Thursday, August 28, 2014

I am at 10 !! Megamania, Activision patch #10


I never really heard of this game, and would have a bad impression about it, but it was recommended, and I have no other Activision game I could beat around, so I tried it. And my guts were totally wrong, Megamania is a crazy shoot them up that I really liked. Because each wave is so different in the shape of enemies  their attach pattern or tactics, it feels like it could have been 8 individual games combined into one. I really enjoyed it, even tough the patch score (45 000) was easy to reach. Also, another super colorful game, one of these I could not have enjoyed with the crappy 8 colors of the Secam games. Enemies are taken from regular household items (tires, dice, hamburgers, bow ties etc...). a little bit like what micro machines did 15+years later with driving game. Like for Kaboom!, there is a limited amount of lives you can get, so the tactic is the same, lose  life just before you are going to get a free one, this allows to continue for a little longer on an easier wave.
Megamania Atari 2600/
So I reached 10 Activision patches, and I still have Enduro to beat at home. I order some decathlon, Oink!, chopper command, River raid and others for my next games to beat. I really enjoy building this collection of Activision games in my retro game library, can't wait to see all the colorful boxes.
51410 points, that all you can see and that's enough for my patch #10
GamePatch difficultyGame Rating
FreewayMediumNice game speedy cars, great colors. netter than Frogger 
DragsterMediumWeird game, with 6 seconds gameplay. Super stressful
Laser Blast Very easy Boring and pointless
SkiingMediumScrolling, colors, learning path, awesome game
Pitfall! Very easyClassic, so many screens, animations, colors, it has everything
Kaboom HardAwesome, colors, paddle control, in the zone feeling.
Pitfall IIEasyHuge map, so many screens, colors, sound, awesome
Chopper CommandEasySpeed and colors, such a long road from Tank
TennisEasyColorfully boring
MegamaniaEasyLike 8 games in 1, great game

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Activision tennis, Patch #9

Quick post to show my progress towards the 10 patches mark, I beat the tennis
score yesterday (beat the "computer", 1 set). The game looks good in comparison of Pong and other racket games from the early days of the console, but somehow I can not get hooked on it. I remember getting it as trade towards the end of my original console life, and back then I liked it, so I guess I was spoiled by the later tennis games. beating the computer is not super easy, because until you realize that (like in most tennis games) your only way of winning is to find impossible angles, you can play for hours in front of the computer that just returns the ball without really trying to beat you. So once you get a sens on how to hit the ball, how far away from the player, and on which side of him, then it is doable without too much trouble, but the game is still kind of boring, just waiting for the right angle, and sometimes it work sometimes it does not, seems random to me.
Activision Tennis patch, beat the computer 1 set.
I have a couple of other games to beat (like Enduro, this one is harder than I thought), and 2 copies of Decathlon that do not work on 2 different machines. I really want to beat that game, so I will look for one on eBay or CL soon. Also on my radar Space Shuttle with the super complex button system. I bought that game "back in the days" but somehow never understood one thing about it, I just abandoned it somewhere, I don't think I accomplished any of the XX required steps to launch and safely return the shuttle.


GamePatch difficultyGame Rating
FreewayMediumNice game speedy cars, great colors. netter than Frogger 
DragsterMediumWeird game, with 6 seconds gameplay. Super stressful
Laser Blast Very easy Boring and pointless
SkiingMediumScrolling, colors, learning path, awesome game
Pitfall! Very easyClassic, so many screens, animations, colors, it has everything
Kaboom HardAwesome, colors, paddle control, in the zone feeling.
Pitfall IIEasyHuge map, so many screens, colors, sound, awesome
Chopper CommandEasySpeed and colors, such a long road from Tank
TennisEasyColorfully boring

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Chopper Command, I am a cadet!! Patch #8 11000 points

Another great Activision game, well described in RetroGaming Round up #75 that is actually based on Activision games, a good podcast for long drives. Somehow the game is familiar to me (and I am not talking about the obvious resemblance to D...R by Atari), but I don't recall buying it

as a kid, perhaps I did, perhaps someone traded it for the mini babybel wax figurine, anyhow it was easy, and it took me only 2 attempts to reach the patch score (10 000 points). I like the speed of the game, and the radar that allows for some tactical approach on enemies. On RetroGaming roundup they mention how this was unique, I don't recall if this was the first radar enabled game, but it certainly was one of the first, and it works great. Knowing a little bit how the 2600 works(read this, it is fascinating), I can't even start to imagine how you would make this work, with a background, 2 objects and 2 missiles sprites. With the amount of games to beat in front of me, I don't think I will necessarily come back, but if I had only a couple of games, I certainly would. I didn't even get to grasp the concept of protecting the trucks, I just shoot everything on the screen, so here must be some tactic to learn and master.
Chopper Command 11 000 points.

GamePatch difficultyGame Rating
FreewayMediumNice game speedy cars, great colors. netter than Frogger 
DragsterMediumWeird game, with 6 seconds gameplay. Super stressful
Laser Blast Very easy Boring and pointless
SkiingMediumScrolling, colors, learning path, awesome game
Pitfall! Very easyClassic, so many screens, animations, colors, it has everything
Kaboom HardAwesome, colors, paddle control, in the zone feeling.
Pitfall IIEasyHuge map, so many screens, colors, sound, awesome
Chopper CommandEasySpeed and colors, such a long road from Tank

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Activision patch #7 Pitfall II, oh yeah...

I just got a bunch of carts from GW, and I actually beat 3 patch scores in one evening, so I have post material for the days to come.
Pitfall II Atari 2600
First one is Pitfall II. I remember this one when it came out,
I bought it, played it a lot,  kid of finished it, but I am not sure what finishing this game means as you seem to be able to continue for ever, albeit losing points. Again an amazing technical game on the VCS, colors, sound (using a special chip), unique feature like respawn places, and so many different enemies. I just don't like the box, not flashy enough, I guess they were trying to showcase the new maturity in their games, an I think it worked (for me) ack then, but I still prefer the colorful rainbows on the first Activision boxes. So beating the 100 000 mark was not too hard, but I did have practice from 25 years ago.  Beating this game and the 2 others that evening made me realize that I should capture the easiness of getting patches, and my initial impression of the game, so adding a table now.
100 000 points+ patch Pitfall II



110 877 points and counting





GamePatch difficultyGame Rating
FreewayMediumNice game speedy cars, great colors. netter than Frogger 
DragsterMediumWeird game, with 6 seconds gameplay. Super stressfull
Laser Blast Very easy Boring and pointless
SkiingMediumScrolling, colors, learning path, awesome game
Pitfall! Very easyClassic, so many screens, animations, colors, it has everything
Kaboom HardAwesome, colors, paddle control, in the zone feeling.
Pitfall IIEasyHuge map, so many screens, colors, sound, awesome


Friday, August 8, 2014

Just 4 digits... 3443, IN YOUR FACE, KABOOM !!

Yep, that's right Activision patch #6 is mine, Kaboom you are out !! 2 weeks on that score, I am so bad at that game, but I still enjoy playing it. I keep seeing videos of 6 digits scores on YouTube, and I feel so disconnected from these ninjas.
Kaboom, 3443 points

Kaboom patch, Atari Activision

I just got this of eBay, so Boxing and Fishing Derby will be on my next runs,

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Activision patch #5, Pitfall !! I am a natural

Yep, still no Kaboom .... Although I consistently hit 2000 + mark, I still can not get to the 3000 points.

So Pitfall.... First game in 30 years and I exploded the patch score (20 000 points), with a whopping 79840 points.
Not much to say about this attempt, as I wrote, first try, I was done after 4 minutes, the rest of the game (20 minutes total), I tried to go as far as possible. This really felt easy to do, I know that finishing the game is not easy on the other side, I did not try this. Finishing Pitfall! should be a topic for a
post series one day, how to complete Pitfall!, I already know that you have to go left and not right, like for any other platformer, and making a map of the tunnels is key.
I remember buying this game for Christmas, with my grandparents, and convincing them that waiting for Christmas day was silly, so I should play it right away. I also saw a Compumate that day, back when I thought that my Atari would one day become a computer of some sort (to do what, who know). The outcome of this is that I now only have Kaboom and Enduro to beat, then I will really need to win some eBay auctions to get games like Frostbite, Chopper Command, Megamania etc...
Compumate for Atari 2600

















I remember Pitfall as a deep game with many levels that no 8 year old (in my mind) would ever finish, I discovered that it is also very nice, the colors are vibrant, a typical Activision theme. And the reason why I am a late bloomer to Activision colors is because I grew up with that F'ed up Secam color system, were the Atari 2600 could only produce 8 colors (!!!) as opposed to 128 in NTSC, it makes a big difference,
Darrel Spice made a great comparison on his site, see below. This is crazy, but I did not know better back then, you lucky bastards in America.
PAL 8 colors
NTSC 128 colors
So fifth patch, my collection is starting to look like something

Pitfall! patch Activision Atari


Activision patch #4, Skiing 28.14sec !!! WWeeeeeee

Activision Skiing Atari 2600
I got tired of miserably failing at Kaboom, especially after looking at threads on AtariAge were people routinely beat 5000 points, and some end up in the hundreds of thousands (reminder, I am stuck at 2754 :), but last evening I beat 2000 multiple times so I might be improving).

Anyway, got bored, so I decided to try my luck for 5 minutes on another Activison. After trying 2 (!!) bad Decathlon cartridges, I settled on Skiing.

Another great game were you have to learn to do small adjustments to your trajectory and get as close as possible to the gates so that you can pass multiples in a row. 5 minutes became an hour, but I finally beat the 28.2 sec patch score, barely by doing 28.14 seconds. I read that Skiing introduced scrolling to Atari games, not sure if this is true, but it is really a well made game. And the controls are there also so simple, right and left only, the down direction being used for starting your run only. And the button ? well it is so useless that it is used to retry your run. No jumping or anything else, just reset. After Kaboom, another super simple to learn game, but probably hours of gameplay.
Skiing Atari 28.14s
So here you go patch #4 !!
28.14seconds and patch #4 Activision Skiing.

I am really getting low on Activision games now, I think I still have kaboom (errr) and Enduro to beat. Time to browse eBay/CL/Goodwill for more. I also want to try out these game son other consoles, either exclusives like the ones on the Intellivision, or the Atari 5200 renditions of the 2600 games.

Monday, August 4, 2014

2754 pts, 10 seconds from glory

I tried to reach the 3000 points at kaboom tonight again, and I was only able to get to 2754 points. I played for 1:30 hour, and while I can consistently reach 1200-1500 points, I only rarely passed the 2000 points barrier. However at that speed, you get so much point per bomb that I feel that I was super close (10 seconds ?) to getting the patch score when I landed on 2754.  Will try again later this week, this is definitively a great game, and it make use of the paddle controllers, which is very nice, as I always felt they were very underused.
Kaboom Atari 2754 points