Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) - Atari Arcade - Home Arcade

This collection of four games is our last of ported arcade games with modified controls.  This collection probably makes the least sense collectively as they are all different thematically, have different scoring systems, and use different control setups.  I decided on the Home Arcade subtitle because you are playing ported arcade games in your home, and almost every arcade I have been to in the last 10 years has at least two of the games in this particular collection, with Pong being the one I have seen the least out in the wild.  As such, these games are ones that I am more likely to play in a real arcade because I know the mechanics and I do manage to have fun playing them even when I find that I am not great at playing them overall.

Centipede

The presentation for Centipede was very nicely done in their attempt to recreate the feel of the arcade cabinet and how you play the game on the DS can be varied.  You have the option of playing either holding the DS like you would normally for most games, or you can turn the system on its side to play with a vertical screen; plus, either have the screen rotated depending if you hold the stylus in your left or right hand.  Then you have the option of playing with the stylus directing Oliver the Elf (because that is what you are in this game according to the Atari 2600 game manual) directly on the screen, or you have the option of using the stylus as you would the trackball that is part of the original arcade cabinet.  I decided to play right-hand vertical and at first, I thought I would prefer to use the stylus to move around directly on the screen, but after the first game, I found that my hand would get in the way of the screen on the bottom which is not good when you have a spider bouncing around that you are either trying to shoot or avoid.  The trackball I actually found to be responsive and I was not constantly swiping the ball to move; although I did not take any measurements to determine if Oliver moved 1/4 the width of the screen for every full trackball swipe.

But Centipede here is essentially the same Centipede in the arcade, although by holding the 3DS vertically, you have to use either the L/R shoulder buttons or the directional pad to fire magical darts from your wand.  Using the directional pad made me feel like I did not have a great grip on the 3DS and using my thumb to mash the R shoulder button became a little uncomfortable (but manageable), although you could hold down the button to rapid-fire.

I am sure there are tactics and a technique to Centipede, something about controlling the jumping spiders at the bottom of the screen and the number of mushrooms dotting the lower third of the screen and where you shoot the centipede so you don't end up with eight heads speeding towards you while still maximizing the number of points you earn each stage.  For me, I would focus on the spider and inevitably hit the centipede at the top of the screen.  I found that I was consistently getting to the second and third stage and in the later games I was at, I think, the fourth stage when I got the game over.

Verdict: Yes

• Game 1: 4,862
• Game 2: 5,952
• Game 3: 10,799
• Game 4: 11,514
• Game 5: 11,054

Missile Command

Missile Command was an interesting game because I feel like there is a lot of legacy that comes with the name despite only having played it a few times in an actual arcade. The concept of the game is that you are operating a missile command station while the cities you are defending are bombarded with incoming missiles.  The missiles you fire do not actually hit and knock out incoming missiles, instead it is the explosion from the missile that destroys the inbound missiles so you have to figure out timing based on where your targeting reticule is, and where the enemy missiles will be when your missile explodes.  Add on top of that, that the enemy missiles will sometimes split off to create additional missiles, often not flying off at 90-degree angles from their original trajectory.  Add on top of that, you have three missile firing stations and each station is equipped with a finite number of missiles.  So unless you are very conscious about how many missiles you are firing, how much you are missing, and how many more incoming missiles there are, you could very much run out of defensive missiles before the end of the stage leaving not only your cities but your missile firing stations open to attack and destruction.

Scoring in the game is made up of a combination of how many missiles you have left, how many cities and firing stations you have left, and if you shot down any additional slow-moving aircraft (similar to the alien ship that flies across the top of the screen in Space Invaders).  You gotta save your family!

The control options in this game are firing using the directional pad to fire from specific missile stations and either the stylus on the screen for targeting, or using the stylus on a virtual trackball.  Before I started, I thought that I would prefer the accuracy of the stylus for targeting, but I found that my hand would get in the way of the screen, especially when firing on the left side and that my shots were a lot more erratic.  When I used the virtual trackball, to me it felt more authentic to playing in the arcade and similar to playing Centipede with the trackball.  The trackball was very responsive and I never felt that I had to move the stylus more than twice to get it across the screen to line up the reticule to where I wanted to aim.  Firing in this mode felt less erratic, but I would still lose all of my cities and firing stations by the third or fourth stage.  That being said, I did get my highest score with the stylus method.

While the game does start to feel nearly impossible by the end of the third stage, it still manages to feel fun, if only because there is that nagging feeling that maybe if I had gotten that missile earlier, it would not have split up into four more missiles and I would not have run out with the central missile-firing station.

Verdict: Yes

• Game 1: trackball 3,085
• Game 2: trackball 6,140
• Game 3: stylus 6,560
• Game 4: stylus 5,615
• Game 5: stylus 5,905

Pong

Yeah, Pong.  But unlike the arcade version of Pong, in this game, you can only play a one-player game against a computer opponent.  I should not have to explain Pong, but let us remain consistent.

Pong is essentially digital ping pong with some obviously needed modifications.  You control a paddle that hits back a block/ball across a line/net to your opponent who has to hit the ball back without the block/ball getting past them.  The ball can ricochet off of the top and bottom walls and the angle that your paddle strikes the ball can alter its return angle and the speed of the return.  That's it.  The control settings were similar to previous games where I could control the paddle with the stylus, or I could use a vertical slider (still using the stylus mind you) to control the paddle.  I only played one game with the stylus, and despite being the only game I won, I did not like the feel because you control the left paddle, but I was using the stylus on the right side of the screen so I felt more disconnected than using the slider option on the bottom screen while controlling the paddle.

Well, it turns out that playing Pong against a computer opponent was a lot less fun than I was anticipating.  In my first two games, I got into a stalemate as the ball got stuck at the bottom of the screen with both myself and the computer opponent leaving our respective paddles in place, not moving, and the ball bouncing back and forth in a straight line.  So I restarted the game.  In the third game when this happened, I did manage to unstick the ball by quickly bringing the paddle down right before it hit the ball and this seemed to work to dislodge it from the beep-beep monotony, but it did not always seem to work; or I am just bad at Pong.

If I ever play Pong again, it will likely be in an arcade for the novelty of playing one of the first arcade video games, or if there is a modernized version for virtual reality.

Verdict: No.

• Game 1: [stalemate] (slider) 2 - 3
• Game 2: [stalemate] (slider) 0 - 2
• Game 3: (stylus) 11 - 8
• Game 4: (slider) 6 - 11

Tempest

I cannot explain why I have a soft spot in my heart for Tempest but I do.  For me, there is just something about the vector line graphics, the novel take on a space shooter, and the dial used on the arcade cabinet as the only mode of locomotion for whatever it is that your character/ship/thing is supposed to be as it crawls across the top of the playfield (called the "web").  

A lot of what I love about Tempest is in this presentation too, except the dial controls.  Like a lot of the games, you have the option of two control schemes, but the ones here are vastly different.  First, you can use the directional pad to move around the web by pressing either the left or right buttons, but this, to me, felt very inaccurate, especially in stages 4 and up as there are areas on the web that are very small and easy to miss if there is an enemy or spike making its way up.  Oftentimes I found myself overshooting where I wanted to be aiming.  The second option is to use the stylus, which ended up being my preferred method.  You would think that moving the stylus across the screen would get your hand in the way, and you would be correct, but this felt like the best and most responsive method to play Tempest.  I wish that there was the option to have a dial on the bottom screen that you could rotate with the stylus and have the playfield on the upper screen.

That being said, I still found this presentation of Tempest a lot of fun to play, not as much as playing it on the arcade cabinet, but that is the trade-off I guess.

Verdict: Yes

• Game 1: 0  [Don't ask, this was a bad game]
• Game 2: 2,700
• Game 3: 6,100
• Game 4: 1,936
• Game 5: 11,144
• Game 6: 6,250
• Game 7: 7,610
• Game 8: 6,000

So now we close out the ported arcade games, at least somewhat on a high note with three of the four games receiving/earning a Yes verdict.  At the end of the series, we will do a recap with the full list of games and their respective verdicts for ease of access, or you can click back through the links to the right.  But this selection of games was a more-or-less solid selection of what Atari had to offer in arcades in the '80s.  

In the coming weeks and months we will be moving to the Atari 2600, which does have ports of almost all of the arcade games we have covered these last handful of weeks, although the "Arcade at Home" games will feature in December as we will move onto a couple of weeks with Adventure games; alphabetical and all.  So stay tuned for some more Atari fun next Friday as we jump into the Atari 2600 and I hope that you gained a little bit of insight into the ported Atari arcade games, as well as personal insight on the types of games that I sometimes prefer, be they games from 2020 or 1980.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

P.S.  I still really need to work on my outros.