Time Warped 1980 - Skiing

On 02/18/2018 at 07:25 PM by KnightDriver

This is Skiing for the Atari 2600, made by its first third-party developer Activision. Over the years I've become a bigger and bigger fan of the first generation of Activision developers. I think their game design for the Atari 2600 is perfectly suited to that machine. The graphics are simple and colorful, the gameplay very accessible and easy to understand, and the games are just darn fun, even today. I have seriously considered collecting a complete Activision collection for the Atari for those reasons. Skiiing is one of the earliest examples of this.

I played this game back in the day on my Atari 2600. i'd say I liked it but maybe not as much as other Activision games. It's just a personal taste thing. The game is perfect otherwise.

Today I played it on Activision Anthology on my PS2. I could've played it on my Xbox 360 via Game Room if I had bought it when the store was still up. I bought other Activision games I liked more, but Skiing is still fun, though slightly less easy to control well on the PS2 controller.

Skiing can be played in either downhill or slalum mode (shown in the video). The goal is to make the best time to the end of the course, which is less than a minute long. You have to avoid trees and moguls and, in slalum mode, skii between the poles. It has great, simple controls and snow slushing sounds. It looks great too. For what the console could achieve, this is the best type of design for it: simple, colorful, accessible.

Here's a commercial for it that was out in '80.

I should mention that the Activision Anthology collection for PS2 is really great. You are given a virtual room to navigate as the menu. There's 80s music playing, music from the games and special features to unlock like the commercial shown above. It really hits that nostalgia button in my brain. I just wish they'd do another one for modern consoles. Activision games are not on the Atari Flashback Collections Vol. 1 and 2.

goaztecs

02/18/2018 at 08:00 PM

Ha, I remember this game, and I think I played something similar on the PC. Man that was fun.

KnightDriver

02/18/2018 at 09:24 PM

It wasn't something I played for a long time, but I remember giving it a few minutes whenever I turned on my Atari.

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/19/2018 at 02:15 PM

Yeah, I definitely recall playing an updated version of this game (only difference was slightly more defined chracter and an animation where the skis go up in the air if you fail) for PC growing up, for sure.

02/22/2018 at 12:24 PM

Haha I forgot about the skis. I should look that game up.

Cary Woodham

02/18/2018 at 09:00 PM

Many of Activision's early games were great. Even I had River Raid on the 5200. The Activision Anthology was one of the best classic game compilations ever. It even rivaled the PSOne Namco Museums!

Next time you fire up Activision Anthology, try playing my favorite 2600 game: Pressure Cooker. But make sure to read the instructions first. It's actually surprisingly complex for a 2600 game. But once you know what you're doing, it's an amazing little game.

02/18/2018 at 09:18 PM

High praise there. Namco's hard to beat.

I have tried Pressure Cooker but probably didn't get it the first time. I'll try again.

SanAndreas

02/18/2018 at 11:10 PM

Pressure Cooker was quite a novel little game for its time.

02/18/2018 at 11:08 PM

That was pretty good for a 2600 skiing game. Most of Activision's programmers at the time were people who had quit at Atari because Atari didn't credit them for their work. Maybe if these guys had stayed on at Atari, the 1983 crash wouldn't have happened. Oh, well, Nintendo was light-years better.

And then a lot of them left Activision for the same reason and formed companies like Acclaim, Accolade, and Absolute. All of these names were chosen so they'd be ahead of Activision in a phone book, kind of like Activision itself choosing a name that would appear before Atari.

02/19/2018 at 03:06 PM

Yea, I've heard the Activision story and all. Bad on Atari for not crediting their developers or putting them in the game manuals. And maybe, with better quality control, the crash wouldn't have happened. Greed. That's all it is. And bad business.

There's like a complete change once Nintendo's system came out in '85 in NA. I was not aware of it at the time, but you can diffinitely begin a new era with that release. I never got interested in Atari 5200 or 7800 or ST. They were pretty much dead to me after '85.

PixlBit