Apollo's June 1982 games: Atari Archive Episode 72
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Apollo is back with a tranche of four games released in June 1982: Racquetball, Space Cavern, Lost Luggage, and Lochjaw (later known as Shark Attack). With these, Apollo's peculiar house style really emerges, for better and worse.
As a bonus, this video includes the second installment of Crash Watch, detailing how the video game industry has been handling the past few months. Enjoy!
If you enjoyed this, consider supporting Atari Archive through its Patreon, www.patreon.com/atariarchive, and by checking out Atari Archive Volume 1, a book now on sale through Limited Run Games and Amazon!
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This is one of the few channels that gets an immediate view. I thank you for this !
I actually anticipate these videos. They seem to be on a monthly schedule
This series is fantastic and deserves far more views. I hope my little bit of algorithm engagement helps! The 'Crash Watch' is especially interesting to one who grew up in the middle of it, blissfully unaware anything was wrong as games just kept getting better and better as far as my 5th grade self could tell in 1982.
Now that he's done Space Invaders and Pac-Man which were some of the most popular carts, maybe people seeking those out will watch his other videos, similar to what I did?
When it comes to VCS/2600 stuff, I've always held the story of ET taking 6 weeks as the example of how even for a "limited" platform, there's so much which goes into a game that you still need to give time. So to see Apollo's attitude being to have that as the default, I guess I'm not surprised to see these games all share interesting concepts, nice presentation, but not quite polished gameplay.
Which I guess ties into their next chapter of their story, which I can't wait to see.
One of the worst games had less than a week. I think I'd have called in sick to get a few more days.
When I think of Games by Apollo the first thing that pops into my mind is one those companies that would sling any kind of shit together just to make a quick buck.
1:06 Racquetball, 7:24 Lost Luggage, 16:23 Space Cavern, 23:42 Lochjaw a.k.a. Shark Attack.
Thanks for discussing all of these Apollo games together, as well as your update on video-game-crash watch.
It's interesting that they got someone else to do the sounds for one of the games, as the standard had been for the programmer to do everything. But sadly it doesn't really show, like say Atari's Moon Patrol from 1983, which I'm told was outsourced. The one month development time seems like such a get-rich-quick, "shovelware" kind of attitude, which contrasts to those Activision games that took many months to make, sold well and are beloved.
It's funny that they decided to copy Demon Attack, which itself was a copy of Phoenix, except without the different stages. I didn't care much for the former, but I'm told it sold over a million copies and some kids liked it; maybe partly due to the ad campaign and if it beat Phoenix to store shelves? Perhaps similar to Freeway beating Frogger?
Yeah, sound was impossible to differentiate much on the VCS. As opposed to Imagic and Atari's later output where they were able to enable artists to draw the objects - and it shows.
Moon Patrol was done at GCC who showed up most of what Atari was outputting even through this later period.
Frogger still sold exceptionally well for Parker Bros. Pre-empting Atari did get Imagic sued and probably did hurt the sales of Phoenix in the end.
Stinks that the best game seems to be a competent "demon attack" clone.
great work on the research!
I managed to play Lost Luggage to the end where it stopped flinging luggage & sat there rotating. I had scored 277,100.
Very nice
You are like G-d
"You're the shark!" is such a funny tagline to me.
Lost Luggage is such a fun treat.
Definitely a good looking quartet for Apollo. Lost Luggage at least seems better than Mr. Bomb for the Gakken TV Boy. Lochjaw/Shark Attack just makes me look forward to Activision's Seaquest, which is a better underwater game.
Maybe do an episode regarding the history of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween for the Atari 2600 since they are early examples of violent video games! The context behind why the games didn't sell well is something for sure to write home about!
I have a love-hate relationship with Shark Attack
such a great channel
As the games slowly become more and more plain and generic, the crash seems to become more and more obvious.
I always liked Space Cavern, a very under rated game.
Agreed.
Is an Arcadia/Starpath video on the schedule?
Yes, currently scheduled for episode 82, as the unit debuted in August!
@@AtariArchive - Thanks!
I was disappointed when I bought Space Cavern back in the day. The ad in Electronic Games magazine really sold me, but the gameplay seemed cheap and clunky. It was a lot of my money at the time, and it did cause me to spend less on games. So it looks like 3rd party games did contribute to the American video game crash
Kids weren't taught to playtest and/or read reviews before buying games.
Racquetball - I got this game back in the 80s and wanted to like it, but sadly, the execution of it ruined the game's playability. Both the speed and all the shadows made it unplayable in my opinion. He should have just had ONE shadow on the floor, and made gray, like in Tennis. If he'd done that, and slowed it down a little, it could have been a neat little sports game,