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

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.

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.