Review scoopings 2/5 · Dec 17, 2022
Great, But Pales To Even Its Contemporaries In The Arcade
Preliminary: Wow how did I miss this. I suppose I wasn't eager to add every shoot em up, but this one obviously is quite early and renowned. Thanks to YellowCab for mentioning it so I would play it! Plus, a great excuse to return to the Atari 2600 (not to mention an early Activision game, I always loved their look …
Preliminary: Wow how did I miss this. I suppose I wasn't eager to add every shoot em up, but this one obviously is quite early and renowned. Thanks to YellowCab for mentioning it so I would play it! Plus, a great excuse to return to the Atari 2600 (not to mention an early Activision game, I always loved their look and colors). Hopefully me being up in 1985 (and later for arcade machines I have access to) wont taint the experience, since if I played it when I was playing 1982 games, it might have shined more.
Look: 7/10 Nice, Atari 2600-era Activision colors, but mostly forgettable graphics. The Fuel is nice looking and it's cute they included the little houses. Plus, the classic simple Atari UI.
Sound: 7/10 Gotta love the sounds of this era, for me I especially like the noise drone when you go fast through the level. I can't claim to be moved by any of it, like I was with Superman for the Atari, and I never particularly love shoot em up sound effects, but Atari sounds are still very palatable for me compared to later, better-developed shooting onslaughts of sound. Oh, and the re-fueling sound was pretty nice.
Play: 7/10 I got oddly hooked for a good while, but the reality is, Xevious and other arcade vertical scrollers are gonna outshine an Atari vertical scroller. This is great for its hardware and without access to Xevious, etc., but really, nowadays, you might as well pull that up. As others have noted, the level design is nice (tho it becomes repetitive, of course, since it's an infinite looping game).
Feel: 6/10 Influential in a genre I've grown to like thanks to this project (vertically scrolling shoot em ups), and a nice return to the Atari era. Nevertheless, once I realized there wasn't a set ending to reach for, the looping level design quickly became bland and the gameplay somewhat irritating. Great for early console vertical scrollers, but might as well go with later ones or arcade ones unless trying to play through em all.
Attachment: 7/10
At about 11k Score I suddenly thought: oh right this isn't 1984, this is 1982... this very well might not have an end like 1942 does. A quick google search showed me, indeed, it's endless. I just pushed through a bit longer but didn't have that drive I had had. I clocked out, so to speak, here 
Completion: 12,180 Score Playtime: ~20 mins