I am not kidding

[mmcirvin]

I just found out that there was a licensed game based on the movie "Alien" for the Atari 2600, reproducing all the atmospheric horror and dark science-fiction background of the movie.

In the first horrifyingly original level of the horrifying videogame "Alien", based on the movie, you played a little stick figure running around a maze pursued by some aliens, and you had to pick up dots, making the sound "wakka wakka". And there was a blinking asterisk--a "power pill", so to speak--which, if you touched it, would make the aliens turn blue, whereupon the tables were turned and your touch could kill the aliens! And their disembodied spirits would return to the alien pen to pursue you again! And there was a back door at each side of the maze that would teleport you to the other side.

Just like in the terrifying movie "Alien".

But that was not all! Oh, no, the terror did not end there!

In the SECOND horrifyingly original level of the horrifying videogame "Alien", your stick figure had to cross the screen from bottom to top--a screen entirely infested by spine-chilling aliens. But not stationary aliens, oh no--these were aliens in constant horizontal motion, from left to right or right to left, in horizonal "lanes" almost as if they were moving rapidly on a multi-lane ALIEN FREEWAY of FEAR! And you had to move, or, one could perhaps say, HOP, from lane to lane avoiding these moving aliens as they sped from left to right or from right to left.

Just like in the terrifying movie "Alien".

Comments

I -think-

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I remember actually playing that game, or at least seeing it.

Re: I -think-

[thatbox.livejournal.com]

I may have played it as well; the levels seem to be ringing some bells.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Given the constraints of these games, I think that was probably all the levels there were, though I am not sure. But my question to you, the readers, is: What should have been the THIRD bloodcurdling level of the horrifying videogame "Alien"?

I'm thinking something where an alien has kidnapped Harry Dean Stanton and has him at the top of the screen, and you have to climb up and save him, but maybe the alien is tossing flaming barrels at you. And maybe you can hit them with a hammer.

[jwgh]

You and the alien control paddles at opposite ends of the screen, and you have to hit a grenade back and forth until one of you misses.

No, that's dumb. Maybe something based on Journey Escape?

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

How about the "escape into space" scene, where you are piloting your spaceship through a terrifying region of space, where a bunch of gigantic but slow-moving aliens are drifting around - but if you shoot them, then (terrifyingly) they are not destroyed, but simply split into two smaller, faster-moving aliens. Which further subdivide into tiny, fast-moving aliens when struck by your ship's weapon, although the small ones can be destroyed by one shot.

[kodi]

According to the instructions, there were only two types of stages.

What about a stage where you're attempting to prepare a giant hamburger for your lunch, and you need to run around stomping on the ingredients, but the alien is chasing you around trying to eat YOU? And of course you can spray the alien with some sort of nerve agent to paralyze it?

Or even better - a stage where a dozen or so thirsty aliens line up at several bars and demand that you serve them frosty beverages, and if you don't serve them fast enough, they kill you!

[kodi]

Also, I cannot believe you are not kidding, even after I've downloaded the ROM and experienced it for myself.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Or... or... it's a bowel-loosening chase of alien horror on an ancient eldritch pyramid of isometric cubes, in which the facehugger's landing on your intrepid spacesuited astronaut causes said space voyager to emit a talk balloon of comical swearing icons!

[timchuma.livejournal.com]

I have played that ROM I think (shh!)

I remember the Atari cartridges used to cost the same as videogames today or a comparable price for that time.

My brother liked playing the "Asterix" game where you played as Asterix and Obelix and had to pick up roast boar and beer and avoid the killer lyres (we called them leeches due to the sound effect.)

[davetheinverted]

I didn't believe you when you said you weren't kidding. I didn't think that anyone could possibly have produced such a game.

I Googled.

You weren't kidding.


Dav2.718

[ckd]

On the other hand, the E.T. cartridge had an alien in it and really was terrifying...ly bad.

[spasmsproject.livejournal.com]

Now I want to play this game.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Other things you can (re)discover by messing around with Stella:

Atari's simplistic, mostly terrible games from the very earliest days of the 2600 (1978 and '79) had little consistency as to which controller was used in a one-player game. In fact, it seems as if the right controller may have been player 1 slightly more often, contrary to the solid convention established later.

At the other end of the craze, a number of amazingly ambitious and slick games for the 2600 came out after the crash of 1983 that hardly anyone played! I was pretty much done collecting 2600 games by that point, being more interested in games for the 8-bit Atari computers. But some of these games, like, say, Doug Neubauer's Solaris, just floor me. The guy decided to top Star Raiders (sort of by crossing it with Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom, only better) and to do it on the 2600!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Another example: The adaptation of Defender seemed disappointingly compromised, but the 2600 Stargate is amazingly true to the arcade visuals considering the platform.

I think part of the leap in technical sophistication is that you simply had to try harder to compete in the dwindling market, and the other part was that bigger ROMs were getting cheap enough that 8k and larger cartridges were more the norm than the exception by that point. Some games also had extra RAM and other supplementary electronics inside the cartridge.

Also

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yar's Revenge, despite being completely fugly, is a really good game!

Re: Also

[piehead.livejournal.com]

I never played it "in the day", so whenever I emulate it I'm completely bewildered as to what is happening and what I'm supposed to be doing.

Maybe the instructions explained all?

concise instructions for Yar's Revenge

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The part that's far from obvious is the level endgame.

The thing that looks like a badminton shuttlecock behind the wall on the right is the boss. It can't hurt you except when it turns into the Hurtling Swirly of Death, but your little fly dude can't hurt it either.

The object is to kill the boss. You eat or shoot your way through the wall. Then when you actually manage to crawl in there (I'm not entirely sure about the exact criteria, to be honest) this shimmering thing-that-looks-like-a-programming-error appears way over at the left edge of the screen. That is actually your super-duper BFG cannon that can kill the boss. You aim that by moving vertically, then fire it and dodge out of the way lest you be killed by your own missile, because it shoots right at you.

(I think this is the thing that really adds a level of interesting viciousness to the game: it's one of the few '80s action games in which you can and often will be killed by friendly fire.)

While you're trying to do all this, the Floating Hyphen of Death hunts you down, and the boss occasionally turns into the Hurtling Swirly of Death, with considerable warning. The larger thing-that-looks-like-a-programming-error in the middle of the screen is a zone where the Hyphen can't kill you (but you can't shoot either).

Killing the boss produces a full-screen thing-that-looks-like-a-programming-error, and then you go to another level with a more infuriating wall.

Also also

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

While some arcade adaptations actually worked all right (there was a late 2600 adaptation of the Star Wars arcade game that gets major, major credit just for being recognizable as an adaptation of the Star Wars arcade game, something I would not have considered possible), the very best games for the 2600 tended to be ones that played to the 2600's strengths rather than trying to slavishly adapt something written to a different hardware platform.

Solaris is actually a good example. Neubauer topped Star Raiders in part by abandoning the first-person perspective and switching to an overhead third-person quasi-3D view that was still impressive, but that he could manage well given 2600 hardware.

All those Activision games are good examples too. The Activision house style--all those rainbow glows--was something you could easily do with horizontal blank interrupts.

Or, say, Turmoil, which just took advantage of the fact that if you didn't get too ambitious with the graphics, you could make the motion in a 2600 game incredibly smooth and fast.

[piehead.livejournal.com]

Solar Fox is a tremendously awesome action (slash puzzle?) game.

I played it on the 2600 first, then later on the C64 (also a good version, but more different). And then much later, thanks to Mame, realized it was an arcade game first, but ugh, the arcade version's controls seemed weird and gimpy when I tried it out.

Then much later I played it some more on the Atari.