Save Mary! and The Mythicon Games (Atari 2600)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- This is a film I made for the Classic-Gaming Webcast, a channel I had in 2013. It features the unreleased game Save Mary! and the three cartridges released by Mythicon in 1983 called Fire Fly, Sorcerer and Star Fox. These are all Atari 2600 VCS titles. At the end is the usual recommendation for our website, Orphaned Computers & Game Systems. Thanks as always to Adam for hosting this on his Bally Alley channel. -- Chris++
Orphaned Computers & Game Systems Website:
www.orphanedga...
The Classic-Gaming Bookcast:
www.orphanedga...
A Commodore 64 Fanatic's First Experiences:
• A Commodore 64 Fanatic...
Thanks for watching!
I had ET and Ghostbusters on the 2600. Both became notorious among the TH-camr gamers as 'bad' games. I loved both games, and still think they're awesome.
Same here, John! When I first played 2600 Ghostbusters, I couldn't believe that Dan Kitchen managed to get EVERYTHING from David Crane's Commodore 64 version into an Atari cartridge with 8K of ROM. Thanks for the comment! -- Chris++
Great video. I planned to just scan through but am watching it all ❤
I never had a 2600, started with Spectrum and had always believed the games are too old to be fun. But after getting into RetroAchievements and playing through loads of 2600 games, with added goals, i came to really love the system. So many amazing games.
Never played Save Mary but it looks brilliant and i will be going to play it!
Thanks, man! I hope you enjoy the game when you try it out! -- Chris++
I was 14 in ‘83. The word ‘Crash’ wasn’t immediately applied to the situation. The situation being, Atari’s painful demise, initiated by a really ugly version of Pac-Man! Most people just weren’t going to pay $39.99 for a new, Atari (made), game cartridge anymore! Pac-Man’s shortcomings painfully revealed, that the VCS (2600) was antiquated. Sad days! I loved Atari!
All I observed was that a lot of Atari console owners around my age had migrated to eight-bit computers. When I got my Commodore 64, I didn't stop playing Atari 2600 games, but I think quite a few people did, or at least took a long break from their consoles to focus on computers. In any case, as I said in the film (I think), we didn't stop playing for a second! The term "crash" is exaggerative. -- Chris++
Yes I think it’s a “myth / phenomenon “ created by press / media who really did not understand the market. And then ironically game press / media kept feeding it.
Around 83 in US and Europe home computers have entered the market now provided similar or better gaming experiences than consoles with game prices that was lower in general than in cartridges. This happens in parallel when both markets grows. Then there is a quick flooding of the more hard core games to those platforms and general gamers just stopped gaming for a while.
The console market in US and Europe collapse. Harder and more abrupt in US due to more console support and more business machines in holes vs in Europe where it was more home computers with gaming possibilities in homes.
(Also disc drives was not as common in Europe and many of the low budget 1-2$ cassette games had expanded that market.
Then Nintendo enter market and brings backs casual gamers as well as hardcore. Actually quicker in US due to same reasons as before but more in parallel.
Then gamers moved direct from home computers to PC. Or was already on PC and some moved to consoles and stayed there.
Imo it’s was / is not more complicated that this.
@@litjellyfish Families exuberantly bought in to the (Atari) video game craze, from 1980 thru 1982. After 2 to 3 years, many 2600’s were collecting dust. It was great fun for a short period - It was just too simple of a system. Those same families who shelved the 2600, weren’t interested in a newer game system or computer. Thus, ‘The Crash’!!
In 1983, I knew one kid who owned a computer. It isn’t like people jumped ship, from the 2600, to computers overnight. I didn’t see much of an acceptance of home computers until around ‘85 or ‘86. And even then, it was sparse.
Anyway, ‘The Crash’ ended once the NES and Commodore 64 reinvigorated the market - along with a ‘younger’ generation of parents to fuel the craze!
Note: This is my simple take on what happened - from my experience. I was in middle and high school during the 80’s. Feel free to disagree.
@@d.vaughn8990 Yes I agree with it and as said it was a bit harder in US vs Europe (where I am from) I still dont buy the crash. Well apart from that some companies overprojected and overstocked. That is anything is true and can be seen as a crash. But as you said many 2600 users / family had already stopped buying games. So what was left to support those consoles? Yes the people than then moved over to computer. A lot less in number but also spending A LOT more compared to the average casual family.
@@litjellyfish You are correct about over projecting and overstocking.
My greatest memory of ‘The Crash’ is how all of the big retailers stopped carrying video games and consoles. It was really sad! The stores felt so dead!
It was like this, until the revamped 2600 J.r. came out - which I recall a few retailers carrying. But it wasn’t the same…
Thank you for sharing - I really enjoy learning about the European Atari experience!
I love the gen X dry humor and quips in this video.
You really had a good thing going with your presentation.
Thank you! I really appreciate that. There are many like this, and we plan on getting them all on here eventually. Stay tuned -- and again, much obliged! -- Chris++
You got a sub and a comment simply for being one of the first North Americans to explain what the "video game crash" was without all the dramatics. I grew up in the UK and migrated from the 2600 to a C64, onto Amiga and then a PC. The amount of games released in the UK during the C64/Amiga heyday was insane. I heard of the video game crash later, but it didn't match up with the years I became a bona fide Gamer in the hobby. For Christmas 1984 I received Ghostbusters for the C64 and to this day, I often play the game via emulator not just to play it, but to mess about on the title screen, where if you press the space bar the game screams GHOSTBUSTERS in all its 8-bit SID glory. Ah, nostalgia.
I loved Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64, not because it was a great game, but because the speech just blew me away when I first play it in 1984/85. Add onto that incredible novelty a good game, and you have games released on computers that kept the "crash" only in the mind of people's much later ideas. Thanks for subscribing. -- Adam
growing up i liked ET the movie and the game. never understood the hate that game got. i beat it too even quite often.\
also the crash didn't even really happen. it almost happened. this is even what they teach in game design school , that a market crash ALMOST happened ,. not that it actually did happen. what really happened is all the shit games made for atari by dev's that just didn't give a shit , those games and their dev's went belly up. bassically abunch of terrible studios closed their doors. studios that did good work, survived to go on and make NES games when the NES launched in 84. so there's this perception from the common idiot and general media , that the market crashed when all that happened was a bunch of these shitty dev teams started filing bankruptcy. stocks in video games did take a nose dive for a bit , because of this. but it was never a total crash. and the arcades were booming as ever durring that time showing uplifts in business actually. so yeah the game market didn't crash.
I know what you mean, Denver. The game has received unfair criticism over the years, probably because a lot of people just believe what they read / hear instead of trying something out themselves and forming their own opinions.
Even back in 1982, I just considered E.T. to be another multi-screen adventure game, along the same continuum as Adventure, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc. In other words, I dug it! Still do. Incidentally, it contains four Easter Eggs that are fun to trigger -- more than any other 2600 game. Thanks for commenting! -- Chris++
@@ballyalley my only critacism of the gmae is it was maybe too easy and too short. oncve you figure out how to avoid falling in the holes and the best spot to drop intot he holes from , it becomes a rather simple game .. but then all atari games were really that simple. so it's jsut a baised complaint from the other side of time where more advanced games exist. back in the day when atari was all there was, i had no complaints about the game.
There was DEFINITELY a video game crash in the early 1980s because I lived through it. All the games were kind of the same by that time. You have to realize that being able to control a DOT on the screen was once mind blowing. A ton of games showed up on the market, but they were all spins on just a few ideas. Missile Command, PacMan, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Defender, everything was a variant on one of those. Games didn't take off again until around 1985, but they survived on computers for a period of time where real interesting developments were being made.
During the video game crash, you could pick up any Atari 2600 game in a bargain bin for 1-2 dollars. The big push was for better and better graphics and that kept it alive for 15 years, but by 2000 or so, basically it was just improving on the look, not that you could actually do more things. I wouldn't say games have changed significantly in 20 years now and I think we've left the golden era of the time.
@@fuzzywzhe first off in 1983 , the arcades stil made up 80% of the game industry. this fact alone means there was n NO industry crash. one small segment of the industry had massive problems and a nose dive in sales and that was atari. maybe you could say atari crashed .. but that would be innaccurate too , as atari survived . who didn't survive were all the companies making shitty games. the Arcades Saw NO change what so ever in sales infact the arcades were booming and growing in 1983. really the only ones you could say crashed were third party atari games . but again not all of them had hard times , nintendo , namco and quite few others breezed through with little to no financial loses.
further more the game industry has a notorious history if exageration of events adn infalted self importance , worse than that of hollyweird. so many people in the industry keep calling it a crash when it wasn't . it was just a rough time . rougher for those that didn't dot all their I's and cross all their T's when making a game.
last but not least if your only measure for there being a crash is "all the games were kinda the same" Then you could argue the gaming industry is crashing right now , or holywood is crashing right now. because of late both industries have been just turning out the same mindless shit for the last 5-6 years for the most part... but saying such would also be false.
P.S. living through something doesn't mean you have an objective and informed view of said events. i lived through it too, i remember seeing a lot of shitty games go on sale for super cheap , and i remember some games (good ones) still hanging on to higher price tags. and i remember the arcades always being packed wall to wall. in hindsight after having a degree in game design , that involved gaming history classes , where we learned what was going on behind the scenes, i can assure your the so called crash was a myth perpetuated by gaming executives that wanted to make themselves look more important than they are. and the simpl fact is even in these school they teach the gaming industry almost crashed , not taht it actually did , but even that is an exageration when you consider that the arcades were the main body of the gaming industry in 1983.
In 1983, Atari and Intellivision took a hit...but Famicom, Nintendo, and even Sega! Gained some lee way... arcade games and their ports continued to bloom throughout the 1980s and 90s.
"If you dont like that kind of thing, you know: thinking"
😂😂😂
"Save Mary" is on Atari 50. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like fun.
Thanks for the comment, Captain. We reckon that the reason this film has gotten so many views is exactly what you've pointed out: The game appears in the Atari 50 collection, so lots of people are searching TH-cam for it. I hope the company that currently calls itself Atari knew enough to use the completed, 1990 version of the game, instead of the unfinished 1989 prototype! -- Chris++
Yeah, it is funny - growing up as a kid in that time, we had no idea there was a "video game crash." I'd never even heard of it until about 10 years ago.
Yeah, that makes two of us, Andy! I have plenty of game and computer magazines from that period in the '80s, and the term "crash" never appears once, in any of them. The closest I've seen is a 1983 article in Electronic Games that celebrates "The Great Video-Game Shakeout" as a good thing, i.e. the weaker companies being weeded out. -- Chris++
I was around back then. Young but I was there. I went straight from coleco/atari to the nes. No gap at all.
I did go to the C64 from the Atari VCS, but I had a friend who choose a more round-about route. He went from the Atari 2600 to the Coleco Adam, so he could play Colecovision games and games that only came out on tape, such as "Dragon's Lair," a game that stunned our little minds. I didn't get my own NES until many years later, in around 1989 or 1990. I bought the cheap version that didn't come with a game. I bought it only to borrow games, and my NES collection was quite limited until the mid-1990s, when used games could be bought for just a few dollars. - Adam
I was 10 in 1983 and I had the black Atari 2600 and loved the games. I still have it in its original box. I remember begging my mom to buy me a game now and then from Sears. They were so expensive though. One day I went there and they were like at least $10 cheaper omg cool. So I was more easily able to convince her to buy them. I don't think it was really a crash. People were changing the way they played Video Games. Home Computers had so much better graphics (which everyone wanted) but they were a little too expensive for most families. However by 1984ish they got cheap enough most families bought a computer. I got a Comodore 128 eventually :-) I didnt want to play Atari 2600 games anymore. Sooo nobody was buying them and retailers had to sell them at a discount. It would have been a crash for them I guess...but video games themselves didn't crash. They were as popular as ever...just on computers now.
As for the Atari ET. I don't think its that bad a game as everyone says. Its not great but there are definitely way worse 3rd party games for the 2600 than ET uggg. As for the film well thats just wrong. ET was awesome l loved that movie! :-)
Thanks for the cool story, Brently! I think I was the odd man out in those days, as I kept playing my Atari 2600 games even after I got a Commodore 64. Not that I wasn't obsessed with the computer and learning how to program it, but I still loved the older console. And yeah, I think I was the only kid in 1982 who didn't dig the E.T. movie. Rest assured that you're not the only one who has disagreed with me on that point! Thanks for commenting! -- Chris++
I sold my Atari 2600 in order to gain funds to help pay for my Commodore 64 in 1984. I was twelve and I didn't know better. I suppose if I had kept it, then I would have continued to play it. I did enjoy some of those games, that is for sure. I especially liked "Gopher" by U.S. Games-- I have no idea why now. I also had "Star Voyager" by Imagic, which I never learned to play properly. Also, many people didn't move onto computers like the C64. I could have continued to borrow cartridges from them. - Adam
I used to play this game alot on stream on another platform. Which this game came on a atari collection on steam. Lord the viewers was coming up so many lore. lol
Thanks for the comment. You made me curious. What kind of "lore" did viewers come up with during the stream of "Save Mary?" Can you give me a few examples of some of the background stories?
@@ballyalley Yes Sir
Why does this feel like a Columbo episode?
Or Kojack, the Night Stalker!
Bae is doomed to Die! 😭😭😭
I guess the final line of the episode would be, "Oh, and just one more thing. Why did you throw your girlfriend into the water in the first place?"
I think 2600 almost didnt exist in the UK - we didnt have the disposable income. NES and any consoles never took off for a long time due to micros having games on tape for £2. C64 was popular but discs were extremely rare as everyone just used tapes to save money 💰
Great review!
Thank you! The comment is appreciated.
Thanks for this video into a game I've never heard of before.
I've just switched on my super console X pro (cheep Chinese emulator device preloaded with thousands of games) in the 2600 section, there it is, Save Mary! With its own write up about the history.
Thanks I'm gonna give it a try 👍
Thanks for the comment, Matt! I hope you enjoy the game when you try it out. If you don't, feel free to come back here and leave a nasty remark. No, wait! What am I saying??
Chris++
The system comes with info on the games? Wow
Xonox: Ghost Manor, Spike's Peak, Sir Lancelot, Robin Hood are great games. Artillery Duel is ok. Super-Kung-Fu, Tomarc The Barbarian and Motocross Racer are bad!
Ghost Manor you can play as a female or male, great!
Skrew spikes peak, artillery duel is great fun though
true@@crappyatlife
When people talk about ET being the worst game or even Atari 2600 game of all time, the Mythicon games immediately jump to my mind. Me and my brothers had the (mis)fortune to buy Firefly and Sorcerer for a couple of bucks and they became legendary in our family. Perhaps the most amazing thing was that as bad as the games were, the random "music" was even worse.
I bought the games, too! They were at Kay-Bee Toys for ten bucks apiece. This was probably around '84. I thought I was getting QUITE a deal. Well, until I started playing Sorcerer, the first game I popped in. Like I said in the film (I think......if I didn't, I should have), it wound up being more fun to look at the detailed illustrations on the cartridge labels than to play the games.
One of the strong suits is, of course, the Random Music Generator that you've mentioned. I'm being facetious with that term, since I don't think it's supposed to sound random, but [darn] -- someone dropped several flutes into a blender or something.
Chris++
One of my first memories of video games was being warned how terrible ET the game was. What a mess! When the crash hit, people were giving away consoles and games. Isles of utter garbage not worth $1. Sadly, the same would happen with the Sega 32X.
I did enjoy picking up a brand-new Sega 32X at Walmart for $20 almost right after it was released (was this 1995?). There were not many games for it, but my buddy had a Star Wars game that was okay. The videogame bargain bins in around 1983/84/85 had some great games. The best pick-up I made at one wasn't a game though, it was the Atari Trak-Ball. I think it was five bucks. I used it in joystick mode with my Commodore 64. As for E.T. on the Atari VCS, I don't have anything against it, but I would not defend it either. It's just not my type of game. I wonder what my buddy Chris has to say about this matter? - Adam
@@ballyalley 1996. I did the same, grabbing like 6-7 other games for it. The store owner was going to give me more of those 32X games, but I didn't want them.
Stupid of me. And I had the whole Tower of Power!
@@MaxAbramson3you turned down free games 😮😮😮
This is why i love these videos. They actually give these games a chance and learn how to play it. Ithers just moan about how dated it looks and only have one button.
Save mary was getting me stressed just watching watching but seems a great puzzel game.
I often use use your experience when people mention the video game crash or as ive heard you call it "the north american video game correction". Im sure millions were wiped off gaming companies stock price, but there wasnt a sudden shortage of games. It was an inevitable backlash against complacent game publishers over the durge they released.
I really appreciate your thoughtful comments, Stuart. You always were massively supportive, and I'm very grateful for that. (I'm sure I speak for Adam as well.)
Have you considered making any new videos these days? I really enjoyed your Liverpool one.
Chris++
I feel like you could do it on a modern console if things were more abstract. i.e. you're saving a cute little cartoon monster dude or something. -- You could probably also change the bricks to tetris pieces, and add some other things going on too, like if you help the dude reach certain places he could pick up the power ups for you... maybe also occasionally a UFO flies by taking pop shots at him, and you have to block the shots with your bricks as they fall. -- Also if the tetris bricks hit him, it doesn't unalive him, instead it just knocks him down for a second... he falls off the current height, or stuns him for a second or whatever... I think you could make it work. You could even call it "Save the Moron!" 😅 .. or maybe, "Save Harry"? 😉
Great ideas, Michael! Maybe someone at Atari will read this comments section, and make a version of Save Mary! that incorporates some of your additions. Then you can sue them and make a million dollars. Well, considering it's the modern version of Atari, you would make about fifteen bucks. Better than nothing, I guess......
Chris++
This game would be codeable in a few days but who would want it?
@@fuzzywzhe2600 fans. Or any 8 bit system I'm sure
I have only played Save Mary on the Atari Flashback 3, it's pretty good really...but that cartridge art is just... Giggity. 💦😍
Edit: Also, I agree... E.T. was a decent game...people just didn't understand how to comprehend the mechanics of it at the time.
And IMO, GORF was really great! It was like 4 games in ONE!
As for Mary and other women who keep getting into bad situations... let's just say, Darwin works in mysterious ways. 😡😭
Also, if Mary was cuter looking, many guys playing this game would make this a Peachy Keen Film. 😉
Those people obviously never played skeet shoot
0:37 I hated the E.T. movie before it was cool, hur hur
1:00 You know... like saying a movie is terrible when you just don't enjoy it.
Im like wow there was a video game crash, that must have sucked....hang on i live throught the 80s bull shit there was a crash.
ET The Movie was one of the Best Movies ever made and the game was one of the Worst games ever made with all it's bugs of falling into invisible holes and being unable to consistently get out of the holes.
Kids are Stupid because they went out and bought Pac Man for the VCS even after seeing how much it sucked.
I was ten in 1982 as well, and I really got into Pac-Man on the VCS. We got the cartridge on or around April 11, 1982. I hadn't expected it to be like the arcade game in the first place. Once I played it, I simply reckoned that it was its own game. "This is Pac-Man as he lives on the Atari, in the Atari world, not in the Midway world." These days, I would word it by saying that it's a fun game -- it's just not Pac-Man. If the cartridge had been released under a title like, say, "Hyphen Chomper,_" it would probably be regarded as a classic gem nowadays. Funny how impressionable people can be when it comes to presentation (which is, to me, a MERE thing). Thanks for commenting! -- Chris++
Whut
such scandalous sexist remarks...i love it, great review too.
Thanks, Gabe! -- Chris++