I played a lot of Atari 2600. I mean it was the only system out there for a while. That and without the internet and video game magazines like EGM… there was no place to read about other games or platforms that may have existed or where coming. In my world there was only Atari 2600 and I was loyal to that system all the way into the NES and later GENESIS ages.
So back in the early 80's, most of the time I was playing Atari 2600 was with Matt Zelesko or my dad. I enjoyed playing the co-op and versus games the most, so of course I played a lot of Combat! and Air and Sea Battle. I still can still hear the sound of those Combat! tanks, that weird vibrating…. grinding noise.
I admit, I recently played through all of my favorite Atari 2600 games on an emulator on my PC. I even tried some of the games I never played before all those years ago. I did this to relive those glory days, and also to find out if any of these games still hold up. Amazingly so they do. Atari 2600 games are still fun! Even after like 30 years!
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| Wizard of Wor is still one of the best Atari 2600 games I have ever played! |
My favorite Atari 2600 games when I was a kid were:
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| Everyone had and loved Pitfall! |
It was hard not to love EVERY single Activision game. Those programers just knew the right recipe for a great time, but other companies had some winners too and Imagine was one of them. I played Atlantis for hundreds of hours. It had excellent replayablity due to its increasing challenge. I also loved the sounds this game made.
So what made a good game for me as a kid? Looking at this list, I guess I liked games with speed, but I also liked games with a good challenge. For example, I loved Pitfall!, but I sucked at it. I played it for days on end, and never got far. I also loved a game I could sit with for a few hours and actually finish, like Gyruss and Vanguard. Adventure, being one of my all time favorite Atari 2600 games ever, had endless replay value, even when the maps were tiny. It was always a new game because of that damn bat. If you have played Adventure, you probably hate that bat as much as I did and still do. It always seemed to appear right when you had finally found a pivotal item. Going to slay the dragon that ate you last, finally found the sword… yep, bat out of nowhere comes and grabs your sword and leaves you with the bridge. Finally got the chalice(or grail, or goblet)? YOU KNOW that damn bat is coming, and when you’re making a mad dash to your home you panic each time you see a flicker on your screen. I played Adventure just last week, and I still jump when I am going between screens and suddenly get attacked and swallowed by one of the dragons. Freaking hilarious.
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| Who's laughing now... |
For as great as Adventure was… for as many hours as I played Wizards of Wor with Matt Zelesko, for every after dinner round of Frogs and Flies I played with my dad… still nothing compared to Activision Decathlon. I played that game from the day I bought it in the early eighties all the way up and through 1998 when I moved out of my parents house, and finally disconnected the Atari from a tiny TV in their basement where it always remained connected.
Back when we first got Decathlon, Matt and I played it and played it thinking it was impossible to even complete many of the events. In time, as we got better, we thought, it was too hard to rank at Bronze. And to be honest, we never did. I remember Matt coming up with a solution to the 1500 meter dash. Which consisted of a good 5-10 minutes of you jerking on your Atari joystick until your muscles burned. His idea was to sit under the computer desk, not looking at the screen, and your teammate would tell you when to sprint. This worked marvels. We actually started doing well enough to score and it became our best event. Yes, from our most dreaded one to the one we scored highest at.
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| Just look at it. Look at the perfection. I love you Decathlon. I always will. |
Years went by with us playing this game. The Coleco came out… the NES came out… with each new system and new group of friends I had… I returned to Decathlon. I introduced that game to so many people, pretty much anyone who came to my house. Chris Straup, one of my lifelong buddies, also became obsessed with it, but it was another friend of mine one I will refer to just as BOB that actually decided we should start training for it. It was the first Summer after high school and we played the game almost daily. Bob actually got blisters, so we started wearing fingerless weightlifting gloves to play and on one sunny afternoon… in my parent's freezing-cold basement, I scored a Bronze Medal.
It was doable! We were finally strong enough to play this game designed by adults for kids. We had the skills, the stamina and the talent.
I reached a Silver Medal score not long after… but we were always just short of the Gold.
One day, I marched down to the basement in my pajamas and just went for it. It was probably my third or fourth year of college. I was easily 20-21 years old… and I finally beat this game which I had owned for close to twelve years. I broke records on nearly every event, scoring extremely high of High Jump and Pole Vault and I brought home the GOLD!!!
I took a picture of the screen, just like in the old days, and mailed it off to Activision for my patch. They were nice enough to send me a letter back, congratulating me, but telling me there were no more Gold patches… so they sent me a Bronze one.
When playing a lot of these Atari 2600 games now, in 2012, I found that my favorites changed only slightly. I still love Atlantis, but now I enjoy Cosmic Ark more. I played a few hours of Wizard of Wor, but alone it’s not as much fun… that being said I only played a minute of Frogs and Flies, which made me sad. I really enjoyed playing that one with my dad. River Raid is more fun than ever. No idea why, but it is. Night Driver was a game I liked as a kid, but now just plain love. As a kid I remember complaining it was too hard and the crashes were so sudden. Now I love it just for those reasons. OH… the honking and crashing… it’s magical.
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| Not to mention, cool Atari cover art... |
I forgot how much fun Keystone Kapers was… and equally I don’t enjoy HERO as much as I did. That one was one of my friend Andy’s favorites. Maybe his end all be all favorite, in fact. Not sure, he and I both loved Berserk, and THAT game still delivers. Which reminds me of the day I saw Matt Zelesko hold still and let a laser beam pass through the space between the character’s body and head. Once I saw that, I had to master it… yeah, I can’t do that now.
Kevin James Breaux
Still playing Atari games 30 years later
