It looks good and has multiple stages which I like, and I played it a lot as a kid. Unfortunately, he's right and the ship slows down for round 2 and round 3, so I couldn't beat round 3 as a kid.
The song from Flash Gordon that plays what you touch the invincibility power-up is also used in the title theme for Apple iigs Space Quest I : The Sarien Invasion
I wanted to see Flash Gordon but Mom wouldn't take me. I remember the TV ad: "Flash, AH-AH." I happened to like Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" but didn't make the connection. I wonder what life would have been like if Lucas got the rights to make a Flash Gordon movie instead of creating Star Wars instead?
So those larva things were called Coatl and there was a cool trick to getting more points out of them. Get really close to one and shoot it, then dock with the explosion. You will dock with it and score points for the kill AND collect the bonus points. You are still limited to 3 docks though.
It was nice that they had so many stages in one round. Unfortunately, he was right about the controls; they are too slow in subsequent rounds so it's very difficult to make it through the stage with the barrier.
As an adult, having seen all the games that have come out since, I could see this wearing a bit thin, but back in the day (1983) this was one of the best Atari 2600 games out (some of my favorites were Yar’s Revenge, Pitfall, Adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Defender, Asteroids, Breakout, Combat, Dodge’em, Frostbite, Video Olympics) . It’s basically a 2-D Zaxxon, and actually better looking than the arcade version. Worth adding to your collection, especially if you have young kids.
Video Olympics? Ouch. I didn't get that until years later on the cheap. I think it's one of only 3 games that can play 4-players at once, as the others were Street Racer (ouch- also released 1977) and Warlords (1981). Still, I'd like to see videos made by someone who played Atari games in 1977-1980 against other kids or relatives, as people mention playing Combat for hours. I never see the videos of top-10 during these years, though.
@@sandal_thong Combat was awesome fun for 2 people. Atari made an 8 player version called "Tank 8" in 1976! Video Olympics was just awesome fun for 4 people, a perfect little casual game that you can pull out at a party!
I wouldn't say it was my favorite game, but I really liked Vanguard on the 2600. Personally, I think only having one fire button was an advantage. You can play an arcade perfect port on the PSP (emulated?) which has four buttons and uses them for shooting in the four directions and you know what? I find it really awkward to have to think about what button I need to press in order to shoot in any given direction. With the 2600 version, you just move in the direction you ant to shoot and press the button. Simple. There was an Atari 5200 port which looked more like the arcade. While the joystick seemed responsive enough for moving the ship (despite the 5200 controller being one of the most hated in history), but the fire button didn't always seem to register. It wasn't the button because it worked fine on other games, but with Vanguard, sometimes it just didn't shoot, which would usually result in me getting killed.
The only game I liked where you had to press a different button to shoot in four directions was Space Zap! at the arcade which they made into half of Cosmic Ark.
Now, see here, NoSwear... It's one thing to be objectively wrong about something, but it's quite another to not like 2600 Vanguard! ;) Being serious, as someone who DIDN'T grow up with the Atari 2600 but is trying to explore it, this is one of the few Atari games I have tried that I honestly loved and wanted to play for an extended length of time. I also think it's much faster and you feel like you have a greater sense of control if you turn off the auto-fire. Different strokes for different folks, of course!
The ship slows down when it's firing. But it's so slow in subsequent rounds that I couldn't make it past the barrier very often in round 2, and not at all in round 3.
Bro, thank you for this video.. My brother and I got a 2600 for Christmas in '82 along with a black and white TV... Mom eventually got us Vanguard and it was the best Atari game BY FAR... Sometimes we'd unplug the Atari (with a screwdriver), take it into my parents room and play it on their color TV.. It was the most amazing thing ever at the time...
I remember doing that for a black & white TV, but then I got a computer with another RF modulator, so could have one on the TV upstairs and one downstairs.
A full color manual? Very nice! Cool that it shoots in all directions I wish more shooters had that. Setting it to shoot all the time sounds cool, except for the slowing down part. Cool that it switches from side scrolling to vertical scrolling. Powerups are cool. Not many Atari games had those. I might need the manual for this one. It's rather complex.
One of the last Atari manuals I had printed in color, along with Moon Patrol. Super Breakout was B&W with 5 languages, and Jungle Hunt was in B&W as well. I didn't get a new catalog for any of these! I guess they had given up before the Crash.
I have this game, but one of the spiky parts of the cartridge broke off so it won’t fit into the console anymore :( I have to physically remove the cartridge case to jam the card inside.
Good call on 1982 vs. 1983 release! I had to look it up and it came out in January 1983, as someone also mentioned who showed the TV ad. I had a feeling I played it in January, but whether I got it then or for Christmas, I didn't remember. It seems odd they would release games after Christmas, but it worked for them with Space Invaders in 1980 and Pac-Man in 1982, though Vanguard was a sleeper and not a must-have game. I didn't play or see the arcade for months later at an oddball pizzeria we went to once. I think it was my first silver-label game, and it still came with a color manual, like Moon Patrol. However, it was disappointing it didn't have a current catalog. Maybe they had so many unsold Pac-Man (or returns) that they pulled out the catalogs and put them in new releases for late 1982 and 1983! That's a sign to me they didn't want to sell any new games. When I got Jungle Hunt and Super Breakout they came with black and white manuals! Just a year earlier they were including Atari Force comic books with some of their releases; now they want to save on printing costs? Atari dominated the home video game market at 70% with 12-15 million consoles sold, so it was theirs to lose or throw away.
As he said in the video, there's four modes based on difficulty switches: one lets you automatically fire forward when you press the button (or not). The other has you fire in the direction you move, but either fires when you press the button or stops firing when you press the button.
I completely disagree LOL. I loved and still love this game....as huge vanguard arcade fan..i was very happy with this port.... But i do agree i wished they made the Gond battle more difficult.
We're always called god as well when we were kids... In fact we never used the then Boss battle. It was already the God battle in all the games that had a boss
Currently ranked 167/264. I've wondered where his break between "I'd like to play this some more" and "I don't want to play this again" would be. I guess this is on the latter. But did he say that for Galaxian which falls below it at 172? I have Tutankham, which is at 169 and I don't want to play that again. I do prefer arcade games with multiple stages, like Phoenix and Gorf. But due to the slow ship, I couldn't beat level 3 of Vanguard as a kid or adult. I played Defender recently and beat 100 levels easily. Then putting it on difficulty A made the ship slower and therefore the game less fun. Similar to difficulty A on Space Invaders with the wider cannon.
SiLenT366 Sadly, yes. While I appreciate the scope of this game on the 2600, at the end of the day I have no desire to play it again, but there is a part of me, albeit it a small part, that would be willing to try and beat a couple more levels of Bubsy.
It would be better if you could still move your ship at higher rounds. It's like there's slowdown with too many things on the screen, but it's made that way deliberately, so you can't navigate the section with the barriers.
I have actually never played any Atari games before. But to be fair, they look pretty awesome for what they are. And I think if I were to play an Atari game, my first one should be Vanguard. If only I had an Atari 2600. But if I get the chance, then move over, Luther! It’s Gage’s turn to destroy the Gond!
You can download a copy of Stella, then download the ROMs and play them that way. If you like the games, you can then start buying the real thing if you want. Emulation may not be perfect, but Stella is pretty accurate.
It's missing 2 levels, Styx Zone and Stripe Zone and the Energy Things that make you invincible are supposed to look like a flashing energy beam inside a rectangular shaped item. In There is a Home Brew Intellivision version of it and it plays just like the Arcade including the speech if you have an Intellivoice hooked up. The Intellivision version is even better than the 5200 version because the 5200 version does not talk and the graphics are not as good because the enemies on the Stripe Zone are single color while on Intellivision they are multi color. Why did they go out of the way to make the controls horrible and not just make it you hold the fire button down and it always just fires in all directions and not slow down your ship ? Why would you not want to fire? The Intellivision takes advantage of having 3 different action buttons and you use top buttons Horizontal shooting and Bottom Buttons for Vertical Shooting and it also has auto fire where it will rapidly rotate all the directions you fire at the time or only shoot vertically or horizontally or every press on the auto fire makes it auto fire in only one direction at a time. Also the Intellivision version plays music in certain stages just like the real arcade version.
This is one of the better 2600 games
It looks good and has multiple stages which I like, and I played it a lot as a kid. Unfortunately, he's right and the ship slows down for round 2 and round 3, so I couldn't beat round 3 as a kid.
I loved Vanguard. I found it to be a lot better than most of their arcade ports.
I played it a lot before I found the diagonal-playfield arcade version at a pizza place.
The song from Flash Gordon that plays what you touch the invincibility power-up is also used in the title theme for Apple iigs Space Quest I : The Sarien Invasion
I wanted to see Flash Gordon but Mom wouldn't take me. I remember the TV ad: "Flash, AH-AH." I happened to like Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" but didn't make the connection. I wonder what life would have been like if Lucas got the rights to make a Flash Gordon movie instead of creating Star Wars instead?
So those larva things were called Coatl and there was a cool trick to getting more points out of them.
Get really close to one and shoot it, then dock with the explosion. You will dock with it and score points for the kill AND collect the bonus points. You are still limited to 3 docks though.
It was nice that they had so many stages in one round. Unfortunately, he was right about the controls; they are too slow in subsequent rounds so it's very difficult to make it through the stage with the barrier.
As an adult, having seen all the games that have come out since, I could see this wearing a bit thin, but back in the day (1983) this was one of the best Atari 2600 games out (some of my favorites were Yar’s Revenge, Pitfall, Adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Defender, Asteroids, Breakout, Combat, Dodge’em, Frostbite, Video Olympics) . It’s basically a 2-D Zaxxon, and actually better looking than the arcade version. Worth adding to your collection, especially if you have young kids.
Video Olympics? Ouch. I didn't get that until years later on the cheap. I think it's one of only 3 games that can play 4-players at once, as the others were Street Racer (ouch- also released 1977) and Warlords (1981).
Still, I'd like to see videos made by someone who played Atari games in 1977-1980 against other kids or relatives, as people mention playing Combat for hours. I never see the videos of top-10 during these years, though.
@@sandal_thong Combat was awesome fun for 2 people. Atari made an 8 player version called "Tank 8" in 1976! Video Olympics was just awesome fun for 4 people, a perfect little casual game that you can pull out at a party!
Loved this one. It was one of the few games i had as a youngster
I wouldn't say it was my favorite game, but I really liked Vanguard on the 2600. Personally, I think only having one fire button was an advantage. You can play an arcade perfect port on the PSP (emulated?) which has four buttons and uses them for shooting in the four directions and you know what? I find it really awkward to have to think about what button I need to press in order to shoot in any given direction. With the 2600 version, you just move in the direction you ant to shoot and press the button. Simple.
There was an Atari 5200 port which looked more like the arcade. While the joystick seemed responsive enough for moving the ship (despite the 5200 controller being one of the most hated in history), but the fire button didn't always seem to register. It wasn't the button because it worked fine on other games, but with Vanguard, sometimes it just didn't shoot, which would usually result in me getting killed.
The only game I liked where you had to press a different button to shoot in four directions was Space Zap! at the arcade which they made into half of Cosmic Ark.
One of the best 2600 games, I'd put it in my top 3. Got it for Christmas in the mid 80's, played it all the time.
One of my fav 2600 games. Top 5 ! Or if not then Top 6. And a really faithful cover of an arcade title too !
I'd say that thing looks more like a space shrimp than a space larva
There are slow-flying shooters that are still popular, like the Gradius series?
Yeah, they can be good, but for me this one felt way too sluggish.
Now, see here, NoSwear... It's one thing to be objectively wrong about something, but it's quite another to not like 2600 Vanguard! ;) Being serious, as someone who DIDN'T grow up with the Atari 2600 but is trying to explore it, this is one of the few Atari games I have tried that I honestly loved and wanted to play for an extended length of time. I also think it's much faster and you feel like you have a greater sense of control if you turn off the auto-fire. Different strokes for different folks, of course!
The ship slows down when it's firing. But it's so slow in subsequent rounds that I couldn't make it past the barrier very often in round 2, and not at all in round 3.
Bro, thank you for this video.. My brother and I got a 2600 for Christmas in '82 along with a black and white TV... Mom eventually got us Vanguard and it was the best Atari game BY FAR... Sometimes we'd unplug the Atari (with a screwdriver), take it into my parents room and play it on their color TV.. It was the most amazing thing ever at the time...
I remember doing that for a black & white TV, but then I got a computer with another RF modulator, so could have one on the TV upstairs and one downstairs.
A full color manual? Very nice! Cool that it shoots in all directions I wish more shooters had that. Setting it to shoot all the time sounds cool, except for the slowing down part. Cool that it switches from side scrolling to vertical scrolling. Powerups are cool. Not many Atari games had those. I might need the manual for this one. It's rather complex.
One of the last Atari manuals I had printed in color, along with Moon Patrol. Super Breakout was B&W with 5 languages, and Jungle Hunt was in B&W as well. I didn't get a new catalog for any of these! I guess they had given up before the Crash.
I have this game, but one of the spiky parts of the cartridge broke off so it won’t fit into the console anymore :( I have to physically remove the cartridge case to jam the card inside.
Good call on 1982 vs. 1983 release! I had to look it up and it came out in January 1983, as someone also mentioned who showed the TV ad. I had a feeling I played it in January, but whether I got it then or for Christmas, I didn't remember. It seems odd they would release games after Christmas, but it worked for them with Space Invaders in 1980 and Pac-Man in 1982, though Vanguard was a sleeper and not a must-have game. I didn't play or see the arcade for months later at an oddball pizzeria we went to once.
I think it was my first silver-label game, and it still came with a color manual, like Moon Patrol. However, it was disappointing it didn't have a current catalog. Maybe they had so many unsold Pac-Man (or returns) that they pulled out the catalogs and put them in new releases for late 1982 and 1983! That's a sign to me they didn't want to sell any new games. When I got Jungle Hunt and Super Breakout they came with black and white manuals! Just a year earlier they were including Atari Force comic books with some of their releases; now they want to save on printing costs? Atari dominated the home video game market at 70% with 12-15 million consoles sold, so it was theirs to lose or throw away.
Hello
On my version for the 2600 I can only shoot in the direction I point the joystick to? Is this normal?
collj86 yes
As he said in the video, there's four modes based on difficulty switches: one lets you automatically fire forward when you press the button (or not). The other has you fire in the direction you move, but either fires when you press the button or stops firing when you press the button.
I completely disagree LOL. I loved and still love this game....as huge vanguard arcade fan..i was very happy with this port.... But i do agree i wished they made the Gond battle more difficult.
"Who destroys the god?"
"Luther destroys the god."
*Luther laughs in typical 80's Media jock doofus fashion*
It's actually "Gond" not "God".
@@japhyriddle god sounds cooler tho.
Classic
I liked that ad a lot. th-cam.com/video/K-gULmk9vMQ/w-d-xo.html
We're always called god as well when we were kids... In fact we never used the then Boss battle. It was already the God battle in all the games that had a boss
I already knew about the “Queen having a 2600 song” Mr No Swear Gamer Sir lol
I wanted to see Flash Gordon, but only saw it as an adult and immediately recognized the Vanguard tune!
@@sandal_thong dude i always thought Flash Gordon had SOMETHING to do with Vanguard, like HE’S the one Piloting the ship or something lol
Currently ranked 167/264. I've wondered where his break between "I'd like to play this some more" and "I don't want to play this again" would be. I guess this is on the latter. But did he say that for Galaxian which falls below it at 172? I have Tutankham, which is at 169 and I don't want to play that again.
I do prefer arcade games with multiple stages, like Phoenix and Gorf. But due to the slow ship, I couldn't beat level 3 of Vanguard as a kid or adult. I played Defender recently and beat 100 levels easily. Then putting it on difficulty A made the ship slower and therefore the game less fun. Similar to difficulty A on Space Invaders with the wider cannon.
This is surprisingly low. You would rather play Bubsy?
SiLenT366 Sadly, yes. While I appreciate the scope of this game on the 2600, at the end of the day I have no desire to play it again, but there is a part of me, albeit it a small part, that would be willing to try and beat a couple more levels of Bubsy.
This a GREAT VIDEO EPISODE! KEEP IT UP! But isnt this kind of a copy of the arcade game called; "SCRAMBLE?" I liked that game too.
Easily top 5 best 2600 games for me
I thought they were mushrooms from centipede
Who destroys the Gond?
Are you SURE it’s family friendly? I mean you do dock with that alien sheik thing..little Johnny could think it’s how babies are born. 😝
The arcade version was only barely adequate as a game.
The game would be better without continues and if you only got extra lifes.
It would be better if you could still move your ship at higher rounds. It's like there's slowdown with too many things on the screen, but it's made that way deliberately, so you can't navigate the section with the barriers.
But who kills The Gond? 😅
I have actually never played any Atari games before. But to be fair, they look pretty awesome for what they are. And I think if I were to play an Atari game, my first one should be Vanguard. If only I had an Atari 2600. But if I get the chance, then move over, Luther! It’s Gage’s turn to destroy the Gond!
You can download a copy of Stella, then download the ROMs and play them that way. If you like the games, you can then start buying the real thing if you want. Emulation may not be perfect, but Stella is pretty accurate.
It's missing 2 levels, Styx Zone and Stripe Zone and the Energy Things that make you invincible are supposed to look like a flashing energy beam inside a rectangular shaped item. In There is a Home Brew Intellivision version of it and it plays just like the Arcade including the speech if you have an Intellivoice hooked up. The Intellivision version is even better than the 5200 version because the 5200 version does not talk and the graphics are not as good because the enemies on the Stripe Zone are single color while on Intellivision they are multi color.
Why did they go out of the way to make the controls horrible and not just make it you hold the fire button down and it always just fires in all directions and not slow down your ship ? Why would you not want to fire?
The Intellivision takes advantage of having 3 different action buttons and you use top buttons Horizontal shooting and Bottom Buttons for Vertical Shooting and it also has auto fire where it will rapidly rotate all the directions you fire at the time or only shoot vertically or horizontally or every press on the auto fire makes it auto fire in only one direction at a time. Also the Intellivision version plays music in certain stages just like the real arcade version.