The Ultimate Parker Brothers/Atari 2600 Tier List - ALL RELEASED GAMES RANKED

thus far in these ranking videos I've covered companies that were founded in the early 80s and in many cases were founded by unhappy Atari employees looking for more compensation and recognition for their talents but this time around it's a company with quite a bit more history we're talking about Parker Brothers in this video I'm going to rank all 21 Parker Brothers titles released for the Atari VCS we're going to get started right after this this video supported in part by playing 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 hey there welcome back to Gen X grown up I'm John and I am a Gen X grown-up thank you so much for the click so yeah we're talking here about Parker Brothers and their games for the Atari VCS now Parker Brothers was founded in 1883 by George S Parker later his brother came on board thus the Parker Brothers now they had been going strong making games and some electronic games for 99 years before they ultimately decided to jump into the home video game Market in 1982. now their MO was largely to license existing successful arcade games and computer games and even grabbed a few notable franchises Star Wars Star Wars which became the basis for the vast majority of their contribution to the Atari VCS library now if you have watched any of my tier ranking videos before you know that I want to look at these games from the standpoint of little Johnny a little 10 year old me what would I have thought of these games had I spent my allowance or talked my parents in into going to the mall down to Electronics Boutique and buying one of these games and I get it home and open it what's it like well to that end remember we're only going to cover games that were actually released and released back when little Johnny could have played them so we're talking about games that actually came out back 82 83 84. back when Parker Brothers was putting stuff out now here's the thing I mentioned that Parker Brothers did a lot of arcade game ports so in this video I'm trying to shy away from judging a game based on how good of a port it is but just how much fun it is to play on its own merits now it's impossible to detach the fact that it's important because little Johnny would have cared and it would have influenced his enjoyment but I'm going to do my best to compartmentalize the arcade portness of these games that talk about just how fun the games are and based on that give it my ranking so with that Baseline established no better time to start than right now we're going to get going with the first one alphabetically which is amadar the original amadar in the arcade is a kind of a crazy fever dream and that was carried over here in the Parker Brothers Port of amadar look the concept is you're running around in a maze that's kind of Pac-Man driven right you're trying to cover every spot in the Maze and Dodge these enemies you are either based on which level you're on a gorilla dodging Warriors or a paint roller dodging pigs I know that's literally what and it's in the manual I'm not lying to you unlike Pac-Man though you have a couple of weapons at your disposal you don't have power pellets but if you can enclose the boxes in the corners of the screen your enemies will turn vincible for a little while much like ghost and Pac-Man turning blue and you can chase them down also throughout the game you have a few jump buttons that you can hit so on that trigger button on your joystick you hit that and the enemies become invisible for a while that you can move past them in the arcade game they actually hopped they couldn't do that but look Amador was a moderately popular arcade game that borrows liberally from Pac-Man and this VCS Port is that unless aside from the gorilla paint roller cycling amadar doesn't offer much in the way of variety or any real sense of accomplishment so the best I can do for amadar gets us off kind of a weak start it's gonna be a d alright moving along then to Frogger a game that needs no introduction Frogger was a staple of arcades and one that I think everybody on the planet recognizes at a glance so I'm not gonna waste too much time here other than to say that Frogger was a remarkably good Port onto the VCS and aside from just being a good Port it's a fun game it retains the vast majority of the gameplay from Frogger despite the graphical limitations you have water you have logs you have cars you have a street you have lady frogs you have alligators you have all these enemies it's Frogger and yes before you ask I am familiar with the Frogger that was released on the star path supercharger around the same time it was called the official version and had improved Graphics but as that was not released by Parker Brothers we're talking about the Frogger they released that star path one might even score better I'm gonna give Frogger by Parker Brothers and a on our tier now if you like Frogger you're in for a treat because the next one up is Frogger 2 3deep or maybe you're supposed to say it three deep and sound like a frog I think I'll go with that so look if you like Frogger and haven't played this sequel you better strap in for a good time Frogger 2 3D consists of three entire scenes that you can play there's an underwater level there's what they call the surface level and then you have the air level now the surface plays much like the original Frogger except when you fall in the water instead of drowning you fall back to the underwater screen the underwater and air scenes have their own unique sets of enemies and rideables and obstacles like you could ride the mama duck to get to the air but avoid the mama duck if you're riding on one of her baby ducks there's all kinds of cool little rules in this it's absolutely Frogger taken up a notch and that's a good thing and unlike another part one part two later on this list Frogger 2 3D takes the basic mechanics of Frogger and builds a more interesting and rewarding game on top of the whole cross the road in the river deal so Frogger 2 3 deep maybe surprisingly is going to be our first s ranked game on the Parker Brothers tier now if you grew up playing Atari in Europe you probably know this next game as action in force but here in North America it was called GI Joe Cobra strike it's one of the two that actually use paddles instead of a joystick you use your paddle in two ways here during the game so when you move left and right without pushing the fire button you're moving this Shield that you're using to protect your Joes from bullets being fired from this giant Cobra when you hold down the button though you fire a bullet from your turret and you use your pedal to steer the bullet and try to hit that snake in its face there's some really interesting mechanics going on here and that you kind of set your paddle in motion then we hit the button it continues to move a bit so you can set velocity and kind of multitask plus this is one of the only games that I can recall for more than two players aside from the likes of Warlords or games where you have to take turns two players can use paddles to protect the joes or you can plug a joystick in the second port and you can be the bad guy you can be the giant Cobra that is trying to fight so you can play against your buddies competitively and cooperatively all in the same game which I think is pretty cool once you get the hang of this game it's a lot of fun I'm guessing I never pick it up because I didn't collect your Joe so it didn't leap off the shelf at me because of the name of the game but there's a great game underlying here without even a need for the GI Joe franchise so I'm gonna give GI Joe Cobra strike a B on our tier up next is another arcade port and it's gyrus [Music] yeah you hear that cool music it's coming out of a VCS that's Takata and Fugue and D Minor by Bach the very song that was on the original arcade game that's used here and that's actually the only sound in the game we'll get to that in just a second this is basically a really good translation of arcade gyrus but with a cheat code because you know the 2600 only has limited items available on screen but it does include things like multiple waves of enemies satellites you can shoot down to get a double shooter and even that chance bonus which is kind of like a Galaga challenging stage where you can get bonus points for taking everybody down look it looks sparse and it plays well there's no sound other than the music as I said so no explosions no firing bullets nothing like that but it's a lot of fun to play and who doesn't like saying too warped to Uranus I mean that's just fun so gyrus is gonna get a B on my tier this next one is not an arcade Port but is a game based on a popular franchise James Bond 007 at a glance you might think oh this is kind of moon patrol-like and I understand why you might think that but it's nowhere near as good as Moon Patrol the idea here in James Bond is it Loosely covers the plot of three Bond films and it has an ending and a score you can get if you can finish all of this but for being a super spy game this is unnecessarily complex and the core game is just unsatisfying look there are lots of enemies forming the sky dropping things at you you can fire bullets and bombs but guess what you can't shoot the enemies no you heard me right you can't shoot anything other than these diamonds that flash the sky so you can see stuff in the background so there's not much satisfaction in playing because like you don't feel like you're doing anything other than just trying to not get hit you're just dodging stuff which is why I said it's nowhere near as good as Moon Patrol so what you get in James Bond is unsatisfying gameplay High difficulty with no reward this is going to be an F sorry James I guess they stirred that game instead of shaking it that's probably what went wrong up next is Montezuma's Revenge now this is something if you're not familiar with it Montezuma's Revenge is a multi-screen Adventure platformer with a variety of Hazards and enemies and tools and objects more than just the key and door Paradigm right there's stuff like like a sword a torch and an amulet and they all have special functions like the torch is good for seeing in the dark and the sword is good for some enemies but not all enemies for others you need to amulet it's this really good kind of rock paper scissors thing they have going plus there's a whole sense of exploration without the feeling of repetition look we all love Pitfall but it can feel a little samey after a while as you're navigating the same rope swing and the same snakes and the same stuff Montezuma's Revenge mitigates that by having so much more to do and to explore you play the game as Panama Joe this kind of Indiana jones-like spelunker an Explorer and he fits right in here because that sense of exploration is absolutely felt and appreciated and feels way more mature than it ought to be on the VCS so this is one in case you missed it don't miss it anymore this is an s on my tier without a doubt okay up next is another arcade Port of a game that I love in the arcade we're talking about Mr Do's Castle this port of Mr do has six different screens to explore but you probably aren't gonna care look this is another game that has tons of great music on the VCS but no more game sounds but if it were just that that would be okay but here's the problem you wander levels trying to smash all these Cherry blocks you know how Mr do is played and you have to avoid and try to squish these unicorns I know those are supposed to be unicorns trust me control here is absolutely atrocious though moving your character is a pain swinging that hammer looks like he's going absolutely bananas on it and sometimes you're it looks like you're hitting a brick when you're not usually have to stop take a couple steps turn around try to hit the brick in the meantime the unicorn has grabbed you plus hitting blocks in general is just super finicky and you're kicking ladders all the game just controls poorly forget about the new music forget about the bases of the original game Mr Dew's Castle is just garbage on the 2600. it does play okay if you can get over those problems which is the only reason it's not an F it's just a d now from one arcade Port done poorly to one done incredibly well it's time to move on to Popeye now this Popeye is a remarkably faithful port and while some ports dump all of their effort into the graphics and miss out on the gameplay Popeye went the other way entirely the graphics look pretty bad and pretty blocky and very rudimentary but the core gameplay of Popeye what made it fun in the arcade it's captured here you have multiple stages you have punching bottles you have grabbing the spinach power up you have the thing where Brutus can jump up at you or jump down at you from the different levels all while you're trying to collect either notes or hearts or whatever it is that olive oil is throwing down to you the Parker Brothers Popeye on the VCS is just a fun game whether it's an arcade port or not and it's going to rank an A on my tier list okay ready for another arcade Port this time it's cubert an arcade game that ranks right up there with the likes of Pac-Man and Galaga and Donkey Kong as being some of the most famous and beloved and the VCS Port here it's really quite good and though I'm not judging this on how good of a port it is look if the arcade game was good and you do a good Port what you're going to end up with is a good game and that's what Qbert is very few Corners were cut you have the progression in levels where sometimes you have to jump on blocks once sometimes twice later they get to where you can change them back you have all the same enemies granted not as frequently because you can't put so many moving objects on the screen at once but everybody's on there I can jump off the edge the disc and coily will fall to his death I love it he even curses when he dies exactly what you want out of cuber and there's one really cool thing I want to point out here that illustrates a real economy of programming on the VCS rather than spin precious graphics and processing time drawing a block that shows you what color the blocks need to be your score of extra man are rendered in the color that you need the blocks to be I think that's just a clever way to get the same information across with less data and for this and so many more reasons Qbert is another s on our tier list so I hope you really enjoyed kubert because the next one up is the sequel to cubert cuberts cubes now I said if you do a great Port of a great arcade game you're going to get a great game well if you do an okay Port of a weird obscure junky arcade game guess what you get you get kubert's cubes for me the whole concept of cubers Cubes is in question here not just this Parker Vision Port look what happens if you take one of the most iconic action puzzle games of all time and then break it with unnecessary Cube rotation mechanics all right maybe you like that but then Port it to a platform that's not capable of animating the very mechanic that makes kubert's cubes unique yeah I know I'm invoking the spirit of erno Rubik here cubes present you with a reference Cube that you then must rotate remaining cubes to match with the same color orientation and you want to play a kind of a game of tic-tac-toe to line a few of them up but once you turn them you can accidentally turn them back and it becomes nearly impossible to get them look it's just not a fun game it's too much work and it's too difficult to tell what's going to happen when you jump on or off of one of these cubes I'm gonna be generous here and give this a c probably because of my love for the original cuber not for any love for kubert's cubes moving along now to a game very early in Parker Brothers life of making 2600 games in 1982 and I'll admit I used to dislike this game because I didn't understand it and the game is reactor well I can tell you I've now read the manual and played it for a substantial amount of time so now I dislike it for an entirely different reason I just don't find it to be much fun the concept here is you're piloting a microscopic I suppose little ship in a nuclear reactor and your job is to push these little particles into the wall before they do the same to you all the while avoiding this pulsing core that's in the center of the game the manual calls the walls in this game kill walls because well you guessed it you can touch them you die but oddly enough at least in the earlier stages touching the core does not kill you even though it's nuclear you're just kind of going in a circle trying to get these little particles to run into the wall and not letting them shove you into the wall I never felt any sense of fun or engagement or progression or any reason to play any further I get that it's kind of innovative and it's early in the life I think I'm gonna be generous by getting a reactor a c all right let's get off a reactor and move along to Sky Skipper now this is a port of an arcade game one that I had never played before I started learning about this port the concept it sounds crazy I know stay with me you fly a biplane around a maze bombing gorillas in order to free animals that the gorilla has trapped in cages but don't fly your plane into the clouds or you'll crash you know like planes do when they hit clouds you've got to manage your fuel when you're playing and interestingly enough you can refill your fuel by grabbing one of each animal in sequence but by the time you do that you've burnt so much fuel doing it that you're gonna probably run out of fuel going back to pick up the rest of the animals but despite that odd little game mechanic the control here is just tight moving your plane is super precise and The Mazes are varied and picking up the little animals is satisfying this is gonna be my firefighter of the Parker Brothers games look for no tangible reason other than the one I stated at the beginning of the video because little Johnny would absolutely love playing this game despite how weird and simple it looks I'm going to give Sky Skipper a b because I found it to be just a lot of fun all right I'm gonna swing by The Daily Bugle on my way to this next game which is Spider-Man especially for a title released in 1982 the web slinging mechanic here is pretty good but the wall crawling leaves something to be desired because spoiler alert Spider-Man can't climb walls in this game if you fall or your web fails you'll hit the ground if you don't connect another web to the building again which is kind of odd for Spider-Man rules but it makes sense in the scope of this game I guess all of the progression in Spider-Man is Reliant upon you learning the mechanic of swinging Spidey around because the goal here is to touch an indeterminate number of either bombs or henchmen before the Green Goblin who's hiding way up top will trigger the super bomb you'll hear this crazy noise and then again you've got to swing your spider butt up to the top of the building and defuse that bomb before you proceed to a new building and get to do it all again and despite any criticisms I had about the controls once you learn the controls Spider-Man is doing something different and Innovative and providing that sense of accomplishment that's missing from a lot of VCS titles so I'm giving Spider-Man a b okay now I'm going to start treading on some Dangerous Ground I know that Star Wars is sacred for many of you and Parker Brothers did a fair number of Star Wars themed games the first one we're going to talk about is Star Wars Return of the Jedi Death Star Battle this game follows that a Magic model of having two different screens with separate goals the first scene is is kind of little consequence you can see the Death Star out in the distance being assembled and what you want to do is get there as quickly as you can blast a few Tie fighters that'll open this little hole of energy Shield wait for that opening and then you're off to fight the Death Star now since it's still under construction you can blast pieces off of it a la breakout but your only real goal here is to get a shot into that Infamous exhaust Port by the way did you know that if you take the time to eliminate all the pieces of the Death Star it'll earn you an extra Millennium Falcon I didn't know that until I read the instructions anyhow Death Star Battle is fine and short bursts but little Johnny Played this game game and I remember growing tired of it after just blowing up the Death Star a couple of times it's it's okay and what's the rating for Okay C this next Star Wars game is probably the biggest puzzle to me it's called Star Wars Jedi Arena and I don't know who came up with that dumb name but he should have workshopped it some more at best I could call this like Star Wars Padawan Arena I think look here's the thing it's a lightsaber duel one of the most exciting parts of any Star Wars film except you and your opponent are standing too far apart to touch lightsabers you're not doing a lightsaber fight you're not a Jedi instead you have that little orb from a new hope you know the one that Luke was training with on the Falcon that is between you and your enemy and you're using your lightsaber to try to block electrical bursts from that thing that then charges up somehow your ability to attack your opponent from that same orb it's just such a weird concept for a Star Wars game and plus every once in a while that little orc just goes bananas and shoots both of you and then no matter how long you play it's not until you destroy all the little bricks protecting your Jedi because you you know Jedis have breakout bricks in front of them once you get through that and finally attack the other guy you finally get one point then you switch sides and go again look there's probably an interesting game here but it's not an interesting Star Wars game maybe if it wasn't shoehorned into a lightsaber duel I think they could have done something really cool with this but as a Star Wars title it's a c continuing with the Star Wars theme it's right into Star Wars the arcade game now for 1983 this is an audio visual Triumph the vector Star Wars arcade game had been dominating arcades so I'm sure porting it to home systems was irresistible for Parker Brothers not only does this title have some good music and sound but it captures the look of the vector arcade game surprisingly well for the VCS and it all goes great right up until you start playing it and you realize what a slog it is what could have been an action-packed movie Thrill Ride is instead a slow crawl through molasses as ships and bullets make their way leisurely around the screen and they'd better be slow because moving your targeting reticle and ship is just as sluggish with some weird acceleration which means that movement isn't one to one plus some rocket scientists at Parker Brothers decided you should not be able to move the targeting reticle unless you're not firing that means you have to move shoot move shoot you can't keep shooting while you move or you're paralyzed who thought that up even when you get to the surface of the Death Star and running the trench you never really feel like you're doing much other than suggesting a direction that you might maybe want to drift in look Star Wars the arcade game looks good screenshots on the box probably sold it but it's a d at best sticking with the Star Wars theme then and moving right along to the one you probably clicked on this video to see and that's Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back and believe me I feel the pressure on this game but I'm not caving in I know this is an all-time Parker Brothers favorite but let's look at it objectively Imperial Walkers are on their way to your rebel base and you're piloting a lone snow speeder tasked with holding off the attack it takes dozens of shot to destroy a walker or you can get a lucky pinpoint shot into an open bomb hatch with an endless line of unchanging enemies this could have been a generic Star Wars shooting game but it's not mindless shooting there's tons of strategy you see damaged Walkers move more slowly so weakening the lead Walker and leaving him alive slows the whole line of Walkers giving you more time to wear down the next one then you return to blow up the first one in line once the second is weakened I love how at at fire sends your speeder koreani out of control for just a second as it would and how damage is displayed by color rather than some HUD plus you can land your speeder up to two times for instant repair and if you stay alive for two minutes you get to use the force and are invincible wallet John Williams theme plays plus there are options like solid body Walkers and smart bombs to try out and other variations this is just a damn good game and maybe the best game Parker Brothers ever released for the VCS without a doubt this is an s on my tier so moving now from one legendary franchise to another from Star Wars to Strawberry Shortcake this is Strawberry Shortcake musical matchups and look it would be easy for me to Dogpile on this game because it's an educational title intended for very young kids but I can have fun with a game I'm too old for if there's something worthwhile in it Strawberry Shortcake musical matchups is at its core a matching game each Strawberry Shortcake character has three elements a head a torso and legs and an accompanying song on early difficulties you just have to match up a set of graphics and hear the song and you'll see the name on harder difficulties it might even require you to hear and recognize the theme song and then build the appropriate character the problem here is no variation the songs are annoying the chiptunes if you want to call them that are just way off key and grading and you can't stop it once they start playing you got to hear the whole thing I'm sorry strawberry or Miss Shortcake if you prefer your game only gets a d for me okay we're gonna round out this tier with two more arcade ports and the first one is one of my favorites Super Cobra just like the arcade original Super Cobra is a 10 level Adventure where you fly through a cavern blasting rockets and bases and fuel tanks on your way to claim the treasure at the end of stage 10. it looks like things are moving one whole block at a time navigating your chopper is choppy to say the least if you can get a sense of how to control this weird block at a time Chopper movement and if you can get over the clunky scrolling then at least this game does give a sense of progression so there's some payoff but it's like some Dev knew the control was clunky so to make your life easier Super Cobra not only has a pause feature using that color black and white TV type switch but also allows infinite continues after you lose all your Choppers now reset your score to zero but you can keep moving along and see the rest of the game they'll even allow you to change the game's speed with the game select switch between continued games so it was too tough you can Notch it down so that's good but all that Herky jerky movement on screen and the fact that when I move the stick I'm I don't know how far my Chopper is going to move I've wrecked in the walls more time than I care to think about the best I can do for Super Cobra is a c I have one more and if you think I saved the best for last you are dead wrong we're talking about tutankham based on another arcade game as the kids say this game is clunky AF tutankham is a spelunking Adventure game where you gather treasure avoid and try to kill enemies and try to grab a key to escape the level so first of all you can only fire left and right that's normal that's fine but this game Scrolls up and down so you can't see left and right it's just as wide as the screen so that's a problem it's easy to get killed accidentally when the screen is scrolling happens all the time to me you can't move diagonally but if you try to round a corner you can get stuck on a corner I guess one Saving Grace is that the enemies sometimes get stuck on a corner too but even that's tough to exploit because you can't control your own self Graphics wise a snake Sprite looks pretty good but everything else looks like a placeholder graphic in a prototype that never got done I guess if I is looking for any kind of Silver Lining here I'll say that when you change levels the pitch of the sound effects changes to kind of give you that sense of increased urgency but it's too bad that that idea didn't find its way to a much better game tutankham in all of its glory is our final game and it is an F so here's that completed Parker Brothers tier and before I leave it let's take a look what can we learn by looking at this well Parker Brothers had a few great titles but the majority of their stuff was middle of the road kind of average material now the ones that were good were great and the ones that were bad were remarkably bad but there's a lot of middle of the road stuff that's worth playing if you haven't explored it before I have found that I love doing these cheer ranking videos they're a lot of work but what I love about it is not the work it's getting your reaction I love hearing people yay you loved my game or what's wrong with you you hated my game I get it we all have our own experiences with these games and those can bleed into their quality or maybe I'm just wrong in some cases so don't pull any punches I love to hear from you down in the comments tell me what games you think I got wrong tell me what you would change and tell me what tier you'd like to see me do next I'm gonna throw some links here and here to some other tier videos that I have done here on Gen X grown up I certainly hope you enjoyed this video and I cannot wait to talk to you next time bye bye thanks [Music]

Channel: GenXGrownUp

Views: 32,976

Keywords: genx, gen x, genxgrownup, nostalgia, generation x, retro, 70s, 80s, 90s, grown up, parker, brothers, bros, parkerbros, amidar, arcade, star wars, empire, jedi, qbert, third party, rank, rating, tier, ranked, 1883, 1982, 1983, 1984, james bond, sky skipper, port, ports, quality, review, evaluation, comparison, atari, 2600, vcs, frogger, q*bert, qubes, sequel, threedeep, gi joe, cobra, joystick, paddle, hoth

Id: fKFjwZ7ec2E

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023