Saturday, October 26, 2019

More Atari Basic nostalgia

God bless you, Atarimania!  They got almost everything that Mushca doesn't.  Of course, Mushca DOES have Compute!'s Castle Quest.  Love that one... I guess.  Oh, and Mushca also has Uncle Henry's Nuclear Waste Dump.  Typed both of those in!  Not as exciting as Candy Crush, sure, but sort of a similar gaming principle. 
But what does Atarimania have?  Well, I looked up Q.T. by Brian McWilliams.  A rare type-in game that has its own opening theme music.  It has 3 levels.  The first one's like Pengo, but without most of that game's bells and whistles.  The second one's like... the last level of Kangaroo?  Well, it's the meanest level anyway.  Your tiny bird avatar has to catch all the falling things... except for the girders.  You skip those.  Otherwise, you get all killed up.  Also, there's sort of a time element.  If you miss something that you can catch, the Jaws of Death get closer and closer.  And the third one befits a bird avatar quite well.  You have to try and pop the balloons that carry things up at you.  And then, you start over and go to the next level.  Each level has a different object: a key is the first, a lunch box the second... like the opposite of Pac-Man, you get the idea.
Atarimania also has Arena Racer... not a fan.  I typed it in and all that, but... oh, and I couldn't get J. D. Casten's Rebound to work either.  Or Rebound Contest, unfortunately.  But thank God they have a version for Mac.  And then I finally got Floyd of the Jungle to work!  But I think I have a version of it not available at Atarimania.  Here's the trick: you have to attach the Basic cartridge, of course, then go to Atari->Settings.  You have to uncheck all four of the things: the SIO patch, regular disk access, etc.  Maybe it's just the principle of the thing.  Just love that dorky old game.  I forgot how to stun the pygmies, but I finally figured it out again!  You have to... you have to wait for the next installment to find out!  Nyaah nyaah.

James Hague's games at Atarimania

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