Atari 400 / 800 / XL / XE

I'm not sure how and why this game gets such a praise.. It's just not good, in terms of mechanics vs rules of the game (making it nigh-impossible to play beyond phase 1), on top of being super repetitive. Sorry, folks, but I just don't like it at all.

Congo Bongo for the Atari 8-bit is living proof that making a game with an isometric perspective should be a privilege, not a right.

Okay. Fine. It's a dumbed down RPG that relies too much on random encounters to pad out the run time. But you know what else was all those things? Final Fantasy. And Nasir Gebelli, I believe, worked on the first Final Fantasy game. I'm just saying - there's more to this game than its criminally unjust rating might suggest. First of all, I don't know how a text adventure of all things wound up being one of the most atmospherically satisfying games on the system. The way it uses music and sound to heighten dread, the olde magicky font the whole thing's written in, the clever use of color, the evocative, one-line descriptions that sound more like jokes a dorky DM might make during an early-80s tabletop game, but I think that's rather the point, now, isn't it? This game's interesting. Check it out.

Of all the edutainment games that rained upon elementary school computer rooms in the 1980s, Facemaker stands apart. It's one of those games that was ubiquitous in the early '80s. Every kid who'd gone near a computer was familiar with Facemaker. Computer stores set up Facemaker as a demo, specifically because little kids would inevitably wind up parking themselves in front of it and would - hopefully - kick and scream until Mom and Dad shelled out for a home computer. Facemaker stands apart from the rest of the "every kid played this at school" titles of the era - your Oregon Trails, your Carmen Sandiegos, etc. - because Facemaker - due to no fault of its own - is the one that has just aged the worst. I still get a kick out of booting up a Carmen Sandiego game every now and then. Heck, my kids got a kick out of those cartoony Mercer Mayer robot games. Facemaker, though... everyone played it, everyone liked it, and no one has any nostalgia for it, because my god folks it's a character customization screen without a game, and the My First ASCII vibe of the artstyle just looks a bit silly. And - to be completely honest, I was the exact right age for this game when it came out, and I found it kinda boring back then, too.

Look: I loved this game as a kid. I loved it for at least one of the reasons that my kid loves Minecraft; you can build stuff, sorta, and use that stuff you've built to do other stuff. Now, by "other stuff" I of course mean "squish evil creatures with bricks," but this was 1981/2 we're talking about here. Sirius Software was on a low-key roll for a while, cranking out "pretty good and approachable" games like Space Eggs and Wayout and this. Bonus points for the animation of the little green Cyclod dude in the beginning, which is always endearing as heck to see. Strangely enough, the cover art goes all epic Greek myth on this one. You can pretend that you're playing as a big ol' tough Cyclops man if you want. In my heart, Cyclod's just a little green dude with a big eye, man. That's all he ever needed to be.

Fantastic game.

Great John Harris game, as close to the arcade as any 8-bit computer was gonna get in 1982

Shamus should have been the Atari 800's mascot. It'd feel absolutely correct somehow. Shamus fits. I think he sort of wound up being Synapse's mascot, maybe. I assume that's who it's supposed to be; the goofy football-head shaped robot; strange and detached from humanity, yet lovable, yet powerful. I mean, the dude shoots laser knives out of his hands. You don't want to be on the bad side of him. When I say this might be the perfect Atari 8-bit game, I mean that it takes a standard Robotron 2084-style shoot-'em-up and then spreads the action out over 120 maze-like rooms, each packed chock full of mad robotic creatures and glitchy clock radios that bite. Also, the walls are electric, so be careful, but not *too* careful, or else the Shadow will getcha. Make your way to his lair, figure out the keys and the timing of the force field gaps, learn the maze, figure out there's a quicker way to get where you need to go. That's all the game needed, and they got the mix exactly right on this one. 9/10

Well, it's no Preppie!, but it'll do.

I'm gonna tell my kids this is a prequel to Splatoon. This is a ridiculously fun and satisfying game where - instead of "Basically Frogger, with better controls and a quirky attitude"," they've given us "Basically Crush Roller with personality." I need to give credit where credit is due: Russ Wentmore was a master at this kind of thing. There are plenty of Atari 8-bit games that are clearly supposed to be *like* another arcade game (oh hey, Jawbreaker, I didn't see you come in...) but Mr. Westmore kicked it up a notch. The first game, Preppie!, might actually be better than Frogger, even though it's - ya know - still built off of the same basic concept as Frogger. Preppie II is "paint three-screens of mazes while lawnmowers and - hilariously - evil frogs try to kill you." You know, *that* old canard. Look: once you've played this Preppie/Westmore version of "paint the floor and don't die," every game in that *very* specific micro-genre pales in comparison *until* (I would argue) Splatoon!, which came out three decades later on a vastly more advanced console. But I'm still gonna tell my kids this is the prequel to Splatoon! The preppie walked so the Squid Kids could ink. 8/10