Home › Armchair Arcade Issue #4 - August 2004

Atari 2600 Mega Mini Reviews: Part I

Matt Barton's picture
Wed, 06/14/2006 - 3:46pm — Matt Barton

Author and Production Credit: Bill Loguidice
Musical Theme to Armchair Arcade: Matt Barton
Online Layout: Bill Loguidice
Special Thanks: Albert Yarusso and AtariAge for providing access to additional information and scans required for the article

Atari 2600 Mega Mini Reviews: Part I
Chopper Command (by Bob Whitehead, ©1982 Activision)
Defender (by Bob Polaro with Alan Murphy, ©1981 Atari, Inc.)
Fantastic Voyage (by David Lubar, ©1982 Sirius Software, Inc. and Fox Video Games, Inc.)
Space Cavern (by Dan Oliver, ©1981 Games by Apollo, Inc.)
Space Jockey (by Garry Kitchen, ©1982 Vidtec and U.S. Games)


Do a “Save Target As…” or similar to download the .WMV video file above to your local system
File size: 17.5MB
Running Time: 10:56 minutes

SUMMARY

Chopper Command
Advantages – Great presentation and control.
Disadvantages – High difficulty level. Not a great deal of variety.
Overall – Excellent (4 out of 5 stars)

Defender
Advantages – Fun play mechanic, especially when rescuing humanoids.
Disadvantages – Poor presentation, mediocre control and some unusual play conversion decisions from the original arcade version.
Overall – Fair (2 1/2 out of 5 stars)

Fantastic Voyage
Advantages – Simple, solid graphics and sound. Interesting setting and gameplay.
Disadvantages – Perhaps a little too simple in both presentation and play variety.
Overall – Good (3 out of 5 stars)

Space Cavern
Advantages – Simple to play.
Disadvantages – Boring, repetitive, too easy, and a poor presentation with sound effects that seem lifted from other, better games.
Overall – Poor (1 1/2 out of 5 stars)

Space Jockey
Advantages – Great graphics and customizable play variations.
Disadvantages – Repetitive, overlapping sound effects. Only single player.
Overall – Good (3 out of 5 stars)

Guide to Game Rankings:

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