This collection of titles from the Mind Games category in
Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 on the Nintendo DS was harder to get into. Some of the proverbial roadblocks consisted of my internal bias against playing board game-style games against a computer opponent, gameplay limited by the number of players, and game controls. Most of the games in this backend collection of Mind Games I have played in one form or another but I still tried to approach each title with an open mind in terms of being adapted to the Atari 2600, but in some cases, those internal biases ran pretty deep.
Hangman
I guess one of the nice things I have to say about Hangman, is that because you are playing against a computer with computer rules, you know how many guesses you actually have, whereas, against a real person, you may not know if they are going to draw the neck as one against or is the neck and the body going to count as one against and not two? Hangman here gives you 11 wrong guesses to guess a four to six-letter word before it draws a monkey. The monkey means you lose. And let me tell you, despite the 3rd-grade vocabulary supposedly choosing from an easier selection of words, the two games I played had only four-letter words and that is difficult to do. As you can see on my scores, in both 3rd-grade games I had the most misses and I even lost on the second 3rd-grade game because I only guessed the A correctly for "BALL." I am sure that there is some kind of trick/skill to guessing a four-letter word correctly in 11 guesses. Yeah, RSTLNE I guess.
I mean, this is really just Hangman that you would play on the chalkboard/whiteboard in school as many times as you want, and Wordle I only have to play once per day.
Verdict: No.
Game 1: [1 Player, Up to High School Vocabulary] CODDLE (4/11)
Game 2: [1 Player, Up to 3rd Grade Vocabulary] HOUR (8/11)
Game 3: [1 Player, Up to 6th Grade Vocabulary] INSECT (1/11)
Game 4: [1 Player, Up to 9th Grade Vocabulary] SHREWD (6/11)
Game 5: [1 Player, Up to High School Vocabulary] PLAIN (3/11)
Game 6: [1 Player, Up to 3rd Grade Vocabulary] bAll (11/11)
Game 7: [1 Player, Up to 6th Grade Vocabulary] SECRET (4/11)
Math Gran Prix
Hmmm. I have mixed feelings about Math Gran Prix. For its concept, I love the idea of turn-based mechanics for games and genres that you would not normally think would mix well, like wrestling or in this case, car racing. This actually plays a lot like a board game in that you determine if you want to move 2 or 3 spaces, with the higher number of spaces being equivalent to a harder math problem. If you get the problem correct, you move your number of spaces and if you get it wrong, you do not move at all. The opposing car essentially does the same thing, but I never once saw the computer-controlled car not move for getting a problem incorrect, which does not really seem all that fair. You can also bump the other car off of the track if you land on the same space, making them lose a turn, and there are buffs on the track that allow you to take an extra move, protect you from being bumped off, etc.
My problem with Math Gran Prix is pretty much the same problem that I have with all board games played against a computer opponent. The computer can fudge its rolls, especially on the space that lets you move between 1 - 4 additional spaces if you land on it (like a slot machine). On my last race (Game 3), I was seven spaces ahead of the computer car which I had bumped off of the course. I was one space away from crossing the finish line. On their turn, the computer moved three spaces, landed on the buff that lets you move again, and they "rolled" a 4, so they bumped my car off of the track. On my next turn, I "repaired my car" and they moved and won the race. Yes, I am that kind of a paranoid person that believes that in these games, the computer-controlled character will cheat because it can, rolling the maximum number of spaces (on the 1-4 extra spaces buff), and never getting a math problem wrong. But I did win one race, so I got that going for me. Which is nice.
Verdict: No.
Game 1: [Addition and Subtraction, Medium (1-Player)] Lost
Game 2: [Addition and Subtraction, Hard (1-Player)] Won
Game 3: [Multiplication and Division, Hard (1-Player)] Lost
Surround
First off, of the 12 different play modes in the game, only two are playable as a single-player experience, leaving me only able to play in the standard up/down/left/right movement instead of diagonals, and you have to play surrounded by walls instead of the Wrap Around. And you cannot engage the Erase, which allows you to strategically not leave tracks or erase your own as you play. So, Surround is basically like the Light Cycle game in the Tron arcade, or essentially a competitive game of two-player Snake (except your tail/trail is permanent).
The first of the two modes play at a consistent speed, which is pretty slow and ate up most of my time. Maybe because I played on the B difficulty, being for amateurs, that dragged the game out. However, once I figured that I just had to literally surround the computer player by staying away from them while still encircling them, I managed to win 10 to 3. The controls did not feel great, although on my second game, I used the directional pad and the responsiveness felt a little better. The second game I played was in Speed Up mode, which increases the speed of all the players at the same time and it quickly becomes a game of "How fast can you react while anticipating the next speed up." The second game felt a little more exciting, but ultimately, eh.
Had there been more modes accessible in single-player mode, I could see my verdict being seated towards a Yes, but knowing what is essentially locked behind a wall (because I apparently don't have friends?) leaves a lot of potential unplayable, and that makes me sad.
Verdict: No.
Game 1: [2: 1-Player]: 3 - 10 (win)
Game 2: [4: 1-Player with Speed Up]: 10 - 8 (lost)
Video Checkers
The most interesting thing about Video Checkers was from the game manual, where it stated that the game is not capable of having the game board on the screen at the same time that the computer is deciding on the move it is going to make, so to save on processing power, the screen will flash black for an amount of time determined by the level of difficulty you are playing at. The harder the difficulty, the longer the screen flashes black, from anywhere between 1.5 seconds up to 15 minutes. The rest of the game is just Checkers with a really bad and clunky control scheme.
Because in Checkers, you can only move your pieces diagonally, Atari apparently thought it was a good idea to only let you move your cursor diagonally (although there might have been additional coding/scripting/whatever involved having the cursor be able to move in a different way than the pieces) by requiring to hold the joystick diagonally for over a second. And moving your flashing X cursor is not nearly as responsive as you would want it to be, often requiring the directional pad or joystick to be held down for a good second or more before the cursor actually moves. I stuck to using the directional pad because I felt that the joystick on the 3DS was not precise enough for the game to register that I wanted to move the cursor.
And I lost because I stopped caring and because I am bad at both Checkers and Video Checkers and apparently cannot fully grasp the concept of controlling the center while the other players' pieces surround me on the edges with their backsides protected and destroying my little Checker army.
Verdict: No.
Game 1: Lost
What kind of surprised me about not only this selection of Mind Games, but all of the games that fell under this category, is that my gut reaction was that I had a lot of fun with these games. But then when I look at all of the games together, I only "Yes'd" two out of seven games, which is not great (28.6%). Where I think a lot of those feelings stem from were Math Gran Prix, and Surround which felt like they really had potential, coupled with how pleasantly surprised I was by 3D Tic-Tac-Toe and how satisfying Atari Video Cube was even if not playing competitively, all created a false memory of actually enjoying more of the games than I actually did. I cannot decide if that is good or bad, but I know that whenever I throw Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 back into the 3DS I will give this category another go.
Except Video Checkers. Or Fun with Numbers. Maybe Surround.
Maybe.
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