I wasn't fortunate to play these games the first time around, since I was born in 1983. But I am an avid gamer, and I will not shun any video game, solely because of its age. I saw this game at Toys R Us one day. I showed much interest in the game, but was worried that I wouldn't like it. Since I'm friends with the manager, he let me play the game. I was instantly hooked, and I immediately bought it. There's sixty some Activision classics, and about 5 or 6 homebrew games (Like 'Okie' which is very similar to the Tiger game 'Lights Out'). I'll give you a complete list at the end of this review.
The way everything is presented is fantastic. When the game comes on, you're looking in the corner of somebody's living room, with an old television, an Atari 2600 sitting right in front of it, a game rack, and some other ambient peices of furniture. To play a game, you would obviously check out the game rack. There, all the games are listed in alphabetical order, so it's easy to find the game you want. Once you select your game, you can look at the 'label' (which seems to be the cover of the instructions booklet, but as I pointed out before, I've never owned an Atari 2600, so I'm not certain), you can take a look at the box (Front *and* back), and then they have the entire manual available for you to read. It's a very neat little package. A note I would like to mention here, is that the game Bloody Human Freeway is the original game of Freeway, but it has humans instead of chickens, and is bloody. This is all explained in the instruction manual. There's also a bulletin board in the living room, and it has all your high scores posted there. However, it doesn't ask for your initials, which is a bit of a drag. Roughly 2/3 of these games have a patch available once you complete the high score. What these patches do, or what these patches are; I have no idea. But it makes for a goal to be reached. Incidentally, the high scores are insanely high, it's actually going to take some skill to accomplish these.
Now, in the IGN review, the reviewer said that there is some slow-down in some of the games. I can't know for sure how fast all of these games ran, but I do notice some slow-down on Skateboardin'. It's real bad, nearly impossible to play. Every other game seems to play smooth enough.
Gameplay is pretty simple in these games, as it was back in their original form. The control pad, naturally, acts as the joystick, and the A button acts as Atari's Fire button. Select acts as Atari's Reset button (altough on some games, the Fire button resets the game, too). If you press L+up in-game, you will select the game (which really means you change the mode of play. For example, on Barnstorming, you have to fly through these barns and avoid the windmills. If you do this L+up, you'll add more barns to fly through. Mostly, each game mode has it's own patch, however that's not always the case. If you hit L+down, you'll change the color to black and white, or vice versa. L+left changes the Left Difficulty, and L+right change the Right Difficulty. And that's everything for the controls.
I hope my review was informative enough for you to decide whether to buy this delightful little game. If you like old games, and are even slightly interested in this game, then without a doubt, get it. It's hours and hours of fun. If you're not a fan of old games, then I'm sorry, but you're missing out on a lot of fun. And now, for the game list.
Barnstorming
Baseball
Beamrider
Bloody Human Freeway
Boxing
Bridge
Checkers
Chopper Command
Climber 5 (Homebrew)
Cosmic Commuter
Crackpots
Decathlon
Dolphin
Dragster
Enduro
Fishing Derby
Freeway
Frostbite
Grand Prix
H.E.R.O.
Ice Hockey
Kabobber
Kaboom!
Keystone Kapers
Laser Blast
Megamania
Oink!
Okie (Homebrew)
Oystron (Homebrew)
Pitfall!
Pitfall II
Plaque Attack
Pressure Cooker
Private Eye
River Raid
River Raid II
Robot Tank
Seaquest
Skateboardin'
Skeleton+ (Homebrew)
Skiing
Sky Jinks
Space Shuttle
Space Treat Deluxe (Homebrew)
Spider Fighter
Stampede
Starmaster
Tennis
Thwocker
Titlematch
Tomcat F-14 Fighter Simulator
Vault Assault (Homebrew)
Venetian Blinds (Not really a game)
Video Euchre (Homebrew)
and two Activision Prototypes.
And there you have it. 9 out of 10
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