Due to my recent infatuation with the great woodgrained beast known as the Atari 2600, I've decided to start writing up bit "reviews" of the various games I have in my collection. So far, most of my games are common, so it's not like I'll showcase hidden gems yet, but I'll attempt to give insight into games you might not know much about. So,why not start with the ultimate 2600 game: a rehash of another game on a competing console!
A long time ago, in the great year 1980 (or 1979, according to some internet dudes), Atari was doing pretty well for themselves, what with their arcade smash hit Asteroids having just come out the year before, and their Video Computer System line (it actually wasn't called the 2600 until the 5200 dropped, so for accuracy's sake, it shall henceforth be called the VCS.) gaining lots of money due to its popular port of Taito's classic Space Invaders. However, a dark shadow loomed on the horizon, one that would shake up the VCS's hold on the market. This shadow's name was none other than... *dun dunnnnnnn* INTELLIVISION! The great console unleashed upon this Earth by Mattel's electronics division, who wanted a piece of the "80's Video Game Market Boom" pie. However, unlike the other consoles that attempted to gain market edge over the VCS, the Intellivision actually did well for itself. After all, you most likely have heard of the Intellivision, but what about the Bally Astrocade? The Arcadia 2001? The RCA Studio II? If you've heard of any of these, then you're either a complete nerd, or a clone of me. But anyways, part of Intellivision's success has to be due in part to its memorable commercials, which dared to challenge the king of the industry itself, with a little help from sports journalist, George Plimpton.
Not to be confused with Bill Plympton, another guy you probably have never heard of until now.
I prefer Atari myself, but let me say for the record, that commercial would definitely convince me if I was in the market for a new system back in the day. Maybe it's a bit of an unfair comparison, since they represented Atari with the game Home Run, which is a rather early title, and one that's certainly not known for being very good (But that game's a story for another one of these blogs.), but it does look legitimately better, and plus they have a real expert backing it. (to be fair, Atari did have Pete Rose and Don Knotts in one of their early commercials. Pete Rose was of course a baseball expert, so natural fit, but Don Knotts plugged Breakout, which just kinda implies he was an expert in bouncing shit off walls or something. Yeah, I dunno.) And they weren't just fabricating anything, the Intellivision is a legitimately stronger console. While it can be debatable whether that makes the games any better (the weird disk thingies on the controllers weren't the best for arcade-like games, which were a majority of the best titles on the market.), it can't be argued that it had better graphics, though. But we're not here just to talk about graphics...
![Posted Image]()
We're here to talk about games! Or, at least 1 game. That game is Space Battle, a relatively simplistic "defense" game focused around preventing a generic alien fleet from destroying your mothership in the center. Now, you're probably scoffing at the mere simplistic idea of it whilst buying the latest and greatest in gaming PC parts so you can play the new MLG MOBA game or whatever you guys are into, but it had to have been fucking cool back then. I'll admit, I don't really know, since I wasn't even imagined, let alone born in the 80's, but to me, it's pretty impressive for a home console of the time. While marketing this to their flagship system was a given, Mattel must have realized that a lot of poor VCS gamers would be missing out on games like that, so out of sympathy, they ported Space Battle and several other titles to the VCS. Well, they probably just wanted money from the heretics who wouldn't bask in the light of the great Vision of Intelli, but it sounds much more pleasant my way.
There are two things immediately noticeable about Space Battle on the VCS: 1, it's not actually Space Battle. Mattel, under its VCS manufacturer name, M Network, released it as "Space Attack", which pretty much means the same thing. 2, it's in a weird-ass cartridge.
![Posted Image]()
After the game crash of 1983, excess units were sent to prisons around the country,. Inmates were overjoyed at how useful the cartridges' triangular edges were as shivs.
Atari had no regulation over the market, so there was no set way a cartridge had to look.3rd party ones went all over the place in terms of design, but most stuck to the standard "rectangular box" schtick, unlike Mattel. You may think this was a daring departure from convention, an artistic statement about how their games were "The razor edge of awesome.", but you're completely wrong. They actually were just being cheap and reusing Intellivision cartridge shells with VCS internals inside. You have a good imagination though. After you get done gawking at the cartridge for a while, then you pop that fucker in and power it on, hoping for some awesome space action and adventure. Instead, you get this.
![Posted Image]()
Initially this screen is completely blank, but I couldn't find a pic of that, so put that wild imagination of yours to use and mentally get rid of those little floating dots and such.
What the hell? Is the game broken? Did you stumble upon some crazy game that's not actually a game like in The Last Starfighter? Well, there's an answer to those excellent questions: Read the manual, you dumbfuck. The manual provides the expert technique of moving your joystick. Then, the game begins, with dots- err, alien squadrons converging on your center area thingy. You need to deploy your units by pulling the joystick left, right, or up after selecting an alien squadron by pulling down. Then, press fire at the same time that you move left, right or up. Then, your loyal spaceship squadrons will head out to battle. Once they meet an alien fleet and start flashing, move the joystick to that squadron's assigned direction and get ready for some galactic ass-kicking.
![Posted Image]()
Violence like this warranted an M rating back in the day.
As seen in the picture, once you engage, you enter a cool little first-person shooter against some incredibly annoying and dodgy UFOs. In the Intellivision version, they can loop and flip, but I like it better without that shit, because the game can be hard enough with those purple fuckers haphazardly darting every which way. The damage system works oddly. you'd think you have to worry about your ship getting hit from first person, but for some reason your sight is the only vulnerable thing. Either that's a very meta game element, or you're in a weird gun turret thingy. But anyways, just avoid the alien shots when they turn red, and you're good. Clear 6 fleets and you're done, and get a weird noise to tell you so. It sounds short, and yes it is, but it isn't a bad game at all. It's pretty fun to play for quick bursts when you get bored, since you don't need to put a lot of focus into much of it, and it's apparently pretty common, so if you have a 2600/VCS/whatever, I'd recommend it.
A long time ago, in the great year 1980 (or 1979, according to some internet dudes), Atari was doing pretty well for themselves, what with their arcade smash hit Asteroids having just come out the year before, and their Video Computer System line (it actually wasn't called the 2600 until the 5200 dropped, so for accuracy's sake, it shall henceforth be called the VCS.) gaining lots of money due to its popular port of Taito's classic Space Invaders. However, a dark shadow loomed on the horizon, one that would shake up the VCS's hold on the market. This shadow's name was none other than... *dun dunnnnnnn* INTELLIVISION! The great console unleashed upon this Earth by Mattel's electronics division, who wanted a piece of the "80's Video Game Market Boom" pie. However, unlike the other consoles that attempted to gain market edge over the VCS, the Intellivision actually did well for itself. After all, you most likely have heard of the Intellivision, but what about the Bally Astrocade? The Arcadia 2001? The RCA Studio II? If you've heard of any of these, then you're either a complete nerd, or a clone of me. But anyways, part of Intellivision's success has to be due in part to its memorable commercials, which dared to challenge the king of the industry itself, with a little help from sports journalist, George Plimpton.
Not to be confused with Bill Plympton, another guy you probably have never heard of until now.
I prefer Atari myself, but let me say for the record, that commercial would definitely convince me if I was in the market for a new system back in the day. Maybe it's a bit of an unfair comparison, since they represented Atari with the game Home Run, which is a rather early title, and one that's certainly not known for being very good (But that game's a story for another one of these blogs.), but it does look legitimately better, and plus they have a real expert backing it. (to be fair, Atari did have Pete Rose and Don Knotts in one of their early commercials. Pete Rose was of course a baseball expert, so natural fit, but Don Knotts plugged Breakout, which just kinda implies he was an expert in bouncing shit off walls or something. Yeah, I dunno.) And they weren't just fabricating anything, the Intellivision is a legitimately stronger console. While it can be debatable whether that makes the games any better (the weird disk thingies on the controllers weren't the best for arcade-like games, which were a majority of the best titles on the market.), it can't be argued that it had better graphics, though. But we're not here just to talk about graphics...
We're here to talk about games! Or, at least 1 game. That game is Space Battle, a relatively simplistic "defense" game focused around preventing a generic alien fleet from destroying your mothership in the center. Now, you're probably scoffing at the mere simplistic idea of it whilst buying the latest and greatest in gaming PC parts so you can play the new MLG MOBA game or whatever you guys are into, but it had to have been fucking cool back then. I'll admit, I don't really know, since I wasn't even imagined, let alone born in the 80's, but to me, it's pretty impressive for a home console of the time. While marketing this to their flagship system was a given, Mattel must have realized that a lot of poor VCS gamers would be missing out on games like that, so out of sympathy, they ported Space Battle and several other titles to the VCS. Well, they probably just wanted money from the heretics who wouldn't bask in the light of the great Vision of Intelli, but it sounds much more pleasant my way.
There are two things immediately noticeable about Space Battle on the VCS: 1, it's not actually Space Battle. Mattel, under its VCS manufacturer name, M Network, released it as "Space Attack", which pretty much means the same thing. 2, it's in a weird-ass cartridge.
After the game crash of 1983, excess units were sent to prisons around the country,. Inmates were overjoyed at how useful the cartridges' triangular edges were as shivs.
Atari had no regulation over the market, so there was no set way a cartridge had to look.3rd party ones went all over the place in terms of design, but most stuck to the standard "rectangular box" schtick, unlike Mattel. You may think this was a daring departure from convention, an artistic statement about how their games were "The razor edge of awesome.", but you're completely wrong. They actually were just being cheap and reusing Intellivision cartridge shells with VCS internals inside. You have a good imagination though. After you get done gawking at the cartridge for a while, then you pop that fucker in and power it on, hoping for some awesome space action and adventure. Instead, you get this.
Initially this screen is completely blank, but I couldn't find a pic of that, so put that wild imagination of yours to use and mentally get rid of those little floating dots and such.
What the hell? Is the game broken? Did you stumble upon some crazy game that's not actually a game like in The Last Starfighter? Well, there's an answer to those excellent questions: Read the manual, you dumbfuck. The manual provides the expert technique of moving your joystick. Then, the game begins, with dots- err, alien squadrons converging on your center area thingy. You need to deploy your units by pulling the joystick left, right, or up after selecting an alien squadron by pulling down. Then, press fire at the same time that you move left, right or up. Then, your loyal spaceship squadrons will head out to battle. Once they meet an alien fleet and start flashing, move the joystick to that squadron's assigned direction and get ready for some galactic ass-kicking.
Violence like this warranted an M rating back in the day.
As seen in the picture, once you engage, you enter a cool little first-person shooter against some incredibly annoying and dodgy UFOs. In the Intellivision version, they can loop and flip, but I like it better without that shit, because the game can be hard enough with those purple fuckers haphazardly darting every which way. The damage system works oddly. you'd think you have to worry about your ship getting hit from first person, but for some reason your sight is the only vulnerable thing. Either that's a very meta game element, or you're in a weird gun turret thingy. But anyways, just avoid the alien shots when they turn red, and you're good. Clear 6 fleets and you're done, and get a weird noise to tell you so. It sounds short, and yes it is, but it isn't a bad game at all. It's pretty fun to play for quick bursts when you get bored, since you don't need to put a lot of focus into much of it, and it's apparently pretty common, so if you have a 2600/VCS/whatever, I'd recommend it.