Atari 2600 Friday’s #13 – Vanguard

Our 13th week brings us a little side-scrolling shooter called Vanguard.

The Story: It appears that you are the crew of a spaceship in the future trying to get through a cavern in order to find an ancient hidden city.

From the Manual: “Your goal is to reach the City of Mystery at the end of the tunnel and destroy Gond. In the tunnel zones, you maneuver around sharp rocks and barriers while battling weird flying objects. The more enemy objects you destroy, the more points you earn. If you make it to the City of Mystery and shoot Gond, you earn bonus points. But watch out! Gond could shoot you instead. If you survive the City of Mystery, you continue the game in Tunnel 2.”

From the box: “Join the Vanguard Expedition on a thrilling space odyssey. Through perilous tunnels, you’ll fight your way to the fabulous City of Mystery and the Great Gond.”

The Gameplay: The very first thing you notice when you turn it on is that Vanguard has a great feature before you start it will auto-play the entire level. Isn’t that nice of it? Your ship fires forward, aft and to either side depending on what difficulty level the game is set to. Now your goal in Vanguard is basically to navigate your way to the end of the zone while avoiding the terrain and killing enemies in your way. Once you reach the end of the stage, shoot Gond for bonus points before he shoots you. What is Gond? I have no idea until I try to play and encounter him. Each zone, or level, is divided up into areas. The Mountain Zone, pictured below, which also includes ‘Pod Power’ marked by an ‘E’ being nothing more than a temporary ten-second invincibility. The Rainbow Zone, which changes everything to a north-south orientation. The Stick Zone, which apparently makes the screen tighter. A second rainbow zone with more enemies. The Stripped Zone, which has two sides and changes difficulty based on which you pick. A third Rainbow Zone with even more enemies, they sure do love the rainbow zone, don’t they? and Finally, the Bleak Zone, where apparently you can dock with a certain enemy by touching them in the middle, no more than 3 times, to gain extra points and maybe lives. After this, it switches to the City of Mystery, which is basically the boss area, where you have to avoid moving barriers and enemy fire while shooting at Gond. After you defeat Gond, it moves on to Zone 2, where everything is faster paced and the level order rearranges. You have five lives and can gain extra lives at both 10,000 and 50,000 points. The red bar on the screen below is your fuel gauge which lasts about 40 seconds, if you let this run out you crash and die. This refills when you grab Pod Power to become invincible temporarily.

The Controls: You can move up, left, right, down, or diagonally. Red button to fire.

Post Review: Okay, first off, I found this shooter annoying for one simple reason. It fires for you; I mean it auto fires in two ways. One shot always fires forward in a slow interval, and one shot fires in the direction you are moving, up down left right, at a fast interval. to not fire and move faster, but the screen won’t scroll faster, hold down the button. Second, while in invincible mode, you cannot fire at all. That’s basically it, that fact alone makes the game much harder. On the cool side, while in invincible mode it plays a neat little Vanguard theme for you. BTW, I only made it up to the stick zone for today.

The High Score: 7090

Atari 2600 Friday’s #12 – Eggomania

This week’s game is a little thing called Eggomania, yes, it’s a game and no it has nothing to do with waffles.

The Story: The player is trying to catch eggs in a hat so they don’t hit the ground and break. Also, apparently from the box art, you are bear.

From the Manual: “Eggomania is a one to four-player, full-color game designed to be played on the Atari Video Computer System or the Sears Video Arcade. A strangely colored, feathered fowl is bent on bombing your bedeviled blue bear with dozens of even stranger colored eggs. Your only defense is catching those falling orbs in your hat before they break and cause a real mess! If you succeed in catching an entire wave, you get the delightful opportunity to get even and fire them back at that turkey! You’ll be dazzled by his reaction. So, go after that bird — if you can “bear” the pressure. Otherwise, the yolks on you !!”

From the Box: “Eggomania is a one to four-player, full-color game designed to be played on the Atari Video Computer System or the Sears Video Arcade. A strangely colored, feathered fowl is bent on bombing your bedeviled blue bear with dozens of even stranger colored eggs. Your only defense is catching those falling orbs in your hat before they break and cause a real mess! If you succeed in catching an entire wave, you get the delightful opportunity to get even and fire them back at that turkey! You’ll be dazzled by his reaction. So, go after that bird – if you can “bear” the pressure. Otherwise, the yolks on you!!” Yes, I am aware the Manual and Box have the same text.

The Gameplay: A very important first note is that this is one of the games that uses the paddles rather than the joysticks.  This is a rather simple game; you move the bear left and right with the paddles. If you manage to reach the end of the ‘level’ and hit the bonus stage, you get to fire the eggs back at the bird which can be done with the red button. speed increases with each stage. I wish there was more to it than that, but this is one of those standard early games about scoring points, not winning.

The Controls: Left-right movement by turning paddles, fire eggs back with red button.

Post Review: Sometimes you learn more from playing a game than looking it up online. So, the ‘eggs’ fall slowly and close together at first, but the more rounds you clear the faster and farther spaced apart they get. Each time you miss one, which happens immediately when they pass the hat (which looks more like a bowl) before they even hit the ground, the bird goes into a song and dance and the yolk fills up a little of the bottom of the stage. It will take a number of misses to fill the stage up to the top of the hat and get game over, so don’t worry about missing once or twice, especially since if you manage to pass to the bonus round a little gets cleared away. So it is possible to miss every now and then and still continue, you only have to worry about missing a lot in a row. On a last note, it is pretty easy to hit the bird during the bonus stage, so don’t fret too much about that.

The High Score: 8008

November 6, 2013 Pickup

I got three NES games yesterday before D&D for relatively cheap (my favorite part of retro gaming, the mass amounts of $5 games).

Picked up Ikari Warriors 2, My girlfriend and Obsessive Compulsive Gamer just oh so love the first one. Also grabbed two power glove games (even though I do not have a power glove), Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Brawler.

I also raided the used bookstore clearance section for a few items. A couple PS2 games; Medal of Honor Frontline, Hitman, and a better copy of Metal Gear Solid 2. Plus, two strategy guides for Resident Evil 5 and Fable III.