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Like Sega's Saturn, the Nintendo 64, or the third
Playstation, the Atari 5200 holds the dubious distinction of being
the first game console to weaken the dominance of a former industry
leader. It's also the
first game system that was undone by an overzealous marketing
department. Originally
based on the hardware used in the Atari 400 computer, Atari made the
dreadful mistake of anchoring the system to a proprietary controller
so awful, it must have flown out of Pandora's box with all the other
demons.
However, once you've moved beyond the mushy, non-centering,
oversized, numeric keypad-wielding disaster (or better yet, replaced
it with something usable), you'll find that the Atari 5200 wasn't
entirely deserving of the reputation that haunts it to this very
day. In many ways, it's
better suited to playing video games than its more popular
competitor, the ColecoVision, with specialized hardware that can
smoothly scroll playfields and display over a hundred onscreen
colors. Its cousins in
the Atari computer line prove just how incredible the 5200 could
have been, if only Atari had stood by it rather than dumping the
system for the decidedly less impressive Atari 7800 in
1984.
Unlike most children of the 80's, my own experience with the
Atari 5200 was a favorable one. That had a lot to do with
the fact that I had a suitable alternative to the horrendous
controllers included with the unit. The system I constantly
borrowed from a friend- then eventually purchased- had that holy
grail of 5200 accessories, the Wico Command Control. Thanks to the included
Y-cable, this candy red joystick could play everything the stock
controller could, only better.
It had both the versatility of analog and the razor-sharp
precision and arcade feel of digital, putting it a quantum leap
ahead of nearly every controller available in the early
1980's.
Without the albatross of the fiendish stock controller around
my neck, I was free to enjoy the system to its fullest. The Atari 5200 was a true
evolution of the console that started it all, with the same vibrant
color as the Atari 2600 but a vastly improved sound chip, more
detailed visuals, and enough memory for arcade conversions that left
nothing to the imagination.
Although the upstart NES was well out of my price range in
1986, I didn't feel like I was missing out, because what I had was
already better than what had come before it.
Eventually, I did buy that NES. Then that was replaced by a
Sega Genesis.
Eventually, the Atari 5200 was trampled by the march of time,
and the system that served me so well through the mid 1980's was
sold to make room and money for other consoles. However, that seperation
would not last forever.
The impulsiveness of my youth eventually made way for the
nostalgic pangs of a man who longed to reclaim it. One trip to eBay and a
week's wait later, I was reunited with the console that devoured so
many of my rainy childhood afternoons... and it was just as much fun
as it was when I was twelve! Here now are reviews of the Atari 5200 games that I enjoyed as a child, along with the titles that I've only recently added to my collection.
Collectors are going to want this complete in the box... as much effort was put into the instruction manual as the game itself, and you're really going to miss out if you don't read Ballblazer's surprisingly deep science-fiction backstory and view the illustrations of your wedge-shaped ship and whimsical alien competitors. You also won't know how to start the game itself, which as you might imagine is kind of important! Ballblazer is best described as a futuristic game of soccer, played from within the cockpit of a hovercraft. Your "rotofoil" must scoop up a ball on a checkered court, then fire it between two glowing goal posts to score points. There's also a touch of basketball in the play mechanics, with more points scored for long-distance shots. Unlike soccer or basketball, Ballblazer is strictly mano-a-mano; an understandable compromise when you consider how hard the game is pushing the 5200 hardware. The first-person perspective, smooth character scaling, and lightning-fast action makes Ballblazer a stunning visual achievement on the system, and makes the single-member teams easy to forgive. What's less excusable is the disorienting gameplay... the limited view of the playfield makes it tough to keep tabs on the ball, and losing to the other player sends you in a choppy, vertigo-inducing tailspin that puts your lunch in jeopardy!
When an invading force seals Earth inside an energy grid, you'll need to ride the glowing rails high above the planet in search of the aliens responsible. Your primary targets are the wily white saucers that dance along the grid, but you'll also have to deal with a variety of security droids that block your shots and restrict your movement. Once you've cleared the sector of saucers, a massive mothership appears in the horizon... nail it with a missile and you'll earn a huge bonus before advancing to a more heavily guarded sector. The game gives you a few stages to learn the ropes, then unleashes hell upon you with an avalanche of aggressive adversaries. By the time you reach the eighth sector, you'll be begging for the yellow chirpers that provide you with extra ships. Just make sure you don't blast them by mistake when they finally make an appearance!
This is one of the better versions of Activision's
overlooked shooter, but it suffers slightly next to Beamrider on the
ColecoVision due to the 5200's low resolution. The blocky
playfield just doesn't sell the stark futuristic setting as well as
the sharp blue grid in the ColecoVision game. Also, the sound
effects are somewhat high-pitched, lacking the raw impact that the
snarling explosions had on other game consoles. On the plus
side, the gameplay is every bit as good as it was on other systems,
and unlike the ColecoVision release, you've got an honest chance at
hitting the mothership in later
sectors.
ACTION/MAZE ATARI 5200
A friend of mine used the term "tedious and process-oriented" to describe an entirely different game, Cosmic Chasm for the Vectrex. However, that description works just as well for Blue Print, a mindbendingly bizarre Japanese arcade game that was first developed by Jaleco, then brought to the United States by Midway. Try to wrap your head around this... you're a vaudeville performer, trying to rescue your buxom bride-to-be from an evil Calfornia Raisin. Wait, wait, it gets better... you have to burglerize houses to collect leftover shoes, pressure cookers, and trumpets. Once you've amassed enough junk, you can build a not-so-awesome mech that fires basketballs at the grape rapist. By now, you're on the verge of an aneurysm trying to make sense of all this, so I'll just jump ahead to the review. You have to work hard to enjoy Blue Print... the frantic action of most arcade games has been replaced with memorization, forcing you to think carefully while hunting down the pieces you'll need to clobber the fruit at the top of the screen. It doesn't help matters much when an unstoppable monster blocks the only entrance to the maze, and deadly flowerpots plummet with the kind of uncanny accuracy that defies the laws of physics. The game redeems itself by being an extremely faithful conversion of a very flawed coin-op... the suburbs in Blueprint are dripping with rich color and ornate detail, and unlike the 2600 version, every play mechanic and enemy (no matter how aggravating) is left intact.
SEGA SHOOTER ATARI 5200
Oh, Buck Rogers!
Who could forget your hokey science-fiction action? Your phallic robots who talk
like Mr. Spacely with laryngitis and wear jewelry so gaudy it makes
Flava Flav jealous? Or
your saggy stars who give the average viewer a whole new
appreciation for William Shatner? There's only one thing about
you that's easy to forget, and that's your library of games. The Genesis release by
Electronic Arts was a long and booooring turn-based RPG. The ColecoVision cartridge
looked like it was giving the system and anyone who dared to play it
a seizure. The "best"
game you've had to offer over the past twenty five years was on the
Atari 2600, and even that wasn't winning over many shooter fans
despite nifty 3D effects.
You had a chance to polish up that game when you brought it
over to the more powerful Atari 5200, but instead of broadening its
horizons, you somehow made it worse. Tight control was the order
of the day in the 2600 game, but the next-generation release has the
unwelcome addition of inertia, making this interstellar slalom both
monotonous AND frustrating!
Sorry Buck, but as usual, your game
bidee-bidee-bidee-bites.
ATARI ACTION/SHOOTER ATARI 5200
In the early 1980's, Choplifter was a game with a lot of promise but very little underlying substance. You'd fly behind enemy lines, scoop up prisoners of war, then return them to a base at the right side of the screen... and that was pretty much it. A later Sega arcade adaptation (and a subsequent Master System port) would give the game everything that it was missing, but those luxuries are absent from the Atari 5200 version of Choplifter. It's just you, the hostages, and a long procession of tanks which have a knack of showing up at the worst possible moments. It's a game of patience rather than skill... you swoop down to grab a few POWs, return to the skies to bomb the tank that's crept up on you, and repeat the process until your chopper is packed with people. Occasionally, you'll see a jet fly past, but the pilot is such a Spaceballs-caliber moron that he'll probably never hit you with his payload of missiles. "Keep firing, assholes!" Anyway, if you like your intense shooters without much intensity or shooting, you might want to look into this one. Otherwise, step up to the Master System version of Choplifter... calling it an upgrade from the original is like calling a Goodyear radial tire a slight step up from a crudely chiseled stone wheel.
ATARI ACTION ATARI 5200 Caaaaaan... you... dig it? If you're playing this conversion of the Namco arcade classic, probably not. Shockingly, Dig Dug on the Atari 5200 is even wimpier than Atari's half-assed port of Joust! The graphics are as dull as the dirt the hero drills through... instead of the vibrant cartoon-quality visuals of the arcade game, you get bland earth tones, tiny characters, and limited detail. More effort was put into the sound, but the music is poorly synchronized with the action and the sound effects lack the whimsy of the plummeting rocks and inflating foes in the arcade game. The gameplay is the best part of the package, but even that suffers without important visual cues. The Pookas and Fygars barely expand when they're stuck with Dig Dug's air hose, making it difficult to tell if it's safe to walk through them, or how much more air they can take before they'll pop. This sucks all the fun and strategy out of the game, leaving it a limp, deflated shell of its former self.
ATARI SHOOTER ATARI 5200
Here's an astonishingly close arcade conversion that's held back by only one thing... the lack of the full-sized instrument panel that intimidated even the most skilled gamer back in 1981. Most of the challenge in Defender come from mastering its two-way joystick and myriad of buttons... without them, the game just isn't the same.
Still, the designers get plenty of credit for a port that spares no details in its reproduction of Williams' merciless side-scrolling shooter. A small jet of flame erupts from your ship as you race to save the next humanoid from abduction, and a diverse assortment of foes crowd the screen, only to burst into cosmic confetti as they're struck by your laser blasts. There's even that brief moment before your ship explodes when the game triples in speed. Why is it there? What purpose does it serve? Nobody knows... all that matters is that it was in the arcade game, and it's here as well.
Although its streamlined control ensures that the 5200 version of Defender will never be as tough as the arcade version, there's still plenty of challenge to be had in the highest difficulty setting, where the Landers will stop at nothing to strip your planet of life.
One long-held belief among fans of classic gaming is that the ColecoVision version of Donkey Kong is extremely faithful to the arcade game. This recent 5200 port, adapted from the exceptional Atari computer game, proves just how wrong they were. Although it doesn't have the sharp resolution or the bright graphics of its ColecoVision counterpart, Donkey Kong on the 5200 captures all the subtleties of the gameplay that were missing from other ports... ports that quickly became boring without them. It's not just the inclusion of the cement factory round, either. It's the way Mario earns bonus points for leaping over clusters of barrels, the way he's got to strike fireballs directly with the hammer to destroy them, and how the spring forces you to watch your step in the elevator stage that makes this conversion feel complete. It's also a lot more challenging than other Donkey Kong translations, with a massive flood of barrels in the iconic slanted girder stage and vicious fireballs that won't rest until YOU'VE been snuffed out! Sometimes the game goes too far in stacking the odds against you... the huge crowds of enemies make finishing later stages a Herculean feat, and barrels rolling on the floor above Mario will kill him if the hapless carpenter's head brushes against them. Still, it's refreshing to have a port of Donkey Kong that demands as much from the player as it does itself.
ACTIVISION ACTION/PLATFORM ATARI 5200
Do you loves you some bosses? Do you wish that Gorf had consisted entirely of flagship stages? Do you buy every Treasure game you can find, then complain whenever you have to wade through a minute and a half of tiny ships to reach that next screen-filling nemesis? Do your nipples get hard when you hear the words "Warning... a giant battleship approaches?" If so, you should get a good therapist, or barring that, a copy of The Dreadnaught Factor. In this Activision shooter, all you fight are bosses, and they're large enough to fill the first ten minutes of a Star Wars movie! They brake for nobody on their way to destroy your puny planet, so it's up to you and your even punier ship to put these behemoths out of commission with a series of bombing raids. First, you'll take out the engines of the Dreadnaught to halt its progress, then you'll bomb the radiation vents, resulting in a devastating nuclear explosion that reduces the city-sized foe to space dust. The game starts out slowly, and ends there on the lower difficulty levels. However, crank up the difficulty to five or six and you'll get a more fitting challenge in the later stages, where the Dreadnaughts are devilishly designed and bristling with laser cannons and missile launchers! Throw in smoothly scrolling graphics and analog control that's essential to the gameplay (rather than ruining it like in most 5200 shooters) and you've got an experience that's REALLY boss!
PARKER BROS. ACTION ATARI 5200
Frogger lost a lot of his slippery luster at the end of the 20th century, thanks mostly to a lame Playstation update by Hasbro Interactive but also because Konami seems to have no idea what to do with him. Even Konami's direct conversions of the arcade original always seem to be missing something, and the less said about Frogger's Great Adventure, the better. However, things were different in the early 1980's. The name "Frogger" was a mark of quality, and crummy ports of the game for home consoles were few and far between. Unfortunately for Atari 5200 owners, they beat the odds and got one of those ports. The game's shabby graphics- as grungy as the rotting corpse of Kurt Cobain and with a color palette only Stevie Wonder could love- could be forgivable if it weren't for the wretched, wretched gameplay. It lacks the spontaneity of the coin-op thanks to a new control scheme designed to accommodate the 5200's non-centering controllers. Rather than merely pushing the controller in any direction to make your frog hop, you've got to hold the fire button, THEN push the joystick in any direction, THEN release the fire button to get moving. A severely pared down soundtrack flattens, drowns, and devours what little charm was left in this arcade conversion. Better luck next time, Parker Bros.!
SHOOTER ATARI 5200
Other reviewers have complained about the control in
this game, but speaking as a guy who's reached Earth in both the
arcade and 5200 versions of Gyruss, I had no trouble at all with
it. It's simply a
matter of rolling the controller in a circular motion, to the
section of the playfield where you'd like the ship to be. If you can play Street
Fighter II, you can easily play the 5200 version of Gyruss. The only thing about this
otherwise fantastic conversion of the Konami arcade hit that
actually interferes with the gameplay is the low resolution... the
fleets of chunky, oversized ships coupled with your ship's close
proximity to the center of the screen makes dodging more difficult
than it should be.
Those same enormous ships are much easier to hit than they
should be while resting in the center of the playfield. This balances the gameplay
nicely, but also gives this port an unwelcome feel of
compromise. Chunky
resolution aside, this game is a lot more professional than other
early Gyruss conversions, with faithful graphics and an outstanding
reproduction of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
soundtrack.
ATARI ACTION ATARI 5200
Ew? Ew! Ewwwwwww! Geez, Atari, what the hell happened here? Most of your arcade ports for the Atari 5200 are great, but someone must have been asleep at the ostrich reins when they made this. First of all, the graphics aren't so hot, with a fair amount of detail in the floating platforms but sprites that look as much like inkblots as vicious buzzards. They're only a faint improvement from the monocolored characters in the Atari 2600 version, which is not what you came for when you stepped up to the big leagues of a next-generation console. My second gripe (and it's sure to be yours as well) is that the flap button produces exaggerated results. Sure, a ten minute session of the arcade game is exhausting because you spend so much time hammering that damned flap button, and yes, the fire buttons on the 5200 controller are so mushy and unresponsive that it was probably necessary to make some adjustments. However, if you're playing the game with a controller that's, you know, GOOD, shooting halfway up the screen with a single tap of flap is going to drive you mad. It's impossible to carefully adjust your altitude with light taps, and the manic fun of the arcade classic evaporates when you're no longer required to fight with every ounce of your will to stay in the sky and out of the reach of those nasty buzzards. I could criticize the limited animation, too, but I'd be beating a dead pterodactyl... there are already more than enough reasons to stay away from this botched conversion.
ATARI ACTION/PLATFORM ATARI 5200 "Ooh, ooh, ooh! Kangaroo! Punch out a monkey, eat a piece of fruit!" Not only is this jingle one of the best songs ever written, it perfectly describes this side-view action game offered as the 5200's alternative to Donkey Kong. As a fiercely maternal marsupial known only as "Mom," you've got to scale to the top of a series of levels to rescue your son, clobbering the pink primates in your path while dodging their apples. Along the way, you can gobble up fruit and ring a bell to call down some more, leading the player to wonder, "Why does some of the fruit give you points while the stuff the monkeys throw knocks you out the moment it hits you?" This in turn leads the player to the conclusion that it's not fruit those monkeys are tossing at you...
On a less scatalogical note, Kangaroo is an extremely close conversion of a flawed arcade game. You're forced to tap up on the controller to bound over the gaping holes in each level, which proves doubly frustrating when you realize how little room for error the game allows. Get too close to the edge of a platform and you'll plummet from it. Stand on solid ground and you won't reach the next platform when you leap for it. The imprecise jumping and brutal level design won't stop you from enjoying Kangaroo, but it does keep the game from reaching the heights of its more distinguished cousin Donkey Kong.
ACTIVISION ACTION/PLATFORM ATARI 5200
All right, I'll admit it... I haven't been fair to the 5200 version of Megamania in the past. I got a negative first impression from playing the game on an emulator, but it turned out that it was running in PAL mode, making it slower and less exciting than its 2600 counterpart. With that sheepish admission out of the way, let's get to the review! At its proper speed on the actual system, Megamania is nearly identical to its Atari 2600 cousin... the only differences worth mentioning are a stylish title screen and greatly improved visuals. What were once abstract shapes have become the random assortment of household items the game's creator had always imagined. Diamond rings have a gem-like luster, clothing irons shoot jets of steam, and ice cream sandwiches spin through the sky, but they all meet the same fate when they fall into your ship's crosshairs. Considering the Atari 5200's abilities, Megamania could have been even flashier... a scrolling starfield and elaborate explosions would have really put this game over the top. Still, even if this conversion doesn't have the highest aspirations, it nails all the fundamentals, putting it a parsec ahead of sad-sack 5200 shooters like Gorf, Galaxian, and Vanguard..
PARKER BROS. ACTION/PLATFORM ATARI 5200
This would be a really cool name for a video game if it weren't also a euphemism for diahrrea... Crappy marketing aside, Montezuma's Revenge strikes a middle ground between early adventure games and intense platformers like Donkey Kong and Kangaroo. As the pancho-clad Panama Joe, you'll climb ladders, bound over rolling skulls, and collect gems on your way to a mysterious treasure. However, your athletic skills alone won't win you that elusive prize. You'll also have to search each room for keys, then use them to unlock new areas. As you descend into Montezuma's tomb, the rooms grow darker and the dangers are more numerous, ranging from creepy spiders to flaming pits that turn your intrepid hero into a puff of smoke! Death scenes like this one add to the charm of a well-balanced hybrid that won't bore action fans with endless exploration, yet won't push away adventure fans with unreasonable platforming.
ATARI ACTION/SHOOTER ATARI 5200 If you buy only one game for your Atari 5200... stop being so friggin' cheap and buy some more! Just make this the first one. The arcade version of Moon Patrol, created by R-Type developers Irem, was cutting-edge for its time, with multiple levels of parallax scrolling and the side-scrolling action that would later find its way into Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. All that's been reproduced in this conversion, down to the last gaping crater and ominously glowing land mine. The visuals are explosively colorful, the enemies loom over you like hungry vultures, and the soundtrack is a catchy blend of light-hearted hip-hop and silly Irish jigs... oh yeah, this is Moon Patrol, all right! There's just one thing standing in the way of the fun... you guessed it, it's that nasty stock controller! Just chuck that sucker in the nearest crater and replace it with an adapter, and you'll be having fun for hours!
CBS ACTION/PLATFORM ATARI 5200
Now's your chance to become the king of the mountain... without the fear of being stabbed by pencils or drowned in orange soda by an obnoxious milkshake. Mountain King is a laid back yet brilliantly designed action game that draws you in like nothing else on the Atari 5200. You'll feel like you're really there, scooping up diamonds and hunting for the fire spirit that will grant you passage to the throne room and its riches. The game really comes to life when you compare it to its stiff ColecoVision counterpart... the gems sparkle in the moonlight, the Grieg soundtrack makes your heart race, and your spindly alter ego darts across the playfield and bounds over cliff tops with the grace of a lively gazelle. When you strip away the aesthetics of Mountain King, you won't find much depth underneath, but the game is so entrancing that you either won't notice or will improvise with your own adventures. Is there anything hiding in the shadows aside from the fire spirit? Can you sneak into the throne room without it? Does the gigantic spider at the foot of the mountain have any weaknesses? Even after you're done playing the game for a high score, you'll spend hours trying to solve these mysteries.
ATARI ACTION/MAZE ATARI 5200
ATARI ACTION/MAZE ATARI 5200 When the Atari 5200 was first released, it was packaged with Super Breakout. Yes, the same Super Breakout that was released years earlier on the crusty 2600, without the paddle that made its gameplay so precise. After realizing what a colossal blunder they had made, Atari replaced this throwaway title with a REAL pack-in, an excellent conversion of Pac-Man that could in no way be mistaken for its ghastly 2600 counterpart. In the early 1980's, it really was the next best thing to being at the arcade, with all the fruits, all the color, all the animation, and even all the intermissions! The graphics are a bit chunky, with the stretched out maze only worsening matters, but that shortcoming aside, this port is a work of art. As usual, you'll want to put your crappy 5200 controllers out of their misery and replace them with a joystick that can meet the demands of such a fast-paced maze game.
PARKER BROS. ACTION ATARI 5200
Hmm... looks like Parker Bros. didn't have much luck with this conversion, either! On the plus side, the game looks nice- certainly better than the monstrocity that was the 2600 version- and it's one of the only ports with true diagonal movement. You don't have to rotate the controller slightly or guess which direction will make Q*Bert hop to the upper left rather than off the playfield... the direction you move the controller is the direction he'll jump, period. That's great, but having to press a button every time you want to move isn't. It slows the gameplay down to a crawl and makes movement less natural than it could or should have been. Yes, yes, it's obvious WHY Parker Bros. did this, but it would have been nice to have other options available. You can only imagine how well this port would have played with a Wico Command Control stick, but because you're stuck pressing buttons to make the proboscis-packing puffball jump, all you CAN do is imagine. Uh... better luck next time, Parker Bros.?
Qix distances itself from all the conventions of early 1980's gaming to create an experience that defies comparison. You don't shoot anything, you don't eat anything, and you don't jump over anything... your only goal is to claim as much onscreen real estate as possible by drawing over it with a pulsating, diamond-tipped pen. The center of the playfield holds an aggressive multicolored streak of energy called the Qix, but dawdling on the edges isn't too bright, either, as they're patrolled by sparks of electricity. The trick is to trap the world's most dangerous light show in one tiny portion of the screen, then close the hole to take most of the playfield and net a huge point bonus. That's the long and short of the Taito arcade game, which was ported exceptionally well to the 5200. The graphics are appallingly low res, lessening the stark beauty of the original and leaving you with less room to move, but everything else is faithfully reproduced. That includes not only the constant tension heightened by an armada of angry sound effects, but the thrill of building a wall between two Qix or claiming an enormous chunk of the playfield.
ATARI SHOOTER ATARI 5200
Just a warning up front... don't even think of playing this with just one controller. Sure, you can use the trigger to fire, but it's like tying your shoes with one hand, or baking a cake with half the ingredients. It's theoretically possible, but just not very smart. You'll see the true genius of Robotron: 2084 only after you break out a second controller, along with a coupler to anchor them both in place. This frantic Williams shooter has just two goals... destroy all robots and save all humans. The androids start out dimwitted at first, only to increase in number and intelligence after every stage. Single-minded GRUNTS and stationary Electrons are quickly joined by tank-spawning Sphereoids, unstoppable Hulk droids, and the queen of this demented chess set, the dreaded Brain Robotrons. No matter how cunning the Robotron force gets, you can count on the last human family to remain as hapless and stupid as they were from the moment the game began. They wander right into the gleaming metal claws of the robot armada, making you wonder if you should just let natural selection take its course and escape the planet with your own life. While you're thinking about that, you'll also ask yourself how the 5200 is capable of such a close translation, or how it manages to put so many sprites onscreen at once without bursting into flames. Even the occasional slowdown and slightly choppy animation don't detract from a beautiful arcade port that will forever remain one of the Atari 5200's proudest moments.
ATARI SHOOTER ATARI 5200
Like Robotron: 2084, Space Dungeon is an omnidirectional shooter, arming the player with an extra joystick for instantaneous eight-way firing. However, Space Dungeon is more ambitious, with a segmented, randomly generated playfield littered with treasures. If you're thinking of an RPG like Gateway to Apshai or Etrian Odyssey with heavier artillery and less turn-based combat, you're not far off the mark. Anyway, the object of the game is to collect as much bounty as you can carry while blowing away the dungeon's defenses; generally non-descript enemies like tie-dye doors, Japanese letters, and giant spike-covered eyeballs. Space Dungeon is entirely dependent on the concept of risk and reward, with the greediest players either raking in huge point bonuses at the end of each stage or losing it all to a stray bullet on the way to the exit. Those devastating losses become that much more frustrating when you consider how cheap the dungeon's denizens can be... you'll frequently be crowded by spiked eyeballs that take a dozen hits to destroy, blindsided by wall-mounted lasers, and ambushed by bugs waiting in the next room, just outside your field of vision. All this ensures that you'll be howling mad by the second stage... and howling for mercy by the third!
ATARI SHOOTER ATARI 5200
It was a dark day indeed when Sega was purchased by Paramount... but at least the scrappy Japanese developer was able to make the most of its misfortune with an enjoyable Star Trek game that still stands as one of the better video games based on that franchise.
Star Trek on the 5200 is loosely based on the turn-based strategy games nerds were playing on their overpriced, underpowered computers in the late 1970's. You'll still be warping through space, picking off Klingons with your photon torpedos, and replenishing your shields by visiting space stations. However, instead of tedious text entry, you'll command your ship using the Atari 5200's joystick and fire buttons.
Most of the action takes place on an overhead map at the top of the screen, but you'll have to use the more detailed first-person perspective on the bottom to line up your shots and destroy those pesky Klingons. Other stages involve weaving through asteroid fields and battling the twisted mechanical menace NOMAD. This time a logical paradox won't get the job done... you'll have to blast the wily robot with a laser before it chokes the playfield with mines.
Without constant music stings or participation from the original cast, Star Trek on the 5200 comes off as a little sterile next to episodes of the series. However, as a game, it holds up pretty well, comparing favorably to its more attractive yet less diverse ColecoVision cousin.
PARKER BROS. SHOOTER ATARI 5200
A cutting-edge arcade game on technology that dates back to the late 1970's? Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Star Wars is probably as close a coin-op conversion as the 5200's dated hardware would allow, but it lacks the thrilling cinematography that made the original so faithful to the films. TIE Fighters don't race past you as you struggle to set them in your crosshairs... they simply dance around the screen at a fixed distance, pulling you out of the action and making it seem as though your ship is anchored in place.
The other scenes make better use of the game's first-person perspective, but twitchy control makes it tough to nail the peaks of the towers on the catwalk, and there's less detail in the trench. To its credit, the game is superior to its cousin on the ColecoVision, with smoother movement and a more convincing imitation of the arcade game's striking vector graphics.
However, Star Wars fans are going to demand a lot more... and more is exactly what the Atari 5200 can't offer. Perhaps Star Wars: The Arcade Game could have been a little closer to the coin-op if Lucasfilm Games itself had handled the conversion, but Parker Bros. just couldn't work the same magic with the 5200 hardware as the developers of the mindblowing Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus.
PARKER BROS. SHOOTER ATARI 5200
Before I start this review, let me get this out of my
system.... AIIIIIIGGHH!!!
Ahem. Now, to
the review.
AIIIIIIGGHH!!!
That's the word that best describes the merciless gameplay of
Super Cobra, Konami's soul-crushing spin-off of Scramble. That game's sleek red rocket
has been replaced with a sluggish, oversized helicopter, and you'll
have to squeeze this air barge through some of the tightest tunnels
witnessed since the host of The Weakest Link had her last
colonoscopy. Oh, but
that's not all! The
harmless mystery bases from Scramble have been replaced with tanks,
which have an uncanny habit of pelting you with cannon fire just as
you fly over them. And
did I mention that those cramped caverns are usually peppered with
missiles and aerial mines that spring to life when you least expect
it? Even with an
infinite supply of bullets and bombs at your disposal, you can tell
that this is gonna be a bumpy ride. Mascochists who look forward to this kind of torture will be happy to know that Super Cobra is a reasonably close arcade conversion... unlike the incredibly flawed ColecoVision version, your helicopter is very clearly a helicopter and not a Volkswagen Bug with a tail, and the stages have a distinctly organic look, with each cavern holding all the nooks and crannies you came to expect from the coin-op. However, Super Cobra on the 5200 just can't be played with the system's stock controller. Seriously, don't even try it. You won't make it past the first stage because the control is so touchy. Replace it with a joypad and you might reach the sixth stage before your sanity slips away and you start frothing at the mouth. It's not a question of "if," but "when."
CBS ROKLAN SHOOTER/MAZE ATARI 5200
When I was growing up, I thought that the 5200 conversion of Wizard of Wor was the best thing ever. Over twenty years later, it's still the first game to find its way into my system, but I'm not as easy to please as I once was, and realize that the game isn't perfect. The translation of the little-seen but much-enjoyed Midway arcade title isn't as polished as it could have been, looking only marginally better than the Astrocade version and sounding nowhere near as accurate. It's also easier than the original, with the once wily wizard shuffling across the screen like the lovechild of Hubert Farnsworth and C. Montgomery Burns. Forget all those minor flaws, though... when it comes to gameplay, Wizard of Wor not only hits the bullseye, it blows the whole damn target to pieces! There's no detail left uncaptured from the arcade original, and the game plays like a dream with a proper joystick. There's a two player simultaneous mode, and you'll want to take advantage of it whenever possible... this already fantastic game becomes even more thrilling when a friend's got your back.
SEGA SHOOTER ATARI 5200
The tragedy of this game and its more common ColecoVision cousin is that each game feels like one half of a complete arcade translation. The 5200 port has the silky smooth scrolling and the electrical fields in the second castle, while Coleco's game has the missiles in the first castle and a much more satisfying boss battle. If only there were some way to fuse the two together into one outstanding conversion!
Anyway, Atari's half of Zaxxon controls wonderfully and looks very much like the arcade game... up to the point where you infiltrate the castle. That's when you notice the fortress seems surprisingly empty, as if its occupants were in the process of moving across the street. The missile silos are gone, the jets preparing for take-off are gone, and even the landing strips they were resting on have vanished! The disillusionment only grows once you've left the castle and battle your first fleet of enemy planes. Your once agile ship is trapped on the bottom of the screen as formations of incredibly stupid jets fly straight toward you, practically begging to be gunned down.
Things pick up a bit once you've reached the second castle, but after you fly through the gauntlet of laser barriers, that crushing disappointment comes right back in the form of the worst boss fight ever witnessed in a video game. Geez Sega, if you're going to name your game Zaxxon, you might want to make the battle with Zaxxon worth the trouble of struggling to reach it! |
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