{"id":16051,"date":"2017-02-06T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T00:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=16051"},"modified":"2017-01-13T19:11:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T19:11:35","slug":"the-games-of-atari-flashback-classics-vol-1-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/06\/the-games-of-atari-flashback-classics-vol-1-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Games of Atari Flashback Classics vol. 1, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ATARI1\"<\/a>I love classic game compilations, but you don\u2019t see them as much anymore since most of the time you just pay for each game to download on your hard drive nowadays.\u00a0 So when I saw that there were two physical disc volumes of Atari games for the PS4 and Xbox One, I made sure to snag them when I got my PS4.\u00a0 So for fun, I thought I\u2019d go over the games on these collections.\u00a0 We\u2019ll split this into two parts.\u00a0 First I\u2019ll go over the Atari arcade games, as well as the Atari 2600 ports of those arcade titles.\u00a0 And in the next part, I\u2019ll go over the rest of the 2600 offerings.\u00a0 And we\u2019ll repeat the process with Vol. 2 as well.<\/p>\n

Black Widow<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always kind of liked this vector shooter.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of like Robotron, but with spiders and bugs.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t see it as much in arcades back in the day, but when I did, I made sure to put a quarter in.<\/p>\n

Centipede<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I see this game, I always think of my dad.\u00a0 When I was a kid and we\u2019d go to arcades as a family, I\u2019d go straight for the Pac-Man machines, my mom would hop toward Frogger, and my dad would make a beeline for Centipede.\u00a0 He loved that game.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s also interesting that this game attracted more female players, or at least that\u2019s what I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n

Centipede 2600<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know, even though they replaced most of the graphics of mushrooms and such with just blocks, if you just look at the core gameplay, Centipede for the 2600 was a fairly decent arcade port for the time.\u00a0 I liked how a lot of these 2600 games had \u201cChildren\u2019s Mode\u201d which made the game a little easier for younger players.\u00a0 You could tell if it was Children\u2019s Mode if you saw a teddy bear graphic somewhere on the screen.<\/p>\n

Millipede<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was one of the first times I remember seeing a sequel to an arcade game.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty much just like Centipede but harder, faster, and with more kinds of bugs to shoot.\u00a0 My dad liked this game, too, but probably not as much as the original.\u00a0 I remember when they made a NES version of this game, I got it for my dad as a present, and it was one of the few NES games I could get him to play regularly (that and Rad Racer).<\/p>\n

Millipede 2600<\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, aside from the blocky graphics, I think this was a fairly decent arcade port.\u00a0 And I can do better at this version than the arcade game!<\/p>\n

Liberator<\/strong><\/p>\n

So this is basically just Missile Command, except the missile come from the middle of the screen outward from a planet graphic, and your guns to shoot them down are on each of the four corners of the screen.\u00a0 Also, I don\u2019t ever remember seeing this in an arcade when I was little.<\/p>\n

Lunar Lander<\/strong><\/p>\n

You have to land a spacecraft by using your thrusters to land without crashing.\u00a0 But you must also watch out and not run out of fuel.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been able to do this game right.\u00a0 I also don\u2019t remember seeing this in arcades much either.<\/p>\n

Space Duel<\/strong><\/p>\n

So this is basically just two-player Asteroids.\u00a0 It has some interesting co-op modes, like one where your ships are tethered together.\u00a0 I also don\u2019t ever remember seeing it in arcades either.<\/p>\n

Tempest<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now this one was huge in arcades!\u00a0 I never liked it as much, though, but only because I wasn\u2019t very good at it.\u00a0 I hear the arcade cabinet is worth a lot of money, but it\u2019s also hard to maintain.\u00a0 I also find it interesting that Tempest 2000 was one of the only games worth getting on the Atari Jaguar.<\/p>\n

Tempest 2600<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some of the Atari 2600 games in this collection are just prototypes that actually never came out.\u00a0 And I\u2019m glad that was the case with this one because I was getting annoyed that I was getting killed for no apparent reason and the only stage you could play looked like a pair of blue underwear.\u00a0 If the game actually came out like this, it would\u2019ve been worse than 2600 E.T. and Pac-Man combined.\u00a0 But since it\u2019s a prototype I guess it\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

Warlords<\/strong><\/p>\n

I actually like this game.\u00a0 I\u2019m not good at it, but I like it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also downloaded a couple of the Warlords remakes on the PSP and 360 and enjoyed those as well.\u00a0 It\u2019s basically just a cross between four player Pong and Breakout.<\/p>\n

Warlords 2600<\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, a fairly decent port of the arcade game, but I don\u2019t think you can do four players on it.<\/p>\n

Pong<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well it\u2019s Pong.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t have anything to say about it except I\u2019m not very good at it.\u00a0 I do find it interesting that you can control games that use a paddleball or trackball with the PS4 touch pad on the controller!<\/p>\n

Pong Sports<\/strong><\/p>\n

So the home version of Pong has some variations that are supposed to resemble sports.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t that also the same game as Video Olympics?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 At least the home version offered more than the arcade did.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all the arcade games on vol. 1.\u00a0 Next time I\u2019ll go over the rest of the 2600 titles on vol. 1.\u00a0 I only put the 2600 arcade ports here so I wouldn\u2019t have to repeat myself as much.\u00a0 Thanks for reading!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love classic game compilations, but you don\u2019t see them as much anymore since most of the time you just pay for each game to download on your hard drive nowadays.\u00a0 So when I saw that there were two physical disc volumes of Atari games for the PS4 and Xbox One, I made sure to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16053,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16051\/revisions\/16053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}