I won a copy of Atlantis II back in 1982. I had something like 48 hours to get as high a score as possible, take a Polaroid photo and express mail it back. I told my super skeptical dad I could win gold bullion and travel to Bermuda for the finals. I wound up with swim fins, a snorkel and a t-shirt all meant for a small child and the Atlantis II cartridge. Super fun game and challenge. I wound up parting with the game back in 2003. It financed a car, airline & hotel in New York and seats at Madison Square garden to see David Bowie. I understand it's kinda rare now (ha! ha!). Only differences between it and the regular Atlantis game were 1) It had a printed label on the outside of the box that was simply typed 'Atlantis II' . I recall after many years the adhesion of the label caused it to fall off. It left a glue mark and I kept the label. 2) Each target you hit was worth 1 point. 3) The speed of the game was, seemingly 5 to 10x faster than the fastest speed on the original Atlantis. 4) It only had a the night version background. I recall scoring no more that 500 or so on my best try. Super fun game and an even cooler company for 2600 games. Dragonfire is awesome. Subterranean is fantastic. Demon Attack to this day provides surprise and excellent game play.
Awesome story :) I used to play Atlantis all the time and would flip the score easily. Never knew they made that one harder. Again, cool story thanks for sharing
Damn, you must be an Ace gamer. I always did crap at that game, but loved to play it anyway. I'm a collecter now and always buy any Atlantis with a dark Background, just in case it's one of the uber rare ones :) Kinda sucks that you sold it, but you did get to see one of the greatest performers, in one of the Greatest venues, in the world. That's pretty damn sweet! Cheers from Canada P.S. I'm not a big Prince fan but, (depending on the year) if it was GNR, The Doors, Queen, or Zeppelin, I would take the deal too :)
Cosmic Ark is one of my all-time favourite Atari 2600 games; I find it extremely rewarding to get to the next planet to see what new aliens Space Noah needs to pick up. There's a real sense of progress and journey that few other 2600 games capture as well.
I can explain 19:46!!! The Atari can only handle 4 sprites: 2 programmable sprites, a "ball", and a "bullet". To achieve the effect of multiple sprites on-screen, they're drawn multiple times vertically (notice that in a lot of games on the Atari like Demon Attack, the enemies never align each other on the Y axis. They're always spaced out. Double Dragon is also a good example of this as enemies are always on the top two sides of the stage). The only way to have the two sprites coexist horizontally is by duplicating them (see Space Invaders, notice that they all share the same "frame of animation" and are equal distances away from each other) or using flickering (see Pac-Man). I'm not *super* well versed in how it all works, but you can check out the book "Racing the Beam" for reference. It's quite fascinating. Now, why they didn't just use a work-around like flickering for a game where it's necessary to grab something quickly??? I dunno.
Imagic did it's best work on Texas Instruments Home Computers. Super Demon Attack and Fathom were really good. Microsurgeon was out of this world technology-wise and there was nothing else quite like it.
If you're debating making more of these videos, put my vote into the firm yes category. I really enjoy the publisher specific approach, and I think they help provide an often much needed context to the games that came after the earlier generations.
"Demon Attack" -- thank you! I played that game once at a friend's house circa 1982 and never knew what it was called, but the gameplay -- especially the way enemies come in from both sides of the screen to form a single creature -- stuck with me for years.
I don't blame you, FrameRater. the Atari 2600 Library is a wild and unpredictable world to properly chart, and the wideness of it's rarity scale is beyond measure.
Riddle of the Sphinx was my jam back in the day! I think I got it in '82 and played the heck out of it. I event sent away for their hint book. Definitely in my top 5 2600 along with Yars Revenge, Enduro, Motorodeo and Pitfall.
I get that it’s complex, but that’s a big part of what I loved about RotS back in the day! Some of the best storytelling and adventure gaming available on the 2600!
I came back to Riddle of the Sphinx this past Christmas to see what the fastest times I could get for a speed run in each variation, as well as the fastest time on each that I could get all nine treasures to the Temple of Ra. I recommended it for an Atari game challenge on another reviewer's channel.
I'm surprised Pete Rose Baseball doesn't have a level where you gamble the earnings of your game on your team and get banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame as a result.
Imagic was one of the best reasons to own an Intellivision. Beauty and the Beast was a much better Donkey Kong than DK itself IMO. And Atlantis was far more involved on that system, with the ability to fire each of the guns independently, and a ship you could deploy to dogfight with the incoming alien ships. Swords and Serpents was also very good on Intellivision. Thanks for the video, it was really interesting to see Imagic’s 2600 games.
It still amazes me that an ancient 40 year-old hardware that originally designed to play blocky games such as pong, break-out and combat could do all these !! Limitation really does breed creativity.
Not necessarily. A few of the Odyssey² games were better than Atari's 1977 games and some 1978 games, but they never really got any better. Popeye was probably as good as it gets, but doesn't look very good.
Revisiting this video, I was just going to say that again! Apparently one programmer did most of those games, so there wasn't the competition and innovation to make them better until Parker Bros. and Imagic made some games for them in 1983 (like Frogger and Atlantis). Another thing happened and that the carts went from 2K ROMs to 4K, then to 8K (except for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong because they didn't want to pay for them to be better).
We loved imagic. Even had the fan club magazine, numb thumb. Demon attack is probably the best space shooter on the system. Riddle of the sphynx took a lot of my after school hours to complete. And dragonfire is my all time favorite 2600 game (along with Hero and megamania). Love trying to get to the tougher dragons and better treasures.
Used to set 8 computers with max money to go at it, fall asleep listening to those sweet 8 bit sounds, and see who won in the morning. Usually Ollie. Absolute classic, severely unappreciated. "Don't be coming back now!"
Cosmic Ark and Star Voyager were two favorites of mine as a kid, but I loved Riddle of the Sphinx. That was the first adventure-style game on the system that I really got into, and it actually had an ending too, which was rare for the time.
I also had Cosmic Ark, and Riddle Of The Sphinx as well. I’ll defend Sphinx too. I had it when I was eight years old around 85’ and I was super into it.
Thank you! Riddle was one of my all time favs on the 2600. The manual had cool clues as to what you needed to do at each temple, and offerings for the Gods. very in depth gameplay!
I played all three at a friend's home. I got two as an adult on the cheap at the thrift store, but didn't get Star Voyager. It seems like every company made its own version of Atari's Star Raiders, which I didn't like, or couldn't win on hard. Activision did Star Master, and M-Network did theirs that didn't have a score if you won (and Imagic did Star Voyager).
yeah I'd say it's actually underated quite a bit despite how it gets mentioned still. It's way better than people say of it and remains easily one of if not my very favourite shooter of this type. Very unique with beautiful visuals and a perfect level of difficulty. Absolutely superb game in a way even some of the people mentioning it don't quite get
@@ImperatorGrausam They did it because they could and had the money. They were also hypocrites because they "stole" home carts from arcade games of the 1970s (pre-Space Invaders), assuming the courts wouldn't rule against them since it was a new media. Atari sued Magnavox for KC Munchkin on the Odyssey2 violating its exclusive license to make home games of Pac-Man. The court ruled against Magnavox saying that Atari couldn't copyright a dot-in-a-maze game idea, but could the Pac-Man and ghosts graphics. This meant KC Munchkin and its successor were wrong, but Lock 'n' Chase with cops and robbers, Mouse Trap with cats v mouse, Alien and other imitators were allowed. Meanwhile, possibly their first licensed game, Space Invaders, Atari didn't tie down the rights correctly, so competitors could make imitations as long as they didn't call it "Space Invaders." Probably the same graphics rule applied?
I really, really love Moonweeper. It overshadowed all of my Atari 2600 games when I bought it, and I still play it on emulators. It's simply amazing what Bob Smith could pack in 8 kilobytes, indeed it's a little technical miracle.
I would literally amaze my friends when I played Dragon Fire. I would go so fast, the dragon would go so fast, my friends couldn't even tell where my character was moving.
I can't tell where the character is moving. I think there's something up with the capture - I can't see the player on the footage when he's in the lair. Is that because it's interlaced and the player is drawn on the other field, and the capture device isn't getting both?
That Demon Attack cover is amazing. I had those exact same dollar store T-Rex and Dimetrodon toys as a kid... minus the chrome finish and rocket thrusters, obviously.
Anyone else remember the incredible rush as a kid when you got to buy an Imagic game then sit in front of your VCS looking at that silver box and that awesome logo just knowing it was going to be a good game? I used to get little kid chills...
Demon Attack, Fathom and Laser Gates were some of my most favorite games back in the day for the 2600. I also remember playing Dragonfire and Atlantis on a 2600 clone filled with various games. Never knew about Skate Boardin to be honest, but it looks fun. Imagic surely made some really great games for the 2600. Thanks for making this vid!
To this day, I consider Dragonfire the Greatest 2600 game ever, considering gameplay, graphics, and story. Laser Gates might have the second confirmed Easter Egg in it, as fighting against an intergalactic computer, you shoot a wall with 6507 inscribed on it, the same number as the MOS chip powering the 2600. I absolutely loved Riddle of the Sphinx, but I never figured out how to beat it. All things considered, I think if I was given the choice of the Activision library or the IMagic library, I'd take the IMagic library, as I remember the games a bit more fondly and they seem to be more ambitious.
Imagic made the best looking games on the system. The had some real bangers too. You always know you are in for a good time when you see that silver cartridge.
I don't remember any of their games from 1983; they must not have advertised and the games must not have been good enough to keep them in business to make computer games.
@6:52 holy crap its Ecco 2 before Ecco 2. Were they inspired by this game because playing as a dolphin that can turn into a bird is a hellof a conincidence
If you do make a future video like this, I'd recommend ordering them as a chronology and providing release dates down to the day if possible. It's a more interesting format than pure randomness, and provides a context that is also interesting, for very little added effort.
It's not random, they're listed in alphabetical order. Finding those dates is far more difficult than you think. I can't even find the dates for when certain consoles were launched.
Demon Attack: The only version with no boss demon at the end of a wave. Fire Fighter: Panicking flailing arm people in the buildings are hilarious looking. Quick Step: Unfiltered ADHD given form.
Riddle of the sphinx had a bit of a learning curve, but if you could get past that it was one of the best games. Very disappointed FrameRater didn't really give it enough of a chance.
I just picked a sears tele-games recently and demon attack has been pretty much glued in the cartridge slot. (Demon attack and berzerk, but mostly demon attack)
Imagic was a fantastic developer. They somehow circumvented the clunkiness of Atari's limited capabilities, and created smooth, responsive, playable games with nice visuals and great animation.
I give Riddle of the Sphinx a 7. If I use my nostalgia with it, a 9. I was never sure how to 'beat' it, but I think by accident I figured out most of what things did and how to obtain them. I liked 2600 games of that nature, such as Adventure and dare I even say, ET. Games that had an ending and you had to figure it out.
The rules tell you how to do it, with some hints, though one could figure out the offerings by trial and error. Once you do it, then you can then do speed runs for best time.
Demon Attack is the top Galaxian, Space invaders style shooter on the 2600. Amazing graphics and gameplay in the year of it's releases and for years afterwards. One of the examples of the 2600 version playing better than the Intellivision version
Funny, but I had the feeling that they upgraded the games to the Intellivision, rather than Activision that just seemed to translate Pitfall! and Stampede without improving them for the fancier system. Of course using the disc controller may mean playing wasn't as fun as a joystick.
@@sandal_thong8631 Yes, the intv version had the Boss level and background graphics, but the 2600s actually had the more colorful and fluid aliens, with the iconic sounds as they formed on screen and exploded, and the constant Jaws like soundtrack increasing in beats
That game variation 1. Two and three are a little more involved, just like Atari's Adventure games 1-3. There is a clock, so you can write down your time for a speed run.
I love the completionist aspect of this. I was convinced I had only played the first 4 games mentioned here, but then when you got to "riddle of the sphinx" I realized a friend of mine owned it and we played it a bunch and could not figure it out either. Those are some neurons that haven't fired for almost 40 years.....very cool!
3:11 "Enemy ships do not fire at you." ... no, they just bleed radiation in a vertical line that destroys your cities. 11:15 "Only the bricks that fall can wipe out those nasty creatures." Except when you do a diagonal shot which also destroys the enemy.
19:41 I scrolled down a bit, but I didn't see anyone explain this, so I'll give it a try. Basically, the 2600 can only render a maximum of two sprites along a horizontal axis. There are a few technical exceptions to this, but basically, the Atari 2600 was only designed to render two playable sprites and a "ball". Technically, there shouldn't even be multiple baseball player sprites on the screen at once, but this only applies on a per-scanline basis. Atari 2600 has a cool trick in which additional sprites can be rendered as long as they don't intersect any scanlines occupied by two other sprites. So, you can technically have as many sprites as you want on the screen as long as they don't all move together to occupy the same set of scanlines. In other words, the reason that the other two other players cannot retrieve the ball is that they'd be intersecting a horizontal axis of the screen currently reserved for the pitcher as well as your baserunner. If the other two players cross into that horizontal field, it'll crash the game. There's a similar issue in the 2600 port of Double Dragon. Two enemies can be on the screen at once, but they can't both attack you at the same time because they can't move into each other's fields. Of course, there are exceptions to this, like Space Invaders, but that involves a very complex series of tricks working together, and is difficult for me to explain.
Thanks. You can see how this works in a game like Berzerk where all the robots are on different rows. But in something like Pac-Man there's flicker for alternating between 4 ghosts (the knockoff Mouse Trap has only 3 cats). They figured out a way around that in Ms. Pac-Man so they only flicker when they're on the same row. I think they didn't have to program the Pete Rose baseball game like that. Other baseball games like M-Network's Super Challenge Baseball didn't have that problem.
Have never seen Wing War on the 2600. I have it for the TI-99, but it's a very different looking game (more of a pure quest game) on that platform. Imagic ported a few of their 2600 titles to the TI, so it was fun to be able to compare them. I agree with your analysis of Fathom...it's a weird game, not awful, but that get repetitive pretty quickly. But it does get full points for thinking outside the box.
Riddle of the Sphinx is one of the more creative puzzle games for the 2600. You forgot to mention Imagic's contest back in the day when this came out. There is a solution video for it on RUclips so give it a watch. RotS is a thinking game not an action game. The winner of that contest submitted his answer as a scroll with Egyptian hieroglyphics as Imagic did say they wanted the most creative correct answer. Laser Gates is interesting in that on the 2600 you shoot a 6507 but Laser Gates on the Atari 8-bit computer has the player shooting a 6502.
Moonsweeper was my favourite game on the system, both for the fluid “analogue” gameplay and the impressive polished visuals. It is good to see someone else appreciates it - it seems to get basically no attention for some incomprehensible reason!
I think Atari did themselves a disservice by keeping in stock bad-looking games from 1977-9 when competition erupted from Activision, as well as their own games getting better when going from 2K to 4K ROMs and learning programming tricks. But since management at Atari had contempt for the people that actually made the games, naturally they left. Some of the best-looking games came out in 1983 when they out-sourced Jungle Hunt and Moon Patrol. Those two were probably made by a team that worked on play, sound and graphics instead of one programmer responsible for everything.
I just saw some of those. Unlike Activision which just translated their Atari games, Imagic enhanced them to make them better, as well as releasing Intellivision-exclusives. Too bad their 1983 games for Atari weren't that exciting in this video. They needed to ask themselves, would kids put quarters in a machine to play it at an arcade? Maybe yes for 1982, no for 1983.
Atlantis was one of the last games I got for my Atari. I got it for Christmas and it was around the time that all of my friends were getting Nintendos. I held the joystick backwards so I could to the direction I wanted to shoot instead of pointing to the cannon I wanted to fire. A friend of my brother or sister ( they are both older than me and were teens in the early 80’s) had Demon Attack. That was a fun game to play. I don’t think we ever got it because of the name.
I have trouble with Atlantis. Maybe I'll try that technique. Too bad they didn't use a multi-button joystick; there's only so much you can do with one button.
Does the artwork for Skateboarding day “Activision” on top or am I losing my mind? Also....GREAT video. I had no idea there were so many Imagic games!! Thanks for another great video.
Correction. I went back last Christmas to do speed runs for best times. Then I tried to do best times for 9 treasures on each level. I wasn't able to determine if there was a technique to get Isis to give you her exclusive treasures or whether it was random whether she gives you anything at all.
imagic is my favorite company to collect for. absolutely great collection of games. the only thing this video needs is an addendum with the intellivison games added because they're very weird. games like microsurgeon might be one of the strangest games of that era
We talked about doing Intellivison together for Console Library at some point, the only issue is the things controller since its pretty unique and I've never even seen one irl before.
Part of Imagic's success was TV advertisements in 1982. I guess after Christmas they decided not to do it for their next games in 1983. In comic books you'd nearly only see Parker Bros' games or arcade conversions with multiple screen shots showing each system. Somehow they collectively decided at the Summer Electronics Show to give up on video games. My feeling was that there were so many games that kids might want to get, that it would be hard for a new release on such an old system (2600) to become the next big thing. Probably just Centipede and Ms. Pac-Man which each sold over 1 million.
Frame, do you think you'll ever upload a BLOOD review on this channel? I'm Asking because I live in Kirkland, Washington & I got to meet Jace Hall in 2019 when my step-brother Dean worked at Monolith Productions. I asked Jace about BLOOD & why ATARI/Infogrames is holding the BLOOD IP at knifepoint, he said that he'd like to scoop up the BLOOD IP ASAP once Infogrames goes under & that day might come sooner than you think as Atari has made bad business decisions that are starting to come back to bite them.
No Escape, Fire Fighter. Riddle of the Sphynx and Space Ark were quite likely my favorite atari games growing up. No Escape's audio and bizarre creatures were always super creepy but compelling, Never figured out Riddle of the Sphynx, I found the manual at some point and that did help but it and the Indian Jones game were two I played a lot just because there was clearly something deeper to them that I couldn't grasp but wanted to and I was always making new discoveries in them. Not much to say about Space Ark or Fire Fighter, I just enjoyed the gameplay in them.
Every time I watch these kinds of videos, Degenatron keeps popping up in my head, heh. "You swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey!" Good series though, keep up the good work.
Those ate not finger puppets on the demon attack box. They are plastic rubbery dinosaur toys that were anywhere from 6 to 10 inches or bigger. Just repainted silver with other stuff glued to them I know I had some of those cheap off the shelf or should I say out of the bin. Dinosaur toys as a kid.
No, it's not a random chance your middle base respawns in Atlantis, you get a building restored every 10,000 points at the end of that wave. Your middle base always respawns first, but if you have more then one building lost and survive another 10,000 points without losing your middle base, one of those buildings will respawn. In theory you can rebuild the entire city from 1 building remaining if you really get in the groove.
OMFG They ported Wing War to the 2600!! I didn't know that was even possible, It obviously is cut down a LOT from the Coleco version which I consider the best ColecoVision game ever made. It's gameplay and both number of maps and graphics of the rooms are way cut down, but impressive they even tried it! It obviously came out after I had left the Atari 2600 behind for the Commodore 64, as I had no idea it was made, or even a number of these Imagic games ever came out for the 2600. How did I miss this in Stella??
I won a copy of Atlantis II back in 1982. I had something like 48 hours to get as high a score as possible, take a Polaroid photo and express mail it back. I told my super skeptical dad I could win gold bullion and travel to Bermuda for the finals. I wound up with swim fins, a snorkel and a t-shirt all meant for a small child and the Atlantis II cartridge. Super fun game and challenge. I wound up parting with the game back in 2003. It financed a car, airline & hotel in New York and seats at Madison Square garden to see David Bowie. I understand it's kinda rare now (ha! ha!). Only differences between it and the regular Atlantis game were 1) It had a printed label on the outside of the box that was simply typed 'Atlantis II' . I recall after many years the adhesion of the label caused it to fall off. It left a glue mark and I kept the label. 2) Each target you hit was worth 1 point. 3) The speed of the game was, seemingly 5 to 10x faster than the fastest speed on the original Atlantis. 4) It only had a the night version background.
I recall scoring no more that 500 or so on my best try. Super fun game and an even cooler company for 2600 games. Dragonfire is awesome. Subterranean is fantastic. Demon Attack to this day provides surprise and excellent game play.
Awesome story :) I used to play Atlantis all the time and would flip the score easily. Never knew they made that one harder. Again, cool story thanks for sharing
Thats really cool!!
En nog
We can be Atlantean heroes just for one day, or night with “Atlantis II”.
Damn, you must be an Ace gamer. I always did crap at that game, but loved to play it anyway.
I'm a collecter now and always buy any Atlantis with a dark Background, just in case it's one of the uber rare ones :)
Kinda sucks that you sold it, but you did get to see one of the greatest performers, in one of the Greatest venues, in the world.
That's pretty damn sweet!
Cheers from Canada
P.S. I'm not a big Prince fan but, (depending on the year) if it was GNR, The Doors, Queen, or Zeppelin, I would take the deal too :)
Cosmic Ark is one of my all-time favourite Atari 2600 games; I find it extremely rewarding to get to the next planet to see what new aliens Space Noah needs to pick up. There's a real sense of progress and journey that few other 2600 games capture as well.
It was one of my favorites as well...
I need to go back and really try this one again
@@mikekopack6441 Yeah,really great game.Played it for months,very addictive.And Demon Attack,such a great game
I played Space Zap! which it was based on. I like it better than Atlantis or Demon Attack.
I didn't have the reflexes for that one
I can explain 19:46!!!
The Atari can only handle 4 sprites: 2 programmable sprites, a "ball", and a "bullet". To achieve the effect of multiple sprites on-screen, they're drawn multiple times vertically (notice that in a lot of games on the Atari like Demon Attack, the enemies never align each other on the Y axis. They're always spaced out. Double Dragon is also a good example of this as enemies are always on the top two sides of the stage). The only way to have the two sprites coexist horizontally is by duplicating them (see Space Invaders, notice that they all share the same "frame of animation" and are equal distances away from each other) or using flickering (see Pac-Man). I'm not *super* well versed in how it all works, but you can check out the book "Racing the Beam" for reference. It's quite fascinating.
Now, why they didn't just use a work-around like flickering for a game where it's necessary to grab something quickly??? I dunno.
Imagic did it's best work on Texas Instruments Home Computers. Super Demon Attack and Fathom were really good. Microsurgeon was out of this world technology-wise and there was nothing else quite like it.
If you're debating making more of these videos, put my vote into the firm yes category. I really enjoy the publisher specific approach, and I think they help provide an often much needed context to the games that came after the earlier generations.
"Demon Attack" -- thank you! I played that game once at a friend's house circa 1982 and never knew what it was called, but the gameplay -- especially the way enemies come in from both sides of the screen to form a single creature -- stuck with me for years.
The animation for the person you're trying to save in Fire Fighter is cracking me up! Waving arms and yelling in, what, 12 pixels? Hilarious!
That land speed scrolling effect in Moonsweeper is some incredible 2600 programming. 😳
I don't blame you, FrameRater.
the Atari 2600 Library is a wild and unpredictable world to properly chart, and the wideness of it's rarity scale is beyond measure.
"Atlantis," "Demon Attack," and "Riddle of the Sphinx" were my favorites.
Riddle of the Sphinx was my jam back in the day! I think I got it in '82 and played the heck out of it. I event sent away for their hint book. Definitely in my top 5 2600 along with Yars Revenge, Enduro, Motorodeo and Pitfall.
I think I won it as a kid at a friend's house. When I got it as an adult, I mapped it out, but it wasn't quite as fun as I remembered.
I have a 2600 in a joystick game with Yar’s Revenge on it and still play that pretty regularly
I get that it’s complex, but that’s a big part of what I loved about RotS back in the day! Some of the best storytelling and adventure gaming available on the 2600!
I agree.. my friends and I loved it.
Great music with it as well.
I came back to Riddle of the Sphinx this past Christmas to see what the fastest times I could get for a speed run in each variation, as well as the fastest time on each that I could get all nine treasures to the Temple of Ra. I recommended it for an Atari game challenge on another reviewer's channel.
I'm surprised Pete Rose Baseball doesn't have a level where you gamble the earnings of your game on your team and get banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame as a result.
Imagic was one of the best reasons to own an Intellivision. Beauty and the Beast was a much better Donkey Kong than DK itself IMO. And Atlantis was far more involved on that system, with the ability to fire each of the guns independently, and a ship you could deploy to dogfight with the incoming alien ships. Swords and Serpents was also very good on Intellivision.
Thanks for the video, it was really interesting to see Imagic’s 2600 games.
It still amazes me that an ancient 40 year-old hardware that originally designed to play blocky games such as pong, break-out and combat could do all these !!
Limitation really does breed creativity.
Not necessarily. A few of the Odyssey² games were better than Atari's 1977 games and some 1978 games, but they never really got any better. Popeye was probably as good as it gets, but doesn't look very good.
Revisiting this video, I was just going to say that again! Apparently one programmer did most of those games, so there wasn't the competition and innovation to make them better until Parker Bros. and Imagic made some games for them in 1983 (like Frogger and Atlantis).
Another thing happened and that the carts went from 2K ROMs to 4K, then to 8K (except for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong because they didn't want to pay for them to be better).
A local friend of mine named his band "Ocean City Defender" and I'm still convinced it's the best band name ever. #BringBackZellers
It's acronym is OCD, lol.
We loved imagic. Even had the fan club magazine, numb thumb. Demon attack is probably the best space shooter on the system. Riddle of the sphynx took a lot of my after school hours to complete. And dragonfire is my all time favorite 2600 game (along with Hero and megamania). Love trying to get to the tougher dragons and better treasures.
You mentioned that adaptations of board games don’t tend to age well - in my opinion, the NES version of Monopoly is an exception to that rule.
Used to set 8 computers with max money to go at it, fall asleep listening to those sweet 8 bit sounds, and see who won in the morning. Usually Ollie. Absolute classic, severely unappreciated. "Don't be coming back now!"
I think battleship has the same thing. It's fun to use multiple weapons and it has a catchy track.
Cosmic Ark and Star Voyager were two favorites of mine as a kid, but I loved Riddle of the Sphinx. That was the first adventure-style game on the system that I really got into, and it actually had an ending too, which was rare for the time.
I also had Cosmic Ark, and Riddle Of The Sphinx as well. I’ll defend Sphinx too. I had it when I was eight years old around 85’ and I was super into it.
Thank you! Riddle was one of my all time favs on the 2600. The manual had cool clues as to what you needed to do at each temple, and offerings for the Gods. very in depth gameplay!
Yeah, those were great games... especially Riddle of the Sphinx.
I played all three at a friend's home. I got two as an adult on the cheap at the thrift store, but didn't get Star Voyager. It seems like every company made its own version of Atari's Star Raiders, which I didn't like, or couldn't win on hard. Activision did Star Master, and M-Network did theirs that didn't have a score if you won (and Imagic did Star Voyager).
Demon Attack is one of my favorite Atari shooters and my favorite boxed game in my ENTIRE collection
I'd say its a 2600 top 10.
yeah I'd say it's actually underated quite a bit despite how it gets mentioned still. It's way better than people say of it and remains easily one of if not my very favourite shooter of this type. Very unique with beautiful visuals and a perfect level of difficulty. Absolutely superb game in a way even some of the people mentioning it don't quite get
I prefer Phoenix, which it was based on, but can see why it was a top seller. I wonder how much profit it made after they were sued?
@@sandal_thong8631 I never really understood the point of suing them; after all they're all similar enough in being fixed shooters.
@@ImperatorGrausam They did it because they could and had the money. They were also hypocrites because they "stole" home carts from arcade games of the 1970s (pre-Space Invaders), assuming the courts wouldn't rule against them since it was a new media.
Atari sued Magnavox for KC Munchkin on the Odyssey2 violating its exclusive license to make home games of Pac-Man. The court ruled against Magnavox saying that Atari couldn't copyright a dot-in-a-maze game idea, but could the Pac-Man and ghosts graphics. This meant KC Munchkin and its successor were wrong, but Lock 'n' Chase with cops and robbers, Mouse Trap with cats v mouse, Alien and other imitators were allowed.
Meanwhile, possibly their first licensed game, Space Invaders, Atari didn't tie down the rights correctly, so competitors could make imitations as long as they didn't call it "Space Invaders." Probably the same graphics rule applied?
I really, really love Moonweeper. It overshadowed all of my Atari 2600 games when I bought it, and I still play it on emulators. It's simply amazing what Bob Smith could pack in 8 kilobytes, indeed it's a little technical miracle.
Okay I really wish I had helped you out with this video now, a lot of these look genuinely fun. That fathom game looks amazing.
@matt fahringer bruh
Yeah, Fathom peaked my interest as well, and after playing it, I'm absolutely HOOKED! It's now EASILY one of my favorite games on the system.
I think I'll put it on my wish list next to Star Gate for the next time I look for Atari carts.
I would literally amaze my friends when I played Dragon Fire. I would go so fast, the dragon would go so fast, my friends couldn't even tell where my character was moving.
I've played Demon Attack and Cosmic Ark, but the only Imagic game I've ever owned was the latter game
I can't tell where the character is moving. I think there's something up with the capture - I can't see the player on the footage when he's in the lair. Is that because it's interlaced and the player is drawn on the other field, and the capture device isn't getting both?
I found Cosmic Ark incredibly addictive. I played that game to death!
Yeah me too It was a joystick buster
That Demon Attack cover is amazing. I had those exact same dollar store T-Rex and Dimetrodon toys as a kid... minus the chrome finish and rocket thrusters, obviously.
Cosmic Ark is one of the greatest 2600 games ever made.
Anyone else remember the incredible rush as a kid when you got to buy an Imagic game then sit in front of your VCS looking at that silver box and that awesome logo just knowing it was going to be a good game? I used to get little kid chills...
I had Demon Attack. Fun and challenging game. This was cool, thanks
Demon Attack, Fathom and Laser Gates were some of my most favorite games back in the day for the 2600. I also remember playing Dragonfire and Atlantis on a 2600 clone filled with various games. Never knew about Skate Boardin to be honest, but it looks fun. Imagic surely made some really great games for the 2600. Thanks for making this vid!
To this day, I consider Dragonfire the Greatest 2600 game ever, considering gameplay, graphics, and story. Laser Gates might have the second confirmed Easter Egg in it, as fighting against an intergalactic computer, you shoot a wall with 6507 inscribed on it, the same number as the MOS chip powering the 2600. I absolutely loved Riddle of the Sphinx, but I never figured out how to beat it.
All things considered, I think if I was given the choice of the Activision library or the IMagic library, I'd take the IMagic library, as I remember the games a bit more fondly and they seem to be more ambitious.
Imagic made the best looking games on the system. The had some real bangers too. You always know you are in for a good time when you see that silver cartridge.
I don't remember any of their games from 1983; they must not have advertised and the games must not have been good enough to keep them in business to make computer games.
@6:52 holy crap its Ecco 2 before Ecco 2. Were they inspired by this game because playing as a dolphin that can turn into a bird is a hellof a conincidence
“You’ve lasted this long in an Atari 2600 video after all”
Me, drunk, making instant noodles: 👁👄👁
Demon Attack with the wico TRACK BALL controller is a MUST TRY! It turns up the action and makes it more fun with higher scores!😲
Activision bought Imagic (what was left of it) acquiring the rights to its games
Growing up Demon Attack was one of my favorite, if not most favorite 2600 game ever.
I loved Demon Attack (the best Phoenix Clone) and Atlantis (the best Missile Command clone).
Yes!
I loved Drag Race and Demon Attack. My cousin had them, but I could never find copies. Now I know why,
If you do make a future video like this, I'd recommend ordering them as a chronology and providing release dates down to the day if possible. It's a more interesting format than pure randomness, and provides a context that is also interesting, for very little added effort.
It's not random, they're listed in alphabetical order. Finding those dates is far more difficult than you think. I can't even find the dates for when certain consoles were launched.
Wow this video takes me back to my childhood, a couple of these games I used to play religiously and I haven’t thought of them in decades. Great job.
Demon Attack: The only version with no boss demon at the end of a wave.
Fire Fighter: Panicking flailing arm people in the buildings are hilarious looking.
Quick Step: Unfiltered ADHD given form.
Riddle of the sphinx had a bit of a learning curve, but if you could get past that it was one of the best games. Very disappointed FrameRater didn't really give it enough of a chance.
Some games involved reading the rules or having an older kid explain it to you. I guess he didn't want to do that?
You’re totally taking me back to a time in my childhood I had completely forgotten about. I must find a way to play these games again!
I just picked a sears tele-games recently and demon attack has been pretty much glued in the cartridge slot. (Demon attack and berzerk, but mostly demon attack)
Get Yar’a Revenge
I owned Demon Attack back in the 80s. too bad I lost all of my games, including the 2600.
After I picked up Demon Attack on a lark all those years ago, I was hooked on IMAGIC.
I really enjoyed so many of the Imagic games and the boxes and cartridge art pics were the best.
imagic and activision were my favorite 2600 publishers
Loved Laser Gates as a child as well - and still like to play it whenever I dust off the Atari. It was called Space Channel over here in Germany.
I got Scramble for the VIC-20 on tape which was not good. I wanted something like Super Cobra, but didn't see the Parker Bros. version.
Imagic was a fantastic developer. They somehow circumvented the clunkiness of Atari's limited capabilities, and created smooth, responsive, playable games with nice visuals and great animation.
Demon Attack was easily one of my favorite games on the system. That game was endlessly fun. :-)
I give Riddle of the Sphinx a 7. If I use my nostalgia with it, a 9.
I was never sure how to 'beat' it, but I think by accident I figured out most of what things did and how to obtain them.
I liked 2600 games of that nature, such as Adventure and dare I even say, ET.
Games that had an ending and you had to figure it out.
The rules tell you how to do it, with some hints, though one could figure out the offerings by trial and error. Once you do it, then you can then do speed runs for best time.
Nice list! Atlantis and Demon Attack were one of my favorites when I was a kid.
I love these videos! It's great to see just where we've come from in gaming, from these blocky representations to realistic horse testicles in RDR2.
What a time to be alive!
Holly molly I didn't know that, I wonder if they also added testicle physics.
Demon Attack is the top Galaxian, Space invaders style shooter on the 2600.
Amazing graphics and gameplay in the year of it's releases and for years afterwards.
One of the examples of the 2600 version playing better than the Intellivision version
Funny, but I had the feeling that they upgraded the games to the Intellivision, rather than Activision that just seemed to translate Pitfall! and Stampede without improving them for the fancier system. Of course using the disc controller may mean playing wasn't as fun as a joystick.
@@sandal_thong8631 Yes, the intv version had the Boss level and background graphics, but the 2600s actually had the more colorful and fluid aliens, with the iconic sounds as they formed on screen and exploded, and the constant Jaws like soundtrack increasing in beats
I remember Riddle of the Sphinx. Go down to an oasis and grab the cane. Take it to the temple at the end. Tad-dah! You win.
That game variation 1. Two and three are a little more involved, just like Atari's Adventure games 1-3. There is a clock, so you can write down your time for a speed run.
Nice video, and nice list! Imagic was definitely one of the better third party game developers/publishers in their day. Absolute was pretty good too.
Dragonfire is pretty dope, especially on Colecovision
I love the completionist aspect of this. I was convinced I had only played the first 4 games mentioned here, but then when you got to "riddle of the sphinx" I realized a friend of mine owned it and we played it a bunch and could not figure it out either. Those are some neurons that haven't fired for almost 40 years.....very cool!
3:11 "Enemy ships do not fire at you." ... no, they just bleed radiation in a vertical line that destroys your cities.
11:15 "Only the bricks that fall can wipe out those nasty creatures." Except when you do a diagonal shot which also destroys the enemy.
19:41 I scrolled down a bit, but I didn't see anyone explain this, so I'll give it a try.
Basically, the 2600 can only render a maximum of two sprites along a horizontal axis. There are a few technical exceptions to this, but basically, the Atari 2600 was only designed to render two playable sprites and a "ball". Technically, there shouldn't even be multiple baseball player sprites on the screen at once, but this only applies on a per-scanline basis. Atari 2600 has a cool trick in which additional sprites can be rendered as long as they don't intersect any scanlines occupied by two other sprites. So, you can technically have as many sprites as you want on the screen as long as they don't all move together to occupy the same set of scanlines.
In other words, the reason that the other two other players cannot retrieve the ball is that they'd be intersecting a horizontal axis of the screen currently reserved for the pitcher as well as your baserunner. If the other two players cross into that horizontal field, it'll crash the game.
There's a similar issue in the 2600 port of Double Dragon. Two enemies can be on the screen at once, but they can't both attack you at the same time because they can't move into each other's fields.
Of course, there are exceptions to this, like Space Invaders, but that involves a very complex series of tricks working together, and is difficult for me to explain.
Thanks. You can see how this works in a game like Berzerk where all the robots are on different rows. But in something like Pac-Man there's flicker for alternating between 4 ghosts (the knockoff Mouse Trap has only 3 cats). They figured out a way around that in Ms. Pac-Man so they only flicker when they're on the same row. I think they didn't have to program the Pete Rose baseball game like that. Other baseball games like M-Network's Super Challenge Baseball didn't have that problem.
I officially love this channel now, thank you!
Have never seen Wing War on the 2600. I have it for the TI-99, but it's a very different looking game (more of a pure quest game) on that platform.
Imagic ported a few of their 2600 titles to the TI, so it was fun to be able to compare them.
I agree with your analysis of Fathom...it's a weird game, not awful, but that get repetitive pretty quickly. But it does get full points for thinking outside the box.
Thanks for this video. I had actually forgotten titles i was playing as a kid and this brought me back to those memories.
2:01 Paul Rudd, is that you again? You sure do love hanging around in retro game commercials, don't you?
You mean Ant-Man?
Those morfs in the adds from the game to real life are hilarious.
Man, Laser Gate looks absolutely amazing
Riddle of the Sphinx is one of the more creative puzzle games for the 2600. You forgot to mention Imagic's contest back in the day when this came out. There is a solution video for it on RUclips so give it a watch. RotS is a thinking game not an action game. The winner of that contest submitted his answer as a scroll with Egyptian hieroglyphics as Imagic did say they wanted the most creative correct answer.
Laser Gates is interesting in that on the 2600 you shoot a 6507 but Laser Gates on the Atari 8-bit computer has the player shooting a 6502.
13:22 I always thought the princess or whatever it is, the blue thing, looked like Donald Duck.
Moonsweeper was my favourite game on the system, both for the fluid “analogue” gameplay and the impressive polished visuals. It is good to see someone else appreciates it - it seems to get basically no attention for some incomprehensible reason!
Pitfall was popular because hit and 20$ vs 40$ atari oem games. And contest for points. Warp zones of sorts underground w scorpion.
Laser gates: you need to shoot a 6507 to keep going? How neat :-) that is the name of the MOS chip which is the atari’s CPU
I'm amazed by the graphics of some of these games... I had an Atari 2600 but I must have had earlier games cuz none of mine looked that good.
I think Atari did themselves a disservice by keeping in stock bad-looking games from 1977-9 when competition erupted from Activision, as well as their own games getting better when going from 2K to 4K ROMs and learning programming tricks. But since management at Atari had contempt for the people that actually made the games, naturally they left. Some of the best-looking games came out in 1983 when they out-sourced Jungle Hunt and Moon Patrol. Those two were probably made by a team that worked on play, sound and graphics instead of one programmer responsible for everything.
Really enjoyed this video. Man I missed like 80% of theses back in the day and boy do I feel like I seriously missed out. Great content, keep it up!
Zellers...that's a name I haven't heard for some time.
On the Intellivision, the Imagic games were the best out there. Awesome gameplay and great graphics.
I just saw some of those. Unlike Activision which just translated their Atari games, Imagic enhanced them to make them better, as well as releasing Intellivision-exclusives. Too bad their 1983 games for Atari weren't that exciting in this video. They needed to ask themselves, would kids put quarters in a machine to play it at an arcade? Maybe yes for 1982, no for 1983.
Atlantis was one of the last games I got for my Atari. I got it for Christmas and it was around the time that all of my friends were getting Nintendos. I held the joystick backwards so I could to the direction I wanted to shoot instead of pointing to the cannon I wanted to fire.
A friend of my brother or sister ( they are both older than me and were teens in the early 80’s) had Demon Attack. That was a fun game to play. I don’t think we ever got it because of the name.
I have trouble with Atlantis. Maybe I'll try that technique. Too bad they didn't use a multi-button joystick; there's only so much you can do with one button.
I put a LOT of time into Cosmic Ark and Demon Attack when I was a kid. When you showed that badass box art, it immediately brought me back! 😂
Does the artwork for Skateboarding day “Activision” on top or am I losing my mind? Also....GREAT video. I had no idea there were so many Imagic games!! Thanks for another great video.
Yeah I noticed after rendering the video, that's a later released copy of the game. The confusion of Activision's ownership never ends.
Laser Gates was not developed by Imagic. It was a Venturvision game, the sequel to Rescue Terra One. I think the original game name was Innerspace.
As a kid nearly 40 years ago I was lucky to at one time get hold of Demon Attack, that game still looks, sounds and plays great up to this day!
Riddles of the Sphinx is an amazing game. Once you start to figure it out, it offers endless hours of fun.
Well many, not quite endless, my interest ended.
Correction. I went back last Christmas to do speed runs for best times. Then I tried to do best times for 9 treasures on each level. I wasn't able to determine if there was a technique to get Isis to give you her exclusive treasures or whether it was random whether she gives you anything at all.
Trick shot was so much fun when I was a kid, we would have neighborhood tournaments!
Riddle of the Sphinx just looks like a guy in a speedo carrying a boogie board trying to find a good spot on the beach.
Nice breakdown of the games ! Riddle of the Sphinx was the only one I owned, but I palyed Atlantis and Cosmic Ark on friend's VCS.
That Shantae GIF with that music makes me smile every time I See it.
Atlantis and Demon's attack my personal fave. Getting good at Atlantis with the side cannons means you can play for absolute ages
no one considers those as real Activision games. THey belong in the Imagic review.
imagic is my favorite company to collect for. absolutely great collection of games. the only thing this video needs is an addendum with the intellivison games added because they're very weird. games like microsurgeon might be one of the strangest games of that era
We talked about doing Intellivison together for Console Library at some point, the only issue is the things controller since its pretty unique and I've never even seen one irl before.
Also the TI-99 games. Imagic shined there.
Part of Imagic's success was TV advertisements in 1982. I guess after Christmas they decided not to do it for their next games in 1983. In comic books you'd nearly only see Parker Bros' games or arcade conversions with multiple screen shots showing each system. Somehow they collectively decided at the Summer Electronics Show to give up on video games. My feeling was that there were so many games that kids might want to get, that it would be hard for a new release on such an old system (2600) to become the next big thing. Probably just Centipede and Ms. Pac-Man which each sold over 1 million.
Frame, do you think you'll ever upload a BLOOD review on this channel? I'm Asking because I live in Kirkland, Washington & I got to meet Jace Hall in 2019 when my step-brother Dean worked at Monolith Productions. I asked Jace about BLOOD & why ATARI/Infogrames is holding the BLOOD IP at knifepoint, he said that he'd like to scoop up the BLOOD IP ASAP once Infogrames goes under & that day might come sooner than you think as Atari has made bad business decisions that are starting to come back to bite them.
No Escape, Fire Fighter. Riddle of the Sphynx and Space Ark were quite likely my favorite atari games growing up. No Escape's audio and bizarre creatures were always super creepy but compelling, Never figured out Riddle of the Sphynx, I found the manual at some point and that did help but it and the Indian Jones game were two I played a lot just because there was clearly something deeper to them that I couldn't grasp but wanted to and I was always making new discoveries in them. Not much to say about Space Ark or Fire Fighter, I just enjoyed the gameplay in them.
Moon sweeper was my favorite 2600 game. Absolutely loved that and yars revenge
19:59 Hey,Caddicarus played that once!
Ok
Demon Attack is my favorite Imagic game on 2600. Spent so much time playing that game as a little kid.
Every time I watch these kinds of videos, Degenatron keeps popping up in my head, heh.
"You swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey!"
Good series though, keep up the good work.
Those ate not finger puppets on the demon attack box. They are plastic rubbery dinosaur toys that were anywhere from 6 to 10 inches or bigger. Just repainted silver with other stuff glued to them
I know I had some of those cheap off the shelf or should I say out of the bin. Dinosaur toys as a kid.
Laser gates reminds me of Vanguard
Reminds me of Scramble and Super Cobra.
No, it's not a random chance your middle base respawns in Atlantis, you get a building restored every 10,000 points at the end of that wave. Your middle base always respawns first, but if you have more then one building lost and survive another 10,000 points without losing your middle base, one of those buildings will respawn. In theory you can rebuild the entire city from 1 building remaining if you really get in the groove.
These games look great for the 2600
OMFG They ported Wing War to the 2600!! I didn't know that was even possible, It obviously is cut down a LOT from the Coleco version which I consider the best ColecoVision game ever made. It's gameplay and both number of maps and graphics of the rooms are way cut down, but impressive they even tried it! It obviously came out after I had left the Atari 2600 behind for the Commodore 64, as I had no idea it was made, or even a number of these Imagic games ever came out for the 2600. How did I miss this in Stella??