In The Beginning...There Was Atari And It Was Good...
Written: Aug 22 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Expansive game library; rights to virtually all major arcade hits; fun for the whole family
Cons: Zip, zilch, nada
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| ChrisJoker's Full Review: Atari 2600 |
A four-bit processor. Generally simplistic, one-dimensional games. The heights of “realism” being a hat on top of a boxy-looking stick figure representing Indiana Jones.
Comparing the Atari 2600 to today’s world of 3-D games so realistic that you can see the sweat on a character’s brow is a bit like comparing Eniac to a laptop PC---that is, it’s not really a fair comparison at all.
As the “grandfather” to today’s Playstation/N64/Dreamcast systems, the Atari holds a special place in video gaming. Yes, there were predecessors to the 2600, but it was the Atari system that first achieved the wide-scale success that set the standard for years, decades in fact, to come. And it certainly speaks volumes to the 2600’s legacy that games produced for that system are being re-released not just in enhanced versions, but also in formats that emulate the original style.
The Atari 2600 first appeared in our house as a Christmas present when I was in fifth grade. Ostensibly, it was a present for both my older sister and me. And while she certainly enjoyed it, I was the one who by far used it more and considered it “my” system. During the summer prior to that Christmas, our family had taken our traditional vacation in the Pocono mountains, and my sister and I had become quite the fans of the Space Invaders arcade machine in the resort’s lounge. Whether it was the video game that stopped our sibling squabbling or just the fact that we (OK, mostly I) had grown up enough to stop the petty arguing, it made things peaceful. Could that tranquility have helped inspire our parents to purchase a video game system for us? Either way, I was one “happy camper” when I came downstairs that Christmas morning and saw an Atari under the tree.
The original Atari 2600 was packaged with the Combat game cartridge, a collection of games in which two players controlled either tanks or airplanes and “fired” at each other to score points. Keep in mind, this was nothing like today’s games, in which you’d likely see the tank’s driver or airplane’s pilot blown to kingdom come in a gruesomely realistic ball of flames. In the Atari universe, the worst fate you suffered for being “hit” was to have your tank or airplanes bounced to another portion of the screen.
To go along with the system, my parents also purchased the hottest game for the Atari at the time: Space Invaders. Even better than the arcade version, the Atari version offered well over 100 different variations of the game to play. One player or two; shields that remained stationary or moved side to side; aliens that could become invisible; the ability of the aliens to drop missiles at you that zigzagged...mixing and matching the possibilities offered a virtually endless array of challenges.
Use of the Atari 2600 system itself was the epitome of simplicity. The system came with two joysticks (a novelty in today’s market, where you often need to purchase a second controller) and a pair of “paddle” controllers (basically a dial controller for moving side to side) that connected to a single controller port. Thus, if you did purchase a second set of paddle controllers, you could have 4 players competing in games that were programmed to use the paddles (though most games used the joysticks). Along the front of the unit were levers to select which game variation you wanted to play (as the majority of Atari games did have multiple variations) and to start, or reset, game play. There was even a selector switch for color TV sets or black & white, depending on which type your system was hooked up to. (For all of the kids scratching their heads and asking “What’s a black and white TV set?”---go ask your parents.)
Next to each of the two controller ports was a difficulty switch with two settings. Game cartridge instruction manuals would tell you how the settings altered game play. Generally, setting the switch to the “A” position would in some fashion increase the difficulty.
In a scenario that would foreshadow the Nintendo/Sega 8-bit console battle to come years down the road, Atari had competitors, but solid marketing, the best library of games and developing a superior retail distribution network helped the Atari 2600 far outpace rivals from Mattel (Intelivision) and Coleco (Coloecovision).
The biggest single factor to Atari’s dominance--at least in my ever-so-humble opinion—was the library of games. Video arcades were one of the hottest trends of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and Atari locked up the rights to the majority of the most popular arcade titles. Some they already owned as a result of producing the arcade game, most of the remainder they secured through contracts with the arcade developers. Space Invaders, the machine that can truly be said to have started the video arcade movement, was the first and best example. Other titles that eventually made their way from the arcade to the 2600 were Asteroids (the next game my parents bought after that Christmas), Missile Command, Defender, Centipede and Berzerk.
After several years of market saturation, Atari again struck gold when they released the home version of the hottest arcade game of the era: Pac Man. Not entirely unlike the recent Pokémon phenomenon, the eternally chomping circle was everywhere: toys, a cartoon series and, of course, the arcade. On the day the game was released, my parents took me on a shopping trip all over our area---without telling me exactly what they were looking for. One or another would disappear in a store, while I would remain with the other ostensibly shopping for such mundane items as curtains or something like that. Eventually, they told me what they were really up to, and to this day, I fondly remember how much trouble they went to in order to find that game. We didn’t find any on day one, but the next afternoon, a store called, and we almost flew out the door to pick it up. In retrospect, I’m a little surprised I didn’t wear out the game from playing it so much.
Beyond arcade-to-home translations, Atari produced a slew of games for the entire family. Sports games were popular, with Atari producing two generations of baseball and football games over the years. Educational games were also available, including the classic parlor game Hangman and the very challenging 3-D Tic Tac Toe.
Atari also introduced the concept of third-party game manufacturing. Activision was the most prolific of the companies to bring more games to the Atari 2600, many of which have been re-packaged on a CD-ROM for PCs, for nostalgia buffs. (Someday I do hope to purchase that CD-ROM so I can see just how faithful the recreations are.) Activision staked out their territory by creating some offbeat and very creative games. Three of my favorites from the Activision library were:
*Freeway--A simple and simply addicting game, with the object being to guide a chicken across 8 lanes of traffic. With varying levels of complexity in the traffic patterns, this was a huge hit in our house. My mother’s family had raised some chickens when she was a little girl, which only added to the amusement of the game. As this was the “pre-gore” era of video games, when your chicken was hit by a car it either got bumped back a lane or two, or returned to the curb (depending on the difficulty switch setting), accompanied by an electronic chirp.
*Kaboom--The Mad Bomber is on the loose. Another deceptively simple game, all you had to do was use the paddle controller to scroll a set of three “buckets” back and forth across the screen to catch explosives dropped by the prison-striped bomber. If a bomb hit the ground, play stopped and you lost one of your buckets (and all bombs on the screen “exploded”), making game play all that much harder. Lose all three buckets, and you were done. In time, you could learn the patterns of the bomber’s movements as you advanced from round to round, and you could earn a replacement bucket at thousand-point scoring intervals (however, if you still had all three buckets when you crossed one of the thousand point marks, too bad—you didn’t get one to hold in reserve).
Plaque Attack--Oh no! The donuts are coming! Something of a cross between Space Invaders and Missile Command, but set in a mouth that saw more snacks than Homer Simpson. (Yes, I managed to work a Homer reference into a review of a product that predated The Simpsons by more than a decade.) You controlled the tube of toothpaste (seriously) and had to shoot at a series of invading junk foods. If they got past you and reached a tooth, it first turned yellow (how attractive), and you had a split second to save the tooth, before it disintegrated before your very eyes. Inevitably, you looked like you were defending a hockey player’s mouth as the teeth gave way to the snacks. Oh, one more thing—use your toothpaste carefully. You had a limited supply, which you could gauge by seeing your tube of toothpaste “deflate,” just like the real thing.
Something you don’t see today in the video game world is one hardware manufacturer producing titles for a competing system (imagine Nintendo’s Mario appearing on Playstation, or a Sonic game for the N64). However, both Mattel and Coleco jumped on the bandwagon and cranked out games for the competing Atari 2600. Mattel created the “M Network” brand for their Atari products, and produced several excellent sports games (I owned football and soccer), as well as a version of Burger Time, based on the arcade hit. In addition to those games, I thoroughly enjoyed a game (whose proper name escapes me at the moment) which consisted of controlling a jumping frog and trying to catch flies (seriously). You controlled how far and high you would jump and had to time “firing” your tongue just right to grab the flies. The sky in the background would change from day to night, signaling the end of the game. It may not be Tomb Raider, but it was great fun.
Coleco had launched Colecovision with much fanfare, and their premiere title was Donkey Kong, starring none other than Mario. Coleco also marketed a computer add-on for Colecovision, but the system never caught on to the extent its descendants (in the form of the Nintendo systems) would. Donkey Kong ended up being a better seller for the Atari 2600 than for the Colecovision system.
Time, and technology, march on, and eventually new products would supplant the Atari 2600, but it would be years before any could match the sheer market dominance the system achieved. Atari launched two moderately successful follow-ups: the 5200 and the 7800 (as well as a re-designed 2600). The 7800 offered “backward compatibility” to play 2600 games (just as the Playstation 2 will play original PS games). The death knell for the old system came as inexpensive home computers offered not only game play but also the exciting new possibility of home computing. Atari had several of their own computers, Commodore produced the VIC-20 and the classic C-64 (another of my cherished possessions), even Timex and Texas Instruments jumped into the computer game. At one point, there was talk of producing an add-on keyboard for the Atari 2600, but it was too little, too late.
My old Atari system still sits in a closet in my parents’ house. Someday, when I’m in a bigger place, I hope to dig it out and see if it still works. It may not have the “bells & whistles” of today’s systems, but the games were engaging, creative and fun the whole family—whether my mom was guiding chickens across the highway or my dad was blasting alien robots in Berzerk. Ah, what great memories!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ChrisJoker
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 in Electronics |
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Member: Chris
Location: Montgomery County, PA
Reviews written: 177
Trusted by: 82 members
About Me:
A new dad, addicted to The Simpsons & game shows, trying to stay sane.
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