Over 35 years later, I finally decided to look this up, and lo and behold, this video appeared! This was by far my favorite 2600 game. My brother and I would take turns seeing how far we could make it. IIRC, I got to level 13, after which it became very difficult. Kudos for mentioning the positional sound of the Zots, which really did make you feel like you were in a real place. I still have this game and the 2600, buried somewhere around here.
I played the hell outta' this game as a teenager. My Grandpa was an Atari fan, and gave me all of his games back in the early 90's. Tunnel-Runner was one of them. I liked it so much that I drew fan-art of what I thought the Zots and the levels looked like. I also imagined the Runner as a bi-pedal machine. Essentially the White-cat vehicle from F-Zero-X on legs. I wish I had my 2600 and T.R. now..
@@redzgaming6880 Yep it looks like a sweet version of the Windows 98 screen saver lol... to be fair I played this as a child and I STILL HAVE the cartridge in a shoebox with E.T. and Tennis and whatever else that I re-found the other day.
I had a different story,, peasant KAYRO angered the tyrant CEREBRUS and was put in his dungeon to be preyed on by his hellhounds. KAYRO was named after an old T.V. company KAYRO VIEW and Cerebrus was based off the whole darth vader craze..
That brings back so many memories! I was obsessed with that game as a kid. I got up to about level 43 or so, the levels got harder and harder, you had fewer clues from the map, moving doors, etc. I doubt my reflexes would be half as good today.
I remember a place in this game on one of the "runs" where you came to a door, and as long as you stood there your score would increase rapidly until you moved. It would only do it once, and you couldn't stay very long before you were eaten. This was my all time favorite Atari 2600 game, hands down!
great review. i remember playing this game the first month it was released for sale. awesome 2600 power!! this game Truly makes me want to eat cheese in the greatest of ways.
1:02 No matter how long it's been since I first saw this video, that particular portion of "Boss 1" from the Terraria soundtrack reminds me of this video.
I loved this game. I played it constantly and finally got to the end of the game. Yes there was an end. I don't remember what number run it was (I think it was well into the hundred something range) but eventually I got so far that everything just stopped. I was disappointed that there was an end. I wanted to keep going. You and the Zots were supper fast by that time. You didn't dare stop for a second. Great fun!
3D has been around for a long time. This game blew me away the first time I played it back in the day. Looking at it now it still does. This came out one the 2600 ppl. Wow. I love the 2600.
There is a new PC version of this game called Tunnel Runner Redux. The walls actually look like brick walls, the key now looks like an actual key instead a glowing wedge, and there's no roof, allowing you to see the full moon in the sky. Of course, the Zots are still there with music particular to each one, and the flashing floors tell you when you're approaching a door. Plus, sometimes you can't see the colored circles representing the Zots on some maps, or you can only see corridors that you've already visited, and on Level 9 the "stick-figure" icon that represents "you" is no longer visible.
Man, i forgot about this game. It's been ages since I've played it. I'm going to dig it out this weekend and give it a play. It should be called "Doom-The early years"
Top 10 2600 game. Way ahead of its time. Set the mold. I remember that the game had a major glitch in the later levels. If you toggled the joystick furiously in any direction you would be transported to any level anywhere in the game. A true underrated classic.
my friend got Tunnel Runner 85, he told me about it when he got it and all i could do is imagine the 3-d goodness he braged the extra ram packed and made possible. he bought the instruction booklet to school and i read it during lunch break. that christmas i got my 2600 and he lent it to me. long after we moved on to the sms i would come back to this game until 1990, i topped out on the 58th level of this game. we loved 3d games and to a bucnh of 5th grade gamers this was the holy grail in 85!!
The 6502 was really a lovely architecture to program, clean and simple just three registers, A, X and Y, although fast zero page access gave you up to 256 registers. I stand in awe of VCS programmers, they didn't even have a full page (256 bytes) of memory to store data in. I assume that the majority of the 128 bytes they did have was mostly screen-buffer, which meant they really had to use each bit of memory with great care. Though this cartridge appears to come with more RAM.
2600's graphics chip (the TIA) didn't read from RAM at all. TIA can do 20 bits of playfield graphics for the background, 8 bits for player 0 and player 1, and 1 bit for the ball. CPU must program the registers by loading ROM data into A, X, Y and storing it into the TIA before or while the TIA is actually outputting the video signal.
I don't know about you, but I think Tunnel Runner would work great on a Tiger LCD handheld. They could have done it, if the people who worked at Tiger used more than a fraction of there brain.
I made it to level 42 I think. At level 40, the entire map goes black AND the markings on the walls are unreadable because the walls are black too! What that means is that you have to get lucky and pick a level up door rather than a level down door rather by luck. Although, if the first door you try doesn't let you through then you KNOW it's the 2x up door so all you have to do is find the 1x up door first then make your way back. This game was brilliant and I played the hell out of it.
I loved this game. The only thing I wish they'd done differently would be to include a different image for the back of the Zots. You could never tell whether they were facing you or not until they started getting closer or farther away. Too bad Crypts of Chaos didn't use the same engine. It's another 3D Atari game, which is more ambitious, but the poor 3D graphics make it virtually impossible to tell where you're going. Now if I could just figure out what happened to my Tunnel Runner manual...
I have this game (and many other 3D ones in my collection!) This is probably my favorite Atari 2600 game =] another cool one that i have is Crypts of Chaos... that 1 is more of an rpg
This is quite simply a feat that was probably overlooked in the halls of gaming history. At the time it came out it was second to none in terms of graphics and gameplay.
I have had this one in my collection for a long time but to be honest I probably just put it in to see if it worked because I bought it in a lot of other cartridges. I have about 300 cartridges and I need to pull some of these classics out and play them some more. Didn't even know this was a 3D perspective game.
God, I feel like I missed out on a lot of good times, considering I am 16 and the atari came out like 17 years befor I was born. I don't have enough time now days to play these atari games, or my classic nintendo anymore considering I have a job, and am always playing halo 3, WoW, GTA4, Oblivion, or just drawing things that I would think would be cool looking. Great video anyways, I love classic games although, they do lack story but that allows you to create your own doesn't it as stated in vid
Ooh,ooh! I have an idea! Tunnel Runners is a game show where you go through a real maze with fake holographic zots. Find your way through the most mazes without losing all lives win 1,000,000,000 dollars!
that is the big problem with disks... you can't add chips to make the system do MORE than it was originaly ment to do... unless it comes with some sort of manual that tells you how to open up your wii and a bunch of legal stuff to help you keep your warenty
I'll get the box if I can, but for the most part, i prefer NOT to have the box. The amount of physical room boxes take up is unreal, and some boxed games can cost more than a small village in another country :)
I unfortunately do not own an Atari, as being a teenager I was not around when these games were common and damned if I can buy one that works on the $30/month allowance I get for doing chores. I do own a Nintendo, super NES, Sega Master System, PS2, and Game Boy though. (4/5 of those were birthday/Christmas gifts). Long story short I was born into the wrong generation
Over 35 years later, I finally decided to look this up, and lo and behold, this video appeared! This was by far my favorite 2600 game. My brother and I would take turns seeing how far we could make it. IIRC, I got to level 13, after which it became very difficult. Kudos for mentioning the positional sound of the Zots, which really did make you feel like you were in a real place. I still have this game and the 2600, buried somewhere around here.
I played the hell outta' this game as a teenager. My Grandpa was an Atari fan, and gave me all of his games back in the early 90's. Tunnel-Runner was one of them. I liked it so much that I drew fan-art of what I thought the Zots and the levels looked like. I also imagined the Runner as a bi-pedal machine. Essentially the White-cat vehicle from F-Zero-X on legs. I wish I had my 2600 and T.R. now..
01975Scorpio emulate it bro, not the same I know but still good for nostalgia 😄
There's an HD remake of Tunnel Runner on the Google Play store that's free, has no ads or microtransactions, and is faithful to the origonal.
@@redzgaming6880 Yep it looks like a sweet version of the Windows 98 screen saver lol... to be fair I played this as a child and I STILL HAVE the cartridge in a shoebox with E.T. and Tennis and whatever else that I re-found the other day.
I had a different story,, peasant KAYRO angered the tyrant CEREBRUS and was put in his dungeon to be preyed on by his hellhounds. KAYRO was named after an old T.V. company KAYRO VIEW and Cerebrus was based off the whole darth vader craze..
The title screen is the bassline to The Doors' song "Riders On The Storm"!!!!!
I thought it sounded familiar!
This game ate so much of my childhood. It remains to this day my favorite on the 2600.
I just LOOOOVE that catchy remix!
Haha, the bass line from Riders on the Storm by The Doors plays when the monsters appear! Definately adding this one to my collection :)
I had that album back then so i knew what it was..
I remember playing this game back in the 80s, and also the commercial for it. "I'm not trapped..."
This cartridge was big for its time at 12k and it has 256 bytes (2kb) of RAM to add to the 128Bytes (1kb) for a total of 3kb or 384 Bytes.
The soundtrack to this game is genius and a true timeless classic.
That brings back so many memories! I was obsessed with that game as a kid. I got up to about level 43 or so, the levels got harder and harder, you had fewer clues from the map, moving doors, etc. I doubt my reflexes would be half as good today.
I remember a place in this game on one of the "runs" where you came to a door, and as long as you stood there your score would increase rapidly until you moved.
It would only do it once, and you couldn't stay very long before you were eaten.
This was my all time favorite Atari 2600 game, hands down!
great review. i remember playing this game the first month it was released for sale. awesome 2600 power!!
this game Truly makes me want to eat cheese in the greatest of ways.
1:02
No matter how long it's been since I first saw this video, that particular portion of "Boss 1" from the Terraria soundtrack reminds me of this video.
Gotta love that rap beat you put to the title screen music!!!!
The Langolierz are comin'!!!!
Great review on this one,just picked it up today to finish my collection of CBS games. Can't wait to get some play on this one.
There were commercial games released through out the entire 80s and a few into the early 90s. Klax was one of the last in 1991.
Wow this brings back a lot of memories. I forgot about this game completely. Tunnel Runner was a pretty amazing game back in the day.
The little song that plays when the... thing comes, sounds pretty similar to "Riders of the Storm".
I loved this game. I played it constantly and finally got to the end of the game. Yes there was an end. I don't remember what number run it was (I think it was well into the hundred something range) but eventually I got so far that everything just stopped. I was disappointed that there was an end. I wanted to keep going. You and the Zots were supper fast by that time. You didn't dare stop for a second. Great fun!
Definitely one of the funnest Atari games ever.
3D has been around for a long time. This game blew me away the first time I played it back in the day. Looking at it now it still does. This came out one the 2600 ppl. Wow. I love the 2600.
I've been around as long as the 2600 has. And I never knew about this game. I like seeing programming achievements rather than the latest HD visuals.
@corntheadventurer Thanks for your support, but I found out the game I was describing was called "Lock 'N' Chase."
Did not know that this game existed. Amazing that they were able to do this with a Atari 2600
Reminds me of 3d monster maze
Terrific light hearted review! Excellent!
This reminds me of the Toonami game "Trapped in Hyperspace," except with 100% less Swayzak, 100% less TOM 2 endo, and 100% more hilarious music.
There is a new PC version of this game called Tunnel Runner Redux. The walls actually look like brick walls, the key now looks like an actual key instead a glowing wedge, and there's no roof, allowing you to see the full moon in the sky. Of course, the Zots are still there with music particular to each one, and the flashing floors tell you when you're approaching a door. Plus, sometimes you can't see the colored circles representing the Zots on some maps, or you can only see corridors that you've already visited, and on Level 9 the "stick-figure" icon that represents "you" is no longer visible.
I love that old opening is so epic!! [CGR openning]
I am glad a review was done on this. This was a very impressive Atari 2600 game!
Man, i forgot about this game. It's been ages since I've played it. I'm going to dig it out this weekend and give it a play. It should be called "Doom-The early years"
Top 10 2600 game. Way ahead of its time. Set the mold. I remember that the game had a major glitch in the later levels. If you toggled the joystick furiously in any direction you would be transported to any level anywhere in the game. A true underrated classic.
my friend got Tunnel Runner 85, he told me about it when he got it and all i could do is imagine the 3-d goodness he braged the extra ram packed and made possible. he bought the instruction booklet to school and i read it during lunch break. that christmas i got my 2600 and he lent it to me. long after we moved on to the sms i would come back to this game until 1990, i topped out on the 58th level of this game. we loved 3d games and to a bucnh of 5th grade gamers this was the holy grail in 85!!
3:43 man when u realize CBS owns copyrights and patents for atari 2600 software and custom hardware....
The 6502 was really a lovely architecture to program, clean and simple just three registers, A, X and Y, although fast zero page access gave you up to 256 registers. I stand in awe of VCS programmers, they didn't even have a full page (256 bytes) of memory to store data in. I assume that the majority of the 128 bytes they did have was mostly screen-buffer, which meant they really had to use each bit of memory with great care. Though this cartridge appears to come with more RAM.
2600's graphics chip (the TIA) didn't read from RAM at all. TIA can do 20 bits of playfield graphics for the background, 8 bits for player 0 and player 1, and 1 bit for the ball. CPU must program the registers by loading ROM data into A, X, Y and storing it into the TIA before or while the TIA is actually outputting the video signal.
Man oh man, this game looks awesome. Random dungeons and everything! A game like this is needed for the NES =D
OMG I LOVE that remix!
I had this game as a kid (hand me down Atari) and loved it.
I don't know about you, but I think Tunnel Runner would work great on a Tiger LCD handheld. They could have done it, if the people who worked at Tiger used more than a fraction of there brain.
DAT remix
Good review, nice philosophical ending of it.
I made it to level 42 I think. At level 40, the entire map goes black AND the markings on the walls are unreadable because the walls are black too! What that means is that you have to get lucky and pick a level up door rather than a level down door rather by luck. Although, if the first door you try doesn't let you through then you KNOW it's the 2x up door so all you have to do is find the 1x up door first then make your way back. This game was brilliant and I played the hell out of it.
wow that does sound like a great game though. Wish I could have played it when our Atari was still working.
very impressive looking, I will have to check this one out
Its all about the cheese!!! Great review man.
Nice dance Tunnel runner music! i'll call it "Tunnel Dancer"
old acc o_o
but that's not what i really look like anymore
London Blitz is a first person game like this. Pretty good one too. Searching tunnels like these, defusing bombs...
I loved this game. The only thing I wish they'd done differently would be to include a different image for the back of the Zots. You could never tell whether they were facing you or not until they started getting closer or farther away.
Too bad Crypts of Chaos didn't use the same engine. It's another 3D Atari game, which is more ambitious, but the poor 3D graphics make it virtually impossible to tell where you're going.
Now if I could just figure out what happened to my Tunnel Runner manual...
Amazingly good graphics in this for a 2600 game!
I have this game (and many other 3D ones in my collection!)
This is probably my favorite Atari 2600 game =]
another cool one that i have is Crypts of Chaos... that 1 is more of an rpg
I love this game too.
This is quite simply a feat that was probably overlooked in the halls of gaming history. At the time it came out it was second to none in terms of graphics and gameplay.
Very philosophical but really we all all in nirvana already - thanks for your time. Atari 2600 rules!
I think I just got the runs from that
Hold down the button and turn joystick clockwise... and you teleport. This game f'n rules!!!
This amazing game was far ahead of its time.
I have had this one in my collection for a long time but to be honest I probably just put it in to see if it worked because I bought it in a lot of other cartridges. I have about 300 cartridges and I need to pull some of these classics out and play them some more. Didn't even know this was a 3D perspective game.
Cheese?
Cheddar, Parmesan, Mozzarella, Leedammer...
I could go on.
I like cheese.
God, I feel like I missed out on a lot of good times, considering I am 16 and the atari came out like 17 years befor I was born. I don't have enough time now days to play these atari games, or my classic nintendo anymore considering I have a job, and am always playing halo 3, WoW, GTA4, Oblivion, or just drawing things that I would think would be cool looking. Great video anyways, I love classic games although, they do lack story but that allows you to create your own doesn't it as stated in vid
it reminds me of the windows 97 screen protector. You know. the one that was a maze. I could spents hours looking at it
This was most likely that very first 3D game in the history....created in 1983...
TheLambdaTeam
Maze War ( 1974)
Battlezone ( 1980)
3D monster maze was another..
Ooh,ooh! I have an idea! Tunnel Runners is a game show where you go through a real maze with fake holographic zots. Find your way through the most mazes without losing all lives win 1,000,000,000 dollars!
Great. Now I need to eat cheese. Delicious cheese. This game looks really awesome.
@moxiecalifornia The game crashes after run 130.
3:09 Plasma Autorifle? Timesplitters refference! ^_^
That's actually a fairly impressive game considering the hardware on which it runs.
That would have been an awesome way to play Adventure.
Damn right it is! Timesplitters rules.
"I'm not trapped!"
The zots do look like pacman when they're facing sideways.
ok question: wats the chance of doing a activision episode?
@SkitzerPoindexter I remember that too! I wish they would bring this back for wii or nintendo.
I never got this game, wait didn't it also have a custom wheel like controller...like the ww1 dogfighting game?
Man, love these memories.
This is what I call hardware pusher
What was the button combination to summon Wind Squid again?
that is the big problem with disks...
you can't add chips to make the system do MORE than it was originaly ment to do... unless it comes with some sort of manual that tells you how to open up your wii and a bunch of legal stuff to help you keep your warenty
I never heard of this one, it must one of those tougher find out there I guess.
Woah woah woah does the remix that starts at 0:41 exist anywhere else? It's cool as fuck.
Captain Beefheart Yeah. It is COOLER as Heck.
TOO BAD IT WAS CUT OFF!
@delfmeek well...maze war should really be called doom the early years...as it came out in the early 70s and had shooting in it
Renew! Renew!
Jeff Lamberton Unfortunately this reference is lost on the dumb masses.
I'll get the box if I can, but for the most part, i prefer NOT to have the box. The amount of physical room boxes take up is unreal, and some boxed games can cost more than a small village in another country :)
great reveiw
@Lupucillo button, button, button, button. did you forget already, its a pretty hard button combination
did you just intend to sound like dwight from the office? :)
riders on the storm...
what's the "thing" doing in 7:28 - 7:30?!
So when people say wolfenstein is the first fps they are wrong since this is the first fps?
Actually, the first fps is considered maze wars, and was made back in the 70's.
B. Ekov Well you don't really shoot anything in this game do you?
B. Ekov It's not a matter of which one was the first. Which one kickstarted the whole genre, that's more important.
lol at the ending, ur like no no no omg! arrhgh!
Also, the walking sound sounds like Pac-Man. Wakka wakka wakka.....
what, you thought the game was aMAZEing....har har har;)
I unfortunately do not own an Atari, as being a teenager I was not around when these games were common and damned if I can buy one that works on the $30/month allowance I get for doing chores. I do own a Nintendo, super NES, Sega Master System, PS2, and Game Boy though. (4/5 of those were birthday/Christmas gifts). Long story short I was born into the wrong generation
I recommend Atari Flashback Gold 8 Activision Edition... This is from someone who grew up playing Atari...
Thats a great atari game for it Time.
3D Pac-Man? Not really, but it reminds me of that.
Also, what the smeg happens at 0:59?
btw thanks for posting this
Basically 3Demon.
exactly
This game would benefit from a rivet gun and a drill! :)
Watch Logan's Run and find out. :)