Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Adventure Pt. 2

 

The next three titles in the Adventure games are all from the Swordquest series.  These games were originally intended as a four-part series, but only three games were released prior to the video game crash of 1983.  Like a lot of games, a lot more of the story in-game is told outside of the game itself.  In the manuals for each game, there are some cursory descriptions of what you are supposed to be doing, along with in-game mechanics.  Where the real story comes in, for each game, is from the accompanying comic book that does not actually come with this version of the game.  I will get into this a bit more with each game, but because I feel like it is an integral part of both enjoying these games and actually being able to play them, I needed to bring that up here first/again.

Swordquest: Earthworld

Swordquest: Earthworld. . . is interesting and a mixed bag.

As it is presented in this collection, it is a medium-firm "No."  First, the game manual references a 50+ page comic book that accompanied the original release of the game, which provides backstory to the game, and why you find yourself wandering in a zodiac-themed maze.  The characters Torr and Tarra interact with characters and enemies that feel like they might reference areas and objects in the game.  

Then, a little further in the game manual, it says that sometimes the video game itself will give you clues, like "16 4" which says that there is a clue to look up on Page 16, Panel 4 of the comic.  This comic is not included in this presentation of the game although I was able to find all three comics online.  As it stands, including a game that references a source material that is not included in the packaging and is only available from a 3rd party website is not great from the player's perspective.

I can easily see there is a certain amount of fun in this game from the 10 minutes I played.  Having a full comic book as part of the larger story that you look back to when prompted by the game is a neat gimmick and I can imagine being eight years old and sitting down to play along with a piece of paper with maps and notes along with the comic on a Saturday morning before cartoons start at 10 AM.  But as part of this collection, Atari would have had to include physical copies of these comics because you cannot save your game, exit the game, look up the comic in the Extras menu (because it doesn't exist there) then go back to the game to figure out what that 4th panel on page 16 was trying to hint at as all the while losing the momentum to get back to the game.  But, I guess we all have phones though, right?

I like the concept, and I like the execution by Atari for the original release of the game, but how they include it here, it's going to be a no from me dawg.  But that being said, I think I might actually come back to this once I get passed the feeling that I need to have all of this information from the comic tucked away, to have the comic out, and some paper for notes in order to beat this game

Verdict: No (At Least for Now).

Game 1: Did not finish.

Swordquest: Fireworld

Similar to Swordquest: Earthworld, there is an accompanying comic that the game manual suggests you have some knowledge of as well as to have on hand to decipher clues that you earn by referencing page numbers.  Unfortunately this time around, in the Fireworld, I was unable to complete any of the trials to figure out what the clues could have been because the trials, which are essentially mini-games, here were wonderfully difficult.  And by wonderful I mean they were a pain in the ass, all except the deadly snake pit which was alike a slow-moving shooter.

The majority of the tests that I came across involved dodging objects that would progressively get faster the more you get hit.  So, if you happen to get hit frequently (as I did nearly every time) by the objects be they fiery goblins, flaming firebirds, or jawing salamanders, the speed at which they fly at you increases with each hit, eventually making the test feel utterly impossible.  The other types of tests are in a similar vein, where you have to move the flying objects themselves into a stationary object at the bottom of the screen and one miss means that the objects fall faster and it becomes more difficult (see above).  Pile on top of all of that information that there is a lot of flashing going on from the objects themselves because some of them are spinning themselves, and also your run-of-the-mill memory issues with a lot of objects on the screen at the same time, and you have a hard to control and hard to see screen.

The other thing that I found rather annoying was that the layout of the maze seemed to be procedurally generated because the map I was creating while playing became useless after I tried doubling back to the room I just came from.  Just something I noticed.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: Did not finish.

Swordquest: Waterworld

Hmmmm.  You know, oddly enough, I did not hate Swordquest: Waterworld.

I started the game after going through the manual before even reading the accompanying comic because I thought that the game was going to be similarly developed.  That there were going to be difficult mini-games that were nearly impossible to beat, along with clues referencing a page and some dialogue from the comic to solve the puzzle.  While some of those preconceptions were true, based on what the manual said, I likely should have read the comic first because you apparently need to have a "careful poetic reading of the comic book ... [which will give you] information that will be helpful in selecting the valid word-clue answers from the false ones.", but even though I did not, I felt that this game was at least somewhat approachable.

Like the previous two games in the series, Waterworld has a maze of sorts and you perform one of three (randomly?) selected "skill-and-action tests."  If you successfully pass one of these tests, the following room will show you some or all of the available items to collect, but if you fail, they will be invisible and you will be unable to select them.  Thankfully the rooms appear in a vertical line and there is a roman numeral in the upper left corner that lets you know which room you are in, which is helpful if you decide that you are going to put all of your items in a single room.

While selecting items, the game did flash with two items at the bottom of the screen, presumably showing me a combination of items needed to function as a key.  I think.  I looked through the manual a couple of times to figure out what the end-game goal was and apart from finding the correct combination of items to place in each room, I cannot think of any way else to end the game.  Which I obviously did not.  

You know, I think I will go back and read the comic for Waterworld and reattempt this game because it feels more approachable than the first two in the series.  I like that the rooms are numbered and not procedurally generated, I like that it does not feel impossible to get the right combination of items together through a combination of trial and error and the (hopeful) knowledge from reading the comic (and interpreting it poetically).

Verdict: Yes.

Game 1: Did not finish.

So that is the Swordquest series and closing out the Adventure series as categorized by Atari and/or Code Mystics.  I have seen that the final game, Swordquest: Airworld will be included in Atari's 50th-anniversary game collection,  Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration which was released back on November 8th.  I cannot say if the comics are included in that presentation of the game.  However, I still feel that you would need to have a dedicated comic available when you are playing any of these games as backing out of the game to pull up a comic from the same game would get very cumbersome.  I guess you could always just print out the comic?

The point is, I felt that so much of the success of these games and being able to successfully play them all hinged on access to the comic and a comic with accurate page numbers at that.  And since that one thing is missing from how this collection is presented, I am really surprised that they were included in this collection with the belief that they could be enjoyed beyond nostalgia and as a video game history artifact.  But that is just me.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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