Box Art Wednesday.

Click the pics to Embiggen!

I've not had the pleasure to play Mr. Do!'s Castle on the Atari 2600 but I can honestly say I had no knowledge of the other two titles existence until this evening.

Doing a little research on the Mr. Do! title it seems that it was ported to almost every system during its time with the likes of ColecoVision, MSX, Atari 5200, and the Commodore 64 to name a few. Gameplay seems to consist of Mr. Do! trying desperately to avoid horned monsters that slightly resemble Unicorns by climbing up and down ladders and when standing above the beasts, using his giant mallet to slam the ceiling down upon them. I've included a video of the gameplay from YouTube below:

I have to say that I absolutely love the music that is in that title, very catchy.

Off the Wall was released in 1989 by Axlon, the game company that Atari founder Nolan Bushnell created after leaving the company, and is basically a breakout clone with a Chinese theme. Players take on the role of Kung Fu Lu as he tries to destroy an evil Dragon that is hiding behind a wall. YouTube has once again come to the rescue:


Finally we have Rescure Terra 1 where you try to combat Space Pirates, Asteroids, Robot Interceptors, and worst of all the galaxies most horrifying force fields...Fish Force Fields! What? Perhaps luckily we have no video of this title from VentureVision...at least we have the box art and advice from it's designer, Dan Oliver.

As always a big thanks to Atari Age for the box art posted above as well as to Highretrogamelord89 for his awesome YouTube videos!

Box Art Wednesday.

For today's Box Art Wednesday we are focusing on three games that I've been enjoying on X-Box Live's Arcade. Two of these titles have been reviewed by myself last year...but I'm on low output today so I'll beg you to indulge my laziness for this post.

I've held no secret of my admiration for Dan Kitchen and Steve Cartwright and their amazing work with Activision back in the glory days of the Atari 2600, you can play any of these three titles presented today and find yourself challenged as much as any recent release on the store shelf.

Steve Cartwright (MegaMania, Seaquest, Plaque Attack) programmed both Frostbite and Barnstorming for Activision in 1983. Frostbite has you donning the fur lined shoes of Frostbite Bailey as he attempts to cross ice flows, avoiding various animals that are bent on pushing him into the frigid waters, each successful jump adds one block to his Igloo and he needs to move fast as the temperature is quickly falling.

Barnstorming puts you in the pilot seat of a Biplane as you navigate obstacles in a bid to reach the finish line with the lowest time possible. You must contend with geese, windmills, and flying through a set number of open barn doors.

Crackpots was programmed by Dan Kitchen in 1983 (Ghostbusters) and has you aiding Potsy the rooftop gardener as defends his building from an invading swarm of insects that are dead set on eating the entire building. By dropping potted petunias on the creepy crawlies he is spared watching the insects eating his home one level at a time.

If you find yourself on X-Box Live, look me up in the Arcade, my gamertag is Unicron2005! Thanks as always to Atari Age for the great signed box art pics posted above.

The Girl At The Videogame Store - Parry Gripp

Box Art Wednesday.

Click the pics above to Embiggen!

Boy howdy, is it just me or does Exoset Missile look like Jim Steranko decided one morning to make the greatest cover for a Trapper Keeper ever?

I've not had the pleasure of playing either of these three games, though I have heard of Communist Mutants From Space, the other two titles strike me as being available in the $4.99 bin at your local grocery store back in the Atari 2600's glory days.

Communist Mutants From Space debuted in 1982 by Starpath (Arcadia) and deals with aliens from the planet Rooskee invading peaceful, democratic planets, and bending them to the will of their Mother Creature...an evil alien that has gone mad due to irradiated vodka. Ah...the 80's.

CMFS also contained an Easter Egg by its programmer, Steven H. Landrum, that when you held in the fire button and turned the power switch on at the same time you would see the hi in high score would be replaced with SHL.

Thanks as always to Atari Age for the box scans posted above!

Because We Can - Fatboy Slim

Box Art Wednesday.

In 1989 I was pretty sure the Atari Lynx was going to be handheld electronic game of choice for the free world...apparently a little item called the Gameboy proved me quite wrong. Now I ended up getting the Gameboy myself and that mainly due to the pricing of the system though the Lynx tried to combat that later on in its run but it was too little too late.

However even though the system failed to find it's audience and more importantly third party developers for their games...it sure has some nice looking box art for the titles that did come out.

As always a huge thank you to Atari Age for the scanned boxes above.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - The Animals