The Ultimate M Network/Atari 2600 Tier List - ALL RELEASED GAMES RANKED

launched in 1979 Mattel's int television was a direct competitor to atari's VCS and while Mattel designed and produced games for their own system it was quite a surprise when in the early 80s they started shipping simplified versions of its games for the VCS under the M Network label and now here 40 years later following the announcement that modern day Atari has acquired a great many of those M Network titles what better time to run down and rank every VCS game ever released by m Network and we're going to begin right after this this video supported in part by play VR I tend to sweat it gives me an edge the king of nerds happens to give me an edge too let king of nerds give you the edge bye king of nerds hey there welcome back to Gen X grownup I am John and I am a Gen X grownup thank you so much for the click with third parties like Activision and a magic making money hand over fist with their Atari VCS titles it's hard to blame Mattel for for wanting a piece of that pie interestingly they didn't feel the same way toward Atari as they bulked at allowing Atari to release cartridges for the intellivision in fact in the early 1980s the Mattel company filed a lawsuit against Atari alleging they'd stolen Mattel's Trade Secrets when it hired former Mattel employees to develop a line of in television compatible cartridges it was fine for them though as evidenced by the fact that M Network released a total of 177 cartridges for the Atari VCS between 1982 and 83 now as is the norm for my tier ranking videos I'm going to do my best to not judge these games based on Modern sensibilities but rather Through The Eyes of little Johnny a little 10-year-old me what would my impression of these games be after talking my parents into buying one during our regular shopping trip to the mall for example look we have plenty of ground to cover so let's get after it starting alphabetically with Adventures of Tron Adventures of Tron is obviously based on the Disney film Tron in each level you're introduced to four floors with bits scanning back and forth and enemies working their way down in a zigzag pattern you need to navigate the floors and collect all the bits while avoiding enemies now you can drop down a floor at any time but those elevators seem to only work when they want to or so I thought until I actually read the manual see you must cross over that Center IO beam in order to recharge the elevators and then they'll work for you this prevents you from just riding it to the top and forces you to cross the screen each time Adventures of Tron is fine and while later levels do introduce things like tanks that can shoot at you he really doesn't change the game all that much but as I said it is fine and it's a b moving right along alphabetically to air Raiders now air Raiders is a simple aerial dog fight game and starts out pretty you tap the button to start your plane down the runway and then pull up to take off now here's where the meh ends and the startlingly rewarding combat game begins your you're given a finite amount of fuel and ammo ammo of course is the number of shots you can take and fuel use is variable and makes sense flying level consumes fuel climbing consumes more and Diving consumes less you can land at any time but unless you've taken out the 10 requisite enemies Landing is going to end your game if you have met your quota though Landing refills your fuel and ammo and you can take off again these systems combined result in a game that not only delivers fun action but also a strategic component that prevents you from just mindlessly hammering on that fire button graphically air Raiders could have done with some more polish but the underlying game provides the kind of tension you want from a dog fight game so I'm going to give air Raiders an a up next armor Ambush now this is M Network's answer to the tank portion of the Atari launch title combat but unlike combat there are no variations such as B planes or jets just tanks which is fine though you can add things like ricocheting bullets with the left difficulty y switch now like combat though this is a strictly two-player game if you don't have a buddy to play with there's nothing interesting really to do the concept is pretty cool across a variety of different Maps you go two on two against a competitor each player is given two tanks on screen which drive like you'd expect but pulling back will toggle control to your other tank so one of your tanks is always a Sitting Duck while you're using the other and that's the Strategic element when to switch tanks where to position them and how best to ambush your opponent when one player wins around by destroying the enemy's two tanks you move on to the next screen and go again repeat until someone loses all 25 of their tanks additional thoughtful mechanics include terrain affecting speed and damage from friendly fire with the right opponent this like any game could be a blast but being purely objective it can get a bit monotonous so I'm going to give armor Ambush a SE this next game I feel kind of dumb for thinking so ill of it for so many years but I finally come around I'm talking here about astr blast and once again reading the manual reveals so much more about these games than is immediately evident at face value think of Astroblast as a mashup of Space Invaders and asteroids you're a ship moving across the bottom of the screen but instead of aliens space rocks are zooming down toward you for added variety you can control your ship with the joystick or the paddle with the paddle being preferred since it allows for zipping quickly back and forth on screen and you're going to want to do a lot of that now of course shooting the rocks gains points and getting hit by one loses a ship it's easy enough to just dodge the rocks and wait for your shots but here's the problem every rock that you don't shoot deduct points from your score that means you've got to take risks and be aggressive to shoot down as many as possible or any score you've acred will start ticking down add to this the progressive addition of special ships and now you have a fast-paced high-score Thrill Ride of a game that belies its simple outward appearances and will keep you mashing that game reset button again and again in an attempt to beat your high score Astro Blast for me is an S tier game moving now into a couple of arcade ports done by m Network the first of which is Bump and jump Now bump and jump is not a racing game if you treat bump and jump like a racing game you're going to have a bad time okay like the arcade game it's based on bump and jump as a high-speed demolition derby you want to destroy every other car on the road by either nudging them into the wall or jumping and Landing on them different enemies have a different Mass so some cars are pushovers While others are like trying to shove a tank on top of that the terrain will mess with you sometimes the bridge is out or the road splits requiring a lightning reflex jump at the last second to avoid going in the drink bump and jump looks pretty low Frills is that car really just a skull and crossbones yeah yeah it is but the mechanics hold true to the arcade game plus using the TV type switch you can turn off that monotonous chip tune to allow you to focus on the road so bu and jump is going to get a be the next arcade Port is Burger time you control pepper the chef making Giant Hamburgers or maybe you're a tiny Chef making normal hamburgers I was never sure at any rate the ingredients are spread across a multi-level map and you need to walk across them to drop them onto the plates below complete all the burgers and complete that level now of course you must Dodge all the enemy food eggs pickles sausages that are for some reason trying to stop you from building Burgers your only defense aside from clever dodging is your pepper shaker that can temporarily stun the enemies that's all fine and remarkably well translated from rcade to the VCS including decent editions of the game music what's not well translated though is the control getting on and off ladders requires frustrating precision and a death is determined purely by Collision detection so even if a pickle just touches the very tip of your little chef's hat as you round a corner you're dead and it's pretty slow the graphics look unfinished though there are multiple levels and the aggravating control problems take what was on the way to being a faithful port to instead having all the fun of playing with a busted joystick the main thing Burger Time Has going for it is how slow it runs so you actually have a chance I'm going to give Burger Time a d up next is dark Cavern I think it would be easy to dismiss dark Cavern as your typical maze running gun and while it is a maze running gun I think there's enough extra stuff going on here to Warrant a second look you navigate your man he he's literally called man in the instructions through the maze dodging or shooting enemies and collecting ammo the extra strategic twist here is that not every enemy can kill you so deciding when to run versus when to shoot and spend a precious bullet makes a difference there are blobs that can steal your ammo and spiders Who Bite and temporarily paralyze you and while you can shoot them they're worth zero points and this only serves to get them out of your way the primary opponent are the roaming robots and they also have guns to top it off they can even fire a shot after they've been killed so you can't stay in their line of sight for long now none of this makes dark Cavern amazing but it's probably better than you thought it was it certainly is better than I thought it was I'm going to give dark Cavern a b up next we're headed to the pond with frogs and flies frogs and flies really gives me the feel of Activision's fishing derby but with frogs instead of fishermen and flies instead of fish you and a friend or the computer if you don't have a friend are both buying for the same flies the buzz back and forth across the pond on easy mode this is a baby's game but on standard difficulty you can change the height and trajectory of your frog control when his little tongue Zips out to catch a nearby fly and you can even fall in the water if you don't plan your jump properly there is something so satisfying about eating a fly in the instant before your opponent is about to that I'm sure it led to plenty of shoulder punches back in the day the graphics while blocking as you might expect do a pretty good job of conveying the Frog Pond environment and rather than a timer the sky gradually darkens until the day ends and one of the Flies buzzes across with a the end sign frogs and flies kind of only does one thing but it does it pretty well so I'm going to give it a b now here's the part of the video that most of you skip over because I'm asking you to visit our merch store for your support on patreon but this time I want to give you something for free more entertainment did you know that Gen X grownup releases a brand new audio show every single Thursday the Gen X grownup podcast is an extension of the YouTube channel where we discuss and review contemporary games Tech media and toys but also devote entire episodes to dig deep into nostalgic Gen X topics VHS Saturday morning cartoons MTV movie rental stores novelty records bbs's one hit wonders Captain Kangaroo look if it's Gen X related we cover it so you can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcast or write on our website at genxgrownup /od plus it's free did I mention that so why not give it a try okay let's get back after it with international soccer now this is for sure a stripped Down soccer game directly from the manual it says no offsides goalies throwi inss Corner kicks goal kicks timeouts or overtime what's left for soccer other than just running kicking the ball which is pretty much what this game is now control feels good considering the limitation of the atar and it seems to auto switch somehow to the right player all the time I never felt like I was out of control passing and shooting just seem to feel right now international soccer is only a two-player game so having fun is dependent on having the right person to play with I know that's true of many many games but this one especially it's a sports game with no computer AI now this is the first game we'll talk about that has a weird and documented glitch SL feature that is seen in a lot of M Network games and that is if the guy you're controlling is falling behind if you let him scroll off the back of the screen he will reappear on the opposite side of the screen to allow you the opportunity to tackle or pass or steal or whatever it is your little guy is trying to do it's kind of weird but it's kind of cool too and it makes up for the limitations of how many players you can have on screen though I'm not a soccer or football fan myself I had a great time playing international soccer and I'm going to give it a b now if you were wondering if Kool-Aid man was going to make this list oh yeah it is Kool-Aid man was originally only available via mail order by sending in UPC symbols from Kool-Aid containers in the game the thirsties are stealing water from your swimming pool not great to drink chlorinated water but whatever they're thirsties you've got to catch them when they're drinking from the pool with their straw because they're vulnerable then gameplay is pretty fast-paced and makes good use of a fullcreen gradient to provide more colors than you typically see on a VCS game plus a great Kool-Aid man smashing through the wall scene to start your game off if you touch a non-drinking thirsty or any of the walls you'll go bouncing around out of control and if the screen is full you can bounce around for a while losing precious time and pool water periodically Kool-Aid ingredients W for water s for sugar and K for Kool-Aid will appear and if you grab one it's like a power pellet making you double in size and Invincible for a very short time the greater value of the ingredients though is that grabbing one will add a bit of water back into your pool if you can defeat all the thirsties you'll to the next level but your pool doesn't refill so the game really is all about catching those ingredients to keep adding water back into your pool for a pure product placement game this is kind of not too bad but it's still not amazing so I'm going to give it a c up next is lock and Chase lock and Chase is a pretty standard Pac-Man esque puzzle game you're a robber navigating a maze collecting gold bars and avoiding the police the game play is quite smooth but the sound is nothing special the key differentiating fact factor in Lock and Chase is the titular locks that you can drop behind you vaguely like mous trap where you can modify the maze your robber can drop up to two locked doors behind him forcing a pursuing policeman to turn and getting him briefly off your tail that's pretty much it collect gold bars and the periodic Pac-Man fruit likee bonus boxes until the screen is cleared exit out the top and repeat but slightly faster so I'm going to give Lock and Chase a c this next game though look M Network developers were given the initial to try to do some games based on other Mattel Properties so obviously Masters of the Universe and I don't like to spoil anything in a tier and I don't like to censor myself but this game Masters of the Universe would like you to think it's a two-c screen combo of Chopper command and earthworld but in reality it's just a frustrating exercise in futility in the first level your He-Man on his flying jet ski trying to make it to Castle grey skull along the way bad guys fire illogical bullets Upward at you that sometimes track you and sometimes don't depending on when you last reversed your ship plus you got these flying asterisks that are trying to wreck you after what seems like hours of that if you haven't thrown the cartridge across the room before making it to gray skull you're greeted with this double wall level where Skeletor is shooting at you you know like Skeletor does but he's not the threat it's these irrationally fast moving slidy wall things that will Bonk you back to the left side of the screen more often than I care to remember if you do finally catch skeletal you are treated to the best part of this whole game a still of He-Man with some [Music] music and then you're punished for your success by having to undertake the whole ordeal again but faster I cannot remember the last time I swore at a game as often or as loudly as I have at Masters of the Universe he man this game is an F for sure okay with that out of my system let's hopefully move along to something better with space attack space attack is a weird little game with a very generic name that at first seems unapproachable but there are layers to be found once you run through the manual the action part of the game is a cockpit view space fight but that's only one piece of the puzzle you start on this Galactic map where squadrons of enemy Fighters are slowly advancing toward the center where your mother ship is though it's never seen on screen in the game with a combination of button and joystick codes you deploy your own squadrons of Fighters to intercept the bad guys before they can launch an attack on your mother ship in other words kill the bad guys before they get to the middle of the map now once they meet up another joystick code is needed to jump into the cockpit segment here you blast enemy UFOs while avoiding their fire and in an odd twist you take damage if your reticle is hit not when your ship is hit and I do appreciate that the explosion from one UFO can blow up other nearby UFOs resulting in the occasional chain reaction of bad guy explosions space attack has no score you either win or or lose by defeating the UFOs before they get to your mother ship or not and then it's over there's actually more here than I first thought there would be but overall it is just kind of a middle of the road space shooter so I'm going to give space attack a c staying in space for this next one it's on to star strike in star strike a powerful space station is about to launch a missile that will destroy the Earth you're piloting a small fighter armed with missiles and bombs and your mission is to destroy the station before it can destroy Earth now like space attack there's no door here just success or failure you're flying along a trench on what is totally not the Death Star and your goal is to bomb the eight missile ports before Earth is in targeting position you get this kind of zaxon likee Shadow to help you determine your height when you're above the trench you fire missiles but when you're in the trench you drop bombs shooting the enemy ships is secondary to your goal so it's really more about avoiding obstacles while you wait for the porch to show up and you'll get a little beeping noise when one is approaching now enemies can't directly kill you but if you're hit you lose altitude and your controls get scrambled for a few seconds you know like Up Is Down and left is right but it's random and if your fighter crashes into the space station at any time then you are toast Star Strike does have four levels of difficulty but there's no variation Beyond things like speed and more difficult obstacles it's fun enough for a play or two and while it's not one that will likely make your list of favorites I'm still going to give it a b we have just a few left and these next two are in the M Network sports series the first being super challenge baseball graphically super Challen baseball is an impressive looking baseball game especially on the VCS but it's the control of the fielders that leaves so much to be desired pitching works well running works well if you put it on Advanced difficulty you can even steal bases there's a lot to like in here but even after you understand the mechanic of holding the button and multi- tapping the joystick until the right fielder is selected it can still feel clumsy and somewhat frustrating so rather than playing a good game of baseball I found myself struggling with the game just to do what I knew knew needed to be done and you shouldn't have to fight a game you should just have to play a game also of note very little sound in super challenge baseball it ends up being kind of mostly silent punctuated by little tiny sound effects like where's the Roar of the crowd give me that hissing noise yeah super challenge baseball you get a D in my tier not so with its companion though super challenge football now like baseball and soccer football is a two-player game only if you don't have a friend to play it's not even worth putting the cartridge in but if you do this is the one to check out and like international soccer before there's a lot in this game that you can't do that is in football like any sort of kicking extra points are automatic you can't punt you just do what you do for four downs and that's it now of course there's not enough memory in Atari cartridge for all the plays you might need for a real football game so instead what they did with super challenge football is you get to program each lineman to create your own play every time around on offense you declare the receiver a decoy receiver or blockers and on defense you declare who rushes in what direction or if your guy should fall back and cover the receiver like with any football game it's kind of a mind game where you try to figure out and guess what your opponent might do and program a play that complement or blocks that what this does is give you the feeling that you're truly in control of both coaching and playing all positions on the team and this one also has that cool run off the back of the field and you appear on the other side of the field trick so if you have a runaway receiver you do have a way to catch up and it's not going to be a blowout but for all the things this football game doesn't have it does have a full 100 yard field including yard lines and hashes and full 15minute quarters impressive for Atari football game and I give super challenge football an a just one more we started this tier off with a Tron title and we end on a Tron title with Tron deadly discs this is essentially a one versus three Arena battle between you you Tron and three bad guys your goal is to defeat all the bad guys by throwing your identity disc at them and it boomerangs back to you whenever it hits a wall if you can defeat all the on-screen bad guys before more spawn then you'll move up to the next scoring level where the bad guys are a different color and worth more points now you can only have one projectile on screen at a time but good news your enemies also have one projectile collectively among them so as soon as one guy shoots the others are not going to shoot at you until that disc hits a wall which means it's never terribly challenging now one thing about this game that I never understood but I do now because I finally read the manual is those boxes that are on the wall that surrounds the arena those are actually locked doors and if you shoot them with your identity disc it opens them and if you can get two open on opposite sides of the Arena you can walk through them like a Teleport shortcut I'm glad I know this now and while it is an interesting twist not once in my play that I find that using the shortcut offered any sort of tactical Advantage once you get hit five times times Tron Dres also known as dying and it's game over so Tron deadly discs is okay not as good as the other Tron title I'm going to give it a c now here's our completed tier and I don't know about you but this is almost exactly the visual representation of my memory when I think back to M Network games and my overall impression of them almost everything in the catalog is a decent middle of the road game that's enjoyable but not earth shattering and then you have just a few outliers that exceed or fall way short while maybe not the Rockstar line of games from other better known third- party developers IM Network put out a respectable collection of games during their short run so I've done my part and now I hand it over to you please do soundof down in the comments and let me know how I did surely there's a title or two that I ranked way outside of what you would have please tell me which ones and why our opinions differ I'm genuinely curious the comment section of these TI videos are some of the most fun for me and in the meantime for your convenience and to feed the algorithm I'm going to throw some links over my shoulders here and here to some previous ranking tier videos I have done I certainly hope you found something to enjoy in this video and I cannot wait to talk to you again next time bye-bye

Channel: GenXGrownUp

Views: 11,091

Keywords: genx, gen x, genxgrownup, nostalgia, generation x, retro, 70s, 80s, 90s, grown up, atari, mattel, m network, tron, astroblast, he-man, vcs, 2600, ranking, rating, tier, games, video games, 1982, 1983, intellivision, frogs and flies, football, soccer, baseball, space attack, paddle, joystick

Id: x4NXxoKd6_o

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023