Night Driver

Night Driver (1980)
Atari 2600

One of the earliest real-time, first-person games, Night Driver for the Atari 2600 is based on the 1976 arcade version.  In the arcade version there are more distinct difficult modes, a different high-score system and the ability to shift gears.  Amusingly, what I remember most about it was that the vehicle you are driving isn't rendered by the game, it's a decal stuck on the screen.  In the arcade, this game always seemed archaic and boring, but I would have seen it 4 or 5 years after it's release.

On Atari, it was a game that I barely knew.  I wouldn't have purchased it simply due to it's use of the paddle controller.  I only liked one game with that controller and that game was Warlords.  It was otherwise always gimmicky.  However, since the age of emulation is here, I was able to play it with a USB dual-shock controller.

The game is quite tricky.  Like all the older videogames, Night Driver is merciless.  The goal is to get the highest score possible in 90 seconds.  The score is based on distance, so you have to drive the furthest, I suppose.  The road twists and turns and there are other vehicles as obstacles (which wasn't in the arcade version).  There are 8 "game modes"  1-4 is timed mode, 90 seconds.  1-3 is easy, medium and hard, while 4 is a random track.  5-8 are the same things but no time limit.

I have to confess that the screen images of this game are composites, they're fakes.  The 2600 was not able to render the elements on the side of the road and the car at the same time.  It alternates which element it is drawing and relying on the refresh rate to make them appear to be there simultaneously.  It's something a lot of 2600 games do.  So, basically, I just cut out a car from one screenshot and pasted it onto another with the road.


As the game progresses, the road will turn left or right and you have to follow the road, simple.  On the first three difficulty levels, the track is set.  On the fourth it is random.  I decided to try to get a decent score, but didn't know what was decent.  I'd read, anecdotally, that the highest possible score is 91.  I decided to try 30.

It took me about an hour of practice before I was able to consistently get a score of 30.  As you progress the clock never stops.  One of the most annoying situations is when you crash, reset a little bit, crash again, reset, crash... When you crash you are suspended for a few seconds as your rest you can slide a bit to the side as it goes, but if you can't get far enough over, you'll crash again.  Then you misjudge the turn because you're slower now, crash!  A car comes around the bend, crash.  I've been stuck in that loop for up to 6 crashes in a row.  Ugh.

Eventually, I was able to memorize the pattern of the track and get a decent score.  Just hitting 50 exactly.  The next step would be to do the same for each difficulty level, but I decided to just do the random track until I could get 50 on that.  It did take a few more days, but I managed it.  The skills I learned translated fairly well to the new track.  It really helped me react to the direction changes, because I'd sometimes forget the pattern in the easier level and have to figure it out.  It's more nerve wracking, but manageable, eventually.

This one is a different color because it's the end screen.  The game continues racing along a track while the elements cycle through colots.  This was my final attempt when I finally hit the score I wanted.  I don't think I could get much higher without a lot more practice and I wasn't interested enough to try it.

The game is fun.  It's a bit repetitive but it challenges your skills in a balanced way.  I never felt like throwing the controller, haha.  Instead, I was able to gradually increase my skills, reaction times and scores in what felt like a "fair" way.

Amusingly, my 12 year old son walked by as I played and asked, "What the heck is that?"  I replied that it was an old racing game.  He said, "Obviously," and walked away.  I suppose the graphics haven't held up well, and my wife commented on the old digital beeps used for the car horns, so I'd have to say that it's a bit dated.  However, it's still a fun game.  I can't see playing it much more than I have, but it's certainly not unplayable, and it's actually a decent racing experience for such an old console.  If I were scoring things, I'd give it around a 6 out of 10.  It's dated, primitive and repetitious,  but has the essence of a fairly good racing game.

Tutankham

Title screen with points

Fun note:  It's called Tutankham because the full name, Tutankhamun, was too long for the marquee.  So they renamed the game instead.

Tutankham was released in arcades in 1982 with an Atari 2600 port following in 1983.  I never actually played the arcade version but I played the Atari version extensively.  The Atari version is much simpler but gets the main idea right.  The arcade version has much better graphics and sound and a bit more complicated gameplay.  It's a maze-shooter game where you have try to find the treasure at the end of each level, hopefully finding the keys along the way to unlock the gates blocking the exit.  Both versions have 4 different levels and then repeat them at a harder difficulty.  I decided that "beating the game" this time would be finishing each level up to the point where they start repeating (level 5).  Also, I wouldn't be able to skip any of the treasures along the way.  At first I was only going to do the Atari version, but that turned out to be a bit too easy so I decided to give the arcade version a try as well.

Day One:

I started the up the Atari version and was immediately taken back to 1983.  It took a while to get back up to speed which meant repeating the early levels quite a few times.  After a couple of hours, I managed to complete my goals and got to level 6, which is the same as level 2, but harder.  Since I beat it so easily, I decided to try out the arcade version next.

The four levels of the Atari 2600 version

Day Two:

I started the arcade version of the game.  My emulator warns of incomplete graphics emulation so let's hope it isn't game-breaking.  Wow!  This version is far harder than the Atari version.  Where the console version seems limited to one or two enemies on the screen this one throws as many enemies as possible at you.  You'll hear them spawning wave after wave then they all head toward you.  I managed level one pretty quickly but level 2 was a challenge.  Unlike the console port which is fairly linear, the arcade version sometimes requires you to grab a key, unlock a door, then backtrack to find another key to unlock the next door.  You cannot carry more than one at a time, so you'll be going back and forth a bit.  It definitely increases the challenge as the areas between the keys and the locked doors are very difficult and you'll have to traverse them multiple times.

Dead again!

Day Three:

Finally completed level 2 and started level 3.  Wow again!  So many enemies...  I've become overwhelmed a few times and had to use my "flash bomb" to wipe out all the enemies on-screen.  This nuke is handy, but you don't get many and, so far, I've found that I could use a few more.  I'd use the nuke to get through an area, but then I have to come back to get the next key where I'd get swamped again.  I tried a lot of times, but I'm hitting a wall.  I'll give it another try tomorrow, maybe we'll get lucky.  I'm getting better at the first couple levels now and can make it to level 3 without dying about 50% of the time, even gaining an extra man at 30,000 points along the way.  Level 3 is brutal though and I end up dying there a lot.

Treasure!

Day Four:

Still hard as nails!  I've been able to beat level 3 a few times but end up dying on level 4.  Level 4 seems a bit easier than level 3, but I get there with so few lives, etc. that I just can't make it.  I'll probably just have to get lucky and get here with more lives.

So many enemies!

Day Five:

I did it!!!  I finally managed to get to level 4 with 2 lives left.  I then used my flash bomb early and made it to the first lock.  Then I died on my way back to the second key.  Fortunately, it spawned me back in a little further back than I had managed to get so I got the key and worked my way back to the last lock.  It was pretty intense getting back through the most difficult parts, but I managed some lucky runs and opened the last gate.  Level 5 was just like level 1, except it had two gates and two keys.  I lost my final life on this level and called it quits.

Mission Complete!

Conclusion:

I'm really glad I played the arcade version of this game.  I had only played the Atari port before and it was very much simplified from the original.  The addition of multiple keys and locks to pass levels and the hugely greater number of enemies on-screen made this game much, much harder.  The graphics, etc are not too bad, it looks to me like 8-bit graphics, but I'm not completely sure.  Most of what the game does could probably be done on an NES but it might be a stretch.  Either way, if you like frantic action and potentially very frustrating gameplay, this game is for you.  It's difficult enough to make completion very satisfying, but not so hard that it seems impossible.  I think this might have climbed to become one of my favorite old arcade games, along with Jungle Hunt and Elevator Action.

Deathsplosion!

As another side-note: there are several elements of this game that seem directly lifted from Defender.  The "laser" that you use as your primary weapon is exactly like the one shot from the ship in Defender.  The death animation is also the same, where you explode radially outward, pushing the other pixels with you.  Finally, it seems that the radar might also be the same, though it's considerably less useful than in Defender.  I couldn't find out much about it, but I'd be interested in how that came about.

Jungle Hunt

Released in 1982, I played the hell out of this game and it remains one of my all-time favorites.  It was often one of the loudest games in any given arcade and I still have fond memories of both the music and the sound effects.

The main game consists of 4 stages.  In the first, you swing from vine to vine across a jungle like set of screens, 10 vines in all.  You have to judge the timing of the vines correctly or fall to your death on the jungle floor below.  The second stage has you fighting crocodiles in a river armed with only a knife.  The crocodiles open their mouths randomly making avoiding them often a better strategy than fighting them.  In addition, you have to manage your air supply as well as avoid sets of bubbles that rise from the river floor which will incapacitate you, pull you to the surface and make you a sitting duck for crocodiles.  On the third stage you're climbing up a hill while boulders fall toward you, bouncing erratically, forcing you to jump over or duck under them.  On the final stage you face two native bushmen who have captured your girl and have her suspended over a boiling cauldron.  Once you finish all four stages you get the one-screen ending of the girl giving the adventurer a much-deserved kiss.  Then you get to start over with each stage palette-shifted and slightly faster.

The four stages of level 1.

In addition, to the new colors and increased speed, the next couple of levels start adding extra features to make things more difficult.  Starting on level 2 you will face a couple of baboons on stage one who will knock you off the vines and kill you.  On level 3 you will have to dodge multiple rocks on stage 3 falling simultaneously and an additional bushman on stage 4 throwing spears at you from the trees.  Level 4 has all of these things and makes you weaker and unable to jump a high or far.  After this point, the game just gets harder and harder, faster and faster until you die.

Level 2, with baboons.

Level 3, with multiple rocks and new bushman in tree.

For my play-through, I decided that I wanted to try to beat every stage through, at least, level 4.  It took about a week of playing about an hour a day to accomplish this goal.  One of the biggest frustrations is having to start from the beginning after each failed attempt.  I got very good at level 1 and level 2 and slowly progressed through level 3.  Level 4 took forever to complete, especially the falling rock stage; get hit by a couple of rocks and it's back to the beginning. Once I figured out the patterns, however, I was finally able to get through level 4 and started stage 1 of level 5 only to die on about the third vine.  Oh well, mission complete.

Level 4, hard as hell.

The only stage I got to in level 5.

One of the things that I wanted to talk about here is the concept of home version letdown.  Consoles of this era were dramatically underpowered compared to arcade machines.  What this usually meant was that a console version of any given arcade game was quite a bit simpler than it's arcade counterpart.  I had the Atari 2600 version of Jungle Hunt in my home and played it quite a bit, but it's a far cry from the arcade version.  Stage one was ridiculously easy, barely requiring you to time the vine swings at all.  Stage two had crocodiles but no bubbles which, in the arcade version make additional hazards to avoid.  Stage three had rocks rolling on level ground without the erratic bounces that make the arcade version so hard.  Stage four has native bushmen, but you face them one at a time without the spear throwing version on later stages.  There is also little to no music on any stage.  I do prefer the home version ending, however, as it has both characters sort of dancing around instead of the big graphic of the girl kissing the old man.

Still fun, but much simpler.

I still love this game and had a blast playing through the arcade version of the game.  I played the Atari version as well, just for completeness but it hardly compares.  If you can get MAME running on your computer, I would highly recommend giving this game a try.  It's got some great, catchy music and some decent graphics for the age.

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.

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.