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

Welcome back and apologies for the delay.  I ran into an issue last Friday (December 30th) where I had not uploaded pictures for the following three games and then I found out that my 3DS was back with my in-laws and I was not about to drive back over The Pass and then back again over The Pass so that I could go back to work on Friday.  I also realize that today, being the first Monday or Friday of the month, I would normally post our Year in Review but I wanted to get this article out today and just move the aforementioned article to Monday (January 9th).  Now that that housekeeping is out of the way, let us get to the last three games in the "Arcade at Home" category which includes two arcade ports, and one unfinished and unreleased game.

Gravitar

It probably would have helped if I liked the Gravitar arcade game to begin with as the Atari 2600 port really felt like the arcade game, so at least success on that front.  Yes, the controls and graphics are all simplified, as is to be expected, but knowing what to expect and how the game is played I felt gave me a bit of an advantage going into this iteration.  That being said, I am still not a fan of Gravitar.  The game is too strict and difficult for me to have much fun.  The wildness in my scores over the 10 minutes I played showed that even having played the arcade game, I was not able to git gud enough to actually improve my score.  Granted, there were times when I would try to get to a specific solar system just to find out what that particular level was like and then found myself stuck there as the game will not let you leave until you have destroyed all of the enemy gun placements.  I think.  I may have also gotten pulled into the sun on a few occasions.

Honestly, it really just boils down to the base game and the authentically created experience is just too difficult and the pixel-perfect flying required to maneuver around tight corners and avoid enemy fire is just not fun for me.

Verdict: No.

• Game 1: 2000
• Game 2: 1250
• Game 3: 1050
• Game 4: 850
• Game 5: 1400
• Game 6: 950
• Game 7: 1150

Missile Command

First off, there are 17 variations of the single-player mode, and knowing that I could not play them all in 10 minutes, I stuck with a few, but still tried to play as many as I could without compromising each game I played (as in I did not try to lose to play more modes).  I did accidentally start my first game as a two-player game and while it seemed to play/control the same as the single-player game, I am not sure why my score was so low compared to the single-player games.

What somewhat surprised me about this game was that I actually enjoyed the game more with smart cruise missiles compared to the slower ones.  Similar to my experience with Centipede on the 2600, the easier modes felt too easy and felt like there was not enough challenge to keep the gameplay interesting.  Even though I ended up dying (having all the cities destroyed) in the end, it still felt like it was through my own error and not that the game beat me on its own; like in baseball if the other team got a base hit because the throw to the first base player was overthrown.

My only gripe with the game was that because you control your reticle with the joystick, it moves slower than it would with the trackball in the arcade or the stylus on the screen and I felt that I could rarely get the reticle where I wanted it to be as fast as I needed it to be and my resulting shot was never as accurate as I wanted to be; this was especially true in the later levels when the cruise missiles were coming in fast.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: 2370 (2-player, start at level 7, smart cruise missiles, slow target)
• Game 2: 15355 (1-player, start at level 1, dumb cruise missiles, slow target)
• Game 3: 13010 (1-player, start at level 1, dumb cruise missiles, fast target)
• Game 4: 11875 (1-player, start at level 1, smart cruise missiles, fast target)

Tempest

Tempest is a bit of an outlier in this collection, although it does fall into the Arcade at Home category because it is just that.  The in-game description says that Tempest is "An unreleased prototype..." which is, at least I think, pretty cool that this Atari 2600 port was pulled out of potential obscurity.  There is no accompanying manual to go along with the game so it was kind of figure out as you go along, but having knowledge of how Tempest is supposed to be played was key to figuring out how to play the game with Atari 2600 graphics.

However, it is probably better that Tempest was not released for a couple of reasons.  First off, unlike the arcade game, you only have a single section to play on instead of an entire polygon, looking like a blue/black striped pair of underwear.  Your playable character and the enemy characters look close enough to whatever they are supposed to be in the arcade game, even getting some of the movements accurate.  And while you still shoot towards the center of the screen while the enemies come climbing out of the void, that is where the similarities end.

It is not always easy to tell which segment the enemies are coming up from and where you need to be to hit them, even when they are not moving laterally.  Unlike the arcade where each stage presents a new and more complex polygon to move around, all of the stages here, or at least the first three because that was all I was to make it up to, are all identical.  Starting in the second stage though is when enemies start shooting back at you, but half the time I could not tell what it was that hit me.  I thought I had waited long enough for their shot to pass before moving over on top of the path they were taking to shoot them only for my character to die.  I was also not 100% sure if when the enemies got to the top that they would start hunting you like in the arcade and at times it seemed like that was the case, but other times I could move on top of them and still shoot them.

I get what Atari was trying to accomplish with this prototype and it does look like Tempest, albeit Tempest-Lite, but it does not feel like Tempest, or at least how I want Tempest to feel.

Verdict: No.

• Game 1: 3300 (5 Lives, Easy)
• Game 2: 2550 (3 Lives, Easy)
• Game 3: 1950 (5 Lives, Hard)
• Game 4: 2550 (3 Lives, Hard)
• Game 5: 5200 (5 Lives, Easy)
• Game 6: 3000 (3 Lives, Easy)
• Game 7: 4150 (5 Lives, Hard)
• Game 8: 4400 (3 Lives, Hard)

So that closes out our look at the Atari 2600 ports (and a prototype) of their respective arcade games.  Having a ratio of four out of six games, being surprised the most by Battlezone and disappointed by the prototype of Tempest.  I guess it somewhat evens out with two of the games today receiving a No on the Replayability Verdict compared to the clean sweep of Yes from "Arcade at Home" Part I.  Something else I discovered while playing these games, is that it is somewhat difficult to take a good-looking picture of action-oriented games on the 3DS while also holding the camera in your hands.

We will be back on Friday, January 13th with our look at the next series of games from Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Diet (Yuri Sakazaki BGM)" - Art of Fighting 2 (NEO•GEO)

 

"Diet (Yuri Sakazaki BGM) from Art of Fighting 2 on the Neo Geo Arcade (1994)

Composers: Yasuhiro Naka, Yasumasa Yamada, & Yoshihiko Kitamura

Album: Art of Fighting 2 The Definitive Soundtrack

Label: Generation Series

Publisher: SNK

Developer: SNK

I like the energy in this song is pretty much the basis for the entire song.  I have also never played Art of Fighting 2.  Yet?

The song starts with instrumentation reminiscent of "Techno Syndrome" by The Immortals used in the 1994 adaptation of Mortal Kombat.  Not having played Art of Fighting 2, I am not sure if the sound effect that is used on beats 2 and 4 for the duration of the song is the punch/kicking sounds in-game, and I would find it super cool if it was, but I love the sound effect used here in lieu of the 80s pop clapping sound.  Even the theme that takes over at about 0:18 is similar enough to "Techno Syndrome'' that "Diet" invokes that feeling without coming across as desperately derivative; or maybe it does and I am just biased.  Then at 0:28 a new theme takes over again, it sounds kinda similar to "Techno Syndrome" again but also introduces the guy saying "One! Two!" for the next couple of phrases then comes back as an outro of sorts before the song repeats at 1:03.

I just thought this would work as an appropriate song for our first MIDI Week Single of the new year.  People making resolutions (Diet, eh!?), needing a little boost to springboard them (and myself) into some semblance of uplifting personal productivity is potentially a good thing.  And the song comes with your own personal trainer too to help you count off those jogging steps.  I don't know.  I just thought this would be an upbeat song to ring in 2023, whatever that means.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PC/SD)

 

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Systems: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Release Date: February 5, 2015

Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment & FromSoftware
Developer: FromSoftware

This is going to be a short article (I of course say that now) because we have already talked about Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin multiple times already (here, and here) and while I do not have a lot more to say about a game that is eight and seven years old, there are some aspects about the game I want to address, as well as how I played the game, my experience playing it, if you will.

Let me start off with how I perceived the game prior to playing it for the first time back in 2017 and then again in September 2022.  I had heard back in 2017 that Dark Souls II was the black sheep of the Souls games but I could not have told you exactly why, only that it was apparently different enough that people did not like it as much as Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls III, or Bloodborne.  I think the only thing I can definitely recall hearing was that DSII did not play as fair and that traversing through areas was not as tight as the first DS.  Being a fan (after several unsuccessful attempts) of Dark Souls, I was a little let down by what I had been hearing, especially about how the various areas were connected.  Then I watched Happy Souls, sometime before playing for the first time back in 2017, and apparently because I was weak-willed, I interpreted how traversing between areas in that video as how it happened in-game; if you are not familiar with Happy Souls, the animation showed movement between areas like a parody of an Indiana Jones movie and if you have not seen an Indiana Jones movie, then DM me and we will figure out a way to fix that.  It turns out that it is likely that people were upset about being able to fast-travel from the start whereas, in DS1, it is a mechanic you unlock close to the end of the game.

So I was wrong on the map-moving and general dogging on fast-travel for a couple of reasons.  First is because of Majula and how it ends up becoming a central hub for you, growing from a desolate waste of a village to a semi-bustling hub of commerce, magic, and ladders.  It is also the only place you can level up so I found myself traveling back there very often to level up.  And upgrade my gear.  And buy spells.  And repair broken equipment.  And talk to people.  There were paths back to Majula, but the way I played a lot of the early levels, that would have meant a lot of backtracking through empty areas and doing a lot of running through some beautiful scenery.  So I admit that I fast-traveled fairly frequently because some areas are large and sprawling, while others offer only one-way routes with no ability to backtrack to the beginning of the area (looking specifically at you DLC stages).  I also leveled up a lot.  As in, a lot, a lot.  I finished the base game at level 195 after 127 hours.

When I say I played Dark Souls II on easy mode, this is what I mean.  Especially in the early stages, I would clear out the area to the point where enemies would no longer respawn, partly to make the path to the boss a little easier, but I also found that by the time I finished exploring all the way to what looked like a boss fog door, I would have a host of souls that I could use to level up, and since souls in Dark Souls II are somewhat limited (excluding Bonefire Ascetic to a lesser extent, and the Company Champion's Covenant), I was somewhat averse to charging into a boss fight with 20,000+ souls when I could just head back to the nearest bonfire to head back to Majula to level up.  Or in some cases, I might be a few thousand souls short of being able to level up, so I would backtrack to the bonfire to travel to another area where I had not eliminated every enemy yet.  And then level up again.  I genuinely do not remember leveling in the first Dark Souls being this easy in terms of the number of souls needed to level up, but I could be wrong.  I was also not against summoning computer-operated NPCs to help out in boss fights, especially Lucatiel when available, but I was not against summoning two additional NPCs as I was more focused on progressing through the area than I was on attempting boss fights over and over and over and over again.  Plus I was not as concerned about losing out on earning more souls for not having summoned NPCs helping out.  That being said, I did not initially make the connection between being able to summon NPCs and having your humanity restored until I failed the fight against the Ruin Sentinels and approached the area with my humanity restored to bring my HP back up to max.  I found that I could summon Pilgrim Bellclaire who I admittedly used as fodder and a distraction during my next three attempts.

My character build, because that is really all anyone ever cares about, started out as an Int/Dex build that changed to an Int/Str Sorcerer build which became more of a quality build by the end of the game for a couple of reasons; although I did find multiple definitions of what constitutes a "quality build."  At some point around the time I was starting to visit Heide's Tower of Flame (before taking on The Pursuer on the rampart) I realized that I wanted to wear armor that offered better poise than the lighter and medium grade sorcerer styled armors but the heavier armors required additional points to go into Vitality so that I could wear heavier (and poisier) armor and use heavier weapons.  And with heavier weapons, comes a higher Strenght requirement, so that had to go up as well.  And let us not forget about our friend Adapatibility to increase those infinity frames while rolling because when you are rolling, you do not have time to parry; I don't think I parried once the entire game.  I ended up leaving my Dex in the low 20s because I found that a lot of my gear did not require that attribute and I only leveled up Faith when nothing else leveled up enough stats and when it would still increase my magic damage, although that seemed capped once my Int reached 50.  I also rarely leveled up Vigor because it would often only increase my max HP by 30 whereas I felt that having other stats increase offered a better option for surviving fights and dealing damage.

For gear, I bounced around a bit until I found the Drangleic armor set and that became my default armor for most of the game until I went up against The Old Iron King and needed something beefier in terms of fire defense, and then I wore the Alonne Captain Armor for most of the game.  Only after getting my Vitality up did I switch over to various pieces of Vengarl's Armor set, which I wore through the end of the game.  I did try experimenting with weapons a bit, but once I found and started upgrading the Craftman's Hammer, that was my melee weapon.  For casting spells, I stuck with the standard Sorcerer's Staff because it scaled so well compared to other staves I found.  Once my Int was up to 50 though, I switched over and upgraded the Staff of Wisdom to +5 and then infused it with Magic for that extra oomph.

I went through parts of each DLC area, making it to Sinh in the Sunken City but did not defeat him after a couple of attempts and trying to find good poison-resistant armor.  I also made it just past the second bonfire in Frozen Eleum Loyce before attempting the Sunken City again.  I made it a decent way through Brume Tower, getting past the third bonfire and into some horrible caves filled with lightning-throwing asshats. After these many failed attempts at Brume Tower, I decided to just go and give what I thought the end-game boss in the Throne of Want.  Just outside the fog door, I summoned both Vengarl and Benhart.  We all fought the Throne Watcher and Throne Defender, although Vengarl died during that battle.  So a weakened Benhart and I took on Nashandra although he died in the process, but I was not too concerned as he did help me bring her down to about half health, but oh boy that curse effect.

I did not participate in any voluntary invasions and of the two to five times I was invaded by hostile players, I might have defeated one.  Invading or being invaded was never a mechanic in either Dark Souls or Dark Souls II (and presumably in any of FromSoftware's games), which is probably why I played a good portion of the middle game in offline mode.  I did like that there were scripted invasions though as a lot of them could be cheesed either by using magic or simply by using any shield with a 100 rating in damage reduction and staggering an opponent after hitting the shield; although this did not always work against invaders like the occasional Forlorn or Jester Thomas.  I did feel though that FromSoftware went a little overboard with all of the PvP-focused areas that were essentially dead ends and while some of the areas were very cool looking and added a bit to the lore of the game (although I still need to do a deep dive into the lore of the game), once I discovered that the Undead Purgatory, Doors of Pharros, Grave of Saints, the Belfry Luna and Sol were all PvP oriented areas, I had no further reason to really explore those areas; except to visit Gavlan on occasion.

I do not know if I would claim that I got gud at Dark Souls II.  I mean, I did use the different avenues the game offered me to finish the main game.  I spent 127 hours playing, leveling up to 195, and died 349 times.  But hey, I did beat the main game, and I can say that.  So I did.

I know that there are some things that I am inadvertently leaving out, but that is going to happen when one tries to write a condensed article after playing a game for 127 hours.  There are some story points that were left unresolved that I do not know if they are covered in any of the DLC areas, such as The Pursuer.  Like, I have read the theory that they are the protagonist from the first Dark Souls, but there was no resolution with how frequently they showed up.  There was just the last encounter in the same room as the Smelter Demon, but that specific location did not feel like there was any special significance, but I could be wrong on that as I know that Dark Souls lore is deliberately vague; yes, I know about the two Pursuers being in the thrown room in Drangleic and that is just stupidly nuts.  Then there was the seemingly random-ish noble guy standing in a study after the fight with The Duke's Dear Freja; was that The Duke?  I think I will just watch a lore video.

So yeah, I really enjoyed Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, even if I did not finish all of the DLC areas.  I think part of that came from going into the game thinking that I was not going to like it based on what I had heard on the Internet prior to the first time playing, and then this time.  I am looking forward to Dark Souls III, but I might take a break to play something a bit shorter where I won't end up sinking another 125 hours into a single game.  But these games are a lot of fun.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

P.S.  Told you this was going to be a brief article.

MIDI Week Singles: "Winter (The Wind Can Be Still)" - Stardew Valley (NS)

 

"Winter (The Wind Can Be Still) from Stardew Valley on Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita, iOS, & Android (2016 - 2019)

Composer: ConcernedApe / Eric Barone

Album: Stardew Valley OST

Label: Bandcamp

Publisher: ConcernedApe

Developer: ConcernedApe

While I have played Stardew Valley a bit, I never made it through the calendar year to reach the winter months to actually hear this song, but I did watch Conklederp play her character quite a bit and I feel like I can hear the chipping away and rocks, and the collecting of gems while this song plays.

What I think is interesting about this song, is that I get both Vangelis' Blade Runner vibes (albeit less aggressive), along with Tangerine Dream's synth-heavy score from Legend (less Prince of Darkness and more sticking it to the evil corporation with a prize-winning bushel of eggplant), neither of which are particularly wintery movies (although the land does become frozen over after the Goblins capture the Unicorn), but they were both composed in the '80s and something about this song reminds me of that time.  Maybe it is how Conklederp approached Stardew Valley without any spreadsheets or digital farmer's almanacs to calculate which season produces the highest yield of Hops or Poppies, that just makes me want to hang out under a warm quilt with a mug of mulled wine while it's snowing outside watching her tend to her digital farm while digital snow falls.  

Maybe it is all reaching a bit, but that is what this song makes me think about at least.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And in the Darkness Shining Far Beyond the Starlight

Game EXP: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (NS)

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

System: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: July 16, 2021

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Tantalus Media & Nintendo EAD

I had a couple of iterations of my Game EXP article for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD on the Nintendo Switch, and none of them I was happy with.  Each article inevitably turned into a list of things I did not like in the game that felt like a poorly written walkthrough article with an apparent axe to grind.  Let us see if we can condense all of those previous articles, along with what I said in my First Impressions article waaaay back in March.

First and foremost, I did enjoy the game for the most part.  I liked how the story that seemingly started the entire Legend of Zelda mythology unfolded.  I liked Fi, but apparently, that is because her character and her mechanics were modified from being overly annoying in her interjections in the original Wii version compared to the Switch version.  I initially started out really annoyed by Link's romantic rival Groose, and I think he was manufactured for me to feel that way about him, but his arc over the course of the game was well played out.  I also thought that Link's arc was thoroughly refreshing in that while part of his character was deemed that of the Hero, there was still a lot of proving he had to go through before that title was fully realized.  Even Impa called out Link as a wannabe Hero and not up to the task of rescuing Zelda in a way that was not tough love, but instead very real criticism.  The main villain, Ghirahim I was a little more mixed on but I cannot put my finger on it, although I think it was primarily because of his fight mechanics which I will cover below when I get into my criticisms of the fight and puzzle mechanics.  I did like the almost cliche reaction to Link as being insignificant and toys with him in each of the early fights instead of outright killing him, but again, Impa thought Link as insignificant as well, so it was nice to have some consistency between two characters with polar opposite goals.

Mechanics.  I already covered a lot of the issues I had with the mechanics in this game in my First Impressions article.  Briefly, though, I found that I struggled somewhat with several of the puzzles, which include some of the fight mechanics because they were heavily designed around the Wii mote as the primary way to control Link.  When the game was ported to the Switch and motion controls became optional, this took away the need of the player to constantly think about motion controls as the primary way to interact with the world.  With so much of the game created with the idea that players would be in the headspace of motion controls, this did not always translate when motion controls were made optional and since I played 95% of the game in handheld mode (and for people playing on the Switch Lite), I was not always thinking about how the novelty of motion-controls was the basis for so many puzzle solutions in the game.  Thinking about how you can move the joystick on a controller is vastly different from thinking about how you can move your arm and hand while holding a controller.

Another issue I had was the direction that Nintendo had taken the Zelda franchise from Wind Waker in 2002 through Skyward Sword in 2011 (omitting Twilight Princess in 2006 which was closer to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in terms of overworld traversal), also including Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, and that is traversing the world map in a vehicle with a lot of nothing between locations.  Getting anywhere in the Skyworld while flying on Link's respective Loftwing always felt like it took too much time and I wished that there was a fast travel option (and if you know me and fast travel, that is not a good thing).  I feel like I partially understand the reason behind this decision (maybe?) that it was done to help convey the size of the world, that this portion of the world is massive, but the way that this was executed is where I felt let down.  Sure there were semi-interesting characters to talk and run into on various floating islands scattered about, but since a lot of them were based around mini-games to earn more rupees (and presumably more Heart Containers?), I felt more that I did not have the interest ins traversing large swaths of clouded sky to get to their places.

Let us talk about something positive before we close out: the music.  The music was absolutely gorgeous, and kind of what I had been looking from a Legend of Zelda game since Ocarina of Time.  I loved the full orchestration and this was the primary highlight of flying anywhere was that theme.  Not only was it a gorgeous theme with elements from the original Legend of Zelda overworld theme, but it conveyed the wonder of flying and the hero that Link would eventually become.  And as mentioned previously, the Lanayru Desert theme was another theme that I did not mind listening to as I tried to find my way around the sandy barren lands.  Just all around, Shiho Fuji did an amazing job with the music in this game.

You know, I think I will end it there on that high note.  I enjoyed the story, the character arcs, and the imagining of these characters that I have been playing and interacting with for the past 33 years, and even with all of the mechanics that did not translate well from the Wii to the Switch, I am still very happy that I was finally able to play this game in a franchise that I had begun to lose interest in (prior to Breath of the Wild, although Spirit Tracks did not help with that at all).  Now I will be jumping into The Minish Cap, probably sometime soon or after I finish "Fire Emblem" on the Wii U Virtual Console; or maybe at the same time, because why not?

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Don't Grow Up Too Fast

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
S nem látja bajai végét

MIDI Week Singles: "Northern Hemispheres" - Donkey Kong Country (SNES)

 

"Northern Hemispheres" from Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1994)

Composer: Eveline Fischer

Album: DK Jamz: The Original Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack

Label: Nintendo of America

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Rare

Like a lot of the music in Donkey Kong Country, you do not often hear the song unbroken all of the way through by the time you finish the stage, be it because the stages are sometimes not long enough to hear the entire song, while more often than not, the song is broken up by entering bonus stages.  The first instance of "Northern Hemispheres" is in the first stage, Snow Barrel Blast in the Gorilla Glacier stage, and it is only a couple of seconds before you can enter your first bonus stage, and as is the case in Donkey Kong Country when you emerge from said bonus stage, the song itself resets.

There are some telltale music cues in "Northern Hemispheres" although most of the sense of cold I get from this song is primarily from the nostalgia goggles that tell me a multi-layered blizzard is about to descend upon me while slipping around snow-capped peaks.  The higher-toned piano notes make me think of a glass xylophone, there are some jingly-bell-like tones scattered throughout, and the glissando-ing high-pitched synthesizer-like-instrument (around 1:19) at least for me, for whatever reason, invokes a feeling of cold.  So I do recognize that while there are a few elements from this song that would be found in stereotypical music for an ice or snow world, a lot of the reason for its including today is because I have fond (and agonizing) memories of Gorilla Glacier and this song playing over some of the best snow and blizzard effects in an SNES era video game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Rise Another Day Across the Distant Skies