Here is a breakdown of the 10 games in the order that they are listed on the console’s menu, which appears to be a random order.
#Adventure:
In Adventure you must run around a labyrinthine world while using objects to collect a chalice and return it to the yellow castle. This game actually uses clipping as a gameplay device, with objects occasionally lodging themselves within the walls. There are dragons, but don’t worry, you can find a sword that wishes it were a crossbow. Touch a dragon with the sword and poof! It dies. If you don’t have a sword and a dragon gets close enough to you he will totally freak out and eat you. I felt bad killing the dragon because, hey, the poor thing’s just hungry. The game, while more varied that some offered here, doesn’t ultimately make sense because if you find the sword then the three dragons can be killed easily and it will just be matter of time before you find and return the chalice (The game engine could have easily been adapted for an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade license). One point in the game’s favor is a maze that is only partially visible and has confusing colors, making it the forerunner for my favorite Doom 3 game mechanic.
#Asteroids:
Asteroids works fairly well because the gameplay is kept simple, and the controls work all right. Rotate. Shoot. Rotate. Shoot. Rotate. Shoot. Thrust. Shoot. Rotate. Teleport. AH, teleport. DFHJFSDG DFGTELEPORTWREHYFRGDG!!!!!!!! Explode. It’s fun, even though it only portrays space as two-dimensional, clearly contradicting NASA engineers who are actual rocket scientists and should know what they’re talking about.
#Breakout:
If Pong is like kicking a ball back and forth and trying to get it by the other person, then Breakout is like trying to get the soccer ball past a balsa wood Great Wall of China. Yes, it will crumble, but it’s still a big obstacle and inexplicably returns the ball to you with greater force, which I believe is another violation of accepted scientific norms. Breakout would be more fun if, after hitting the little ball at the wall about five times, it didn’t reach mach speeds. Also, the touchy joystick makes it all too possible to “Matrix” around the ball and completely dodge it. This is the first game that really emphasizes the controller’s non-precision, making playing a frustrating experience.
#Centipede:
Centipede is latest attempt to adapt Starship Troopers to video game form, and it succeeds in keeping the novel’s intense social and political commentary intact. You get to shoot a manic centipede, a drunken spider, and a run-of-the-mill scorpion. The controller works find in this game, because you usually just want to get away from something, rather than move a specific distance in any given direction. The various game modes don’t offer a lot variety and the gameplay gets old quickly.
#Circus Atari
Circus Atari is a stupid game. It doesn’t have clowns, or monkeys, or elephant dung, but it also doesn’t have tigers or motorcycles driving inside spheres, three things that might have improved it. This is perhaps the only game in this collection to feature actual physics in the gameplay. You must move a see-saw so that one of the acrobats will land on one side propelling the other one up into balloon things. The realistic physics mean that the only way to get the men to fly high enough is to land a guy at the very end of the see-saw. This, however, is extremely difficult, because of the twitchy joystick. The most enjoyable part of this game is seeing the acrobats go splat, which was perversely funny.
#Gravitar:
A surprisingly deep game that actually features three dimensions! Just not all at once. When the game starts, you are in a top-down perspective (at least it feels that way) solar system where you will manually have to keep your spaceship from drifting into the sun. What, no futuristic subroutine (maybe using punch cards?) to take care of this mundane task? From there you can land on planets and fly up/down left/right and again try to not let gravity pull you into the ground. There. That’s the game. Oh, you can also shoot aliens, which is an exclusive feature of this game.
# Missile Command
Missile Command is an extraordinary, epic, spectacular human drama set upon the doomed landscape of humanity’s future. It’s also one of the more enjoyable games included in the set. You fire a cannon thing at bomb things that are falling on your town things. It’s surprisingly cinematic, and the explosions of your poor settlements look cool. I shed a tear whenever I completely lost one of them. All-in-all, it’s not a very optimistic game; it could easily been called Doom if that name wasn’t taken more than a decade earlier.
