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[img width=370 height=444]http://vectrex.playntradeonline.com/ppf.jpg[/img]
Specs:
Game: Pole Position
Year: 1983
Publisher: General Consumer Electric (a Milton Bradley company)
Developer: Namco, Ltd.
Designer(s)/Programmer(s):
Rarity (according to RarityGuide.com): rare - 80% out of 100%
Controls: Vectrex Control Panel
Number of Players: 1
Average Cost: around $100+ CIB
Also Available On: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-Bit, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, DOS, Intellivision, TI 99/4A, VIC-20, ZX Spectrum, arcade cabinet, and various Namco gaming compilations.
Tagline: Do you possess the skill, dexterity and courage to pull out from the crowd for qualification in one of the exclusive starting positions or will you end up as an also-ran?
Continue reading Pole Position - Vectrex
VANGUARD
[img width=264 height=332]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4068/4353036519_6418245b98.jpg[/img]
SPECS:
Game: Vanguard
Year: 1982
Publisher: Atari, Inc.
Developer: SNK Corporation
Designer(s)/Programmer: David W. Payne
Rarity (according to AtariAge): 2 = common+
Controls: Joystick
Number of Players: 1 - 2 (turn based)
Average Cost: $.50 - $2 loose, under $10 CIB
Also Available On: Atari 5200, originally an arcade coin-op (Vanguard II later released, arcade only).
Tagline/Description: "Join the Vanguard expedition on a thrilling space odyssey. Through perilous tunnels you will fight your way to the fabulous City of Mystery and the great Gond."
Vanguard is a vertical and side-scrolling cave shooter for the Atari 2600. Your goal is to pilot your spaceship to the City of Mystery, which is located at the end of a heavily guarded tunnel, to battle the creature Gond. Your spaceship is equipped with lasers that can fire in four different directions, however your speed is decreased when firing. You will also need to keep an eye on your fuel gauge, a solid bar, located at the bottom of your screen. Your fuel depletes at a rapid rate, and your ship will crash if it runs out; fuel is replenished by destroying enemies. The tunnel is broken up into several different zones, called the mountain zone, rainbow zone, stick zone, stripe zone, bleak zone, and City of Mystery. Each zone features a variety of enemy spaceships to dispatch and earn points. In the mountain and stripe zones, you will come across energy pods marked with an 'E'. When you pilot through these pods, your ship temporarily becomes invincible to the deadly cave walls and enemies which are trying to stop you. When you finally make it through all the various zones of the tunnel and defeat Gond, the game will repeat at a more difficult skill level.
Early 80's Atari commercial for Vanguard. Every good video gaming home needs a Luther.
What makes Vanguard such a great game for the 2600 is it's concept. As many of you already know, the majority of games produced for the Atari system (besides sports titles) have no real ending and were primarily points based. Vanguard not only allowed the player to accumulate points, but also had one of the earliest defined endings in a video game, which also incorporated a boss. Though Gond, the overlord of the City of Mystery, is a one-shot pushover, the ultimate goal and challenge of Vanguard is to successfully navigate the tunnel and make it to the boss. Modern day gamers might be disappointed at such a lackluster boss battle. However, and I speak as someone who grew up on the 2600, because I grew up with no preconceived expectations of what a "boss battle" was, this ending was quite epic.
The fierce and all-powerful GOND!!!! (insert sarcasm here)
[img width=350 height=275]http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/images/thumb/7/73/Vanguard_-_A26_-_6.png/256px-Vanguard_-_A26_-_6.png[/img]
Vanguard is not the easiest game to finish and since the game repeats at a much quicker and more difficult skill level, one could argue that there is no strictly defined ending. Before battling Gond, you must navigate through seven (7) zones (the rainbow zone is repeated a few times). There are always a plethora of enemies on the screen: ones that shoot back at you, as well as those that attempt to ram your spaceship. The developers of Vanguard made sure that players are never comfortable for long within the tunnel; in some zones, you travel from left to right, while at other times the game becomes a vertical shooter in which you must navigate from down to up, or up to down. Since the game is a 4-way, multi-directional shooter, players must make full use of the joystick and fire button, since enemies approach from all directions. Areas within the cavern can get very tight on occasion and my only complaint with the controls is that your ship may move slightly when trying to direct your fire with the joystick. Since Atari controls are typically very stiff anyway, attempting to fire in a specific direction can cause you to lose control of your ship and plow into an enemy.
Though the handling can be a little frustrating at times, Vanguard is an excellent port for the Atari 2600. The graphics are superb under such limitations and the exceedingly vibrant use of color creates an other worldly atmosphere. Though Vanguard lacks a soundtrack, it's omission is masked by the constant zinging of lasers and exploding enemy starcrafts. The lone piece of music in the game occurs upon collecting an energy pod. Fans of 1980's "Flash Gordon" and/or Queen may recognize a familiar tune entitled "Vultan's Theme: Attack of the Hawkman" (http://www.the-top-tens.c...s-theme-attack-197148.asp). Some dispute their similarities, but it's quite hard to brush it off as coincidence.
Vanguard is one of a handful of tight scrolling shooters for the 2600, similar to Fantastic Voyage and Super Cobra (a Scrabble clone). If you are a fan of early shmups, this title can easily be picked up at a great price either individually or in a large lot of 2600 commons.
**video courtesy of googoo11672
RATINGS (on a scale of 1-4: 4 being the highest):
Controls: 3
Graphics: 4
Sound Effects/Music: 3
Concept: 4
Replay Value: 3
Cart/Box Art: 2
Overall Score: 3.17
TAPPER
[img width=300 height=347]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-005/bf/U-005-S-04750-A.jpg[/img]
Specs:
Game: Tapper
Year: 1984
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Bally-Midway Manufacturing Co., Inc.
Designer(s): Marvin Glass
Rarity (according to AtariAge): 6 = rare+
Controls: Joystick
Number of Players: 1 - 2 (turn based)
Average Cost: currently, usually $10 - $30 loose, depending on condition
Also Available On: Arcade cabinet, Atari 8-bit, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, PC, Mobile phone, Xbox 360 (XBLA); also released in the compilation "Midway Arcade Treasures" for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and the PC.
Tagline/Description:
"Side-splitting, soda-flinging laughs and spills!
The Official Home Version of Bally/Midway's Arcade Sensation.
Five belly-busting screens of Soda Fountain Fun, including:
-- Four mad-capped barrooms of soda-starved, clamoring cowboys, sports fans, punks, and space creatures.
-- Plus a head-spinning Soda Bandit Bonus Round
Awesome color-packed action graphics.
Just try to keep your cool as hot-headed, crazy customers blitz your bar for another cold one."
In Tapper, you control a beer tapper (bartender) and have to serve beer to demanding customers. Customers shuffle up the four bars toward your beer taps and you must slide them drinks in order to keep them satisfied and make them go away. You start out with 5 lives and these lives are lost as follows: (1) if a bar patron reaches the end of the bar without receiving their beer, (2) if you slide an extra beer when there is no customer and accidentally spill beer needlessly, and (3) if a patron throws you back an empty mug and you fail to catch it. You can score additional points by competing in a bonus round between every few stages. In these bonus rounds, a masked bandit creeps into the bar and shakes up all but one, of six available cans. The cans then flip around in a shell-game fashion and you must keep your eye on the one that was not shaken. You then select the can you deem undisturbed and the bartender opens it; if you are correct, you are awarded bonus points, if you are wrong, the tapper receives a heady bath.
Tapper was originally a coin-op machine marketed in conjunction with Budweiser and intended to be sold only to bars; many of the cabinets were designed to look like bars with a brass rail footrest and drink holders. The controller was designed to look like the tap handles on a real keg (see photos below). It's also rumored that digitized belches were also recorded, but never used. In order to broaden their target market (and to not lure the kiddies toward the "sauce"), Bally/Midway created coin-op cabinets and tabletops known as Root Beer Tapper. The Atari 2600 version is simply called Tapper, which apparently leaves it up to the consumer, or pre-video game advisory warning parents, to determine which frothy beverage bar patrons are actually chugging in game. However, in between clearing a few stages there is a bonus stage, brought to you courtesy of your good friends at Mountain Dew. It's not clear whether or not Tapper on the 2600 was trying to "C.I.A." by employing the soda company's logo, but by doing so, the ad's presence resulted in one of the earliest examples of marketing within a video game.
[img width=300 height=347]http://ggdb.com/img/ggdb/vol2/3027_1_fs_cp[/img][img width=300 height=347]http://i441.photobucket.com/albums/qq134/Krajkerjak/Tapper/0132.jpg[/img]
Tapper is a great game and probably one of the best ports to the Atari 2600. Not only is the concept original and the gameplay simple and attractive, but the sound effects and music (yes, actual music on a 2600 game) are wild west saloon-like and second to none. The graphics are as good as they can be due to the limitations of the system and all characters and settings are well defined and recognizable. My only real knock on this game is the controls. You use the joystick to move the tapper up and down, while using the orange button to fire off brewskies. Like many other 2600 games, Tapper is hampered by the rough and often rigorous directional tapping of the joystick. Because the action is so fast paced, and gets even quicker as you progress through multiple stages, the 2600 joystick cannot keep up and it often results in a few misfired mugs. One would do well in achieving higher scores by obtaining a European CX78 controller and popping this game into the ole 7800.
Even though the controls can be a bit sticky, Tapper is still one of the best games for the 2600. Though the rarity and price point make it a harder game to come by, you can easily snag a loose copy at a good deal with a last minute, no reserve auction bid. No matter what price you pay due to condition or completeness, Tapper will be one of those games that you will be proud to own.
**video courtesy of Hairman9252
RATINGS (on a scale of 1-4: 4 being the highest):
Controls: 2
Graphics: 4
Sound Effects/Music: 4
Concept: 4
Replay Value: 3
Cart/Box Art: 4
Overall Score: 3.50
As many of you know, I typically blog about 2600 games, but my other passion is collecting for the Vectrex. For those of you who are also enthusiasts, I just wanted to send out some updates regarding the Vectrex community for anyone who might be interested.
John Dondzila is still going strong and creating some great games for the Vectrex at:
http://www.classicgamecreations.com/
Fury Unlimited is still putting out a few good homebrews:
http://www.furyunlimited.com/_sgg/f10000.htm
Vectrexians (a Galaxian clone) is now available for order and a few other homebrews are currently in development. Vectrexians comes with a box and an overlay:
http://www.kristofsnewvectrexgames.comli.com/
[img width=325 height=425]http://www.tokensonly.com/images/consoles/vectrex/vectrexians/images/vectrexians_001.JPG[/img]
It appears that the RecycledGamer is putting together some more homebrew lightpens for sale (see post dated 1/26/2011). AtariAge members were picking them up earlier for only $35!!!! A considerable discount considering the original pens sell for a few hundred. A buddy and I are currently working on creating some light pens just for fun, but they will be no where near the quality of these. Stay tuned: http://www.atariage.com/f...d05dea8716720b5e30303702f
[img width=250 height=347]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-005/bf/U-005-S-01590-A.jpg[/img]
Specs:
Game: Entombed
Year: 1982
Publisher: U.S. Games
Developer: Western Technologies
Designer(s): Jeff Corsiglia & Tom Sloper
Rarity (according to AtariAge): 4 = scarce+
Controls: Joystick
Number of Players: 1 - 2
Average Cost: approx $3 - $8 loose
Also Available On: 2600 only
Tagline/Description: "You and your team of archeologists have fallen into the "catacombs of the zombies." There's no time to look around; these guys are after you, and they mean business! Your only salvation is that you have discovered the secret to the "make-break." Grab them, and you can break through walls when you get stuck, or create a wall behind you - if you are being chased. The longer you survive, the faster you have to move. Explore alone, or two archeologists can work together or compete in a frenzied trek through the catacombs."
There was probably no more diverse or stranger catalog of games than the fourteen (14) titles released by U.S. Games, a subsidiary of Quaker Oats (uhhhh....yeah), for the Atari 2600. Like several other companies (i.e. Purina, Johnson & Johnson, etc.), but with a larger volume than most, the Quaker Oats Company tried to cash in on the video gaming craze of the early 80's. Titles released by U.S. Games include:
Entombed;
Sneak n' Peek (a game of hide and seek);
Space Jockey (a horizontal, UFO shooter);
Word Zapper (a spelling shooter);
Commando Raid (a parachuting android shooter);
Eggomania (a Kaboom clone where you can fire back);
Piece o' Cake (a cake decorating game);
Picnic (a fly shooter);
Raft Rider (a river rafting game);
Gopher (a vegetable protecting game, similar to Activision's Oink!);
Squeeze Box (a prisoner trying to escape a constantly closing Tron MCP Cone);
Towering Inferno (a firefighting/rescue game);
M.A.D. (an improved version of Atlantis); and
Name This Game (an octopus shooter).
[img width=299 height=208]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tCCK5wYrFr4/TMWPms5g3lI/AAAAAAAACA0/J8idkdOHPB0/s1600/608quaker-oats1.jpg[/img]
While some believe that a few of these games are among the worst titles for the 2600, I'd have to say that the overall catalog is pretty creative and solid (and fairly cheap). Where else can you fend off an octopus and fill your diving tank with air from a guy with long, flowing hair in a speed boat?
Entombed is another of these strange games in which you control an archeologist trying to escape a zombie-filled catacomb. While navigating a random, vertically scrolling maze, your only defense from zombies and dead end walls is an item referred to as a "make-break." A make-break allows you to knock down a square section of wall or place a similar section of wall in an open area to fend off zombies (similar to Lock n' Chase). However, make-breaks are not abundant and are collected 3 at-a-time in the form of side-to-side moving rectangles, throughout the maze. Scoring in Entombed, for the 1-player game, is determined by how deep into the maze your archeologist goes. You are awarded one point for making it through an undefined section of the maze; there are no treasures to collect or points for killing zombies. As you might have noticed, scoring is not one of the stronger features of this game.
Another poor feature of the game is it's graphics. Zombies, which should be very cool, instead look like arachnids, your archeologist is merely a semi-mobile stick figure, and the make-breaks are, well, just blocks (a hammer, or some sort of device would have been cooler). There is no music and the only sound effects are a series of extremely monotone beeps (only when zombies are near) and an electronic gurgle when you pick up a make-break.
With all of its faults, Entombed is a pretty good game (yeah, stick with me here). I remember loving this game as a kid and playing it every time I went to my neighbor's house. When I saw it in a pawn shop several months ago I grabbed it up quickly, even though it had a bit of label damage. So what is it that I liked so much about this game? Well for one, I enjoyed the pace of the game (how it continues to get faster as you complete every level) and the frantic dodging/escaping from zombies while collecting make-breaks to ensure mobility; you lose lives by either running into a zombie or by being forced into the top of the scrolling screen when you are out of make-breaks and are unable to escape a dead end. The controls are adequate for a 2600 game, since your only movements through the maze are vertical and horizontal; however, setting make-breaks correctly in open areas to avoid zombies can sometimes present a challenge.
While the originality of the game is great, the best feature of Entombed has to be its 2-player option. In two player mode, both participants play at the same time, instead of the Atari turn-based style that is typical with most 2600 games. Two player mode can be played in two different ways (as determined by the participants): (1) you can battle against each other to see who can make it deeper into the maze (whoever dies first loses), or (2) you can work with each other, hoarding and best using make-breaks, to see how far you both can go. Being somewhat of an a%$, and torturer of my wife and friends, I tend to prefer the former.
Though there is nothing particularly exceptional in terms of graphics and sound in Entombed, the gameplay is fairly solid and the cost of the game is typically low. For a few bucks, Entombed should be worth heavy consideration if found in the wild.
**video courtesy of Highretrogamelord89**
RATINGS (on a scale of 1-4: 4 being the highest):
Controls: 3
Graphics: 2
Sound Effects/Music: 1
Concept: 3
Replay Value: 2
Cart/Box Art: 3
Overall Score: 2.34
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