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

"It's gonna drive you insane."

Back in 1982 in my youth my first introduction to the Atari 2600 title Megamania was through the TBS aired Starcade during a commercial break. The advertisement is reminiscent of MTV videos of the 80's with music provided by The Tubes, I'll post the commercial below for your enjoyment.




Unfortunately I was not able to get my hands on Megamania until the Activision Anthology was released for the Playstation 2 in 2002. I found it to be an enjoyable but very tasking title. The gameplay is a riff on Space Invaders where you control a ship and must fire a shot upwards to hit moving targets as they descend upon you, however in Megamania the objects move much faster in a cascading effect and will reverse direction which can easily result in the loss of your ship by collision.

To add to the difficulty of the game you have an energy bar that depletes the more shots you fire but at least you can control your fired shot, move it just a little to the left or right so that it helps connect with the fast moving objects above you.

The enemies in Megamania are a little odd. You are not fighting an alien invasion in this title but are stuck in a nightmare where you must defeat bow ties, hamburgers, and steam irons. I'm guessing that Steve Cartwright must have been having sleepless nights when he was designing this title.

I've come to play this title again quite a bit just recently as the X-Box Game Room has added it to its available Atari 2600 titles. It's worth the 240 points because while it may not have the next gen graphics we've grown accustomed to it still has an outstanding and challenging game play. Feel free to look me up by my online gamer tag, Unicron2005, if you want to spend an evening blasting 8-bit foes!

Thanks to Atari Age for the pictures above, check out the box cover, the creator of the title Steve Cartwright signed it!