PixlBit

Here are some of the 2600 games I played in volume 3 of Atari Flashback Classics. There are 20 in total in the collection.

Adventure II: I played this for a few and got eaten by that duck-looking dragon. Then I got seriously lost. There were a lot of bats flying around with all the items. What’s up with that? There’s an achievement for finishing the game, but I don’t want to. I find the labyrinth very boring.

Air Raiders: Baffling at first, but when there’s an achievement involved, I’ll try a bit harder. I had to read the manual included in the collection to get that I had to wait about 4 seconds to pull up on the stick to take off from the runway. Once in the air, you shoot at planes until your fuel runs out. Then you have to land. I kept crashing. I’m supposed to go to near 0 elevation and just wait for the runway to appear, or so the manual says. I couldn’t figure out how the game keeps score. The achievement says get 60 points before landing, but the scoreboard only shows how many planes you’ve shot down. I think it would be very impossible to get 60 kills on one tank of gas. I was baffled. I moved on but maybe I’ll research it more next time. This is a cool game I never knew existed.

Aquaventure: I like this game quite a bit. You dive for treasure and try and avoid the fish and jagged walls. You have to bring the treasure to the surface. The first one is two screens down and each one after that, one more screen down. The achievement had me go to six treasures. You have an air meter too, so you can’t waste time. Those fish are a pain because your character is so huge. You have a gun and can shoot the fish, but they are replaced with faster swimming fish. I played it over and over again and finally got it. It’s another 2600 game I never knew about.

Holey Moley: This is just whack-a-mole. I guess the 2600 had a key pad controller. You’re supposed to use that but tough luck, you’ve got an analog stick instead. The achievement says to get to screen 10. You have to score 300 points per set of moles to move on. As fast as I could whack ‘em, I still couldn’t get them fast enough for the highest point values. I blame the controller. I could do this much faster with a key pad. So, I couldn’t get past screen 2. Maybe I can tweak the settings next time.

Saboteur: This is an interesting game. You have to stop an evil doer from building a missile. You have to shoot the builders as they move left to right on rows of platforms. My character only shoots in fixed diagonal lines, so it was tricky to get kills. They also move very quickly. The second screen was baffling to me. You have to stop the warhead from being launched, but I really couldn’t figure out what I was controlling or what I had to shoot. Maybe I’ll try it again.

 

Wizard: I still have no idea what to do in this game. It looks like a kind of Wizard of Wor or Berzerk game with a maze and enemies that chase you in it. One of the achievements said to get 90 points shooting the “Imp”. It took me a while to figure out which game that was. The thumbnail image on the achievement gave it away finally. I shot various enemies over and over and finally unlocked it. I’m still not sure what the “Imp” is.

Yar’s Return: I really wanted to like this because I love Yar’s Revenge, but it’s basically the same game with two sides instead of one to shoot at. You can move your craft all around the center area where the enemy is surrounded by a barrier. Thing is, there’s not much space to move on the screen. I had to get to 300K points for the achievement, but I didn’t even get to 100K. I guess I’ll try it again but I really hate not having enough space to fly around.