Atari Emulator -> Synapse Software's "Slime"

Mushca Disk 175 - I gotta say... hello?  Anybody out there?  Okay, got that out of the way.  Thought I was sleepy, but I just got my second wind... after getting the contraband out of the car!  Tee hee hee... wait, did I say that or just think it?
And second, I just recalled another long-buried memory, just under "Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute" and just over all my terrible faux-pases in middle school.  In the Atari era, you would sometimes need a disk called a "Translator" disk.  I would, because I primarily had a 1200XL.  (#1200XLrules400drools)  And I forget which games needed the translator disk, but some of them did, mostly because of poor planning on the machine engineers' part.  God bless PCs and Macs!  Fortunately, going through the Mushca disks just might remind me.  Alas, not in the case of Synapse Software's classic called "Slime."  That needs 800 OS-B for those of you using the world-renowned Atari emulator.  And it's not kidding!  It'll crash, but you can always go to ... whatever.  File -> Machine -> and select "800 OS-B."  When you do, it'll reboot and you're on your way to Missile Command-style gameplay!  It's like Missile Command meets Plinko / Pachinko.  Spoiler Alert: so what do you do?  Do you a) rebuild the big pyramid shape that doesn't quite meet?  Or do you b) just ad hoc try to protect your ship from getting, as the game's name implies, slimed?  Somehow I don't feel the need to try and flip the score on this one.

Synapse Software's official home at Atarimania

Atari Emulator -> Crumble's Crisis

Mushca Disk 264, if memory serves.  i ACTUALL.... oops, did it again.  I actually tried hunting this down based on finding Caverns of Khafka here on this Digitpress list.  And from the first few minutes of gameplay, I think I see what the crisis is: everything kills you.  Everything.  The walls, the floating player/missile bad guys... apparently, the knife and fork DON'T kill you.  But as an Atari fan, the most distressing thing of all that kills you is the Atari symbol itself.  What?  How?  Why?  Why, Atari products have made me the person I am today!  And now they're killing me?  No.  This is a bridge too far, my friends.  Obviously this was a game ported from the Commodore 64.  It's the only explanation.  I gotta go.  It's a little past my bedtime as it is.  I'm late for my 11:00pm wakeup to take a leak!

Atari Emulator -> Typo!

Have you ever thought to yourself, I like Pac-Man, but I also need to practice my touch typing?  Well, are you ever in luck!  The very game for you is something called "Typo" from TJ's Industries and Romox.  (Mushca Disk 74)  ...I've just realized that I've been very lazy about providing hyperlinks, so I do apologize for that.  I also need to update my very popular post about Len Dorfman's "Erg."  It apparently no longer has a home at Atarimania, and the link to it is faulty.  I mean, you try to search from the page you get, and you end up breaking the internet!  Well, at least Atarimania's small corner of it.
...where was I?  Oh, right.  Back to "Typo."  Whelp, once again it stretches the limits of what an Atari can do, believe it or not.  You do have the option of either typing random gibberish (Parental warning: "MILF" did come up amongst the Qs and Xs) or a series of random phrases.  You know, real Comp. Lit. type stuff like "Computers can be friends" and "Touch Typing can be Fun and Educational."  All that 16K allows, mind you.  I do hate to be a backseat programmer, but I might have programmed it so that you have to type different letters to move your avatar around the maze.  Again, asymptotically stretching the processing capabilities of the Atari. 
And now that all games are either mouse-based, arrow-key based or Nintendo-type-controller-based, a typing game at the very least seems a tad bit redundant, but it does speak to what has to be sacrificed in order to merge a Pac-Man-style game with a typing-style game.  Instead of four ghosts, "Typo" has only one, which looks like a Cheeto from hell.  Frankly, your avatar ain't that pretty either, but whatever.  And instead of going fast, the ghost has to go slow.  In order to maneuver around a maze and eat the dots, you have to type several hundred characters to do so.  But when you use Phrase Mode, they do include spaces and some punctuation!  Which is definitely way more than I can say for Atari diskette file names... boy, those were the days.  I'm definitely turning into an old man, reminiscing about how we used to go bowling and roller skating.  Dana Carvey is too, but he's not using the voice he used when he did his Grumpy Old Man character on Weekend Update.
But back to the Pac-Mannish qualities of the game.  For all you old multitaskers out there, you may be disappointed to find out that, yes, it is indeed true that you cede control of the avatar to the Atari's limited A.I. capabilities.  Apparently, one cannot play Pac-Man and practice typing at the same time.  The computer picks what dots you eat next, and you will often find yourself deadheading to an all-but-forgotten corner of the maze.  But, Video Game Lunatic, you ask!  What if the computer fixes it so that you run directly into the enemy Cheeto?  And how often does this happen?  Whelp, this much I can tell you... A) you have to start over, and B) often enough that you may find yourself having to slow down so that the Cheeto is never too far behind.  But who knows?  Maybe that's a good thing.  Good workplace training, anyway.

So here's what a typical "Typo" maze looks like... actually, I guess it's the only one.  But I do give the programmers more props!  Apparently they did the Atari font in... I forget the name of the mode, but it's the mode where you can have font characters in four colors instead of just one.  My own Atari games were usually Graphics 1, and not very good in general.. oops!  Did I just let that slip?


Typo's home at Atarimania

Romox's home at Atarimania.  I think their corporate motto was actually "Brought to you by Romox, you big Lummox!"

TJS Industries' home at Atarimania

Educational Typing games at Atarimania

Atari Emulator -> Caverns of Khafka

Now, here's my type of game.  Alas, it wasn't an integral part of my childhood, so I missed out.  But it's got everything: big points, fluid action like Pharaoh's Curse, lame random sound effects... what else?  Oh, I did detect a bit of a bug.  A very Atari-style one, too: see, when you complete a level, you are treated to that old rainbow effect, and you have to hear the whole Khafka song.  It takes about ten minutes for the whole ceremony... feels like it, anyway.  As the levels progress, things get tougher, naturally.  These pesky player-missiles fly horizontally across the screen, and while you're sitting there, waiting, if you get hit by one, the Atari will remember it!  And you will therefore lose a life.  But whatever.  Everybody takes a beating sometime.  Right, Henry Hill?
I was going to make a map of the game, but something called Digitpress beat me to it!  Here's their map of Caverns of Khafka.  See, Boulder Dash has too many levels, and 5 variations to boot, so someone else will have to do it, hint hint.  Here's my highest score so far.  Level ... I'm sorry, STAGE 4 is a little too mean so far.  Clearly, I need to learn how many Gets it takes to get the next anti-Red "power pill."

(7:06 pm) - Okay, I've finally kicked this game's ass enough.

Atari Emulator -> Morky

Mushca Disk 49... I gotta say, Morky's a little dorky!  But I guess I am, too; really can't delude myself about that any longer.  And now that I'm on vacation... actual vacation, not one that involves a couple days at the hospital... I finally decided to see it all the way through.  That's the big question: what does it take to reel them in?  About three levels or so?  This game's got it all, I'm telling you.  And according to atarimania, it's based on a German type-in game ... see, a long time ago, there were these things called magazines.  Ask your great-grandparents.  They're like thin books, but with slicker paper to compensate for the lack of a hard cover.  Also, if you're not careful, you'll slice your fingers open with them!  Yeah, I miss those days NOT.  Go ahead!  Try it!  Drag one of these Cosmopolitan magazines along your finger, and not just because it's one of the sex tips they recommend.  Anyway, there used to be all these computer magazines before "Game Informer" came to dominate the scene.  And furthermore, video games used to be simple enough that you could actually list some computer code in a magazine!  A few pages worth of code, give or take.  You could actually type in the instructions for one of these stupid games, then actually play the game!  There were actually  programming environments that Microsoft didn't control!  And charge an arm and a leg for!  I'm guessing Morky is a combination of Basic and a few machine language routines.  USR 1536 and all that... ah, that takes me back.  And some of these type-in games are nothing to sneeze at!  The best is probably J.D. Casten's Rebound from Antic magazine.  It's got everything: a rainbow of vertical colors, six fonts it has to switch between, an avatar that needs two player-missiles, decent sound effects.  But Morky's got something!  Arguably, it's a little unfair... okay, a little to a lot unfair.  I confess I had to use the Atari emulator's state-saving feature about a few hundred times.  Take the ladder, for instance.  There's a couple rooms where you restart and have to climb down a ladder onto a platform... where you immediately get hit by one of the bad guys.  Five times in a row, thereby ending the game.  There's that, plus the globs of cotton candy that fall from the ceiling.  Some of them seem to know better than others where exactly I am, and usually on a ladder.  Also, there's the usual keys/doors motif, but here's a neat twist: if you push against a door without a key, you get killed!  As I sarcastically mentioned at the beginning, talk about door-key!  But here's the map in the attached picture.  The rooms all fit together nicely, unlike Willi... Cathryn Mataga's Shamus 1.  There's a little bit of overlap in the Red level, but those were the days, when you could do that with a maze in a computer game.  And even though this is a type-in game, I will say that the final room is devilishly fiendish.  I can't remember a finale that required such timing, even in games of complete machine language.  Takes me back to my old jump rope days in grade school, where they make you jump into two at once.  You know, timing.  Also, I'm a completely terrible juggler.  Use that information against me well someday.

Morky's home at Atarimania.com

Atari Emulator -> New York City (NYC): The Big Apple

Mushca disk 53... man, New York City's the meanest place on Earth.

Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Level 6 - The Grain Elevator

Oh, I LOVE this one!  A little like that one level on Donkey Kong with the big, killer bouncy things, a little like Level 9 in the original Bounty Bob game.  But what's the deal with those piles with the stink lines over them?  Only 50 points?  That doesn't seem right to me. But for those of you keeping score, this level features the most mutants you can subdue with just one prize: five in a row, then the two at the bottom. Seven in total! Maybe eight if you can get to that one in time on the right.