Saturday, March 03, 2007

Atari 2600, And Now...

My "Atari Flashback 2" came in the mail last week and I'm happy to say I'm not tired of it yet. I'd forgotten how smooth and fast the games can be and it's nice to play a game with a joystick again.

(Speaking of the joysticks, unfortunately these ones are not chewable...they look and feel exactly like the old Atari joysticks but their "barrels" are made of plastic instead of rubber).

Of all the games, so far I've found "Missile Command" and "Adventure" to be the most fun, the former because it's so frantic and the latter because it's so methodical, duck-like dragons notwithstanding. The problem with arcade games, however, is that they tend to progress in levels that get steadily more difficult, and you eventually reach a level that you can never get past.

As for weird games, I'm a bit confused by "Aquaventure," a prototype that was never released. You're a treasure-seeking scuba diver who blasts the hell out of seahorses with a speargun. Why do I want to kill seahorses? Why do I need a speargun to do so? It's a mystery.

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