Games That Push the Limits of the Atari 8-Bit Family

they're 400 800 1200 XL XE no one ever seen sure what to call these machines the Atari 8-bit family is the clumsy name for the mole not the biggest selling system anywhere this mostly inter compatible range of computers still left a fairly big mark on the world of gaming once again I'm going to go waiting through the retro effluent to dredge up a net full of games that's really push the limits and showed what these machines could do and well there's only one place we can start it's got to be star Raiders on their release in 1979 the original 400 and 800 machines were easily the most graphically powerful hose systems you could buy the star Raiders was the killer out there showcase for what they could boast over there by this point many competitors a game that actually turned out to be one of the most important in videogame history even if no one seems to remember it much today a pioneer how so well let me count the ways number one it's a 3d first-person perspective with two different viewpoints and total freedom of movements coming along even before atari zone battlezone this may well be a first in commercial gaming beaten to the punch only by experimental stuff being passed around the computer labs of the day number two it's an open world game or at least an early prototype of that sort of thing there is no linear structure here no levels no set path you are free to move around the galaxy of will in fact it becomes an essential part of the game's strategic element leaving it up to the player to decide whether to attack or defend number 3 it's got a narrative okay not a massively strong one by today's standards but this is more than just bump on the back of the box it's a story that you play a part in which leads us to point four it's beatable yes there is an end to this game unlike even many later games there is a way to win numerical score has been dispensed with complete they may be the first action game to do this replacing it with a performance rating not unlike elite from a few years later there is quite a lot about this game that will be familiar to fans of elite from the star map and hyperspace to the 3d combi this was in fact an acknowledged influence on the now legendary space trading saga of course with early games like this you can always point to examples that better compared to what's coming up later this looks nowhere near as impressive on the surface at least but well I think you did push other limits not just of the old-school axe re8 bitters but of games in general crammed into an 8 kilobyte cartridge and pulling just a year after space invaders it was a big leap forward where to next well I think it's got to be way out from 1982 yes this games greatest feature is obvious from the start 3d graphics once again I want to call this Wolfenstein style raycasting but well I'm fairly sure that it's not it is though quite possibly the first example of filled 3d polygonal graphics ever seen in a game complete with 360 degree freedom of movement yes the viewing area is small but the frame rate is high and despite being the first this is some of the best 3 day you'd see on a home system for years to come as again well although it may look like a first-person shooter the actual act over shooting precludes it from being that much more like the zx81 3d monster mazing gameplay it's not massively deep escape the maze whilst avoiding the fearsome map of stealing collect angle is the basic thrust pilfering euclidean geometry is never going to be quite as scary as priest during monsters but still it plays pretty well and he's more than just a tech demo there's only one thing that's going to top this in 3d performance though that is this game's direct seagull from a year later cap each other flag created by the same program as this goes even further into the third dimension we lives a bit of framerate maybe but we gain a much larger playing area and split-screen two-player action capture the flag well that man captures exactly what this is about either against another human or against the CPU once again almost but not quite a first-person shooter giving us a surprisingly early preview of what was going to be big in the next decade in fact taken together these two games seem uncounted ly prescient like some kind of out of place digital artifact in the hyper compressed progress of the gaming world well this is a bit like finding a pair of Air Jordans in a medieval midden why did this not cause more of a stir at the time why does no one remember these games well I have no idea definitely these two are long overdue for being given their jus we can do no better than this though surely there can be no greater surprises in the Californian computery phunsukh can their well hang on to your cut pcs because he is a trailblazer if ever there was one it's mercenary yes okay this appeared on a lot of platforms what the Atari was the original and at least in the 8-bit world maybe the best to ambition and innovation is what's striking about this it's got its sloshing all over the place a 3d first-person open-world gang crammed into such a machine 'is pretty breathtaking you wouldn't think it was possible and well it feels like it only just is yes it requires the massive 48k of RAM that the later machines came equipped with but still hardly a resource hog there's a whole city to explore spaceships to fly cars to drive and lots of fairly obscure puzzles to solve a primitive low spec version of the modern immersive sim a taste of what Fallout and Bioshock would givers in the years to come of course it's all very blocky textualist wireframe stuff but it moves surprisingly well and critiques solid frame rate throughout you might spend much of the time wondering where the hell you are and what's going on like a lot of games of this vintage half the battle seems to be working out exactly what it is you're supposed to do it is though still pretty forgiving you can't actually die and if you do get hopelessly stuck somewhere in the massive gang world you can warp it back to the city at any time though you do lose your actions in the process this is a game that really wants to encourage exploration and experimentation a truly nonlinear open-world experience escape from tog is the subtitle and that's exactly the aim of the game get off planet tug but how you do that is largely up to you offering the sort of freedom that very few games had done up to this point yes it bears comparison to elite once again elite released the year before blue opened the doors of what was possible in a game and mercenary seems like he's set out to do the same thing but on a terrestrial rather than a galactic scale another title that deserves more recognition than he seems to get it's arguably just as groundbreaking as elite and in some ways maybe more relevant to the past but gaming eventually took a lot of the biggest games from the past 15 years or so do look an awful lot like more sophisticated versions of this a remarkable legacy moving on released in 1985 the same year's mercenary there's another huge innovator we need to look out alternate reality that's sitting [Music] treating us to a colorful cinematic and maybe slightly overblown opening complete with its own song it's got more of that common theme on the Atari a bit Bishan true to RPG form the first thing to do is create your character then it's time to dive right into the vast and strange world of the city a massive game that left all its contemporaries behind when it comes to buffing complexity now first off the graphics here are definitely worth talking about right away I want to call this ray casting once again but this time I would certainly be right because that's exactly what it is in fact probably the very first time this was ever used in a video game admittedly the end result isn't all that much different from the purely bitmap pseudo 3d of the bird's tail it doesn't allow for full rotation or anything like that what he feels look pretty good for any big game from 1985 the rain effect is certainly notable crude but effective and I'm stopping to think of an earlier game that even attempted something like this now I've got to say that I have a fairly high tolerance for challenging 8-bit games and sure my videography will prove that but well this one left me feeling a little frustrated throwing you right in at the deep end with no weapons little money and very limited resources this game is tough to get into to say very least I'm not sure what you're supposed to do other than wander around town punching blind beggars to death until you get enough cash for a decent weapon I could well be missing something maybe seasoned players could fill me in but he seems like an aggressive learning curve you'll be faced with the direct sequel alternate reality the dungeon is slightly more accessible but not a whole lot moving underground to the dank pits favored by more conventional RPGs it does seem a tad more focused but still not easy to get into how can you fail to escape from mold many game overs will be the fate of anyone who plays either of these two games each one accompanied by another song just what you need to soothe your tortured soul in the face of defeat and a very long bouts of loading yes I resorted to some fairly serious cheating to try and get further into this port well he's pushed even my ZX spectrum hardened patients to the edge but well I am getting off the point here in either guy's alternate reality is a flawed experience in many ways but it undoubtedly pushes the limits of this system pretty hard enormous world's deep and complex systems tons of content for anyone with the persistence to get that far like mercenary these two tackles were a window into the future of gaming ridiculously detailed the amount of stuff you can do here is incredible your characters can even get scurvy if they don't eat enough fruit it would take another 20 or 30 years before this kind of world building would really come good with the likes of the Elder Scrolls an amazing attempt on a system that finds its origin in the 70s now though we're running into a bit of a problem in 1985 the best years aren't best games of many 8-bit systems we're still to come the NES had barely got into its stride the Atari 8-bit line on the other hand seemed to be withering on the vine with releases slowing to a trickle as the decade wore on the system missing out on most of the major multi-platform releases and enjoying scant few notable exclusives a real shame this multicolored pixel pioneer had a lot of untapped potential as this modern modern scene demo shows it could have it should have enjoyed the same continued success as the spec II or the c64 but it never did at least in the commercial arena it does though continue to have a very large following on the demo scene and in the homebrew world so it seems fitting that I should round this list off with a couple of more modern releases new tricks for the old Doug which show what might have been and first up its Space Harrier yes an unofficial conversion of Sega's super scaling arcade rail-shooter wonder appeared and well done near every platform bar this one back in the 80s originally released in 2012 this modern retro conversion is a mine of masterpiece of 8-bit porting better in so many ways that it really has any right to be on a machine of this vintage ok the color palette is a little strange but other than that it seems to have it Oh a surprising amount of detail and a decent turn of speed make this a winner it could be ahead of all those other 8-bit home computer ports from way back when of course programmer Chris foot had the advantage of a whole load of modern development tools what is she still damned impressive more of this sort of thing back in the late 80s would probably have given those Atari systems at first they really deserved these machines were in most respects well in advance of anything the spectrum could offer and could pull off trickster even the c64 and NES would struggle to emulate thanks to his clever graphics hardware and large color palettes with that in mind there's only one place this could end it has to be Atari blast now the old octo-pete Brotherhood was sadly left wanting when it came to 2d shooters missing out on so many of the big names no it's re equivalent of Manfred Trenz ever turned up at least back in the day PFL cold at pole lay does his best to make up for the deficit by creating a game that he's basically every darn 80 shoot - almost a winter one and somehow it works yes this is again that's rather well liberal with its inspirations making no attempt to hide what it's riffing on but for a non-commercial release like this I think we can forget that everything this game does is undeniably impressive proving that Ataris weird wedgies had very compelling 2d capabilities even if they were never fully exploited back in the Golden Age of 8-bit masses of sprites swirling across huge colorful backgrounds smooth scrolling even some parallax effects we may never have seen ports of our type horse salamander or really any of those big arcade shooters what this surely proves at least Hardware could have come up with the goods if anyone had bothered it's even got a fairly catchy in-game soundtrack a surprisingly uncommon feature on this platform given the capabilities of the onboard bulky sound chip this game looks so wonderful it might be a bit too good to be true doesn't this require some special modern upgrade i dono something well actually no although Atari blasted does use a huge Warner megabyte cartridge it doesn't require any special Hardware on top of that and will consequently run and all but the earliest of the line those limits pushed without cheating the best looking game on the old Sunnyvale Smasher I think he could be finally something that gives you a good workout and now this is the point where I'm going to call time on the adventure you know even with Atari blast on the table I still think there is some excess capacity left here with graphics hardware designed by Jay miner this was the baby amiga capable of oh so much when pushed out demo Cygnus keeps showing us just what Heights this 70 survivor can be pushed to and the eye-popping tricks that it can do it never seemed to end out there more surprises in store on the 8-bit family well I hope so as always do let me know what you think I've missed new or old so with that it's time to say thanks for watching and I'll see you next time you [Music]

Channel: Sharopolis

Views: 92,165

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Id: HTUmiot6vyM

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020