"Miscellaneous" is a good way to put it. I can't believe I haven't geeked out about this one yet! Another important part of my ill-spent childhood. Note to self: take better notes during childhood. Sure, the game seems silly and obnoxious now, but it was the Cold War, my friends. Games like "Final Legacy" were the only thing standing between peace and a permanent nuclear winter. But Carl Sagan got the ball rolling, and Sting's 1985 song "Russians" also helped. Looking back, this game reminds me of Atari's very superior "The Last Starfighter." It's so good, it's almost like it's not an Atari game at all! Where's the clunky scrolling? The overuse of player/missiles? Different stories, but the game play is similar: a series of mini-games, and you have to go after the enemy bases. You also get to blow up ships at sea. Thank goodness you get a really nimble ship! Either that, or the enemy torpedoes are just really, really slow. And of course, a detail that only true Atari-heads will appreciate: when the big map goes from thin to thick, or Graphics 15 to Graphics 7. I believe it was called a "display list interrupt." They can be used for just about anything vertically-based, from rainbow colors to multiple player/missiles. In this case, going from thin to thicker graphics. This is the only (Atari) game I can think of that uses this technique. I still can't wrap my head around C'est La Vie and, by extension, Star Maze, which seems to have two horizontal areas, unless the one on the right is all player-missiles? Yeah, that must be it.
Final Legacy - Disk 141, Mushca
Atarimania home of Final Legacy... and here as well. Also exists as a preliminary version (en)titled The Legacy. For some reason, my version had no title sequence, and a different set of bells and whistles.
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