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.

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress

This game had me stuck for a really long time.  It's not that it's difficult, it's not.  It's just that it's not a very good game.  The first Ultima was kind of fun and quirky and was interesting enough to keep me involved, but this one didn't have the same magic.

Plot-wise, Ultima II picks up where the first one left off.  You've defeated the evil wizard, Mondain, but his disciple, Minax has emerged to revenge his death.  And that's it... not much of a plot.

The game is almost exactly the same as the first Ultima.  Same graphics, same controls, etc.  It's located on Earth this time instead of Sosaria and takes place over 5 eras of history.  You start on medieval Earth and, through time-gates, make your way around Pangea, 1990AD, which is closest to "modern times", the Aftermath, which is a post-apocalyptic world and the Time of Legends, which is supposed to be the origin of time, or something like that.

The place is England, the year is 787...

In addition to the different time eras, you are also able to travel to the other planets of the solar system this time around.  Each planet is habitable and can be landed on and some of them even contain dungeons to explore.  Oddly, every time period and every planet contain the same exact set of enemies; So, in medieval England, Pangea, post-apocalyptic U.S. and Jupiter you will face Orcs, Thieves, Wizards and demons.

Space!

Sounds good so far, right?  Well, let's get on with the bad.  I'll start from the beginning.  You can choose your class from 4 options, however, since you can only use spells in dungeons and you don't actually need to go to a dungeon for anything at all, you may as well just pick one of the two melee fighters.  Wizards and Clerics are pretty useless.  Next, unlike the first game, there are no quests and, therefore, no reason to explore any of the dungeons or towers.  There are a couple of cities that you need to go to, to level up your skills and to get the rocket ship, but beyond that, there's no reason to visit any of the other cities.  You eventually get to space, but the only planet you need to visit is Planet X making the other planets irrelevant.

My useless Cleric.

In addition, the best way of leveling is to get yourself a boat.  Once you have that, you can shell enemies from the sea.  The ship has weaponry better than most land items and keeps enemies from ganging up on you since they cannot get to you at sea.  Essentially, I fought land enemies until I got the requisite item then procured myself a ship.  With the ship, I farmed enemies until I had enough money to buy the best weapons and armor and upgrade my health to several thousand points.  Then I went to the city with the rocket ship, launched to Planet X, got the item there and returned to face Minax.

Farming the baddies...

Overall, it was a very easy game and easily exploited.  I suppose you could try to play the game without exploits, but the game all but discourages you from doing so.  Going to dungeons and exploring further than necessary will only diminish your health and gold, leaving you weaker than before you entered.  You get no special items or quests from exploring them so there is, literally, no reason to do so.

Well, she's dead... so there's that.

So, non-existant plot, non-existant quests, half the classes available are useless and most the cities, planets and dungeons are irrelevant.  Did I miss anything?  I finally beat the game and it seems like it took forever to do it.  Hopefully, the next Ultima will be better.

A poor game... play it if you must, but avoid it otherwise.

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.