Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (DS) -Atari 2600- Arcade at Home Pt. 1

 

Welcome back to our deep dive into Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, released on the Nintendo DS in 2010 by Code Mystics.  For the next two weeks, we will be looking at the games categorized as "Arcade at Home, all ports of classic Atari arcade games that not only attempted to recreate the feel of the original arcade cabinet while making use of a joystick and a single button, but also were able to add additional features and modes that would not have been possible in the arcade.  All of the original games we previously covered in their respective categories when we were looking at the arcade games (Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede) and while there has to be some reference and comparison between the two, I did try to go into each game with an open mind

Asteroids

You know, oddly enough, I actually enjoyed this version of Asteroids.  I liked the ability to decide what kind of ability my little ship had and how difficult I wanted to make it to earn an extra life.  I liked that the asteroids were bright blocks of color compared to the vector-line graphics of the arcade, although I do wish that the asteroids did break up into multiple fragments like in the arcade game because here, each asteroid just broke up into a single smaller and harder to hit piece.  I feel like the game description should have used "normal" instead of "slow" regarding the speed of the asteroids because the difference between slow and fast was noticeable, but I never felt out of my league.

I know a lot of Atari games have different variations or settings of the same game, be it single-player, two-player, and often other slight modifications to the game (like having ships that fire back in Submarine Commander).  Asteroids has 66 different variations.  These all range from the number of players to having access to shields to being able to activate a 180 turn, to activating your hyperspace engines to warp to another part of the screen to escape imminent destruction, to setting the bonus points needed for an extra life.  Two versions of the game implement a Young Children's Version which has slowed down asteroids, and an extra ship at the start.  Playing the game for only 10 minutes will allow me to experience maybe only 10% of the game types, but that is our plan, and that actually turned out to be perfect.

Out of all the ability options, I definitely preferred having the shield (Being similar in execution to Space Duel), which in one instance, to test the shield, I did explode after being hit by an asteroid, but that was likely because I held down the shield too long to see how long I could last while passing through a large asteroid.  It turns out you gain about 1 second of invulnerability before you end up exploding.  In other instances where I activated the shield before an asteroid hit, it ended up just passing through my ship leaving me unharmed.  The hyperspace ability was fun but in a stressful way because, from what I could tell, you could not decide where you spawned out of hyperspace.  Maybe it is decided by the direction your ship is pointing and the game chooses a random point between where you are and the edge of the screen, but even then, coming out of hyperspace still might only give you a split second for your eyes to catch up to figure out which way you needed to fly to avoid another asteroid.  Lastly, the flip ability, which is as simple as its name implies, just flips your ship 180 degrees, but you still maintain the same velocity in the direction you were previously facing.  So the flip really is only useful if there is an asteroid about to hit you from the opposite direction you are facing.

Lastly, this was the first 2600 game I played in this collection that had any semblance of music, albeit simplistic JAWS-inspired music that felt like it was speeding up to the end of the stage and if I did not shoot the last asteroid fragment before the song reached its tempo-increased end then my ship would explode.  Not really being an Asteroids person from the arcade game, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I found I was having here in this graphically simplified but heavily variable port of Asteroids.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: (1-player, hyperspace, bonus every 5000, slow) 2210
• Game 2: (1-player, hyperspace, bonus every 5000, fast) 6490
• Game 3: (1-player, shields, bonus every 5000, slow) 8980
• Game 4: (1-player, flip, no bonus, fast) 3750
• Game 5: (1-player, children's version) 2740

Battlezone

Wow.  Just wow.  I was honestly not looking forward to playing this iteration of Battlezone as I was expecting a poorer version of the arcade game that I already did not like.  But once again, like the simplified version of Asteroids, Battlezone's adaptation to the Atari 2600 surprised me in a lot of ways.  First off, I had fun,  I actually did not mind playing the game six times in 10 minutes.  I liked that the game options were simple, that there were just three difficulty settings and nothing else to worry about.  

In-game, you had your radar which accurately showed you where enemies were, and your view screen, which was more like a third-person view rather than an attempt at a view from a targeting periscope similar to the arcade game.  So there you are, just driving your tank around through a grassy field hunting down other tanks, a spastic fighter jet-thing that I could never shoot down, and a purple flying saucer that never fired back and was supposed to be a distraction but I found to be fun and engaging.  The number of colors on the screen was rather surprising too as I was expecting a single-color foreground, a single-color background, a super blocky radar, and slow gameplay.  This was a really fun, faster-than-expected third-person tank shooter with satisfying Atari 2600-level explosions.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: (Novice) 20000
• Game 2: (Intermediate) 28000
• Game 3: (Advanced) 17000
• Game 4: (Intermediate) 25000
• Game 5: (Intermediate) 14000
• Game 6: (Advanced) 9000

Centipede

This version of Centipede took me a moment to get used to.  I was expecting at least a triangle-shaped avatar similar to the sprite in the arcade version but instead, you are a featureless rectangle that at moments looks too similar to the blocks that are supposed to be the mushrooms from the arcade game.  Maybe because I was playing the game on a New 3DS screen and not a TV, but the projectile your little Elf character is firing at the invading centipede was very faint, especially when the color scheme is on the darker red side, so it can be hard to know exactly where your projectiles are hitting.  

Despite the simplified graphics, this still feels like Centipede, but only on the Standard Version, in which the game manual is not specific on the differences between Standard and Children's versions, despite the total point ceiling of 999,999 and 99,999 respectively.  To me, in the Children's version, the enemies moved a little slower allowing me to get a much higher score than any of the other games I played in the Standard Version.  That being said, I did grow pretty bored playing the Children's version as it felt like the challenge of the game had been stripped away, which I guess is kind of the point.

I do wish that there were other modes in the Atari 2600 version of the game besides just the Standard and Children's versions because only having two modes with only one I found enjoyable gives me overall mixed feelings about the game.  Yes, the Standard mode still feels like Centipede, but the Children's version takes away a lot of the tension.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: (Standard Version) 6750
• Game 2: (Standard Version) 8724
• Game 3: (Children's Version) 39935
• Game 4: (Standard Version) 15439

So that closes out the first three of six games in the "Arcade at Home" category for Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1.  I was pretty surprised by all of these games, initially going into them thinking that I was going to get inferior versions of the original arcade games and while there are necessary downgrades to each of the games here, I felt that each still retained the feeling of the original game and in the case of Battlezone, the simplified mechanics and presentation was exactly the way to approach this specific title.  Very happy all around with this selection.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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