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ATARI
5200 |
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A cutting-edge 80's console
with an Achille's
Heel. | |
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HISTORY
The year
is 1982. A new generation of game
consoles is on the horizon, and the Atari 2600 is no
longer enough to satisfy gamers looking for an authentic
arcade experience. Eager to stay competitive,
Atari responds with the 5200, a powerful console based
on the industry leader's line of home computers.
However, the console is cursed with a series of design
flaws, ranging from a cumbersome analog controller to an
RF adapter that doubled as a power supply. These
faults and a dull pack-in game leave the 5200 at a
disadvantage against its lead competitor, the
ColecoVision. However, the 5200 would get
another shot at fame when its hardware would
be resurrected as the XEGS in 1987. The awful
controller... would remain in the past where it
belonged. |
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TECH SPECS
| PROCESSOR |
Custom 6502C |
| CLOCK
SPEED |
1.79MHz |
| SYSTEM
RAM |
16K |
| MEDIA
FORMAT |
cartridges,
max 32K |
| SOUND |
POKEY, 4
channels |
| GRAPHICS |
ANTIC &
GTIA chips |
| RESOLUTION |
320x192 |
| COLORS |
256 (16 per
scanline) |
| MAX
SPRITES |
4 players, 4
missiles |
| MAX
POLYS |
N/A |
| I/O PORTS |
2/4
controllers, expansion, RF video,
AC | |
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THE DREADNAUGHT
FACTOR: Next, on the Dreadnaught
Factor! An exciting bombing raid over an
immense battle cruiser the size of Bill
O'Reilly's head! |
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MEGAMANIA: It's the
same great shooter that it was on the Atari 2600,
but with greatly enhanced visuals. Whaddaya
know, those things really WERE
hamburgers! |
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MOUNTAIN
KING: A fun, fast-paced action
game that challenges the player to snag a crown at
the bottom of the screen, then carry it to the top
before it vanishes. |
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MOON
PATROL: Ooh, ooh, ooh! Moon
Patrol! Leap over craters, blast some
UFOs! Wait, that jingle was for another
game, huh? That's OK, it works just as well
with this one! |
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WIZARD OF
WOR: Contrary to popular belief,
Wizard of Wor on the 5200 isn't a perfect
arcade port. However, it IS close enough
that it hardly matters. | |
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FROGGER: Run, don't
hop, from this heinous game based on the Sega
arcade hit. Or was it Konami's arcade
hit? After all these years, I'm still not
sure! |
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GALAXIAN: Holy
conflict of interest, Batman! Why is the
version of Galaxian that Atari released for
the ColecoVision so much better than this
one? |
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JOUST: Wow,
Atari. Was this really the best you could do
on the 5200? Somehow, I doubt it. The
gameplay is actually a step DOWN from
its cousin on the 2600! |
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Q*BERT: It looks
fine. It sounds all right. So what's
the problem here? The problem is that the
control in this port totally bites... and
that stupid stock controller is to
blame! |
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SUPER
BREAKOUT: This must have been a
super letdown to early 5200 adopters who expected
a cutting-edge gaming experience from their
purchase. | |
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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.
NEW GAMES:
Beamrider
Defender
Star Trek: Strategic
Ops
Star Wars: The Arcade
Game
Zaxxon
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.
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.
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BUCK ROGERS |
  
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SEGA |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.
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CHOPLIFTER |
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ATARI |
DAN
GORLIN |
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ACTION/SHOOTER |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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!
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FROGGER |
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PARKER
BROS. |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.!
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GYRUSS |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.
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JOUST |
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ATARI |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.
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KANGAROO |
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ATARI |
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ACTION/PLATFORM |
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ATARI
5200 |
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"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.
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MEGAMANIA |
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ACTIVISION |
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ACTION/PLATFORM |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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..
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.
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!
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.
Funny
how a game that was so much better than its predecessor
in arcades could be so much more disappointing on a home
console.
Ms. Pac-Man's still got her shapely figure on the
Atari 5200... the system's low resolution results in
some minor visual compromises, but the colors are as
lush as ever and fruits still bounce happily through
each maze.
The problem is, the world's first video game
heroine just doesn't have the same style as she does at
the local laundromat. This conversion
lacks the speed and the silky smoothness of the 5200
conversion of Pac-Man, with the old girl choking down
dots as she runs from a quartet of hungry monsters. Ms. Pac-Man's
newfound gag reflex doesn't make the game any less
playable; it just keeps it from feeling as spontaneous
or exciting as its coin-op counterpart. It's even a
slight step down from the 5200 port of Pac-Man, even
with all the added bells and whistles.
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PAC-MAN |
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ATARI |
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ACTION/MAZE |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.
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Q*BERT |
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PARKER
BROS. |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.?
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QIX |
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ATARI |
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ACTION |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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SUPER COBRA |
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PARKER
BROS. |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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."
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.
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ZAXXON |
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SEGA |
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SHOOTER |
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ATARI
5200 |
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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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