players could play simultaneously as monsters smashing buildings while avoiding gunfire from helicopters and police cars rack up points by smashing as many buildings as you can until you run out of quarters the game was very successful and ported to several other systems including the atari 2600 once again activision handled the port and it should come as no surprise that they did as good a job as you could ask for you can only play one player at a time but you can still select any of the three monsters which is nice the sound effects sound like actual buildings being smashed to bits and helicopters firing down on you the buildings are destructible which is cool even though the physics don't make much sense am i climbing up the air here what's going on there's little people flailing their arms for help in the buildings and you can eat them there's even little cut scenes between stages imagine that an atari game with cut scenes the play control it's a little awkward and realistically by 1986 you would probably have been playing this on the nes instead but you can't help but tip your cap to them for attempting this on the 2600 and somehow pulling it off well that wraps it up for this week what did you think what were some of your favorite arcade games on the atari for that matter what were some of your favorite arcade games one of these days i suppose i should actually do a video about arcade games since it's in the name of the channel hey i wanted to let you know too that there is a friday night arcade official discord server now think of it as like a 24 7 chat room where everyone can hang out and talk about games or whatever there's an invite link in the description anyway thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade well i was gonna switch back to nes games this week but ah what the heck we've had so much fun revisiting atari over the past few weeks and i've received so many requests for various other atari games from you i figured why not just throw out a bunch of atari games you picked this week there's no rhyme or reason to this list other than it's all games that viewers like you have suggested in the comments section over the past few weeks it's the atari 2600 games you loved on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] here's one i actually never played when i was a kid and i wish i had this one comes in from robbie ramundo nova sky and several others moon patrol developed initially for the arcades by irim and released in 1982 i'd heard of it but we just never owned it the story here is that you're a police officer assigned to a moon base and your job is to drive this moon buggy across the surface taking out any ufos you see along the way you drive this moon buggy and it looks just like the mako from mass effect right maybe not boy i missed that game but i do have to say the wheel animations on this thing are pretty good so the moon buggy is constantly driving forward but you can speed up or slow down by pressing forward or backward on the joystick and you jump by pressing up your moon buggy shoots forward and upward and you'll have to take out as many ufos as you can while jumping over craters on the ground and shooting rocks that look like hershey's kisses the ufos shoot back and sometimes their shots actually make more craters as they hit the ground at any given time there's a lot of stuff flying around on the screen which is impressive given the hardware and is that parallax scrolling with the mountain ranges against the starry background that's awesome the game's levels are divided into checkpoints and there's a radar at the bottom of the screen which tracks your progress also this game has music but you have to switch the left difficulty switch in order to engage it definitely check this one out if you've never played it before [Music] activision presents mega mania a new video game for your atari video computer system [Music] several of you have written in about mega mania and i'll confess this is another one i had completely missed out on in my youth this game was developed in 1982 by you guessed it activision i i swear there was a time when they were actually a good company it starts off simple enough looks an awful lot like space invaders or just about any other random space shooter your ship looks eerily similar to the uss enterprise except those aren't ufos they're cheeseburgers there's a certain irony to this the thousands of cheeseburgers i've devoured in my life have finally come back for revenge the other difference is that when the burgers reach the edge of the screen they cross the plane and come out on the other side this game throws all sorts of crap at you burgers cookies bugs radial tires there's also an energy bar constantly ticking down so you'll have to act fast the object is to stay alive as long as you can and score as many points as possible this was another activision game that had a patch system if you scored enough points you could take a picture of the screen and send it in to receive your very own mega maniac patch did any of you ever win one of these things get really crazy after the hamburger stage the cookies rapidly swing back and forth in sweeping patterns and actually come all the way down to the bottom of the screen if you don't make enough of a path for yourself you'll eventually just get clobbered and die this is rough and it took me a while to get the hang of it in the baseline version of the game your missiles are actually guided and move along with you as you move your ship this totally threw me off because i was used to the space invaders way where your missiles aren't tied to your movement however in the baseline game you also have a rapid fire which i didn't even realize and i was totally playing the game wrong for the first five minutes before i figured it out if you use the game select switch on the console you can toggle the non-guided missile option where your shots just go straight up but then you lose the rapid fire mode so pick your poison carefully either way this is a tough game but it's a lot of fun hmm you want to play berserk you're on hey where you going video arcade you can't play berserk at home now you can't [Music] and only for systems from atari several of you reminded me about berserk which was a game i hadn't thought about in forever this was a game my cousin had as a kid so i remember playing in a bit at his house but it wasn't what i personally owned until much later i love the box art on this and it reminds me of logan's run or some other futuristic 70s sci-fi show really the box art on all of these atari games was pretty great even if the gameplay required you to use a little more imagination the story here is that you were part of a team of explorers checking out a far off planet in the future you land to find out it's not habitable at all this floating disembodied genie head named evil otto went nuts and reprogrammed a bunch of robots to murder anything that moves now you're stranded here and have to make your way through all these maze-like passages with evil robots hunting you down the robots shoot at you and if that's not enough the walls are also electrified the sound effects are just awesome from the laser blasts to the explosions it's all top-notch atari goodness as you wander around these mazes blasting robots and just trying to stay alive there's a genuine sense of foreboding dread as you sneak around and there's a little bit of strategy to this too you can shoot horizontally or vertically but you can also shoot diagonally which is a skill you'll need to master if you want to stay alive in the later stages since the enemies do get more challenging as you go the good news is that the electrified walls also kill the robots too so sometimes you're better off just getting them riled up and then running away they're kind of stupid but you should be aware that this game makes use of several different game modes by toggling the game's select switch on your console the manual comes with this special chart to let you know the differences between each mode if you use the first mode evil auto doesn't show up at all if you're just starting out to the game this is definitely a good way to practice but i recommend picking invincible evil auto with at least mode 3 and i feel like this is actually the proper way to play this game in this mode evil otto's creepy smiling disembodied head comes bobbing onto the screen after a minute or two and it adds to the panic as you're trying to take out all the robots and escape the room if he catches you he smashes you to bits and just he just keeps going stop it man i'm dead already you can't linger too long and have to think quickly on your feet as soon as you enter a new area an evil auto really hates it when you kill the last robot he speeds up much faster and i recommend making sure you're close to an exit before you land the final kill shot in any room i never got very far in this game but i still can't help but to keep playing it berserk is super addictive and i want to thank all of you for reminding me about it [Music] helicopter emergency rescue operation that's hero for short lots of you wrote in about this one and i definitely should have gotten to it sooner it's another fantastic activision title that was developed and released in 1984. instead of trying to kill everything in sight like a normal atari 2600 game you're actually trying to rescue miners trapped in the mines by shooting everything in sight actually it's quite a bit more complex than that you have an inspector gadget like helicopter mounted to your back that you can use to float through the caves as you make your way down to the miners once you get to the bottom of the stage run up to the miner to rescue them and then you'll move on to the next stage learning to control your copter is crucial if you typically use a sega controller when you play atari you may want to switch back to the og atari joystick as i feel like controlling your helicopter is a little more suited to the stick instead of a d-pad you have two methods of attack a simple short range laser that you can fire with the big red button on your controller and if you press down on the joystick you'll drop a stick of dynamite you start each stage with six of these and they can be used to take out thin walls as you make your way through the caves the first few levels are easy enough but after that the game really ramps up the difficulty with enemies placed in the most devious possible locations walls made of magma and the mines have lights placed in various locations where if you touch them they break and the screen goes totally dark you can use dynamite to light up a room for a few seconds but be careful with these as soon as you drop one you'll have to run away or it will kill you too there are 20 levels to make your way through and memorization is pretty much essential if you want to go far in this one this was another activision patch game this time the cutoff was 75 000 points did you score enough points to get your official hero patch this is one of the best games on atari especially given the hardware limitations at the time i definitely recommend picking it up if you get the chance sometimes you just have to take a moment and appreciate the time developers spent writing out these stories atari games were usually ridiculously simple but they still take the time to conjure up some crazy backstory as to why you're doing whatever you're doing in the game check out the manual for phoenix in ancient times legend says there was a bird of great beauty about the size of an eagle it had brilliant scarlet and gold feathers a melodious song and was one of the only of its kind in the entire world this fabulous creature lived in arabia and had a lifespan of over 500 years at the end of its life the phoenix built a nest of frankincense myrrh and other aromatic spices after setting fire to the nest by rapidly beating its wings beautiful birds settled down to die amidst the flames from the ashes of that fire miraculously arose a young revitalized phoenix this new bird then took the remains of its parent to the temple of the sun at heliopolis in egypt and sacrificed them on the high altar the long life of the phoenix and the dramatic rebirth of its own ashes has made this legendary bird a symbol of immortality and spiritual rebirth in many cultures the egyptians saw the myth as a symbol of the life cycle of the sun which dies every day at sunset and is reborn every morning at dawn most others interpret the legend as a general symbol of the regeneration of life after death however something awful has happened to tarnish the long-standing image of the phoenix due to the effects of radioactive fallout on its nest the phoenix has unfortunately mutated into a bird of prey now several birds arise from the ashes but these are not like the beautiful friendly bird of old these birds are mean their cries are shrill they have developed a tough metallic-like skin that makes them almost indestructible and they have turned their backs on the human race to offer their services to alien beings determined to drain away earth's energy resources your mission eliminate these seemingly immortal warhawks destroy the alien spaceship and safeguard our planet from ravaging energy thieves and that's that's the story of phoenix it's actually pretty cool that they were able to weave in some egyptian mythology into the backstory developed for the arcades in 1980 imported to the atari 2600 in 1982 at a glance this looks like your average space invaders game but that goes immediately out the window when the bird starts swooping down at you they swoop up and down haphazardly so that you're constantly on the defensive the enemies are well animated and highly detailed everything looks and plays smoothly you'll fight through four bird stages with the last two having very large phoenix birds to deal with the sprites are huge and just look great the birds even flap their wings and you have to shoot them in the middle to kill them if you hit their wings the wings just fall off but they keep attacking you and eventually their wings will grow back this looks tough but the good news is if you push down on the joystick you get a temporary force field and that's going to be super handy because after you get through the first four waves of birds you have to deal with this giant flying saucer looking boss this thing throws all sorts of firepower at you especially near the center and it has a couple of layers of shield the goal is to kill the pilot in the middle of the ship so you'll want to clear out a path up the middle through the orange layer of shields however the blue layer of shields rotates around the ship sort of like in yar's revenge so your best bet is to try to move your ship off to the side first then take out as much of the blue shields as you can then move back to the center raise your shields fire away and hope for the best this game is very well done and super addictive my only minor complaint about it would be the sound effects while the explosions and laser blasts are fantastic the constant shrieking sounds that the birds make might make your dog have a seizure well what did you think what were some of your other favorite atari 2600 games if you didn't see your favorite game mentioned here check out this special playlist with all of my other atari episodes odds are you'll find it in there somewhere as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] demon attack was developed and released by imagic in 1982 for the atari 2600 it features that epic silver foil box art similar to one of my other favorite games cosmic arc if it's got that silver foil it's gotta be good the story of demon attack is pretty simple around the icy planet cryboar you watch legions of eerie creatures scream overhead they hover ominously attack and destroy them or be destroyed armed with your laser cannon you confront the ultimate challenge survive and so here it is demon attack at a glance it looks like your typical fixed shooter you control your laser cannon at the bottom of the screen while enemies hover overhead and shoot at you however astute viewers may notice something familiar about this because it looks an awful lot like phoenix which was released on the 2600 two years prior atari which held the rights to phoenix also felt like it was a little too familiar and actually sued imagic over copyright infringement the lawsuit was settled out of court and imagic was allowed to continue producing it though really it's not like they were even marketing the game as being that similar to phoenix about all i can tell from this commercial for demon attack is that it was uh tough which of you and magic experts has created the toughest game for atari's videos [Music] good work voltar demon attack really is tough the i feel like the two games are similar but definitely not exactly the same certainly the first level of demon attack looks a lot like phoenix with the way the birds flap their wings and swoop around the screen but the enemies tend to change a bit over time and demon attack and in later stages looked nothing like the birds from phoenix at all and i don't want to sit here all day comparing the two but phoenix has the flying saucer bosses at the end of each stage well that's totally not a thing in demon attack the stages here are just comprised of a certain amount of enemies before eventually you move on to the next stage also in phoenix it's possible to shoot off the larger birds wings which eventually grow back whereas in demon attack the flying demons split off into multiple smaller demons that swoop down at you after being shot so two totally mostly pretty much separate things going on here okay are we good on the whole phoenix versus demon attack thing all right then moving on demon attack is actually a pretty enjoyable shooter in its own right there's a creepy tension that builds up at the start of each stage the sound effects of the demons descending toward you start off slow and then begin to ratchet up adding a certain sense of chaos and panic while you're moving around your laser cannon back and forth there's a catch here though and once you figure it out it will make life a little easier first the demons seem to move in the same pattern throughout and second only the demon on the bottom row actually shoots at you the rest just hang around and don't do much of anything so you can just focus all of your attention on the guy at the bottom he'll respawn a number of times throughout the level and once he stops respawning then you can take out the remaining demons and finish up the stage the enemies get tougher though and sometimes they shoot at you in these long lasers while other times they throw scatter shots you've got multiple difficulty levels as well as variants where you can guide your missiles also check out the level of details on the enemies here unlike most atari games where the bad guys are just one basic color there's multiple colors and a level of texture here that's fairly remarkable this came out in 1982 so it was about five years into the 2600s lifespan but still seems ahead of its time i also like the overall color scheme with the deep blue color on the ground signifying the icy planet's surface it's just a nice different look when most games like this had pretty bland colors in the background the two-player co-op mode also has a twist to it instead of trading turns or playing at the same time the two-player mode actually puts both players in control of the same laser cannon the cannon changes color about every 4 seconds signifying that control has switched between player 1 or player 2. so you gotta pay attention i think i'd rather just have two players playing simultaneously but maybe this was a way to force the kid who was really good at video games to share equal game time with his little brother who was probably terrible at them overall demon attack is another solid space shooter on atari 2600 if you enjoyed games like space invaders but just want something a little different you can find demon attacks super cheap on secondary markets and it's worth picking up as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] joust was initially developed for the arcades by williams electronics in 1982. in a market cluttered mostly with space shooters joust featured a unique control scheme where the player controlled a knight flying around on a giant ostrich trying to take out other knights flying around on other giant ostriches just because that's that's just not normal it also featured a two-player co-op mode which wasn't really something you saw much at the time williams really wasn't sure if arcades would buy these machines since it was so different but it actually went on to be very successful selling over 26 000 units and received almost universal praise from critics they even made a cocktail variant of the arcade machine and it was eventually ported to several home consoles including the atari 2600. the story here is just awesome i love the insane stuff they come up with for the manuals in these early games knights on birdback how on earth did you fall into this bizarre world look around you the sky is filled with knights a stride among enormous armored buzzards these characters look mean and the buzzards they ride don't look very friendly either that's that's just fantastic so the saw takes place somewhere deep underground and in fact the ground is made up of lava the first few levels have a solid surface over the lava but as you progress more of the lava gets exposed so you have to avoid that the objective here is to ride around on your own armored buzzard taking out all the other enemies on their own flying buzzards called the buzzard riders according to the manual rather than shooting them you have to take them out in a joust literally running into them and whoever is higher in the air at the moment of contact wins the joust because you know it's over anakin i have the high ground knock the writer off their buzzard and they turn into an egg which you can collect for points but if you take too long to collect the egg it hatches again and turns into an even more difficult buzzard rider plus if you stay on one screen too long these pterodactyls show up and they're really tough to kill [Music] you have to hit them dead on and i never could do it just avoid them so controlling this guy is unique you move them around with the joystick and if you get them started in a certain direction he'll just keep going until you slow him back down with the joystick by pressing in the opposite direction like see here i can get him started just running across the ground and now i've taken my hand off the controller he'll keep going until i force him to stop then you use the button for flapping your bird's wings and that takes some getting used to okay so it's not as scatter shot and annoying as trying to control the astro chicken mini-game in space quest 3 but it's a touch below that it just takes a little finesse and once you get the hang of it it's not too bad i mean i got 10 or 12 waves into this game and i hadn't played it in 30 years so it doesn't take long to get a feel for it obviously they had to change some things around from the arcade versions in the arcade version there was a lava troll that lived in the lava and would reach up and try to grab you if you hung around the bottom for too long and that's completely gone here and the way the eggs work is different too in the arcade version if you knocked a guy off the bird the bird would lay an egg and fly away here the bird just disappears entirely and turns into an egg you can only do so much on an atari 2600 and it's fine this iteration is still really fun once you get the hang of it and it's just nice to play something different there's also two player co-op mode just like in the arcades unfortunately i can't really show much of this since i don't have any friends but you get the idea and just like in the arcades you can either work together to try to take out the enemy buzzer riders or joust your buddy for a few thousand extra bonus points actually though this game gets really hectic in the later stages so it wasn't uncommon for players to accidentally joust their friends i mentioned the wonky controls earlier and that influences the strategy of this game just a bit when something flies off screen it flies back in on the opposite side of the screen since the controls are so awkward sometimes it's easier to just wait for the egg to come back around the loop and grab it but you have to be situationally aware because if that egg has been floating too long it's gonna hatch and also if you flutter around too long the pterodactyl shows up and ruins your day overall though this game is actually a lot of fun and it's just nice to play something different from the usual gluttony of space shooters that permeate the atari 2600s library the sound effects are simple but not bad graphically the color scheme is a little drab with just yellow and red but the enemy animations are well done given the hardware this game is definitely still worth picking up and it's also super cheap and if you're still not convinced check out this commercial for the game it's kind of long but i mean you just can't look away got it joust [Music] so [Music] so atari presents joust the video game where buzzard men battle ostrich men the graphics go beyond your wildest dreams how can you possibly argue with that well what did you think did you play joust growing up in the arcades or on any home console what are some of your other favorite atari games if you enjoyed this here's some of my other atari videos you may want to check out as well as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] over the past few weeks several treasure hunters have disappeared while exploring a dungeon reputed to house the most priceless treasures in the world the only known survivor has returned with stories of monsters who eliminate anyone who dares enter the dungeons halls and complex labyrinth of chambers but authorities are not taking such reports seriously we have no rational explanation for these disappearances one investigator reported all we know is that the brave soul who wants to claim these treasures had better be sharp at this point the only one i know who's clever enough for the job is winky that's right it's all up to winky now no i'm not making that up your character's name really is winky and that's that's the story of venture no not adventure designed by warren robinette in 1980 that's an entirely different game and we'll eventually get to it venture was initially developed in 1981 for the arcades by exedy and later ported to home consoles including the atari 2600 okay so we'll just get this out of the way first obviously the arcade version as well as the colecovision version is going to be utterly superior to the atari version in every way but if you had an atari this is what you got so you take up the mantle as winky an avid archer and brave treasure hunter who sets off to collect treasure from a cave full of evil monsters what sets this game apart from most other atari games is the fact that it takes place across multiple screens multiple rooms and even has something akin to an overworld screen let's call this the overworld it's actually meant to represent a hallway view of the underground caves the hallways lead to four separate rooms in the caves each containing one treasure and a handful of monsters your winky represented by this little dot at the bottom of the screen the object here is to move your little dot around the screen avoiding these monsters that kind of look like space invaders navigating your way to the nearest door for one of the four rooms despite the fact that winky is a decorated archer and skilled treasure hunter his one weakness is firing his bow and arrow in a hallway full of monsters you can't fire in the hallway view so don't even try you just can't your only play here is to avoid the monsters entirely i can't tell if the monsters have any sort of logical ai to them on this screen or if they're just in a random pattern but they're not too difficult to avoid for the most part navigate winky to one of these holes representing doorways to one of the aforementioned rooms and winky will enter the room now the view changes to a full screen view of the room you just entered take a moment to process that most atari games take place on one maybe two screens here you've got several rooms to move through each being different so even with the primitive graphics use your imagination here and pretend you're a kid in the early 80s it really makes you feel like you're just tooling around some caves looking for treasure that's actually pretty cool one of the rooms has no monsters and instead has these moving wall traps [Music] you enter the room and now you've got multiple monsters to deal with as well as a treasure off in the corner that you have to collect one hit from any of the monsters here or in the hallways and you're dead but you do have three lives as a backup now there's a couple of ways to deal with this you can shoot the monsters right away and go off to collect the treasure ah but if you shoot the monsters first you don't get any points so if you're going for a high score you'll actually want to try avoiding the monsters first grab the treasure then shoot the monsters on your way back to the exit also adding to the challenge is that even after the monsters are dead they can still kill you if you touch their carcasses their bodies don't disappear right away either so if it's a tight corner you'll have to think about where and when you decide to shoot a monster so you have enough room to get around however the fun doesn't stop there because if you linger in one of these rooms for too long one of the hallway monsters gets impatient and comes charging into the room after you and even though you're in the room your puny arrows are totally useless against the mighty hallway monster so you better just run for your life or you'll lose your winky this part is very similar to evil auto chasing you down in berserk when you linger in a room for too long and for that matter winky kinda looks like evil auto also when the hallway monster chases you it sounds like your ship engine's in starmaster but it makes for some white knuckle escapes depending on where you're at in the room when the hallway monster shows up [Music] if you're going for a high score or if you're just having a hard time navigating around the monsters you may want to leave the room and come back to reset the clock on when the hallway monster shows up as long as you haven't collected the treasure you can re-enter a room but once you've already collected the treasure the door is sealed and you can't go back inside keep working your way through the hallways collecting treasures and murdering monsters racking up your score if you can and if you manage to collect the treasures from all four rooms you get to go to a whole new set of hallways with a whole new set of rooms whoa now that's actually pretty cool for an atari game okay so the atari version only had two hallway levels while the arcade version actually had a third level and if you beat level two it just loops back to the first level again atari gamers got hosed on the third level but still this is impressive for the time and the hardware i also have to applaud the detail on the monsters here you've got snakes two-headed monsters the robot from lost in space maybe alright some of these are an incomprehensible hodgepodge of pixels but at least they tried okay you've also got four difficulty levels which instead of using the game select switch are dictated by what order you put the difficulty a and b switches in on your console overall this game is actually relatively fun and it's something totally different from your usual atari fare obviously if you have a colecovision that's the version you should seek out but if not the atari version is really cheap like maybe a couple of bucks and totally worth seeking out to add to your collection oh what did you think did you play venture growing up in the arcades or maybe at home if you're interested in more atari games here's a playlist with all of my other atari 2600 content that you might enjoy as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] 40 years ago today marks the official release of the first ever alien film ridley scott's terrifying masterpiece that launched an entire franchise as well as catapulted sigourney weaver into super stardom and also for some reason they made an alien game on atari 2600 alien the video game was developed and released by 20th century fox in 1982 three years after the release of the film but at a time where movies were starting to get adapted into arcade games as well as home consoles what sort of tactical survival horror video game did the masterminds at 20th century fox conjure up in 1982 find out all about it on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] it's it's a pac-man clone that's pretty much the whole game alien on atari 2600 is pac-man and when you get past this screen you get a bonus stage that's basically a frogger clone then you go back to the pac-man screen no really that's salient on atari 2600 okay so it's a tiny bit more complex than that the object on this screen is to collect all of the pellets just like in pac-man but at least the manual tries to come up with a movie tie-in instead of chomping pellets you're going around smashing every alien egg you see before they hatch instantly making you smarter than every single character in the alien franchise history also you get a flamethrower i've always wished pac-man could pick up a flamethrower and unleash hell on those stupid ghosts and this game makes that dream a reality for me well almost so just like in the movie the flamethrower acts more as a loose deterrent for the aliens and you still can't actually kill them if you time it just right they'll turn around and go the other way but sometimes that doesn't even work and they'll still kill you also for some reason the flamethrower doesn't work when you're around the edges of the screen i'm not sure if that's supposed to represent the outer hole of the nostromo and thus you wouldn't want to go burning a hole in it or if it was just an oversight you can't turn around or face up or down either so you're just kind of stuck aiming outward and you can't fire the manual calls these pulsars and if you pick one up suddenly you can take out the aliens i totally remember that from the film and not pac-man you can adjust the difficulty switches and make it to where this doesn't work though if you want a more hardcore alien experience and don't confuse them with prizes the prizes just give you points and not mystical alien exterminating powers and this area on the side of the screen where you can jump to the other side is called the hyper warp passage well i don't think that was in the movie maybe that was supposed to be like the air ducts except the aliens typically use those to move around the manual tells you these are helpful for losing the aliens if they're chasing you since they usually won't go through the passage the manual gives several hints from the game's programmer dallas north which was actually just an alias for doug neubauer neubauer programmed star raiders but he also made a handful of movie adaptions under the dallas north pseudonym when he freelanced for 20th century fox including that atari 2600 adaption of mash that the public had been desperately clamoring for after you smash all the eggs you go to the frogger screen where you have to make your way to the top for a prize unlike frogger it's just a plain black screen with waves of aliens moving across and you can only move straight up or down you also have an 8 second time limit i must be missing something because i never could make it to the top but this is considered a bonus stage so if you die at least you don't lose a life overall this isn't necessarily a bad game it's just definitely not what people were expecting when they picked up a game based on alien in fact the commercial wisely doesn't even bother to show any of the game's footage a great movie has now become an exciting new video game alien one of the new games of the century from 20th century fox 10 seconds there you go it's an alien game go buy it talk about false advertisement the sound effects are pretty harsh on the ears too from general footsteps to picking up one of the pulsars the little animations for the aliens are okay i guess except they look more like the shriekers from the tremors sequels than they do actual xenomorphs what you've never seen any of the sequels to tremors you didn't know they're all the way up to trevor's part six now straight to dvd starring the dad from family ties they've even announced a seventh film is in the works all right anyway so as far as atari 2600 pac-man clones go you could do a lot worse than alien heck it's a better pac-man clone than the actual atari 2600 version of pac-man at least the eggs actually look like the power pellets from pac-man instead of tic-tacs and the aliens aren't a flickering mess like the ghosts it's just weird that they chose pac-man and frogger as the games to clone for this material clearly they just picked a couple games that were popular and slapped the alien egg on the cartridge i could think of a few other atari era games that might have worked better you could have done something like the second screen in cosmic arc where you have to send a shuttle down and pick up all the facehuggers before they wipe out the planet you could do keystone capers but in reverse where the alien is chasing you across multiple floors of the spaceship frankly if you want a genuine alien experience on the atari 2600 it's actually kind of neat to see in action check out xenophobe this was an arcade game that got numerous ports and the 2600 version ain't half bad i've talked about it a little more in depth in one of my previous videos but basically you're just going around this space station trying to eradicate an alien infestation to say this was inspired by the alien franchise would be an understatement you've got these crawlers that look like face huggers and then the big aliens too alien on atari 2600 is what it is it's not great it's not awful i can't really recommend picking it up unless you're just an absolute mega fan of the franchise and need to collect any alien memorabilia you see or maybe you just want to have an atari box with that iconic alien egg on it as a conversation piece in your game room i don't know this is just one of those things that happened anyway thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] officer kelly reporting for duty leaping leprechauns if it isn't harry hooligan up to his old shenanigans that wondrous hoodlum is robbing southwicks and on a sunday at that come on then lend a hand we've got to catch the crook recover the loot and be careful to boot listen up don't get killed by wild shopping carts beach balls and biplanes and get moving there's not a moment to lose okay i won't do that again but that's strong advice to heat from your official crime buster's handbook included with your new copy of keystone capers for the atari 2600 keystone capers was developed and released by activision in 1983 and ported to a few other systems at the time including the atari 5200 and colecovision you play as the aforementioned officer keystone kelly a bumbling police officer trying to capture harry hooligan while he burglarizes a shopping mall the game takes place on three screens of the mall and the mall has three floors that you can move in between as well as a rooftop the concept is simple but fairly unique for the time and the hardware you have to make your way through them all and catch harry hooligan as quickly as possible before the time runs out or else harry escapes and you lose a life you don't have any projectile weapons you just have to run jump or duck your way through the stage the good news is you can run slightly faster than harry but the bad news is everything in this mall is out to trip you up shopping carts beach balls antique radios and remote control biplanes you start off with 50 seconds to catch harry and if you run into most of the items it docks 10 seconds off your timer however if you get hit with a remote control biplane you lose a life these biplanes are tricky too because just when you think you've dodged them all there's usually one more right before you get to the edge of the screen there's a radar at the bottom of the screen similar to defender or chopper command where you can see what floor you're on as well as harry's location you've got two ways to travel between floors the elevator or the escalator the escalator only goes up though so you'll want to think carefully about how you use the elevator here's an example if harry is on the third floor and you ride the elevator up to the third floor harry sees you and will turn back around and go the other way harry doesn't ride the elevator but he's a bad guy so somehow he can still jump back down to the second floor when he gets to the edge of the screen harry will go down a floor and you'll probably run out of time before he escapes since you can't go down the escalator yourself furthermore don't go up to the roof at all unless harry is already up there because there's no way to get back down and you'll get stuck catch up to the burglar and grab him to end the level rack up some points and move on to the next stage for every 10 000 points you get an extra life rack up 35 000 or more points and you can take a picture and send away to activision to get your official billy club patch every stage looks the same except as with most atari games the difficulty gradually increases the difficulty switches on the console are not used but you won't need them because after the first few stages stuff gets crazy with tons of shopping carts and biplanes flying all over the place the game throws everything at you and it keeps getting progressively faster there's a rhythm and cadence to their patterns so you can figure it out it just comes down to execution but i'll confess no matter how many times i play i always forget the duck on that last biplane right at the edge of the screen it gets me every time this game is fun and ridiculously addictive though it's simple but you have to tip your cap to the graphics especially with how your character actually looks like a cop and the burglar actually has the striped prison jumpsuit everything is incredibly detailed for this being an atari game keystone capers was primarily designed by gary kitchen who also designed pressure cooker and the 2600 port of donkey kong among other things he said in a 2017 interview this game was inspired by a couple of different factors first he had been working on an escalator animation on the atari 2600 that he hadn't really found a use for yet he noted it was incredibly difficult to program this escalator animation and have it be functional given the limitations of the 2600 but he found a way to make it look really smooth and actually function like an escalator he also mentioned that he knew he wanted to make a humorous game that would just be kind of silly and still enjoyable to play gary recalls being heavily influenced by the keystone cops silent films of the early 1900s these films depicted the misadventures of the keystone cops a troupe of bumbling police officers the officers were mostly incompetent and the comedy stemmed from slapstick and nonsense gary thought the idea of playing a bumbling cop trying to catch a crook would be perfect and he started to work out the particulars originally though he wanted to have keystone kelly chasing harry who will get up the side of a shopping mall with the action being more like a vertical climber harry would then throw items such as televisions or toys downward that keystone kelly would have to dodge gary kitchen showed an early prototype of his vertical climbing keystone capers game to fellow activision programmer david crane crane thought this might be a little too much like crazy climber a vertical climbing arcade game of that era david crane suggested that kitchen make it more of a horizontal runner game similar to one that crane was working on at the time the one you know as pitfall and just have keystone kelly run back and forth across multiple screens in the department store after crane made this suggestion suddenly gary kitchen realized he had the perfect game to implement his animated escalator idea and the rest is history keystone capers is easily one of the funnest games in the 2600 library and is one any atari enthusiast should have in their collection it's just as easy and addictive to pick up and play today as it was three decades ago and since it typically goes for a going price well under 10 bucks there's no reason not to grab it and if you're still not convinced this commercial should seal the deal you've read my name and all the papers and how i solved the keystone paper keystone kelly is my name introducing a hilarious new video game keystone capers for the atari 2600 patty hooligan was loose in the department store and mean pursuit from floor to floor they ran and leaped and dropped and dropped [Music] keystone papers designed by gary kitchen for activision well what did you think did you play keystone capers growing up or maybe discover it recently did you get 35 000 points and send off for your official billy club patch from activision what were some of your other favorite atari 2600 games as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] dig dug was initially developed for the arcades by namco the same folks that brought us pac-man and released in 1982 going on to garner massive success and praise from gamers at the time the arcade game is a beloved classic and most everyone i know has a favorite dig dug memory of some sort and of course that meant dig dug would be ported to several different consoles and computer systems of the time including the atari 2600 dig dug on the atari 2600 is actually pretty darn great the story here is that you're dig dug a miner who's trying to stomp out all these monsters that have overrun the mines underground you can make your own tunnels through numerous layers of dirt the manual calls these monsters the fierce fygar and the big mean puka trademark the phygars breathe fire and the puka look like cubert minus the nose if the monsters touch you you're dead so you use your jet powered shovel to create these tunnels and move around underground and there are two ways to actually kill the monsters you can get creative and try to tunnel out space under these boulders so they fall on the monsters and smash them or you can use your portable air tank and inflate the monsters until they pop because it turns out dig dug is actually the twisted origin story for the bad guy in no country for old men seriously that's messed up check out the box art what the hell man anyway you can create your own tunnels but your movements are still kind of based on a grid up down left or right and you can fire your air tank in all four directions the monsters typically will start out in their own little tunneled out areas but they can also turn into ghosts and travel through the dirt without tunneling at all and they can utilize whatever tunnels you create and when it gets down to just one monster left on the screen that monster will actually attempt to flee to the surface making it extra satisfying if you manage to catch the little coward [Music] naturally the game gets progressively more difficult as you go with the monsters increasing in number and overall speed while dig dug stays the same slow and plotting speed throughout but never fear here's a few pro tips to help you out first of all when you're inflating a monster to his horrible gruesome death if you hold down the fire button the inflation process takes a few seconds as the monster slowly fills up with air before he explodes but if you tap the fire button repeatedly once you've connected with the monster he'll actually blow up and explode much faster this can save you crucial seconds if you're surrounded also you can kind of fire your air tank through a tunnel wall if it's thin enough i'm not sure if this is a glitch or if this is how they designed it but you can tunnel right up to the edge of where a monster is and then shoot through it but he won't be able to get to you without turning into a ghost first which costs him an extra second since it's part of the game just use it to your advantage and i found this really interesting dig dug has something akin to a continue feature the manual notes that if you press the fire button on the title screen immediately after you lose all of your lives you'll restart on the most recent difficulty level that you died at so if you just want to keep practicing on the more difficult stages you can basically continue your game almost as if you added an extra quarter you'll just start out with no points that's fairly innovative and i wish more atari games would have had that feature were there any other atari games that did this that you know of you can also use the game select switch on the console to toggle between normal mode and easy mode easy mode is indicated by a teddy bear on the screen oh the graphic even shows up next to your score so you can't just run up a fake high score on easy mode to impress all your friends graphically this game certainly isn't perfect especially when you compare it to the arcade version but it's as good of a translation as you could hope for given the hardware and it's just as playable today as it was three decades ago the play control is solid and the gameplay really is addictive i played this for a good hour or so even after i'd already collected enough footage for this video the music is also catchy even if it's just the same really short j played on a loop it only plays when you're moving around or tunneling but it's still cool [Applause] overall i can't recommend dig dug on atari 2600 enough and you should be able to find it between 5 and 10 bucks and if you don't have your physical atari anymore there are plenty of other great ways to play the game it's even available on steam for a couple bucks anyway that's all for this week thank you so much for watching seriously your support just means the world thank you for all of the kind words and support over these last four and a half years i really appreciate it and of course please don't text and drive and we'll see you next time on friday night arcade in the late 70s and early 80s the atari 2600 was your gateway to the arcades featuring numerous ports of your favorite arcade classics some were really fun and enjoyable and others not so much this week let's dig into some of the better atari 2600 arcade ports on this edition of friday night arcade jungle hunt was developed and released initially for the arcades by taito in 1982 and later ported to various systems including the atari 2600 the story here is you play as sir dudley dashley a big game hunter who is camping with his wife when she gets kidnapped by local savages i'm not making that up that's language right from the manual deadly picked up the sound of jungle drums and translated them to read that today's soup du jour is english woman broth wow so this guy's wife was kidnapped by cannibals and they're gonna cook her and eat her if you don't rescue her in just time you can save our in atari jungle hunt just like the arcade classic fight man eating crocodiles dodge deadly boulders oh wouldn't you rather order abs outsmart hungry head hunter [Music] that's messed up for a kids game juggle hunt consists of four scenes swinging from vines swimming through a river overrun by crocodiles running through the jungle dodging bouncing boulders and then finally you have to get past two cannibals and rescue your wife at a glance this looks pretty basic but keep in mind this is running on a system that was designed to play pong so it's incredible they got it to work at all there's even some parallax scrolling in the trees of the jungle here the controls are pretty straightforward although don't confuse this with pitfall your character can jump much higher and further also and this will feel weird at first but you actually run from right to left instead of the other way around if you're going for a high score try to get through the game as quickly as possible as you get more points depending on how much time is left on the timer the area that's most impressive to me is the river sequence dodging the crocodiles is pretty easy but they even put in a breathing mechanic you have to occasionally go back to the surface for air or your character will drown you can either dodge the crocodiles or try to stab them with a knife by pressing the button but the knife won't work if their mouth is open your character can also duck when avoiding the boulders and really the detail in your character here is pretty neat for the time the first time through you'll probably find this game to be pretty easy you can rescue the girl in a couple of minutes but have no fear it's an atari game and you get to start back at the beginning with increased difficulty every time you rescue the girl junior pac-man so for the longest time i've always thought of this game as pac-man jr but it's actually called junior pac-man i'm not sure why i had that in my head maybe that's because pac-man jr rolls off the tongue a little better i don't know anyway we all know the original pac-man on atari 2600 was an abomination but ms pac-man in 1983 made up for it and is absolutely as good of a pac-man game as you could want on the console then came junior pac-man in 1986 by this time there were all sorts of arcade releases and iterations of the pac-man franchise pac-man plus super pac-man baby pac-man by 1986 atari 2600 games were getting pretty advanced so you'd think it would be an even better version of pac-man but that depends on what you're looking for if you like ms pac-man but want something more challenging then i'd say give junior pac-man a try this time the maze takes up two screens that you scroll in between and everything runs faster pac-man the ghosts it's all rapid movement and really ramps up the adrenaline seriously this game is difficult there's way more pellets and the ghosts actually seem to be smarter they always find a way to corner you from a technical standpoint this game runs pretty well the flickering ghosts are unfortunately back but scrolling from one screen to another is smooth and pac-man's movements and animations are solid even has a little rotating beanie cap on his head there's fruit bonuses like before and as the fruit moves around it makes the pellets bigger which makes them worth five times more points but pac-man slows down if you grab the larger pellets so it's a trade-off if the fruit makes it all the way to one of the power pellets it self-destructs there's also seven different mazes to play through on the one hand i applaud the way the game runs on the system but on the other hand oof this one is really tough pac-man moves so fast it's challenging to control him as you're going through the maze the ghosts are way faster the power pellets barely give you any time to eat the ghosts and if the ghosts are off screen you won't know where they are making it tough to plan your next move this game is only for the bravest of pac-man fans centipede was developed by atari and released on the home console in 1982 after about a year in the arcades i had no idea this game had such a complicated backstory a bunch of good elves lived in this enchanted forest and everything was hunky-dory but their prized mushroom garden was infested with centipedes fleas and a dancing spider the good elves tried everything and couldn't get rid of the pests until one day an elf named oliver discovers a magic wand in the garden he was able to use the wand to destroy the spider and thus centipede was born you take up the mantle as oliver tasked with ridding the elves mushroom garden of all these pests using your trusty magic wand that seems excessive couldn't they just call terminex okay so this is atari 2600 so let's just get the graphical failings out of the way early oliver looks like a rectangle the mushrooms all look like wafers and the centipede looks like a series of interconnected flickering blobs but if you can get past that the game does play quite smoothly and the elements of the arcade version are still very playable here you can move around in the lower third of the screen and you're trying to protect the mushrooms while taking out the centipede the centipede slithers back and forth across the screen a lot space invaders but with a twist it can split off into multiple pieces and it also deflects off the mushrooms so even though you're trying to protect the mushrooms sometimes it's a good idea to clean out some of the ones near the bottom of the screen since the centipede can move at a jarringly fast speed and the extra mushroom pieces make him that much tougher to hit but eventually the flea shows up and leaves more mushrooms and he'll show up even more if you clean out too many of the mushrooms in the bottom area and while all that's going on this dancing spider is constantly chasing you around the bottom of the screen and he keeps coming back no matter how many times you kill him that stupid spider can go straight to hell thankfully for every 10 000 points you rack up you get an extra life if you enjoyed the arcade version of centipede the atari 2600 would very much have been worth your time in the 80s and is still very playable and enjoyable today and if you liked centipede then there's millipede which was released a few years later in 1984. bugs were a big problem in the 80s and it was up to little kids on their ataris to deal with it if you felt like centipede was too easy then millipede is the game for you because it's basically the same game but now with more mushrooms for the millipede to bounce off of more spiders and other pests thrown in there like bees and a swarm of dragonflies holy crap there's too many of them this time around you've also got these ddt pesticide bombs sprinkled throughout the field that throw off pesticide gas for a period of time after you shoot them with all sorts of stuff flying every which way you'd think this game would suffer from a lot of flicker and slowdown but it's impressive how smooth this thing runs it made use of a 16 kilobyte game cartridge which was massive for the time my only complaint about this game is the death sound effect and you'll be hearing it a lot [Laughter] tapper now here's a game that's totally appropriate for little kids you play a frantic bartender trying to keep all of your customers served with beers in a rambling old timey bar you have to operate the tapper and slide the beers to the customers as they make their way down the table and if they make it all the way to the edge you lose a life okay okay so the home version switched out the beer for sodas and even has a mountain dew logo in the background but we we all know it was beer the arcade cabinet had budweiser logos slathered all over it so as you're sliding the beers or sodas down the table you actually get music in the background in one of the rare atari games that had a soundtrack it's a simple little tune but it's pretty cool that they made this work [Music] once you make it past a wave of customers you're treated to a mini-game where the soda bandit shakes up all but one of the cans of soda this is sort of a modified version of the cup game where you have to try to keep track of which soda hasn't been shook up pick the wrong one and it sprays in your face then it's back to serving customers again and of course the difficulty continues to ramp up with more customers and occasionally the sodas start ricocheting back to you and you have to catch them before they break fun arcade game and a well-made port on the atari unfortunately it's harder to find and significantly more expensive than your typical atari 2600 cartridge galaxian warriors today we're going up against the most feared commander and everyone counts even you quid your ships we're going in zoom attack formation owing's ready sir okay i'm peeling [Music] the arcade hit now for the atari 2600 system galaxian was initially developed and released for the arcades in 1979 before later being ported to the atari 2600 fresh off the heels of space invaders and certainly a very similar looking bottom shooter but different enough to be its own thing first off can we take a minute to appreciate some of the artwork that went into this game some of this stuff is just epic look at the colors and the detail i could do a whole video just on the box art for some of these old atari games anyway you take up the mantle against the evil galaxians a race of beings been on terrorism and warmongering according to the manual at the time this would have been a step up from the arcade version of space invaders because if you recall the arcade version of space invaders was just a flat monochrome color scheme and enemies that only moved in a basic pattern keeping the same formation the whole time galaxian featured multi-colored enemies that start off in an attack formation but random enemies will break formation and swoop down at you at first it starts off just one enemy swoops down at a time but after the first wave more and more enemies start swooping down to where it just goes bonkers there's enemies flying all over the screen and it's a lot of fun if you can manage to stay alive this game also looks and sounds great the details and colors on the enemies and their movements are all really smooth even when you've got lots of enemies moving at once the sound effects are also top-notch atari 2600 goodness just awesome well what did you think what were some of your other favorite arcade games on the atari 2600 if your favorite atari game wasn't mentioned here there's a good chance i may have already covered it on one of my older atari 2600 videos as well as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade hello and welcome to friday night arcade first of all i just wanted to say a quick thank you to those of you that recently discovered the channel this thing has just kind of taken off much further than i ever thought it would over the past few months so i just wanted to say thank you for checking out the show and for all of the kind words it really means a lot also since there are so many new faces i wasn't sure if you knew or not but i actually have a second youtube channel friday night arcade plays these videos are a bit more laid back and not as heavily edited as the main channel but if you want to hang out with me in a more casual setting or you just want to see more friday night arcade definitely check this out friday night arcade plays features the occasional live stream along with some of my older videos where i play through random stuff old and new my best friend jason and i played through a ton of old games like ninja turtles and super star wars and we also teamed up for some modern survival games like daisy or finding bigfoot these videos were not serious at all we also did a full playthrough of broforce a throwback to retro run and gun shooters that nearly killed me so if you want more friday night arcade beyond the weekly episodes definitely stop by friday night arcade plays sometime and give it a look and thank you so much for watching [Music] well here's one i had no idea existed frankenstein's monster on the atari 2600 i love the artwork on the box the vision and detail that went into some of this atari 2600 box art is just fantastic anyway if you've never heard of this one don't feel bad frankenstein's monster was developed and released in 1983 by data age one of those random companies that sprouted up out of nowhere and attempted to cash in on the atari's popularity they released less than a dozen games during their lifespan including snake and warplock which both frequent atari 2600 worst games list before ultimately going bankrupt and fading back into the ether frankenstein's monster is considered to be their best contribution to the atari library so let's see what they came up with the gameplay is pitfall style although it's limited to just this single screen consisting of three floors you control this little multicolored pitfall harry by walking jumping or climbing you start out at the top of the screen and have to make your way all the way down to the bottom of the screen pick up a stone and then make your way all the way back up to the top of the screen where frankenstein's monster is the goal here is to use the stones to build up a barrier around the monster so that you can contain him before he comes to life sounds easy enough but along the way you'll run into poisonous spiders crawling on the ground dropping from the ceiling along with trapdoors and terrifying ghosts and for good measure the bottom floor has a pool of acid that you have to traverse also for some reason on this top floor you just can't jump so you have to wait until the ghost passes you by take the stone up to frankenstein's monster and surprise the game switches to a different scene where you have to make your way directly up to the monster by dodging dozens of vampire bats you have to do this six times in order to completely trap the monster before he breaks loose and terrorizes the villagers but like any good atari game after each stone the game gets a little more difficult more trapped doors more spiders zigzagging vampire bats and the pool of acid just gets oh crap all the while this power probe over frankenstein's monster keeps going off sending electrical energy into the monster and slowly bringing him back to life the monster starts off white but slowly fills up with green to let you know how much time you have left as usual you've got some top-notch atari sound effects each time this thing goes off you can change the amount of time with the difficulty switch beginner mode gives you eight and a half minutes while advanced is five minutes if he fills all the way up with green before you get the barricade built or if you run out of lives the monster busts loose and it's game over you didn't get many true game over screens on the atari 2600 but this one is by far my favorite this game also has a scoring system which is different you start off with 500 points and you lose points for things like running into spiders and falling down trap doors you also start off with three lives or what the manual calls turns you lose a turn by falling into the acid your frankenstein timer doesn't reset when you lose a turn though so you just have to keep going and you get bonus points for getting through the vampire bats and successfully placing a stone you can play in single player or the game does feature an alternating two-player mode the goal of two-player mode stays the same but you're technically trying to score more points than the other player however if you find yourself running out of time there is a strategy to making the choice to jump through the trapdoor and lose 100 points for the trade-off of making up some lost time if you lost a turn earlier i definitely have to praise the marriage of systems they put into place with this game it combines platforming elements a unique game timer a scoring system that adds some strategy to the game and it's all set against the creepy backdrop of frankenstein's monster all of this is exacerbated by the power probe going off every so often and jolting the monster with electricity the sound effects really add to the tension along with the increasing difficulty levels unfortunately the play control is i mean it's an atari game it's just not that good and as the game gets progressively more difficult some of the platforming elements are frustrating for all the wrong reasons in later stages these platforms get spaced out and the spacing is just slightly smaller than your character's jumping range so you have to sort of back up jump and then push yourself backwards in the air to try to land and it's just not easily replicated given the limitations of the atari hardware this completely goes off the rails when the platforms start moving back and forth this is just mean maybe i'm just terrible at it if you had an easy time with this i'd love to hear about it also in later stages the dropping spiders always seem to come down at the worst possible time no matter what i do and even though the spiders don't kill you on their own they knock you down into the acids so it's pretty much instant death every time hey i don't mind a good challenge but i feel like a certain degree of luck is hard boiled into it if you want to have any chance of successfully making it through all six stages with all of that being said this game typically fetches between twenty dollars as a loose cartridge and upwards of ninety dollars complete in the box and with the wonky controls i'm not sure i can necessarily recommend going out of your way to acquire this one say for purely curiosity's sake this game is definitely worth playing but not necessarily worth that much cash except to the most extreme atari collector it's certainly interesting and one of the better obscure titles on the atari console if you have a chance definitely give it a try just don't overpay for it or you'll probably be disappointed well what did you think did you play frankenstein's monster growing up or maybe find out about it later did you play any of the other titles in the data age library what are some other obscuratary games you'd like for me to check out as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] secret quest on the atari 2600 now here's one i completely missed out on as a kid several of you have written in about this one so i'm experiencing it now through a fresh perspective and i have to say what they accomplished with atari 2600 hardware is very impressive frankly it's downright incredible okay so the story here is that alien bases have sprung up all over opening up gateways for all sorts of evil alien beings like dragons and dancing bear traps which will wipe out the human race you play a lone human tasked with infiltrating each base and locating the special code needed to activate the base's self-destruct sequence and then you'll have to make it to the teleport pad and get off the base before it explodes along the way you'll find all sorts of enemies such as dragons ghosts and dancing pair traps but check this out these levels are complex the gameplay here may remind you of berserk or maybe even venture where you're navigating through these rooms in a top-down perspective now you'll have to use your imagination here a bit since all of the rooms on the alien bases do look exactly the same say for the entrances and exits take a moment to process what's going on here the sheer size and volume of rooms they were able to include here is staggering given this is all on an atari 2600 cartridge and it gets even more complex okay so here's how the game actually works you start off the game on the title screen and you have to enter your initials make sure to keep track of what you import here because that's gonna come up later and also how many atari games get a nice title screen like this then press the fire button on your joystick and now you start off in the first room of the alien base on the very first screen you actually don't have a weapon but navigate to the second room and you'll find a sword this is starting to look a little familiar now keep making your way through the rooms and you'll start to encounter enemies that seem to teleport into the roots there's a bit of a rhythm to this and you'll have to get the hang of how the enemies appear on screen and when they'll actually be vulnerable to attacks the controls are very smooth though and your character moves easily in eight directions everything runs great and there's no flicker here at all when you're dealing with the enemies on the screen also look at how detailed all the enemies are and your character for that matter after you defeat an enemy they'll drop an item either an energy pod or oxygen tank so again this is all fairly impressive here it's not a one hit in your dead game and instead you've got a couple of meters down here in the corner the top meter is your energy meter and the bottom is your oxygen level you can replenish these by defeating enemies and picking up the power ups but fighting enemies deplete your oxygen and energy so there's a trade-off your oxygen also steadily decreases over time run out of energy and you can still move around but now you can't use your weapon to fight an enemy which means you're unable to replenish your oxygen tanks yeah run out of energy and you're probably not long for this world run out of oxygen and you're dead [Music] so you're going along exploring the alien base smashing up enemies and finding your oxygen tanks and energy pods we're not doing too bad here eventually you come to a room with a mysterious symbol in it what could this symbol be well it turns out this is the detonation code for the self-destruct sequence you'll need to activate later to destroy the alien base you'll probably want to jot that down keep exploring the base and you'll come across another room with a flickering symbol in it and you won't be able to get past the doorway okay so this is where you'll activate the detonation device to destroy the base now this is a little awkward here but press up against the mysterious force field that keeps you from entering the room and you begin to cycle through the available code options when you get to the code that you found in the other room press the fire button on your joystick and now you've activated the self-destruct sequence get the heck out of there before the timer runs out you've got 20 seconds to find the teleport door before the whole place goes up [Music] not bad kid but there's still seven more bases and it only gets more difficult from here as you explore each base the layouts become more and more intricate and complex sometimes even including stairs to multiple levels within the base to the point that you'll have to draw a map if you want to remember where you're going it's incredible to think that they were able to program this many rooms into a tiny little atari cartridge also the enemies get more difficult to kill and the codes start to get more complicated as well with two or more characters now technically if you find one code you may be able to guess your way through the second character when you get to the detonation room but remember that the whole time your oxygen tank is running down so you're always on the clock here and the codes randomize each time you play yeah they thought of that too also there's more items that you can find beside your sword to help you on your quest you may be able to find a sonic blaster or a particle beam and you may also find a sonic key to open certain doors that's right kids this atari 2600 game actually has an inventory system if you toggle the black and white tv switch on your console this brings up a special status screen and there's a lot going on here the symbols on the top two rows represent the remaining bases and there will be empty slots if you've already destroyed some of them further down represents which level of the current alien base that you're on if you've gone up and down flights of stairs this will be helpful as you draw out your map so you can keep track of where you're going some of these bases have three or four separate levels to them and that's just insane also over here to the right you've got your inventory if you push the fire button you'll toggle through items in your inventory whichever one is visible is your active item so if you need to use the key to open a door or you want to change your weapon here's where you'd go also this screen doubles as a pause feature if you need to jot down notes on your map or just need a breather so that's handy too again just take a moment to process all of that i can't think of too many games that made use of the black and white switch in such a creative way to add a whole new dynamic to the game it's similar to star master where it uses the switch to bring up a navigation screen but it's even more complex than that just wow so anyway you're blasting your way through all these convoluted maze-like levels drawing your maps and trying to find detonation codes the enemies are getting tougher to beat and you have to defeat more of them in each room before you even get oxygen and energy drops by the time i got to the third level this just went off the rails the only way you'll go far in this game is to basically explore each level and make yourself a detailed map and then make your way through the level in the most efficient way possible so that you find all the codes without running out of oxygen but by now you're probably thinking that sounds impossible if you have to keep restarting your game from the beginning after you die well they thought of that too if we toggle back into the status screen you may have noticed a series of bizarre symbols at the bottom right corner that almost look like hieroglyphics you won't believe it but this is actually a password so that you can continue your game at a later time so every time you start a new level you'll want to jot these symbols down in case you die or if you just want to basically save your game and come back later here's how it works remember on the title screen when you entered your initials well that's important because the password is dependent on the initials you entered i guess maybe this was a feature to keep little kids from sharing passwords i don't know anyway if you just pop the cartridge in and you want to pick up where you left off you'll enter those same initials again then on the very first screen of the very first level this only works here toggle into the status screen okay now press the game select switch on the console until the first symbol at the bottom is flashing i'll use the joystick to toggle through the symbols and enter your password from your previous game session press the fire button and boom you're back at the first room of the stage where you left off it even remembers how much oxygen and energy you had left which could be a bad thing the energy and oxygen carries over from the previous stage and doesn't refill after you destroy an alien base so if you haven't been efficient with your time and don't have much left you may still want to start the game from the beginning so that you can try to find the most efficient path through the game as possible but still holy crap how awesome is that the programmers of this game seriously deserve some sort of major award okay so to be fair this game came out late in the atari 2600s lifespan very late it wasn't released until 1989. it was actually the last officially released game on the console in north america by that time games had gotten pretty complex on the 2600. the box art notes this game was programmed by nolan bushnell a pioneer in the atari industry although technically it wasn't steve de frisco actually did all the programming and for some reason the game was credited to bushnell on the packaging the frisco was asked by bushnell to come up with a title similar to the legend of zelda with a top down room exploration and secret quest was the result regardless of who made it secret quest is a fantastic achievement given the hardware it used a special chip in the cartridge called the sara superchip that added a massive 256 bytes of ram making secret quest a 16k cartridge to put that in perspective the donkey kong port on atari 2600 was done using only a 4k cartridge so they had way more space to work with here i mentioned this game was released in 1989 and to that end the game is actually somewhat difficult to find it's not clear how many copies of secret quest were officially sold but it's fair to say most gamers had probably moved on to newer consoles by then everyone was too busy playing more modern games such as the legend of zelda unless they got stuck with a stupid doctor mario under their christmas tree instead to note a secret quest on the store shelves and these days it's actually a little difficult to find a physical copy prices tend to go on the higher side but it's not often you even see it for sale anywhere there was a complete in the box copy selling for 60 bucks on ebay at the time of this review but if you're a fan of the atari 2600 and want something with a little more teeth on it this one is absolutely worth seeking out one way or another even though the difficulty spikes off the charts after the first few levels i do wish there was a little bit more of a steady curve to the difficulty but it's still really cool and very well done [Music] [Music] well what did you think did you get a chance to play secret quest when it came out or maybe tracked down a copy more recently how far did you get in this game i'd love to hear if anyone actually managed to destroy all 8 bases because i absolutely couldn't as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] spider-man on the atari 2600 was the first ever spider-man video game developed and released all the way back in 1982 by parker brothers the object of the game is simple but surprisingly well done given the limits of the atari hardware the green goblin has taken over several skyscrapers around the city and planted large bombs at the top of them you play as spidey and have to scale the skyscrapers using your web get past green goblin and defuse the bombs the game is a clever vertical scroller and you actually do get to swing around as spider-man ok sure this is pretty simple by today's standards but put yourself in 1982 and imagine playing this it's very well done and not at all glitchy you hold down the fire button to fire your web shooter and you can aim if needed with the joystick or just shoot straight up when you let off of the fire button your web will attempt to grab a hold of the building don't miss and hit a window or something though because then spidey will fall but that's not the end of it you can actually fire off your web shooter again while you're falling and try to catch yourself again this is really next level stuff given the hardware here and doesn't take too long to get the hang of on your way up the building criminals will occasionally stick their heads out of the windows you can catch them by just swinging into them or touching them as you climb up the criminals also cut your web as you're climbing so be careful you get three lives to start with and there's a limit to how much web you can shoot indicated by the web fluid meter in the lower right corner you can replenish your web fluid by catching criminals although it may be a bit of a trade-off since you have to swing out of your way to catch them you'll have to be efficient as you make your way up the building miss too many times and eventually you'll just run out of webs and then spider-man does his best hans gruber impersonation [Music] as you make your way to the top of the building it changes to this awkward scaffolding that's much more difficult to hit with your web then you've got green goblins swinging back and forth and hucking bombs at you if you touch these bombs you can defuse them for points but don't hit them with your web or you'll fall and have to catch yourself and also you'll fall if green goblin touches you or your web the goal here is to try and defuse the super bomb which is this little checkboard area at the very top of the building but this is tricky you can't actually shoot this directly with your web or you'll fall instead you'll have to shoot near it on the surface of the building and then just sort of swing into the bomb to defuse it i'm not going to lie it took me a good 20 minutes or so of putzing around before i could pull this off there's a bit of a trick to it especially with timing it around goblin's movements back and forth [Music] once you touch the bomb and defuse it you'll rack up some extra points and move on to the next stage get over 10 000 points and you'll pick up an extra life although that seems impossible given the fact that you don't get hardly any points from catching criminals and you don't get that many points for diffusing the super bomb either like any good atari game the difficulty ramps up as you progress the buildings get taller you get less web fluid there's way more of these awkward scaffolding parts and green goblin moves super fast you can also select multiple difficulty levels if you're a masochist and just want to skip straight to the harder stages and this game could also be played with two players taking turns competing for the high score overall this is a simple but very well done atari 2600 game that plays surprisingly well and handles complex mechanics like spidey shooting his web and swinging around with ease i mentioned before this was released by parker brothers and actually it was developed by just one person laura nikolic laura had full creative control over the game and came up with the concept for the vertical scrolling gameplay and using your web to climb up the building while the other programmers at parker brothers were working on star wars games laura was the lone programmer on spider-man and worked on it for about six months this is noteworthy because if this game was getting made today marvel and horror sony pictures would probably be shoehorning themselves into the development process back in 1982 they gave the project to parker brothers who in turn handed it off to laura and then everyone stepped back while it got made spider-man on atari got a nice advertising push was relatively successful from a commercial standpoint and is regarded highly among licensed games for the console to this day great job laura i'll blow this towel [Music] try to get up there in time spider-man watch me close my web goblin watch yourself full suit stop the bombs in time if i don't get you wet had mine now this will holy hannah and you're running out of blue [Music] is this more action that even spider-man can handle [Music] these days spider-man on atari goes for under 10 bucks and i guess it's just a matter of whether or not you're a big spider-man fan as to whether or not you'd want to pick this one up like i said before the gameplay is solid and well done the sound effects are basic atari fair and not necessarily noteworthy what really impresses is the ability to swing around as well as catch yourself when you fall it's some next level programming that is pretty astonishing given it's all done with bass atari hardware what did you think did you play this one growing up or perhaps discover it more recently what are some of your other favorite movie-based atari games as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade the atari 2600 or as most of us probably refer to it as simply the atari when you think of atari games you might typically think of games like space invaders or chopper command where you play the game the difficulty gradually increases and increases and eventually you'd just die it was never really about beating the game it was just about getting the high score to brag to your friends before you know the dying happened some games technically did have a max amount of points for example river raid keeps looping through the levels until you reach a million points then your plane just explodes and the game ends while your score changes to blah but what if i told you there were certain atari games that had actual endings meaning there's a set amount of levels and maybe even a final boss or some sort of end scene it's atari 2600 games with real endings on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] raiders of the lost ark was designed by howard scott warshaw and released in 1982 by atari and it's been confounding gamers in the decades that followed you play as indy in a top-down perspective and you have to navigate through various areas that are sort of loosely based on the movie the market forests the well of souls the valley of poison okay so they took some liberties here and there but you get the idea while you navigate through you'll have to avoid trouble from poisonous spiders stinging flies thieves this one guy dressed in black that may or may not be the main nazi from the movie and of course snakes ugh why did it have to be snakes at a glance this would seem pretty straightforward but it's just the opposite this game actually has an inventory system and you have to pick up various items along the way to help you out in your quest you have to use two atari controllers one for movement and using your item and the other for selecting or dropping items in your inventory to say this game is cryptic would be an understatement some stuff sort of makes sense for example if you pick up the flute in the beginning of the game you can select it to play a tune that charms the snakes so they won't be able to harm you or you can use the key to open up the well of souls and then select the headpiece to the staff of raw at just the right time to reveal the location of the ark of the covenant hey now i remember that from the movie but other stuff makes no sense whatsoever like would you guess you're supposed to use a grenade in this first room to blow a hole in the wall to proceed to the next area and the rooms in general don't even have marked doorways for example in the room of the shining light if any part of you touches any part of the walls you immediately get put back in the dungeon then you have to use your whip to escape yet the exit to this room is on the right side and you have to just know to push up against it to find a secret passage or if you try to move down from the market you'll fall past a tree land in the valley of poison and then the flies will sting you and the nazi will keep robbing you and eventually kill you from the perspective of someone playing this in 1982 it had to be incredibly frustrating graphically the game's about what you'd expect on atari indy has his fedora but when you try to use the whip it's just a dot spider-man's web shooter looks more like a whip than this does and then when you find certain items in the game there's really no telling what they are you're gonna have to refer to the manual to see what's going on musically the game plays a little snippet from the familiar theme song at the beginning but otherwise there's not much sound here i should also mention you can only hold a certain amount of items at any given time so this can lead to a lot of backtracking if you don't know what you're doing when you find the secret exit from the dungeons you'll enter the treasure room avoid the snakes and pick up the gold coins to reveal a secret item actually one of three secret items an hourglass a chai or an onk the only one you need is the onc which you have to use as a grappling hook which you'll need to move around the mesa field and the only way to stop using the grappling hook is to drop it which means you'll have to backtrack to grab another one after you figure out the location of the ark in the well of souls and you'll have to backtrack to make sure you have at least three pots of gold two to purchase the shovel from the black market and one to purchase the parachute from the regular market and of course if a thief touches you he'll steal something out of your inventory so at any given time you may have to backtrack to get the item again thankfully they do respawn in the area where you initially found them technically you can beat this game in under 20 minutes if you legitimately know what you're doing but if you were playing this for the first time in the early 80s you could expect to spend hours probably days and even weeks studying the manual reading up on all the items in different rooms and then just doing trial and error until you figure this thing out now to be fair you have to applaud the effort here to turn a popular movie into a unique adventure game that was unlike just about everything else on the console and it's pretty cool that you can actually beat it by finding the ark of the covenant but i wouldn't go out of your way to try to play this one now except maybe as a mere curiosity [Music] e.t the extraterrestrial well you knew i was going to have to get to this one sooner or later so we may as well get this one out of the way now at this point you all probably know the stories and legends behind this game so i'm gonna skip all of that and just focus on the game itself this was another game designed by howard scott warshaw and just like raiders of the lost ark it's frustratingly vague to figure out you'll definitely need to brush up on the manual to figure out what you're supposed to be doing and what all the little symbols mean so you play as e.t and the sound effects when he arrives in the spaceship are actually kinda cool your goal here is to find three pieces of his interplanetary telephone like what he had in the movie so that he can phone home and leave earth the pieces are randomly strewn about the area in these pits that you fall into and every time you play they're in a different spot so it's not like you can even memorize their locations after you fall into a pit you press the button to extend et's neck and fly back out of the pit because that's a thing for some reason this is awkward because often times you end up getting stuck in a loop and just falling right back down on the pit again meanwhile the whole time e.t is being pursued by scientists and fbi guys that will snatch you up and take you away you go to jail e.t you go directly to jail we'll also take away your phone pieces if you've already collected any and at that point you may as well just start over because if et runs out of energy he'll just keel over and die so yeah et only has a certain amount of energy and walking around or floating drains it you can replenish your energy by finding these reese's pieces candies scattered about the area but you can only consume the candy if you're standing in a specific zone that's another thing every time et moves around he's moving across different zones which are indicated by this icon at the top of the screen the arrows let you teleport to another screen if you have enough pieces of candy the manual says you can technically call elliot if you're standing in the right zone and make him go find a missing phone piece i guess while you just sit back and chill it's it's complicated and audiences thought so too technically though it is possible to beat this game if you find all of the pieces and successfully phone home to get the aliens to come and rescue e.t unfortunately only about seven people in the history of forever have actually pulled this off since this game is about as much fun as brussels sprouts did any of you ever actually beat this game well now here's something you don't see every day riddle of the sphinx was developed by a magic and released in 1982. you play as the son of a pharaoh trying to save a kingdom from a vile curse you have to travel across the valley of the kings in search of treasures that you need to appease the gods and solve the riddle of the sphinx uh yeah something like that this game is complicated it's similar to raiders of the lost ark with an inventory system and once again you'll need two controllers to utilize items that you're carrying and you can defend yourself against thieves and scorpions with a slingshot you'll have to barter with nomads who occasionally give you items but may also steal from you if you're carrying too much stuff because it can't be that easy the whole time that you're moving your thirst factor keeps increasing which causes you to move slower and slower and slower you can top off your thirst by visiting an oasis or interacting with this goddess whose name i won't repeat because it will probably get my video red flagged or something but don't try to interact with the god and yubas because you're totally not worthy and you'll take damage as you pick up items you can use them to interact with sacred sites like the phoenix pyramids and several temples including eventually the temple of ra this is the final part of the game and only the purest of offerings will appease raw and cause them to paint this guy a special shade of honey mustard and save the entire kingdom okay so you're supposed to do things in a certain order and depending on which difficulty variant you're playing on you'll have to use other items at some of the other sacred sites to get the necessary treasures you'll need when you approach the temple of raw also your score will get dictated by the amount of treasures you bring so i guess that's a reason to come back and keep playing i told you this game is complicated and just look at the manual this game was way ahead of its time and i totally admire the passion and grandiose ideas here but maybe this was all a little too convoluted for a console that only has one button on the joystick i mean look if gary larson has an iq of 162 and he can't figure it out what chance does a dope like me have wait no i did i just beat the game next up i'm going to run through a few games here that do technically have endings but have already been covered a bit more extensively in previous videos on my channel i'll throw some links down in the description if you want to get a closer look at any of these titles first up is secret quest the game was released later in the atari's lifespan much later it was released by axelon in 1989 and was technically the last officially released game in the united states for the console you play the hero trying to stop a horde of evil aliens by destroying their space stations to destroy the space stations you'll have to infiltrate each base one at a time take out enemies and collect power-ups and special weapons along the way and eventually set a self-destruct sequence to destroy the base from within then get the heck out of there before the whole place goes up there are 8 bases in total that you have to destroy with each one being more intricate than the last the game even has an inventory system that you can get to by toggling the black and white switch on the console and it also has a password system that lets you save your progress it's incredible what they packed into this tiny atari cartridge unfortunately this game gets ridiculously difficult after the first couple of levels so i've never actually seen the official ending but if you ever wanted to play a game similar to the legend of zelda but for atari and set in outer space this is the game for you frankenstein's monster this is pretty much the only notable thing to come from the forgettably brief data age era of atari games you play as a nameless hero who must stop frankenstein's monster before he escapes and wreaks havoc on the town's people technically he's the final boss the gameplay is similar to pitfall although it mostly takes place on this one screen you have to navigate your way to the bottom of the screen and pick up a stone then navigate your way back up to the top and use it to build a wall around frankenstein's monster before he comes back to life along the way you'll have to avoid ghosts spiders more spiders and traverse these moving platforms once you get the stone back to the top you'll have to fight your way through a bunch of annoying vampire bats before you can ultimately place it you'll have to play six stones in total to completely trap the monster and like any atari game the difficulty ramps up each time you place a stone you also have a time limit the whole time you're playing these electricity blasts are coercing through the monster's body and slowly bringing him back to life indicated by the green color filling him up hurry up before he comes back to life if the monster breaks loose you're treated to the most epic game over screen ever [Music] star master this was one of my all-time favorite games and it's still fun to play even today the game places you in the cockpit of a space fighter and you'll take on enemy ships from a first person perspective the goal here is to protect your friendly space stations which are indicated on this special map screen yeah this game actually has a built-in navigation computer that you can get to by toggling the black and white switch on the console that's pretty cool the space stations are represented by these special symbols and the enemy ships are these little dots so you'll want to warp to the area where the enemy ships are and then take them out your ship can also run out of fuel and take damage for example you can lose your shields or your weapons and then you'll need to warp to one of your friendly bases to dock for repairs and refueling you beat the game by taking out all of the ships in the sector and there's multiple difficulty levels to keep you coming back for more this is a pretty incredible space survival sim and it's amazing to think that activision pulled all of this off on atari hardware you could even take a picture of your high score and send it off to activision to get a special patch i wonder if i can still get one [Music] keeping with the space shooter theme star raiders and solaris both technically can be beaten these games were programmed by doug neubauer and published by atari in 1979 and 1986. similar to star master these space shooters pit you against the evil xylons and lets you warp around the galaxy through special navigational charts though it's a bit more complicated solaris in particular is crazy the galaxy is divided up into 16 quadrants basically the goal in each of these games is to survive long enough to destroy all of the evil xylons although good luck getting through either of these they're really fun but definitely not games you can easily just pick up and play you'll really need to familiarize yourself with the manual and what you're supposed to be doing in both cases but they're totally worth checking out especially solaris it's easily the prettiest game on the atari 2600 with incredible graphics sometimes vacations just go bad this guy's wife was kidnapped by cannibals and it's up to you to help save her before she gets lowered into a smoldering cauldron and cooked alive no really it was even in the commercial jungle hunt on atari is a side scroller and weirdly it scrolls right to left instead of left to right first you'll have to swing through the jungle on these vines then you have to swim through a river full of crocodiles and finally you'll have to dodge these boulders and get past the final bosses the cannibals themselves in order to save your wife or is it your girlfriend i don't know maybe they weren't even that serious the early working version of this game was going to feature a bare-chested hero who would have looked an awful lot like tarzan too much so according to the edgar rice burroughs estate who ended up suing taito and forcing them to change several aspects of the game so it didn't quite seem so much like tarzan in the year 2089 the earth is reeling after a giant comet slammed into the planet leaving the world's population with radiation poisoning and the world's worst hangover you play as a lone warrior in a race car tasked with delivering the vaccine to every city to cure the world's radiation sickness at a glance this looks a lot like pole position but it's a bit more complicated than that you'll have to race through 32 levels and along the way you'll run into other cars driven by what the manual calls nefarious henchmen who are out to try to kill you and take all of your stuff so this is basically mad max chunky pixel road there are also obstacles like oil slicks because every racing game has to have oil slicks and there's also roadblocks that look like a ham and cheese sandwich all of these little readouts and meters at the bottom of the screen have a purpose too like armor fuel ammo and so forth you'll want to try to make it through as quickly as possible so that you can save more survivors at each city because after each level depending on how many survivors you save you'll get more points to spend on repairs for your vehicle there's also a variety of ever-changing backgrounds to keep things interesting as you go if you manage to get all the way to the end you'll get to launch a rocket that puts a satellite into space which will save the entire planet this game was released by sculptured software fairly late in the atari lifespan all the way in 1989 and it was released only in europe it uses an insanely large and expensive to produce 32k atari cartridge which is probably why it never saw a us release although an ntsc prototype did exist and the rom did eventually make its way online a much more polished version of fatal run came out on the atari 7800 but still it's impressive they even got this to work on the atari 2600 at all adventure can't get much more simple than that name but this is a surprisingly complex and well done game given the limitations of the atari console hardware at the time okay so the story here is an evil magician has stolen the enchanted chalice it's up to you to find the chalice and return it back to the golden castle if you make it back to the castle with the chalice congratulations you just beat the game sounds easy enough but along the way you'll have to deal with locked doors keys that are guarded by man-eating dragons that look like sea monsters and these thieving little bats that steal all of your stuff there are three difficulty levels and the first level is pretty straightforward and thankfully doesn't have the bat pick up the sword go and murder the dragons before they eat you then grab the black key and go into the maze and find the chalice but in the second difficulty level the world's bigger and this time the bat is there to really make things complicated by stealing all of the items that you need and the third difficulty level randomizes the stage so no two playthroughs are necessarily the same this game would have a ton of replay value for its time i realize this looks incredibly basic now but you have to appreciate what went into this warren robinette programmed this entire game by himself on an hf1611a microprocessor look at what's going on here for an atari game you're moving around from room to room picking up items and dragging them with you sure later games like secret quest and raiders of the lost ark would add significant polish to their inventory systems but adventure came out a couple years before raiders of the lost ark sadly atari typically refused to credit developers for their work on the game box and this led to one of the gaming world's first widely known easter eggs there's a special hidden room within the game that contains warren robinette's name atari eventually found out about it but it was way too expensive to reproduce all of those cartridges so they left it in well now here's one i completely missed private eye was developed by activision and released in 1983. it definitely has shades of pitfall another activision title so here's how this works you play a detective pierre touche because everyone is french in this game i guess you have to arrest this bad guy lefend and take him back to the police station unscathed but you guessed it it's a bit more complicated than that there's a case to solve here and you've gotta find clues yeah they thought of that too the manual reads like a criminal dossier you've got five different cases to choose from depending on which difficulty level you select in the first case you have to find the gun and get it verified at the gun store then you have to find the stolen money and return it to the bank and finally after you've dealt with all the evidence then you get to go find lefeen arrest him and get him back to the police station to beat the game along the way you'll have to dodge birds oil slicks rats falling bricks and flower pots and other criminals that throw knives at you thankfully this isn't one hit and you're dead there's a point system here and you lose points for taking damage but if one of the criminals hit you with a knife while you're carrying the evidence or the fiend you'll lose whatever you're carrying and have to backtrack to retrieve it and that's another thing you've only got three minutes to do all of this the manual calls this the statute of limitations i always dislike time limits like this though but it forces you to do a couple things you'll have to find and remember where everything is and then make a mostly perfect run in order to get everything done in time you can deal with the evidence in any order but you can't arrest the fiend unless you've processed both pieces of evidence and if one of the thugs knocks anything out of your hands you may as well restart because you're probably not going to make it in time with 5 cases to choose from there's definitely plenty of replay value here though this game isn't going to make any top 10 lists but it's pretty cool what they did here nonetheless [Music] [Applause] [Music] rounding out the list of games that can be beaten is pitfall and pitfall 2 lost caverns i'll start with the first pitfall and this is one people have been asking me to talk about since forever it's an all-time classic atari game and one of the crowning achievements of activision in the early days pitfall was developed by the great david crane who also did a boy in his blob which i've talked about before in the past and it was released by activision in 1982 it went on to sell over 4 million copies and is one of the longest atari games you'll find seriously the sheer volume of area to explore is staggering given most atari games only lasted a few minutes there's 255 total screens to explore here most people think of pitfall as being the first side scroller although technically defender was released in 1981 and also it's not even really a side scroller the screens just load when you get to the edge but still the platforming and exploration elements was just something you didn't see on atari at the time okay so the story here is you play as pitfall harry your mission is to navigate your way through the jungle maze and collect all 32 treasures which are scattered all over the place once you find the last treasure the game freezes and you've officially beaten the game congratulations the end along the way you'll have to swing across alligator infested lakes and holes in the ground while avoiding snakes scorpions and rolling logs also campfires seriously shouldn't i put that out or something so navigating your way around is a little weird the underground passages are shortcuts for example if you take the underground passage to the right you'll technically skip three screens to the right over whereas if you took the path above ground you'd have to traverse all three screens the top area typically is the tougher path with all sorts of obstacles while the bottom area is infested with scorpions you'll need to keep track of where you're going though to find all of the treasures and while all of this is going on you're up against a ticking clock you've got 20 minutes in total to find all 32 treasures while successfully navigating through the jungle maze and that's well that's why i've never talked about this game before truth be told i've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with this game we had it growing up and i played it but i never got very far in it and with the ticking clock i was always running out of time well before finding all of the treasures to make matters worse the play control of this game is wonky as all heck i realize it's an atari game but jumping and controlling your movement is stiff as heck meanwhile many elements of the game require absolute precise jumping and timing you can't screw up at all the game is designed to be ran through as quickly as possible and yet sometimes depending on how quickly you're moving the ropes won't always be in the right spot when you enter a new screen and you'll be forced to wait on them or you'll have to stop and wait on a pit to open and close before you can run across the screen sometimes you can get on a roll and make it a few screens in a row quickly but then you'll mess up and jump a quarter pixel too far on a crocodile head because the play control sucks and then you're dead the hit detection ain't so great either no matter how many times i think i've got the timing down on these scorpions i still screw this up you only get three lives too no matter how many points you get and really 20 minutes is literally just enough time to make it through this game and find all of the treasures and that's if you know the exact path to take if you mess up and have to backtrack you may as well start over see like here i actually only have one treasure left but i needed about an extra minute to get to it instead the timer ran out and now i'm just done so i guess i always hated that the game forces you to rush through it and basically make a perfect run at a rapid pace with the precise jumping and stiff mechanics it really feels like you should be able to kick back and approach this more methodically now don't get me wrong pitfall is still a fascinating and monumental achievement on the atari console it just always has bittersweet memories for me what did you think did you ever beat this one [Music] and that leaves us with pitfall 2 lost caverns developed and released by david crane in activision in 1984 and well pretty much all of my complaints about the first one are addressed here the play control and jumping are tightened up quite a bit and there's no time limit so you can explore at your leisure there's also checkpoints and instead of one hit and you're dead if you get hit you just lose some points and go back to the last checkpoint you touched also they did away with the confusing underground secret passage system that warps you three screens over and instead you just have a static map to navigate through that looks something like this at a glance this seems simple enough but it's actually pretty devious and i'll get to that here in a bit okay so the mission this time is to collect all of the treasure again but now you've also got to save your girlfriend pitfall ronda and debatably more importantly your loyal pet quickclaw the cat quickclaw needs your help man the game even taunts you by showing you quickclaw right at the start of the game but if you try to get him this stupid rat just pushes you away looks like you're gonna have to take the long way around along the way you'll have to navigate around scorpions again along with frogs and this time there's bats and eagles that zip across the screen in specific patterns your only recourse is to move in just the right spot to pass under them you can even swim in this game and there's electric eels i mentioned the map is devious and it consists of two main shafts on each side that you'll have to navigate through along with these two areas in the middle your path through should look something like this there's treasures scattered about in each area but getting to them all is well they just got totally mean for example as you're making your way up the shaft on the left to get to quickclaw you'll see this treasure ring taunting you on the platform below but there's no way to get to it from where you are would you guess that you're supposed to jump across the cavern from the other section and land on the edge so that you can get in here and collect this treasure this game is full of all sorts of little nuggets like that thankfully there's no specific order that you have to do everything in the game will let you know when you find everything so just keep moving also there's water all along the bottom of the map so if you're unlucky enough to fall in it the only way back is to make your way all the way to the right and climb up this ladder that's dangling just above the current but it turns out david crane is actually kind of a jerk there's a frog hopping back and forth at the top of the ladder a bat fluttering across the middle of the screen where the ladder is and oh if you fall back into the water watch out for the electric eel the game totally punishes you for falling into the water and you'll have to time this just perfect to get out but none of that is a complaint really just an observation in all honesty pitfall 2 lost cavern is probably the greatest atari 2600 game ever made what other game lets you swim ride balloons and actually last longer than 5 minutes because the world is so big also there's music the cartridge has a special chip built into it to play some nice tunes along the way did you ever find everything and beat this one [Music] well that wraps it up for this week what are some other atari 2600 games that have real endings that you can think of i know i'm missing some here as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade hello and welcome to friday night arcade this week we're taking a look at something i had no idea even existed when i was a kid this is an actual genuine set of wireless controllers for the atari 2600 video computer system who needs bluetooth when you've got these bad boys huh so it turns out there were a couple of different manufacturers that made these types of controllers but this particular set was actually manufactured by atari as best as i can tell they all operated off of a similar premise though you had a receiver that would plug directly into the atari console and then you had two controllers that you could use these operated using an rf signal and it turns out this was actually a bit of a problem for atari when they first started developing prototypes for these the rf signal was so strong it could have potentially set off garage door openers 1 000 feet away or you'd be inadvertently controlling your neighbor's pitfall game from across the street this meant that there was no way they could have gotten it approved by the fcc this was actually going to be part of a prototype system that they were calling the atari 2700 that would have actually been basically a premium version of the atari 2600 it was gonna have touchscreen controls and all of this crazy stuff including wireless controllers but they just couldn't get it approved by the fcc and this was probably right around the time of the video game crash anyway so they kind of scrapped the whole idea but the wireless controllers did actually eventually make their way onto the market looking closer at the packaging the box promises instantaneous response and we'll just have to see about that when atari first released these controllers they carried a suggested retail price of 69.95 which comes out to about 180 bucks after inflation i guess only the little rich kids could get on the wireless atari fun i'm anxious to see what the lag time is on these and just how tactile they really are the electronic bay listing i bought this off of said they had never been used before the buttons do feel nice and clicky although it looks like some little kid used this joystick as a chew toy thankfully they didn't leave any batteries in them that would have leaked over the years and gotten battery acid all over the insides each controller runs off a 9 volt battery the box also says you can play up to 20 feet away and promises to clean up all those messy wires overall though these look pretty cool and i gotta say i like the look of the receiver too it's got the old-fashioned pull out antenna on it it's just got kind of a nice clean 70s technology feel to it and i'm anxious to hook this thing up and see how it works so without further ado let's head upstairs hook this thing up and see if it works okay so for the purposes of this test i'm not going to use any modded consoles or fancy upscalers or anything like that i want to get a raw test of how much latency and responsiveness this has so instead we're just going to use my og atari 2600 console this is the one that has been in my family for uh probably about 40 years i think my parents had it before i was born and it's the one that i played on so that's pretty cool it somehow still works even though my ps3 just died a couple weeks ago one thing that i wanted to show you the way that this works is uh this is actually the receiver so this lives kind of in the general vicinity of your atari 2600 console and it plugs in there's there's a couple different ways that this plugs in you've got your standard controller 1 and controller 2 which is basically just your basic 9 port controller adapter that you would normally see on your atari controller plugs into controller 1 and controller two respectively and then the other thing that i wanted to show you was how this thing gets power so this is the receiver uh there's an antenna that pulls out on the back and then uh the way that this gets power is uh very interesting to me so um i thought that this would just have a normal ac adapter since it's a separate device but actually all it has is uh this little thing so uh if you can get a closer look at that um basically the way that this works and this is actually in the instruction manual you will take the ac adapter from the atari 2600 and unplug it so that's this cord right here you will unplug that and plug it into the back of the receiver for the wireless controllers so and and then what you'll do is uh you'll take this and plug it into the back of the atari 2600 so so that means that the power is coming from your wall outlet going into the atari 2600 wireless controller receiver powering the receiver and then traveling from that all the way to the console and powering the console i'm not 100 sure if this is gonna work so i will have a fire extinguisher on hand and hopefully we won't be setting my grandparents atari 2600 on fire today let's see if this works [Music] okay well we got everything hooked up so here goes nothing let's fire this up and see if she runs and i'll be darned it's uh it's actually working so okay so that means that power is going through the radio receiver for the controllers and actually getting to the console so it appears that everything is uh actually working um so let's try out the controllers and see what happens okay so we're just firing up this up for the first time here and um one thing i did notice was the controller was kind of wiggling a little bit when i first plugged it in so what i actually did was i read somewhere that you can get a little bit of uh interference from a wi-fi signal or something like that so i unplugged my wireless router because it actually lives right behind the atari so i thought maybe that might be messing with it a little bit but basically uh it does work it's definitely not perfect um and i don't know if that's because the signal is bad or if that's just because maybe this controller you know the controller's uh 38 years old so uh i mean it's i'm i'm working it's working i mean i'm playing space invaders but this this game probably doesn't require as much uh hairpin trigger re response as say you know chopper command or river raid or something like that um so i i'm making this look easy but really i'm i'm i'm having to try as hard as i can here um i also i like i feel like right when you first turn the controller on there's a little bit of a sluggishness to it almost like it takes it a minute just to kind of get uh synced up with uh see and there you can see sometimes it's like it doesn't quite pick up uh it doesn't quite pick up the response from the from the controller and there's it's i can't say that it doesn't work but uh let's try it with a different game and see what happens uh so now we're going to try we're going to try cosmic r cosmic arc requires a lot of very rapid movements especially with the joystick as well as just very precise response time so this will be a good test as to whether or not this is actually working or not yeah see that time it didn't even it didn't even register the the input that i pushed down see that was close um yeah see it's having a real hard time picking up down and it could just be that the controller is broken i mean that's possible too what i might do is uh swap out the controllers i'll see i'm not going to make it yeah it has a real problem with up and down so um what i might do is swap out the inputs uh on the receiver and just see if the other controller works a little better oh it did it again so this is with the other controller and it's still not yeah see it it's having a real hard time with up and down movements so left and right works okay and the button seems to work okay but up and down definitely does not work okay so yeah river raid doesn't require a whole lot of up and down on the joystick but you do need it to slow down and like i can't even slow down at all so um yeah it doesn't really seem like it's gonna work for this either yeah the the button's working okay uh the fire button works just fine and left and right work pretty okay but up and down definitely does not work that's really not functional so um unless you're just trying to do a no breaks challenge on river raid i don't really think this is going to work for you well we gave it the old college try um unfortunately it just didn't work i think we proved the concept that it probably could work but either the controller just maybe is broken internally maybe it needs some restoration like i said the listing said it had never been used but i doubt that considering the uh bite marks that i was seeing on the joystick and everything so um it's hard to say why it wasn't working i tried a different set of batteries i tried various distances from the receiver i tried getting right up next to the receiver i tried standing five or ten feet away from the receiver and i just couldn't get a consistent signal that would even uh remotely consider this to be uh playable uh or usable in a in a realistic scenario also you know practically from a practicality standpoint i'm not really sure that it's something i would want to necessarily use anyway you know even though the cord on the original atari 2600 controller was uh very short odds are most atari games only lasted five or ten minutes before you had to hit the reset button again anyway so you probably would want to be pretty close to the console in fact the console actually made up for this by having an extra long ac adapter so you could actually have the console pretty close to you and then it didn't matter that the cord was only a foot and a half or two feet long anyway and then there's certain games that actually require you to use buttons on the console for in-game functionality uh star master space shuttle games like that star master you had to use the black and white toggle switch to toggle into the navigational computer so you'd want to be next to the console for that anyway and then also there's just the simple fact that one controller is way bigger than the other uh this is the uh this is the original controller in fact this is the one that i actually had when i was a kid which still works and then this one is uh it's kind of like the double quarter pounder with cheese uh version of the atari 2600 controller uh and then you've got this big silly antenna sticking out of it too which it wasn't that big of a deal but you know it's it's definitely not like the bluetooth controllers uh that you have now for playstation three and four and all that stuff so so yeah at least from my perspective i could not get these to work uh and i definitely couldn't recommend picking these up um like i said before it could have been some sort of internal component of the controller may be busted it could also just be that there's sources of interference that are present now in 2019 that just simply weren't here in the early 80s you know uh wi-fi signals uh i disabled the wi-fi signal in the house but i mean every one of my neighbors probably has a wireless router so it could be that it could be cell phone towers could be the garage door downstairs is causing some sort of interference who knows so uh if anybody knows more about these i'd love to hear about it i'd love to hear your experience if you had these growing up or maybe if you've gotten these to work more recently either the atari brand that i was using here or one of the other manufacturers that produced these and that's all for this week so thank you very much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] a few months ago we took a look at some atari 2600 games that really showed off what the hardware can do and you guys were quick to point out several more worthy titles so this week let's take a look at some more atari 2600 games that pushed the limits not just from a graphical standpoint but the sheer size and scope of the game and sometimes even running complex and advanced simulators you're going to want to stick around to the end for this one first up is california games released by epics this was released very late in the atari's lifespan all the way in 1988 and it was programmed on a 16k cartridge to make for more space to put that in perspective the donkey kong port on the 2600 was only a 4k cartridge california games features four different games to choose from foot bag half pipe skateboarding bike racing and surfing you could even play up to 8 players taking turns so this would have been a solid party game the hacky sack game features an oversized character that's very detailed given what you usually see in atari games you can actually tell this is a real person there's also moving clouds in the background the goal here is to do as many tricks as possible and you get points depending on the difficulty of the tricks the next event is the half pipe you move your guy back and forth building up speed by moving the joystick and using the button to attempt to do tricks for points after that it switches to bmx racing and this may be the weakest looking game of the bunch from a graphical standpoint but keep in mind most guitar games only had one mode to begin with whereas you're getting four separate games here controls are pretty basic speed up or slow down with the joystick and you can jump over obstacles using the button once i got the hang of this it's actually pretty fun after that you get the surfing mode and there's some really cool graphical effects here to simulate the water i never could really get a feel for the controls on this one though but frankly i've never seen surfing translate well into a game case in point tnc surf design on the nes all of these games probably seem simple by today's standards but they're actually kind of fun and addictive even today also how often do you see this many modes on a single atari game they even got a license to include the song louie louie [Music] moonsweeper developed and released by magic in 1983. heck even the box art is incredible but the gameplay is pretty crazy too this came out several years prior to solaris but it will look familiar to fans of that title several miners are trapped on these moons and it's up to you to fly the moonsweeper and save them the goal here is to fly this spaceship while dodging or destroying solar flares from the sun and space debris you can't move up and down on this screen just side to side the detail on your spaceship is impressive as well as the animation for the explosions when you destroy something occasionally you'll see these planet looking things zoom by and you're actually supposed to fly your ship into these to land on the moon's surface below there's even a really cool landing sequence as you descend to the surface and each moon is a different color depending on which one you land on the moon's color actually indicates how difficult it will be green is the easiest and red is the hardest once you're down on the surface the mission here is to rescue these miners while avoiding towers and flying saucers or blasting them to bits be careful not to shoot the miners you're supposed to be rescuing as i did this several times sorry guys once you've collected at least six miners on the surface fly through these special rings called acceleration rings to fly back to outer space and move on to the next mission there's even a takeoff sequence showing you going back to space the game features four selectable difficulty levels utilizing the switch on the console and also gets progressively more difficult as you go some folks will notice this game looks a lot like buck rogers planet of zoom developed and released a year earlier but i feel like this is a much more polished and playable version of the concept than the buck rogers game this one is a lot of fun and certainly more complex than most atari games at the time i'll throw in a couple quick ones here i've covered more in depth previously on the channel but jungle hunt and moon patrol are both worthy entries just for their use of parallax scrolling jungle hunt has a really cool parallax effect when you're swinging through the jungle and moon patrol has a similar effect as you're careening across the surface of the moon blasting aliens it totally adds to the depth of field helping to make this game incredibly fun to play it's subtle and certainly became commonplace on later console generations but when you stop and think about when these games were made it really blows your mind that they pulled this off at all given the limitations of the hardware [Music] here's another one i did an entire standalone video on a while back secret quest like a lot of games on this list secret quest was released late in the atari's lifespan all the way in 1989 and in fact it was the last officially released atari 2600 game in north america so by this time atari was trying to compete with advanced games on the nes secret quest was heavily inspired by overhead adventures such as the legend of zelda and to that end it's pretty incredible that they pulled this off on the atari at all the game's packaging notes set to be programmed by nolan bushnell but that's totally not the case it was actually programmed by steve defrisco it used a special expansion chip within the cartridge giving them an extra 256 bytes of ram to work with this made it possible for the game to be much larger than a regular atari 2600 game you play as a lone hero setting out to take out these enemy alien bases that have sprung up all over you have to infiltrate the bases and the overhead gameplay is totally the legend of zelda sure the rooms all look the same but there's a variety of enemies as well as some advanced gameplay mechanics such as an energy meter and an oxygen meter which you'll have to replenish throughout the game the goal of each stage is to take out the enemy base by setting a self-destruct sequence and then escaping before the whole base explodes furthermore each base gets more and more complex and intricate as you go involving multiple floors and twisting passageways it's easy to get lost and you'll need to draw yourself some maps or find some online in order to find the optimal way through this game even features a password system so you can save your progress sure you could just play the legend of zelda but what if the legend of zelda was on atari and took place in outer space [Music] star raiders was initially developed by doug neubauer and released in 1979 for the atari 400 and 800 family of computers then ported to the atari 2600 by carla maninski fans of activision starmaster which i covered extensively in a standalone video a while back will notice several similarities because to be perfectly honest they're the same game except star master is simplified a bit while star raiders is the real deal so you play as a lone star fighter your mission is to fight off the evil krylons who are attempting to destroy your star bases the gameplay centers around a first person perspective putting you right inside the cockpit of the starfighter and you've got a whole slew of readouts at the bottom of the screen that you have to manage and keep track of what sets star raters apart from star master and other space fighter games on the atari is this special keypad add-on that comes bundled with the game to my knowledge there aren't really any other games that utilize this type of keypad except for basic programming a cartridge written by warren robinette that taught basic programming through the atari console for star raiders the keypad comes with a special overlay that you put over the buttons which tells you what their functions are in the game and then you plug this into the second controller port so you would steer your ship and fire your weapon with your primary atari joystick and then use the keypad for other functions such as bringing up the navigation computer warping to enemy locations switching on shields as well as your ship's computer the game is very complex and you'll need to spend some time thumbing through the manual just to figure out what all these little readouts on the computer actually do it's impressive that they took the time to program all of these complex mechanics into an atari game and look for a standalone video on star raiders in the future so i can really dig into this one and show you what it's all about and if star raiders was too unrealistic for your space exploration needs well then how about space shuttle a journey into space designed by steve kitchen and published by activision in 1983. if you always wanted to turn your atari 2600 into a real-life space shuttle simulation machine well here's your chance whenever i think of this game i think of the 1986 movie space camp where a bunch of idiot teenagers inadvertently launch a real space shuttle and fly into space and then have to figure out how to get back home safely the game comes with all of this stuff you get your flight manual which is full of all sorts of over-the-top technical instructions a couple of overlays that you can put right on the console as well as a handy fold out instruction sheet just use whichever set of overlays fits either the heavy sixer or in my case i've just got the four switch console you'll want to pull the atari console right up in front of you while you're playing because every switch has some sort of expanded in-game functionality the game reset switch activates the launch sequence the black and white switch throttles up your primary engines and the difficulty switches have different functions too the left difficulty switch activates your backup engines and the right one handles your landing gear as well as opening and closing the cargo bay doors this game is definitely not one that you can just pick up and play and you'll need to read through the manual just to figure out what's going on even taking off is an ordeal you'll have to activate the launch sequence throttle up the engines at just the right time as well as maintain proper roll while you're escaping the earth's atmosphere who needs elite dangerous when you've got space shuttle on the atari right once you get into space you'll have to stabilize your orbit as well as dock with a satellite once you're finished in space you'll have to bring it on home for a safe landing just like with the launch sequence landing is an ordeal and you'll have to maintain the proper angle while re-entering earth's atmosphere so the shuttle doesn't burn up you'll also have to open up the landing gear and hit the ground at just the right angle this game certainly isn't for everybody and if you're craving action you'll definitely want to look elsewhere but it's really cool to see the atari transformed into such a complex simulation and this would have been just awesome for its time in 1983. i'll definitely be doing a standalone video on this one as well since this is way too technical to get into in just a couple of minutes here on this video well that's all for this week what are some more atari 2600 games that you loved what are some more games that helped really show off what the system can do i'd love to hear some of your suggestions below for a potential future episode as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade by the late 80s double dragon was just about everywhere the popular arcade game had been ported most notably to the nes but also the sega master system game boy various home computer systems you name it but did you know double dragon was released on the atari 2600 that's right kids you could team up with your buddies for some two-player side-scrolling beat-em-up action on your atari 2600. this port was developed by activision and carries a copyright release date of 1989 which means it had to be one of the final officially released atari 2600 games at this point the atari 2600 was on fumes so i'm not really sure why they even bothered heck to put that in perspective super mario brothers 3 was just released on the nes a year earlier but let's forget that a million other better versions of this game exist and just examine specifically what dan kitchen and activision accomplished on the atari given the limitations of the hardware it's a wonder this game even functions so you play as billy and jimmy the two brothers tasked with punching and kicking your way through the evil black warriors gang to rescue your girlfriend marion along the way you'll fight boss characters and you can also occasionally pick up weapons to help you out so obviously the graphics aren't much to look at but you can at least halfway tell what the characters are supposed to be the thugs look like well thugs and your guy looks like what you would expect it's not a total leap of logic also the backgrounds are actually fairly exceptional each stage has multiple backgrounds that you'll fight through and this looks like you're fighting through the mean city streets similar to the arcade game you could also play two player co-op but i don't have any friends so you'll just have to imagine player two okay now let's get into the play control and here's where this game sputters as admirable as the effort is double dragon just doesn't translate well to a controller that only has one button pressing the button punches pressing up on the button does a flying kick if you push diagonally down on the joystick along with the button you'll do a kick and if you push up diagonally plus the button you'll do an elbow punch that sounds simple but getting these moves to work in real time is awkward often times you'll do a flying kick at totally the wrong time launching yourself face first into an enemy punch and oh by the way the enemies are ridiculously difficult no matter what you do they always counter the good news is the enemy at the bottom is at least polite enough to wait until you're done fighting the enemy at the top of the screen before he starts attacking you so at least it's one at a time you get three lives and even a pretty generous life bar but heck the first time i tried to play this i lost two lives on the first screen i'm not even joking i was trying as hard as i can you can use the game select switch to switch between one player or two player modes and it also features a third mode that would let player 1 and player 2 face off against each other death match style this is actually kind of useful if you want to practice the moves or you could just pretend like you're playing atari street fighter 2 i don't know okay kids so here's a tip from your dear old uncle aaron i practice this so you don't have to if you want to be able to impress all your friends at double dragon on atari and it doesn't bother you that there are probably a million other more constructive things to do with your time on this earth you'll need to master the dreaded double dragon elbow punch of doom it's tricky to get the hang of but if you can keep the enemy slightly off axis from you horizontally and time your elbow punches just right they won't really be able to counter and you should be able to take them out pretty easily it's not exactly the funnest way to play through a double dragon game but if it works it works try and stay in the middle of the screen though because if they get you in a corner it's tough to get out of it you can also use the jump kick maneuver to keep some distance between you and the thugs but otherwise that move seems utterly useless i mentioned weapons before and yeah the bad guys do sometimes have weapons they might throw knives at you or bats or well they all look the same but sometimes they might throw one at you so i guess that's supposed to be a knife you can pick up the bat if you knock it out of their hands although honestly you're better off knocking it out of their hand and then just using the oboe punch it seemed like they always knocked the bat out of my hands and smashed me in the face with it for complete and utter demoralization so is double dragon on atari fun or otherwise worth playing today well no i can't recommend this unless you're just a rabid double dragon fan and want to own every version of it or something there's really no reason to play this version of it other than curiosity's sake just to see what the atari vcs was capable of with the absurd difficulty it's not very enjoyable to play especially for the higher price tag it usually brings in it is noteworthy though for being one of the few atari games it has music and also a real ending if you can make it that far there is a final boss and you end up rescuing the girl i think it just says you win or something like that but i didn't have the patience to play this one all the way to the end what did you think did anyone actually own this when it was first released in 1989 or have you bothered to play it since then what are some other absurd atari 2600 ports of games that probably had no business being on the atari that you can think of as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Applause] hello and welcome to friday night arcade my name is aaron and this week we're taking a look back at this little oddball nugget it's atari asteroids on a vinyl lp this is a real thing that actually existed okay so there's a bit of a backstory here i actually owned this when i was a kid to be honest i can't remember if my parents bought it for me as a gift or if it was something i picked out myself but i'm sure i would have been interested in this if not for the video game tie-in or the box art alone asteroids and well atari games in general always had some excellent box art and how cool is it to see the asteroids box are blown up this large in the modern era of digital downloads you really don't get that aspect of the album buying experience anymore but it was always so cool to see whatever artwork they came up with and have it displayed so prominently it looks cool enough on the cartridge for sure but you can really see some of the fine details with it all blown up like this i've said it before and i'll say it again but at some point i want to go back and do a whole deep dive on some of the fantastic artwork that went into these atari boxes the artist responsible for this one in particular was chris kenyon who as far as i can tell also did artwork for jungle hunt real sports soccer and missile command great job chris anyway when i was a kid i was always infatuated with all things outer space i would devour anything related to nasa space books documentary videos on vhs whatever i could find i actually had another one of these records based on 2010 the year we make contact which was basically a shortened audio book of the movie and i used to listen to it all the time even though i didn't actually see the film until much later i probably just like the box art but unfortunately i can't find that one anymore so it's possible my parents bought this for me as a gift just based on the cover and my love for space exploration we're going to dig into the actual album and what mysterious wonders are contained on said album soon enough but first let's find out a little more about the folks who actually made this thing taking a closer look at the cover and trying to figure out just who exactly made this there's a logo down in the corner that says kids stuff i've actually invited a very special guest onto the show today to help us find out a little bit more about kids stuff and just what that record label actually did so please give a warm welcome to jon from the gen x grown up youtube channel if you're a fan of friday night arcade i think you're definitely going to want to check out john's channel ghana has covered lots of atari games in the past but jon and his crew also cover all sorts of goodies like vintage tech and toys all the new movies and many other wonderful nostalgic things this past month they covered a wide range of topics like recent movies handheld games action figures and they even did an entire podcast about rotary phones i'll put a link down below so you can check out gen x growing up after this video well john what can you tell us about these kids stuff records oh sure i know a bit about kids stuff records happy to share incidentally thanks so much for inviting me to be on this edition of friday night arcade as aaron mentioned i am john with gen x grown up and i am a gen x grown-up that means i was a kid during the 70s 80s and early 90s so i grew up during the heyday of kid stuff records kid stuff was founded in 1975 in hollywood florida as a no surprise here children's music label now some of their releases were on these 33 and a third rpm long playing records or lps very much like the asteroids that we were already looking at the other variety were these little 45 rpm book and record sets you probably know the kind it's like a comic book come to life and they read the story to you and you know it's time to turn the page when they play a little tone every time you hear this sound it means it's time to turn the page and let me tell you kid stuff was no small time operation they were the powerhouse of kids records they were like the disney corporation of their era they got a stranglehold on the release rights of every major pop culture intellectual property out there i'm talking about things like strawberry shortcake care bears fat albert the berenstain bears masters of the universe gi joe star wars pink panther garfield barbie schoolhouse rock benji my little pony webster knight rider the chipmunks transformers i mean i think you get the idea but they didn't stop there when the 80s rolled around they jumped on the video game bandwagon and got the rights to release a ton of these albums for great video game titles and i'm talking heavy hitters like pac-man donkey kong missile command yar's revenge and of course asteroids i have all of the kid stuff video game releases digitally in my media arcade but it wasn't until aaron started talking about his asteroids that it reminded me i might still have some of these from my youth in my closet i went digging i have this pac-man picnic a cheesy little story about pac-man and chomp chomp headed off for a day in the woods taking a picnic and of course the ghosts throw a monkey wrench into that pac-man will prevail at the end spoiler alert i also found that i still have the story of missile command i know what you're thinking missile command has a story well it does in this book now naturally they have to take some creative license create some characters you've never heard of and put them in this mythical world where someone's protecting the cities from the incoming missiles admittedly it's a little cheesy but it's just the kind of nostalgic cheese that i enjoy and finally the third one that i found that i still have my crown jewel the amazing adventures of pac-man in this charming little story record the ghosts from pac-man steal all the fruit and of course it's up to pac-man to find the fruit and save the day the twist here is that the fruit is actually hidden inside of a haunted house and there's the usual amount of kid-friendly spooks and scares these kids stuff records are a really special part of the memories i have growing up in the 70s and 80s i'm especially happy that i still have some of the physical copies in my collection what i don't have in my collection though is that sweet asteroids lp for more on that let's go back to aaron thanks john now that we've got all of that out of the way there's not much else to do but pop this thing in the old turntable and see what it's all about looking at the back label there is actually a story here maybe the story will explain why they used a screenshot of missile command instead of asteroids anyway asteroids on vinyl lp tells the story of well asteroids while on a routine mission the cosmic space patrol ship intrepid is trapped in a time warp and has rocketed 600 years into the past it's up to captain jim stanton and his computer sidekick chip brain to find their way back to safety last off her adventure with atari's asteroids they actually do make mention of the cosmic space patrol in the atari instruction manual for asteroids so at least they read it when you first put the record on you're greeted with about three minutes of musical fanfare which is what you've been hearing in the background up to this point there's no dialogue in this track at all so i guess they were stretching things out a bit the story picks up in the next track complete with space age sound effects and captain jim stanton makes me think of zapp brannigan hi and welcome aboard the cosmic space patrol ship intrepid i'm captain jim stanton you must be the new trainee they told me about yes sir captain where should i sit right there in the co-pilot seat kid wow what's the machine captain asteroids i hope maybe but it's usually not that exciting it's a quiet beef no hassles nothing like the pirate lanes on the titanium freighter circuit oh every once in a while we might run across a pleasure cruiser or a beat up old communications satellite that's drifted off course but that's just about it golly i thought it would be more exciting than that it has its moments now don't get me wrong i like my job most of the guys i went to school with are punching out silicone chips or selling robots door-to-door not me i've got this baby and when i'm out on patrol she's all mine forward thrusters accelerate from zip to half the speed of light in under 10 seconds i've got enough photon torpedoes on board to turn saturn into a hunk of swiss cheese not to mention the shields flip control and hyperspace this baby is loaded strictly state-of-the-art so it's basically just a few minutes of the captain mouthing off to some random little kid on this spaceship about how cool it is there's the obligatory exchange where the writers tried to predict stuff that may happen in the future such as climate control biogenetic farms and saving endangered species from extinction eventually there's a red alert and the spaceship intrepid runs into you guessed it an asteroid man would you listen to that the visual particle counter is going crazy but i don't see anything out there neither do i maybe we'd better take a closer look hold on kid here we go at 72 000 miles per second it shouldn't take long to find out what's going on out there my god look at the size of that thing it's colossal and it's headed right at us shields up confirmed shields are up rapid fire torpedoes locked on target confirmed photon torpedoes locked on target fire when ready hold on kid here we go fire torpedo one fire one look at that we hardly made a dead net fire two fire two was a dead hit but instead of vaporizing it's breaking up into smaller pieces look at that there must be thousands of them they managed to blow the oversized asteroid to bits but it sends thousands of pieces hurtling towards the ship and the shields just won't hold so just like in the game they decided to jump to hyperspace to try to avoid any further damage the hyperspace trip works and they're able to successfully avoid danger but they accidentally end up in the year 1983 then as what typically happens when you accidentally time warp through hyperspace to 1983 a random musical number breaks out behold the asteroid's theme song [Music] lookout hold them steady so back in the 80s you could be sitting there with your atari playing asteroids and rocking out to the theme song and if that doesn't get stuck in your head you're immediately greeted with another musical number as soon as you flip the record this time it's time warp this tune is definitely a time capsule from the 80s complete with trippy sound effects and all of the dialogue was recorded using something called a vocoder [Music] million years [Music] so it really just repeats that over and over for three minutes that's just fantastic i wonder how many parents came in and unplugged their kids fisher-price record players after hearing that for the 180th time i mentioned the dialogue was recorded entirely with a vocoder and i really didn't know much about this device or its history so i'm going to turn it back over to john from gen x grown up one more time to tell us a little bit more about the vocoder what have you got for us john as we've seen most kids stuff records had short simple stories punctuated with original songs and asteroids was no exception in this case though we're focusing on that amazing track from asteroids time warp created almost entirely using a vocoder believe it or not the vocoder was originally devised in the 1930s as a voice codec for communication technology the initial goal was to encode and compress speech for transmission on very narrow bandwidth with high security during the vocoder process lots of audio data is discarded and that results in a very dehumanizing effect to the human voice this unique sound led the vocoder to be utilized heavily in all sorts of audio and music entertainment unless you've been hiding under a rock there's no way you've escaped hearing the vocoder used in tons of pop music artists like craftwork music or tupac [Music] [Applause] one of my favorites the beastie boy now you don't need super evolved equipment to get vocoder quality effects in your own home there are small and cheap modular units you can acquire that plug right into existing audio equipment to generate real-time vocoder effects but if you don't need real-time live and you can wait until after you edit you can do it for free today in audacity just lay down your voice on one track generate some sawtooth noise on the other apply the aptly named vocoder tool and just like that i now sound like a robot thanks to the vocoder hey maybe i have a future in pop music intercollecting planetary thanks again john and don't forget to check out gen x grown up on youtube after this video the final track on the asteroids album is a 10 minute chunk of storyline that kind of meanders for a bit before ultimately wrapping up everything nicely the characters realize they're 600 years in the past so they get a history lesson from the ship's computer about what life was like back in 1983. so that's earth in the 1980s what a place while they're sitting there contemplating their fate a super-sized asteroid comes across the computer headed straight toward 1983 earth and they have to leap into action and deal with it because you know asteroids let's go for it i'm punching in the coordinates that will put us on an intercept course we should be within firing range in a few minutes stand by for ignition now look there it is up ahead look at the size of that thing it's enormous they set out to destroy it take out several smaller asteroids along the way and even run into a ufo with all sorts of fun sound effects scattered about red alert red alert ufo dead ahead and firing shields up shields up captain photon torpedoes engaged fire when ready the ufo is closing fast look out he's shooting that again too close for comfort okay overgrown pie plate we're shooting back now and of course they eventually destroy the giant earth-killing asteroid jump to hyperspace to escape the debris and end up right back where they started 600 years into the future for the nice happy ending and so captain stanton fired the main thrusters and the mighty ship roared off through space in a never-ending battle for planetary safety it's tough work but then that's your job when you're a member of the cosmic space patrol well what did you think did you grow up with any of these kids stuff records or audiobooks which ones did you own did you find out about them more recently i'm not even sure what something like this would go for these days i've seen a copy on sale on ebay for close to 70 bucks but people tend to just make up random prices for classic stuff like this so who knows if you see something like this at a garage sale or flea market for cheap it would certainly be cool to own just for the artwork but i can't say that i'd overpay for it unless you just really love asteroids if you want to listen to the record in its entirety the digital files are certainly floating around out there in cyberspace for you to find anyway that's all for this week as always thank you very much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade

Channel: Friday Night Arcade

Views: 82,768

Keywords: atari 2600, friday night arcade, atari video computer system, best atari 2600 games, atari 2600 best games, pitfall, atari, space invaders, these atari 2600 games pushed the limit, atari 2600 friday night arcade, friday night arcade atari 2600, atari 2600 activision, top 10 atari 2600 games, secret quest, footage, gameplay, retrospective, gaming history, classic gaming, retro gaming, retro, 80s, atari classic, atari vcs, commentary, river raid, enduro, mediaglitchhd, fridaynightarcade

Id: Jjes-hO3ts0

Length: 224min 3sec (13443 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021