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2010 4 quarters (4 stars) Action Adventure Available In Our Store D-Pad Disney Interactive Driving Fighting First-Person Game Systems More Than 2 Buttons Shooting At Enemies T Wii Wii Remote with MotionPlus with Nunchuk

Tron Evolution: Battle Grids

Tron Evolution: Battle GridsThe Game: In the era before Clu’s forceful takeover of the grid, Tron is kept busy with securing the digital world, leaving a vacuum from which a new champion can emerge in the grid games. Various factions have their own champions, who now battle each other on the game grid in various contests: light cycles, hyperball, disc battles, tank battles, and various vehicle races. (Disney Interactive, 2010)

Memories: Though tied into the new Tron movie, Tron Evolution: Battle Grids shows strong signs that its DNA is infused with the original movie and its associated games. Scenarios that didn’t even appear in Tron Legacy are front-and-center in Battle Grids, despite the story mode that sets up the era between the two movies. [read more]

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...on computers 2010 5 quarters (5 stars) Action Adventure BBC Collecting Objects D European Import First-Person Home Computer System IBM PC Keyboard Mouse

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, Episode 1 – City Of The Daleks

The Game: Promising to take his time-traveling sidekick Amy Pond to London in 1963, the Doctor is shocked when the TARDIS actually gets there – and London, and the rest of Earth, is in ruins. The human race is extinct and the Daleks have taken over. Completely unarmed (except for the Doctor’s trusty sonic screwdriver), the Doctor and Amy have to avoid the unstoppable Dalek patrols, make their way back to the TARDIS, and do whatever it takes – no matter the risk – to defeat the Daleks and set history back on its proper course. This means setting the TARDIS on a course for the heart of Dalek power: Kaalann, the capitol city of the Dalek planet Skaro. (BBC, 2010)

Buy this gameMemories: Offered for free in the UK and Wales (and for a fee everywhere else), Doctor Who: The Adventure Games not only sets out to bring an interactive component to the spectacularly revived long-running British science fiction series, but it also aims to make the games an official part of the show’s ongoing story, and tries to stick to the underlying premise of the series – namely, that the Doctor employs wits and words in lieu of weapons. And for the first time in the history of the franchise, we have, in City Of The Daleks, a game that succeeds spectacularly on all of these fronts. [read more]

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1 Button 2011 5 quarters (5 stars) Atari 7800 AtariAge.com Controller Game Systems Homebrews Joystick M Publisher / Manufacturer Rating Shooting At Enemies Slide & Shoot (i.e. Space Invaders) Special Style Title Begins With Year

Moon Cresta

1 min read

Moon CrestaThe Game: As commander of the three-stage fighter rocket Moon Cresta, your job is to ward off endless varieties of evasively weaving space attackers. Every time you knock out two consecutive screens of assailants, you’ll have an opportunity to dock your ship to another one of Moon Cresta’s three stages, until all three portions of the ship are combined to create one bad-ass weapons platform. But you can also lose stages very quickly, ending your game – a bigger ship makes a bigger and easier target. (AtariAge.com, 2011)

Memories: Quite simply one of the most superb arcade-to-console ports ever made on an Atari platform, whether cranked out professionally or as a homebrew, Moon Cresta is a knockout on the Atari 7800. [read more]

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2015 5 quarters (5 stars) Atari 7800 AtariAge.com Controller Game Systems Homebrews Joystick K Maze Publisher / Manufacturer Rating Retro Remakes Special Style Title Begins With Year

K.C. Munchkin

1 min read

K.C. MunchkinThe Game: As a small blue spherical creature whose sole sensory organs consist of two eyes, two antennae and an enormous mouth, you are on a mission to eat twelve dots which are floating around a small maze. Pursuing you are three multicolored jellyfish-like horrors who will gobble you up on contact. (AtariAge.com, 2015)

Memories: The Atari 7800 was the Rip Van Winkle of the classic console world. Put into deep freeze by the incoming Tramiel administration, the 7800 was awoken by that same management regime when the whole “Atari does computers now, not video games” strategy didn’t work out; when the 7800 – developed and market tested in 1984 – was revived, it was thrust into a late-‘80s world where it had the more powerful Nintendo Entertainment System for competition. [read more]

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1 Button 2015 5 quarters (5 stars) Atari 2600 VCS AtariAge.com Controller Game Systems Homebrews Joystick Maze Publisher / Manufacturer R Racing Rating Special Sports Style Title Begins With Year

Rally

RallyThe Game: As the driver of a high-powered race car, you rocket around corners and down straightaways, trying to pick up every yellow flag in the maze-like course and avoiding deadly collisions with pursuing red cars. Watch out for rocks and oil spills, and use your smokescreen only when necessary to distance yourself from the red cars. (AtariAge.com, 2015)

Memories: Now that there’s a homebrew version of Rally-X, I find myself wondering why this didn’t happen back in the day? Especially if Atari and Namco had “an arrangement” (one which, famously, landed the home console rights to Pac-Man in Atari’s lap). [read more]

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2 Buttons 2017 5 quarters (5 stars) Action Strategy Atari 5200 Controller Game Systems Homebrews Joystick Keypad Maze Rating Shooting At Enemies Special Style Title Begins With V Year

Venture

VentureThe Game: Trapped in a maze full of HallMonsters, you are adventurer Winky, on a mission to snatch incredible treasures from hazardous underground rooms inhabited by lesser beasts such as re-animated skeletons, goblins, serpents, and so on. Sometimes even the walls move, threatening to squish Winky or trap him, helpless to run from the HallMonsters. The deeper into the dungeons you go, the more treacherous the danger – and the greater the rewards. Just remember two things – the decomposing corpses of the smaller enemies are just as deadly as the live creatures. And there is no defense – and almost never any means of escape – from the HallMonsters. (unreleased prototype, 2017)

Memories: There may be nothing quite as bittersweet as an unreleased prototype that turns out to be awesome, we gladly would’ve paid full retail for it back in the day had it ever gone to market. It’s not that it was hard to find a good port of Venture back in the day – there was an excellent port on Colecovision and a more than passable version for the Atari 2600. [read more]