Raiders of the Lost Ark

This game was released in November 1982 and programmed by the same person that later made E.T.  This one, however, was much better received and made quite a hit for Atari.  This is a little bit surprising because it's one of the more arcane and arbitrary games out there.

You play as Indy and follow, roughly, the same path as the film. You begin at the start screen where you get your whip, then to the market to gather more items.  Later you visit the temple to gather some useful treasures then to the map room to find where the ark is located.  Finally you head to the well of the souls to uncover the ark itself.

The first confusing thing about this game is that it uses two controllers.  Controller one moves your character around the screen while controller two is for inventory management.  Confusion between the two controllers was responsible for a lot of lost time as I would accidentally drop items or use things I hadn't meant to.  The second confusing thing about this game is that it's just plain arcane.  As an example, look at the image below showing the marketplace.  You are supposed to buy items by standing on top of them and "dropping" a bag of money.  If you're touching the merchant while trying this you will lose your money and get nothing.  There are also three baskets on the screen each with an item.  Once you get the normal item from the basket about 15 seconds later another item, the medallion, might spawn in one of them.  None of this is mentioned in the manual.  It does make the game a bit more of a puzzle that you have to just try everything to progress, but it's also quite frustrating.

If you are able to complete the game and perform one extra little easter egg on the way you will get a good score along with the creators initials at the bottom of the screen.  The score is represented by the height of your pedestal on the screen.  The easter egg is achieved by dropping the "chi" item while falling off a cliff.  This unlocks the "Yar" which is a reference to the programmers first game, Yar's Revenge.  I took this as my challenge to "beat" the game.  It took a few tries, but I eventually managed to get the Yar with no deaths, no items stolen and found the ark.  It really wasn't that hard, except navigating the parachute into the hole in the cliff.  That took some effort.

Overall, the game is good, but not really exceptional.  There is a small amount of replay value due to the random location of the ark, but everything else is exactly the same from game to game.  I recommend playing this game, but it probably won't make a long-term addition to your game library.

The mysterious marketplace	Pursued by a thief
The map room showing the ark's location	The ending, with easter egg unlocked

Pitfall

Pitfall!  September of 1982 gave us this great, iconic game.  You play as Pitfall Harry as you work your way through the jungle trying to collect 32 treasures in 20 minutes.  You get three lives to make it to the end and lots of perils await: alligators, scorpions, campfires, snakes, rolling logs, quicksand and pits.

Play-through for me consists of simply completing the game.  It doesn't have to be a perfect game with no points lost and no lives lost... just complete it.

And it was freakin' hard.  I've spent the last several days trying to beat it.  To explore the game I played through it going only one direction, left or right, just trying to survive for the full 20:00.  After that it was pretty apparent that you can't complete the game without taking shortcuts through the underground. With 256 screens (8-bit!) there's a lot to explore.  Each underground screen equals 3 above ground screens and you have to take the right underground passages because some of those passages lead to dead-ends and some bypass treasures.  So, I downloaded a map showing the optimal route.  But. even with a map, it takes a good amount of skill to finish this game.  Many times I died before the time limit and once I ran out of time with one life still remaining and two screens to go to the last treasure.  That one hurt.  My final play-through was very tense at the end:  I had no lives left and I missed the last two vine swings, delaying me precious seconds.  I managed to run across the last obstacle and grab the last bar of gold with 2 seconds remaining.  I was ecstatic.

The game doesn't offer much of an ending.  It just freezes and shows the publisher logo alternating with the copyright year.  I'm not really sure how much replay value the game has either.  I suppose you could try to improve your time or your score, but I think I'd take a break for a while first.  This game is hard in that way only old-school videogames can be.

I did have a great time with this game and it is definitely a deserving icon in videogame history.  I think the game holds up pretty well today and is still quite fun.

3 lives, 20 minutes, ready?	Aha!  A diamond!
Digital tarzan yell is music to my ears.	Two seconds to spare!  Whew!

Haunted House

This is another game that I never really played through as a kid. A friend of mine had the game but I never spent enough time over there to really get into it.  It always looked cool, though, and I really wanted to give a try.  This time, I tried to just jump right in and give it a go, but I was totally lost and died a whole bunch of times.  It wasn't until I found a copy of the manual and read through it that I figured out how it's supposed to work.

As with most Atari adventure games, the main goal is to collect three pieces of an item.  In Superman it was a bridge, in E.T. it was the phone and this time it's an urn.  The pieces are spread around a mansion with 4 floors and 6 rooms per floor.  Trying to stop you are a tarantula, a bat and a ghost.  There is also a key that will let you through any door and a rod which will make you immune to the creatures.  The goal is to collect the urn and return it to the front doors and exit the house.

Sounds easy, right?  At the easier levels it is.  The game has 9 difficulty levels which progress as follows:

• Level 1 - The walls are lit up, there are no locked doors and there are three creatures.
• Level 2 - Walls are dark, no locked doors, three creatures
• Level 3 - Like 2 except: Some doors are locked but the key is in the first room.
• Level 4 - Like 3 except: Random key placement.
• Level 5 - Like 4 except: 3 spiders giving a total of 5 creatures.
• Level 6 - Like 5 except: All 5 creatures chase you from room to room, ghost can pass through locked doors.
• Level 7 - If you're touched by the bat, you drop your item and it moves somewhere random in the mansion.
• Level 8 - Like 7 except: Creatures are faster and ghost is immune to the rod.
• Level 9 - Like 8 except: New House layout and all 5 creatures pass through locked doors. 

Though you're given 9 lives in which to accomplish the goal, I decided that "beating the game" would mean defeating each difficulty level without dying.  This ended up being substantially harder than I thought it would.  Screenshots of this game really don't do it justice.  They just show a pair of eyes in a dark room, but the game is actually pretty tense.  Especially when you have the urn completed and you're carefully opening doors and hoping there are no creatures in the next room.  There were a couple of times that I got to the ground floor and just decided to run like hell for the exit.  The one thing that would be an improvement to this game would be a final difficulty level that would be just like Level 9 but where the locked doors are random.  I can imagine that this might cause problems or even impossible games (i.e. the key is locked inside a room) but I imagine you could write an algorithm to ensure the game is solvable before starting it.

I knew from my limited experience with the game as a kid that it was fun, but now that I've had the chance to sit down and really get to know it, I have to say that it's now one of my favorite games for the Atari 2600.  Highly recommended.

Searching the spooky old house.	AAA!  A ghost!
AAA!  A tarantula!	Making a getaway with the urn.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Ah, poor E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Developed in December 1982 this game is widely blamed for the death of Atari and a major contributor to the great videogame crash of 1983.  Atari reportedly payed an enormous amount to develop E.T. including a huge sum for licensing.  Add to that an extremely tight development deadline of 5 months and you had a recipe for disaster.  Ultimately, the game didn't live up to expectations and the company took a huge loss.

Playing through it again I have to say that I don't think it's all that bad.  You play as E.T. and have to collect 3 items with which to build a device to "phone home." Standing in your way are an FBI man who will steal your items and a doctor who will capture you and take you back to the lab.  It's not that bad though because you can just walk right back out.

What most people hate about this game are the pits.  Each device piece is hidden within one of the pits on 4 of the screens.  First of all, it's very easy to accidentally fall into a hole, either changing screens or just walking around.  Secondly, once you levitate your way back out of the pit, it's very easy to accidentally fall back in.  Since both falling in and levitating back out cost energy, it can get very frustrating.  There are 3 difficulty levels in the game:  Level 3 only has E.T. and Elliot (who will help you with your quest), Level 2 adds the FBI man who will frustrate you to no end, Level 1 adds the doctor as well and is the hardest version of the game.  I decided that "completing" the game would entail one win at Level 3, two at level 2 and three at level 1.

E.T. the Title Screen

AHHH! The doctor's gonna get me!

Eventually, I did manage to accomplish the goals I set for myself.  Near the end I started creating maps of each screen and finding the locations of all 3 items and the "phone home" location before actually grabbing any of them.  In this way, I would have an extended "exploration" phase at first where the FBI man didn't have anything to take from me and the doctor was a minor nuisance.  Once I knew where everything was, I would dash from screen to screen grabbing what I needed, dash to the "phone home" spot, call the mother ship and head to the landing spot.  About half the time, I would fail anyway.  The game doesn't really let you fail completely as Elliot will come by if you die and give you another 1500 energy, but I was considering it a failure and restarting if I died.

Flower easter egg :)

End screen with Elliot

It still only took me a day to "complete" the game but all games of this era are rather short (if they end at all).  I enjoyed myself while playing it, but was getting pretty frustrated by the end of it, trying to beat the hardest level.  It's a pretty simple game, with only six screens, 4 characters and 4 items.  It's worth trying out but it's not likely to be anybody's favorite game.

Ultima I

 Released in June 1981, this was the beginning of the Ultima series.  I never actually played this one before.  I started in on the series around Ultima 3 but I thought I'd play them all for the sake of thoroughness.  This is one of the first games for the PC (in this case it was for the Apple II, Atari, Commodore, etc.) and probably the first RPG.
You start with 100 coin and a dagger.  After heading to town to buy some better equipment you can head to the nearby castle to gather the one quest available there.  You then can travel to the other castle on the starting continent or go dungeon delving.  The dungeons are randomly generated based on a template but there is no reason to explore more than one of them as all of the quests that require you to kill a dungeon monster (all 4 of them) can be achieved in any given dungeon.  The dungeons themselves are interesting as it switches to a first-person, vector graphics display.  One of the strange mechanics in Ultima I is the health system.  Depending on how many and which kinds of enemies you defeat in the dungeon you will gain a varying amount of health on exiting.  Meaning, if you go into the dungeon and kill 8 monsters then return to the surface, you will gain something like 128 health for that. It's odd, but it works out alright.

Title Screen

The wide world of Sosaria

After grinding long enough to gain more experience, gear, health and some for of water transportation, you are ready for the next phase of the game.  I should mention at this point that there are exactly two types of towns and two types of castles in the world.  All towns fall into either the Type-A town or the Type-B town.  Each sells about half of the equipment available in the game.  Similarly, all Type-A castles offer the same type of quest, i.e. find such-and-such location, whereas Type-B castles offer the other type, kill such-and-such monster.  I mention this because this next phase requires you to complete all 4 of the kill-a-monster quests.  Once completed you can return to the castles to receive a colored gem as your reward.  With all four gems in hand you can head to space... that's right, space.

A typical town

A typical dungeon

So you buy a shuttle and head into space.  I'm not really sure why, but the goal here is to shoot down 20 enemy fighters, which look an awful lot like TIE fighters.  Once you do this you gain the rank of "Space Ace" and can go ahead and head back down to earth, er, Sosaria.  If you have the Space Ace rank and then rescue a princess trapped in any of the castles, she will tell you about the Time Machine hidden nearby.  This thing just keeps getting crazier and crazier.  Once you find the Time Machine you can board it and, assuming you have al 4 gems, you can use it to travel to the past.  Apparently, the bad guy, Mondain, has grown so powerful that he is invincible and it is only be traveling back 1,000 years before Mondain gained too much power that he can be defeated.  After a quick trip back in time and a quick battle, Mondain is cast down and you get a nice screen of text telling you how the world now loves you and sees you as their hero.

The Star Wars portion of the game

The final boss, Mondain

This game goes from dungeon crawling to world exploration to space shooter to time traveling.  It's a strange game but highly ambitious.  It's a little odd that there is no real incentive to explore the world.  You need to visit, maybe two of the world's 20-ish cities and only one of the world's 20-ish dungeons.  There are only about 6 hours of gameplay here, depending on how many times you die while grinding for cash and health.  I was able to complete the game in a single day.  It really inspired a lot of ideas in future RPGs, however.  Particularly, I believe that Final Fantasy is heavily inspired by this game.  Final Fantasy has a more coherent plot (marginally), but it also sends the players to space and back in time to defeat the final boss.  Overall, this game was fun to play, partly because of the crazy directions that the plot went and partly just to experience this piece of gaming history.

Superman

Another game from 1979 and one of my earliest gaming memories.  It's not a great game, but I remember it being kinda fun.  At the beginning of the game, Lex Luthor blows up a bridge in Metropolis.  The idea then is to collect the three parts of the bridge to rebuild it and catch Luthor and his four henchmen and put them back in jail.  Making this more difficult are 3 kryptonite satellites which will keep you from flying or picking up items.  If you're touched by one then you must kiss Lois Lane, who is also wandering around, in order to regain your powers.  Random, huh?

After playing through the game once I managed to finish in 611 seconds, just over 10 minutes.  I figured, if I can get it done in half the time, 300 seconds, I would consider the game "completed".

After finishing the game a few times, I was able to complete my goal, however, it felt a little too easy.  After playing with the difficulty settings however, I found something that made it feel more satisfying.  When the "B" difficulty setting is changed Lois no longer appears near you when the satellites touch you.  Having to walk around the game looking for Lois turns a minor inconvenience into a major annoyance.

Soaring over Metropolis!

Luthor is escaping!

It took a few more playthroughs to really start to get a grasp on what the map looked like.  I found that the subway screen with the pink background was right next to the jail.  And the bridge location was down one screen and left one screen from the jail.  After figuring out a few more shortcuts like this and having a lucky break with the satellites I was finally able to beat the game again at less than 300 seconds.  My new record, 250 seconds.

 

Lois and Clark

Level complete!

Overall, the game is a bit repetitive and I can't see a lot of replay value once you've done it in as short an amount of time as you're willing to call "done".  It's fun to play a few times, but I'm pretty much done with it.  Thanks for all the happy memories Superman, it's time to retire you.

Adventure!

Let's get this thing started!  I decided to compile a master list of all the games I've played and always wanted to play.  It's a huge list and I'm going to start working my way through it from oldest to newest.

My gaming history began with the Atari 2600.  I was probably about 6 when we got one and I had probably a dozen or so games. Some of them were good, some were terrible and then there was this one, Adventure!

Let me take one second to mention how much I LOVE the old Atari box art.  There is something incredibly cool about it that I can't put my finger on... I'll try to figure it out before I exhaust my Atari playthroughs.

There are 3 difficulty levels to this game, level 1 is the easiest version with only 2 dragons, 2 castles and everything is easy to find.  Level 2 gives the full game with all three dragons, all three castles, invisible labyrinths and the Bat.  You could probably call level 2 the "official, complete game".  Level 3 takes things a bit further and gives you the complete game, but randomizes the location of all the objects.  I'm not sure if that means that there's a possibility of impossible combinations, i.e. the white key inside the white castle, etc.). But it adds a ton of replayability to the game.

I decided that "officially completing" this game would entail beating the game once each on levels 1 and 2 and 5 times on level 3.

I have to say, level 1 was a breeze, but level 2 was harder than I thought it would be.  The stupid Bat kept switching things around on me.  One time he stole my sword, leaving me a live dragon and another time he stole my bridge leaving me trapped in a wall.  There was, of course, a lot of getting eaten by dragons.


Overall, I loved playing this game again.  It didn't take long to get the hang of it, but the randomness of the hardest difficulty made it a lot of fun.  There were several times that I was being chased around the screens by two or three dragons and I was desperately looking for the sword.  So much fun!

Starting my quest!	AAA!  Don't eat me!
That's one dead duck, uh, dragon.	The forbidding, black castle.