Frogs and Flies was the number one game in my house that my sister and I played together. I have such great memories of that game, especially with the difficulty switch flipped so you can land in the water or make small jumps on the pads. What a fun game! I loved both Tron games. I still play both of them on my Anbernic RG-352, along with Astroblast. My dad was obsessed with Air Raiders and Star Strike. I also loved Lock and Chase and Armor Ambush. Fun fact about the M Network games: My family grew up kinda low to middle income and games were expensive, but a lot of these games started showing up on closeout at Odd Lot in Brooklyn, usually for less than $5.00. My dad and mom got me a ton of games that way; closeouts, used, second hand... Whatever they could, and my collection, while it wasn't huge, was definitely interesting and a lot of times I'll see titles on a list that I felt like only I had or knew about. Also MOTU was literally the worst game I owned. Period. End of story. LOL
Agreed. MOTU, while a fun game on the Intellivision, was completely & utterly butchered on the 2600. Astroblast, lock & chase, & the tron games are my fav from mattel.
M Network really gave it a good try with the 2600. The baseball game was my favorite, as I was able to get a handle of controlling the player. I once pitched a 1-hittter in that game. And I loved Space Attack...I used to play it saying "It's just like Beggars Canyon back home!"
Super Challenge Baseball looked and played pretty well. The "super challenge" was to find an opponent who either had the game or was willing to learn the controls. Too bad it came out the same year as Realsports, which probably split the audience, so to speak (and its baseball and football games had glitches). I just rewatched his video on Imagic, which included Pete Rose Baseball, which had a glitch so you couldn't use certain fielders to get the ball if it was out of their location. Bad programming. The only problem I could see with M-Network's is that there's no shortstop. But what are you going to do with only one fire button?
TRON: Deadly Discs is awesome! Incredibly addictive and always keeps you on your toes. My younger brother and I vastly preferred playing it over similar (and more boring) games like Berzerk.
Space Attack (originally Space Battle on the In tell I vision) was originally another development of a Mattel license. Originally it was intended to be a Battlestar Galactica game, but there were two problems. One was that although Mattel had the licenses to produce toys, and electronic games, they didn't extend to video games. The other issue is that when the Intellivision Space Battle was nearing completion, acquiring a license didn't matter in light of the show's ratings. So it was decided to release the game as a generic space game. If you ever play the original Intellivision game though, it's pretty apparent what the initial inspiration was. For one, they really nailed the design of Cylon raiders, right down to how they fly in the show. The look of the "strategy" screen also looks like the "war book" computer displays in the show. Even the three squadron colors correspond to those of the Viper squadrons; Blue, Gold, and Silver spar squadrons.
They must have had programmers for these who were extremely efficient in writing code, using the bare minimum of lines to make each thing happen and who know just how much memory they needed to get decent looking images and animations. The flicker we see in some games comes from the game running low on memory whenever there are too many objects on screen at once. I bet the really flickery ones were rushed too much and weren't debugged enough before they were shipped.
@@enfieldjohn101 There are videos saying that flicker results in alternating too many enemies/objects in the same player-2 register or something. Mouse Trap only had 3 cat enemies so didn't flicker. Ms. Pac-Man's solution was to use line-by-line drawing to the screen so that it only flickered when ghosts were on the same row. In Berzerk, the enemies never get on the same row so don't. I wondered if you could alternate the player-1 sprite with an enemy in the same way, so you could have more enemies without noticeable flicker. Maybe M-Network did it for Lock-n-Chase and Dark Cavern? But I suspect with 5 or more enemies, CBS's Wizard of Wor must have been incredibly flickery like Superman gets with too many things on screen at the same time.
LockNChase and Burgertime were two of our faves, controls notwithstanding. Funny how much better the Pac-Man knockoffs were than the actual Atari game!
Super Challenge Baseball was infinitely more frustrating on well-used (and less sensitive) joysticks. On new joysticks (or any third-party joystick of decent quality) it became much easier to select fielders and throw to the right place. It didn't stop my brother (3 years older) from being a poor winner though!
good review...I liked m network the games remind me of the great year that is 1982....I liked football tron....star strike...I remember the commercial for m network...' m network is the cure for the video blues'singing that song in my head!
With only 2-3 million Intellivisions sold but 10 million Ataris by the start of 1982, the writing was on the wall. Mattel finally figured the way to make money on their game library was to sell some to Atari owners. Too bad they didn't get some of these out in 1981 before their was a glut, so maybe one of their games might have been a hit; though he rates most of them C-to-B.
My friend and I played the heck out of M Network Baseball. We had rosters, used an official baseball scoring book and kept stats. Total nerds, but it was a blast. Why were Al Bumbry (Orioles) and Kent Hrbek (Twins) so good "in" this game? This deserves a homebrew with a CPU player.
That's awesome! I've often said that any game, with the right second player, can be elevated to S Tier in that instance because of the fun it delivers!
That was the "Super Challenge:" to find a worthy opponent willing to learn the controls. Sadly, it didn't have a 1-player option. I found out the Intellivision games didn't either. So if I'd gotten an Intellivision, I probably would have been disappointed in their line of games, since they didn't get Atari conversions or many 3rd-party games, or their licensed Burger Time until really late in 1983.
I got my systems late in their life cycle. We were poor, but I do remember Frogs n Flies and while yes, the depth of ANY of these games wasn't there, making a high score was way more fun.
Frogs and Flies was the ONLY game I remember playing on the Atari 2600 with my mother, who gave me my Atari for a Christmas present as a kid. I LOVE this game on A-Difficulties. Great game, looks great, plays great, and a lot of fun for ALL ages/sexes. Also, Football was great, but I never had anyone to play with, so that's my biggest disappointment with it; wish it had 1-player. Played a lot of Adventures of Tron (I think I got that free with proofs of purchases or something) and Space Attack. The only other 2 I played regularly as a kid were Burgertime and Lock'n'Chase, but they were "one game and done" titles for me.
I used to love frogs and flies graphics. Not only they look like The things they try to represent, but it even has a day and night cicle. At least, until sunset. I loved Atari games that do that, like the Voleyball one.
Growing up , I had one friend who had an Intellivision. He was always trying to get us to come over to play it. And while the graphics were definitely superior, the controller was a nightmare. It had a 9 digit number pad that you would slide a plastic cover over indicating which button did what. But that also destroyed the tactile recognition of which button you were pressing. For games like baseball, each button indicated a player you could switch to, but inevitably you had to look down at the controller to figure out where you thumbs were, and why you kept selecting the right fielder instead of the first baseman. Also the controller was the first to use a digital pad, except it was a large disc that was difficult for small hands to control. My friend also neglected to tell us about the "running off the screen" trick in football and soccer, which was great for him, but frustrating for us. Strangely enough I never had an issue with the ColecoVision's number pad because the buttons were big and separated by plastic walls. And you have to remember, this was also a time when kids still might choose to play outside over playing video games. We still had games like lawn darts, and slip-n-slide that had much more potential for bloodshed than any video game. Hey we were kids. We were invincible.
I had a similar experience with Intellivision. I was fascinated by it, but each time I got my hands on one, it just felt so unintuitive compared to the simplicty of the VCS. Thanks for watching, Mike! 😁
Loved all of it an whole heartedly agree. Even when you gave Baseball a D. I agree with the D because the control is wonky. But I played this with my brother for decades. As a two player game you both deal with the frustrating controls and struggling with getting the right player to run after the ball became the best part of playing. And like you we didn’t read the manual so we never knew how to hit a home run. For decades!!! So infield hits added to the urgency to get to the ball quick. It gets an S for some of my favorite gaming memories.
I like to hear stories like this, because the Atari initially was a two-player machine, like some Arcade games were in the 1970s and the previous generation 1 consoles that only had one or a few games in the circuit board. However, by 1982 the one-player games were the thing, and M-Network missed out not having a computer player. I'm told the Intellivision games these were based on didn't either for some reason (limitations of the system?).
IIRC you can only hit a home run right down center field. I could be wrong about that. I only managed it once and I gave up on it really quickly. Easily one of the worst games on 2600.
@@jamierose9095. I think it as easy as pressing up on the joystick as the batter. More speed in theory. Can launch it consistently out of the park. Made the two player experience less about skill or composure.
Super Challenge Football to be so simple really is a fun to play. I have always wished that someone would do an updated hack to somehow add punts and FG's.
As someone who owns the Atari version of "Football", I would have been ecstatic having the M-Network 's title on the same platform. While I had some idea of memory and resource limitations at the time, I had no concept of generational consoles. What we had was what we ever will have. I loved both baseball and football so much I was a naive early adopter of both Atari titles. Thank goodness for competition from Activision and M Network.
I felt Atari's Home Run and Football (why didn't they call it "Touchdown"?) from the '70s were so bad, I didn't want to have them in my collection when I could have gotten them at the thrift store for $1-2.
It's too bad they didn't release a version of the 4-stage Tron Arcade game that had shoot-the-spiders, shoot-the-bricks, tank maze and light cycles levels. I loved that Arcade game. I had Surround (1977) but it wasn't cutting it.
Lock and Chase is noteworthy as the Pac-Man clone on the 2600 with rock solid, flicker-free graphics. They used clever tricks to do it. Nobody else figured those tricks out.
@@stevehastings2010 Yeah, I'm looking forward to a video on that. I think Wizard of Wor had even more enemies than Pac-Man, but really bad flicker. They should have learned from this.
A follow up video to this would be to compare the actual Intellvision games these were modeled off of. Tron Deadly Discs is awesome on the Intellivision.
Dark Cavern deserves a second look. Those different color robots give different point values and really influence your strategy. Those green and yellow ones are not only really high point values, they are only that color for a short period after they spawn. So you want to get to them fast as soon as they appear. And they can only shoot in the direction they are looking. So that influences your strategy for tracking them. Some of them are always looking around, some only look ahead. And the ammo appearing at random spots forces you to run around the maze instead of camping out in a good spot.
Little Andy's friend, little Jamie from up the street, had Super Challenge Baseball. We had lots of fun playing that game with other "littles" from the neighborhood. We were amazed at how many glitches we found in the game (like the home run detection being VERY inconsistent). The most bizarre one is if the ball gets hit to the third baseman and you hold right and hit the button at the exact second the ball hits the third baseman, the ball will NOT go to first base, instead it will make this half circle bee-line down to the bottom of the screen, the ball disappears and the game calls it a home run for the other team. We figured the game was "whipped." My uncle was a Catholic priest and the game was so full of glitches I asked him to bless the game and my uncle said "God has better things to do than bless video games." We just played the game for what it was and had fun. Astroblast is a really good game. I wanted Discs of Tron back in the day but could never find it. Everyone had Adventures of Tron, but nobody had Discs of Tron so I never got to play it.
Bump N Jump even retains the Arcade's secret bonus trick. Koolaid Man and He-Man work only on 6 switch Atari 2600 units. Peter Pepper is the protagonist of Burgertime. The difficulty of Dark Cavern resets after a score of 400,000.
Wait, what? Work only on six-switch consoles? That's not accurate. Four-switch units have all the same functions, the difficulty switches are just moved to the back.
@@GenXGrownUp The only games modern gamers should have a problem with are those that use the Color/BW switch to do something in the game, since some of the retro consoles don't have that switch.
Adventures of Tron, Air Raiders, and Discs of Tron were my favorites. Star Strike - When I saw screenshots of this, I loved the 3D effect, but when i actually played it, I thought the game was kind of boring. Coincidentally, I once saw a small, fake screenshot for the Intellivision version of Zaxxon, and it looked a lot like this game. I was very disappointed to later find out that the Intellivision version looked about the same as the Atari 2600 version, rather than this. BurgerTime - The reason most of the enemies look like flapping squares is that rather than being programmed sprites, those are built-in missile graphics, which were basically just rectangles. Programmers could control their size and color, but not their shape. The developers did this because using sprites for all the enemies would have lead to the dreaded flicker problem that plagued Pac-Man, especially if there was a whole row of enemies chasing the player. I'm not sure I agree with their decision, but there was an actual reason for it, it wasn't just them being lazy.
Space Attack remains one of my all time favorite 2600 cartridges! I first played it at a friend's house, and while we were playing his older brother commented "that's about as close to a real space battle as you'll ever want to get." Since I play Elite Dangerous, that's comical nowadays, but at the time it felt like he was right. By the way, Frogs and Flies is an adaptation of the arcade game Frogs.
Thanks for the info. I figured it was an original concept; oh well, at least it was playtested with kids' quarters at the arcade. Though that's no guarantee of a hit or successful conversion.
Excellent video, outside of the whole Masters of the Universe difficulty switch debacle. When you do this kind of content, you are the best on the entire TH-cam platform.
I played it at a friend's home and it was OK. But would I have wanted to play it hours on end by myself? Maybe not. I like to joke of all the dogfood kids had to eat for proof-of-purchases to get "Chase the Chuckwagon" one of the worst games made for Atari, and I'm told in about 3-5 days, and didn't involve chasing anything.
Ah, I played many of these games back in the day. One thing I wish had been included in this video are video clips of what the original games looked like on the Intellivision, just to see the comparison. My cousin had an Intellivision while we had the VCS. Sometimes his games looked better, but the Intellivision controller was the pits in my opinion, which made the VCS games more fun to play (for me).
Baseball was a tough translation, i think your grade is fair. The Intellivision version was great in that you used the overlay and pressed the player on the controller to throw to.
I have played competent single-button versions. Most notable for me is Star League Baseball on the Atari 8-bit computer - a spectacular single- or multi-player game that figured out how to select the most logical player automatically for you without feeling like a cheat or being forced.
I remember playing the arcade version of Bump 'n Jump with my best friend back in the day. He was killing me in score so I decided to try playing a level without hitting ANY cars...and I ended up with a huge bonus! I found out later that this was a well known trick (that I was nonetheless not aware of). I can't remember if it was just the first level or every level that you could do that on, but if you're ever looking to get a high score on the arcade version (and some home conversions), that's one you can try. But be warned, it's not necessarily as easy as it sounds!
I'm a Xennial who had a NES, but is now going back to learn aboutgames from late 70s/early 80s consoles and 80s microcomputers. Lots of games to discover for the first time! Thanks for the vid.
My brother and I drank a lot of Kool-Aid one summer to mail-in for that game. Your ranking seems right to me; it's not a great game, but not bad at all...especially considering it was a marketing tie-in game.
I'd move Bump'n Jump to S (it's a lot of fun, varied and technically impressive game on the VCS) and Lock'n Chase to A (the maze is always the same, but the mechanic of locking the enemies is very fun, and if you manage to trap one inside two of your doors you get a lot of points). Astroblast is great, especially with a paddle, but it gets repetitive after a bit, so I'd give it an B. On the other hand, I'll check out Dark Cavern, it seems a kind of game I'd enjoy
@@GenXGrownUp you can only do it in two spots: bottom left and bottom right of the screen. When you are followed by an enemy you can place two doors in a row, but you have to time it exactly. You must place the first door while the enemy passes that exact spot in the maze
I had two M-Network games - Astroblast and Dark Cavern. I never know why they were shaped differently or that Intellivision was a thing, but they were both pretty fun and featured heavy in my rotation. Honestly, I think you were undersold Dark Cavern a little - that game is FUN! Plus it holds up well. I do know tha tMasters of the Universe is pretty lame, but that He-Man theme is worth a little credit, right? Also, NEVER turn off the Bump-n-Jump music! I still get that stuck in my head at times.
Given your exhaustive and methodically accurate descriptions, Im surprised you didn't clarify that Dark Cavern is a rename of Night Stalker. Do you happen to know why they renamed it for the VCS version?
I opted not to call out every rename (i.e. Astrosmash/Astroblast) -- I had it in the script early on but felt it didn't add anything to the discussion for this video's purposes. From what I've read, Mattel renamed their VCS ports to keep them at a distance. Then you could say, "Night Stalker - ONLY on Intellivision" without blocking the M Network division from creating a port. 😀 Thanks for watching!
A lot of these are best-effort ports with slight name changes. Astro Blast is Astro Smash, Frogs and Flies is Frog Bog, Space Attack is Space Battle, Star Strike is... Star Strike. I bet they renamed most of them because of missing features--like in Night Stalker, there's a progression of different robots with extra capabilities. I don't think those made it to Dark Cavern.
I don't know why, I loved Astroblast and would play it for hours. Loved the changing background colors. 🎉 Air Raid was another one I just liked playing
Adventures of Tron is one of the very best games for the 2600. It's massively dynamic regards to how much choice you have at any time and soon becomes the most rewarding experience once you are aware to this. One complain is that the collision detection concerning collecting the bits is a bit random but this simply isn't the case once you understand the window of collision required. Easily one of the most satisfying games you will ever play on any system but you do have to at least be aware to the various fall back options available to you on your current plan of action. Truly amazing game but it's often misunderstood and rated as such
I never owned an Intellivision system and these ports were pretty much as close to playing these on our Atari back in the day. I did play Intellivision games like Astrosmash, Night Stalker and Space Battle when I could play them in stores like Sears or Kmart. I was thrilled to actually play the Atari counterparts of each of those games and a few others I never played before. Oh and those three Intellivsion games that I loved to play were Astroblast, Dark Cavern and Space Attack on the Atari. Oh and incidentally I remember a kid's show like Captain Kangaroo that utilized the Space Battle game to shoot the UFOs when the kid said the word "pow," I believe. I think that was on the Bozo the Clown show, but I could be wrong.
I only played their auto racing game at a store. Sadly it didn't make it to an M-Network conversion, probably because it would have required the Steering Controllers which only came with Indy 500. I got Indy 500 from the initial launch in 1977 in 1981, and it was still good. But because only a few people had the controllers that was a disincentive to make any more games like that. Too bad.
OH YEAH These are up there with Activision as my favorite games on the console. I used to play Frogs and Flies for hours, I loved jumping into the water and making up stories about the other frog. I did this for most Atari games, come to think of it. Thank you for covering these!
I loved Masters of the Universe. The enemy interactions never got old to me because it was very complex and therefore required a lot of action. The rotating bullet forces you to stop and deal with enemies instead of flying straight to the castle. Dealing with them is very specific. You must line up with them then turn to shoot them. As you’re doing that, You can drop bombs by holding down and firing. Bombs leave a hole and you can lure enemies into it. Doing both together results in a lot of twitch action. As your skill increases, you learn to drop bombs and lure enemies into the holes as soon as they appear on screen before they can attack-which is very satisfying. The Skeletor screen requires that you plan your route in advance instead of trying to react when the wall is directly in front of you. You can also block Skeletor’s shot by holding the button which raises He-man’s sword. While you hold up your sword, you can’t move, so it can ruin your route. It’s a good balance. The character art in the intro and at the end of the game is amazing for this hardware. The intro is also one of very few “cutscenes” on this platform and it’s very well done.
🤘👍👍👍🎥💥 Being big fan of all Atari products, including for sure Atari 2600, and also having few videos about Atari, I'm highly interested what other "competitive" channels present about this iconic console! Do you remember how much this console was wanted by children in the 70s and 80s? ❤😏
I remember wanting a better system like _Intellivision,_ or _ColecoVision_ which were advertised on TV showing better graphics. But once you had one, parents wouldn't get you another, and Atari was the cheapest and playable, unless you got stuck with _Odyssey²_ or something. Some kids were able to get around that by getting a better system through a computer like _Atari 400/800_ or _Commodore 64._ Since my computer, the _Commodore VIC-20_ didn't have sprites, it wasn't any better than Atari. Also screenshots of video games in ads in comic books looked the worst for _Atari VCS_ and dissuaded me from getting ones that are said to be good, like Popeye, Joust and Mario Bros. However, upon seeing recent reviews of old Intellivision games, I probably came out ahead as I got to play Space Invaders, Missile Command, Asteroids 1980-1 and more games that came out in 1982-3.
@@sandal_thong8631 Nice memories... However from time perspective, we can see that difference between Atari 2600 and other consoles at that time was quite minor... more marketing than real difference. Perhaps sprites were there a key difference...?
@@ITGuyinaction Oops. I must have lost or deleted my comment. Probably it was about watching the ads of Atari vs. Intellivsion (and VIC-20). First Mattel said their Intellivision had the better sports games (true). Then Atari countered saying it had games people wanted like Asteroids, Missile Command and Warlords while the competition, not so much. Then Intellivision said they also had space games, which seemed weak, though from comments people here liked the M-Network space conversions. Finally William Shatner showed up saying the VIC-20 was a computer that can play games too.
I really enjoyed your ranking rundown. I had a few of these titles as a kid. I have a few more now in my collection. The ones that I had back then were closeouts games from the crash. They were okay but not great. Especially compared to other developers. I remember as a kid playing deadly disks alot. And I desperately wanted an opponent to play armor ambush. But, rarely had a taker. That one intrigued me. But, now, 2 of my favorites that I play often are Burgertime and Lock n Chase.
I had lots of these M-Network games, they were cheap at my local Ames (old-timey Walmart) so I loaded up and was generally not disappointed. Frogs & Flies was adorable and endlessly fun, an infinite range of angles and speeds you can jump at, and you could never master it because you could never predict the flies. Loved how it ended when it became nighttime. Adventures of Tron took practice but ultimately was the most challenging game on the Atari, it got harder and harder and was very playable, one of the few Atari games that held up to actual arcade games for pure fun. And finally I loved that baseball game! It was so good! Yes it took practice, but baseball is a complex game w/ 9 players and 4 bases, the video here proves you didn't get good at it. You would never run your 2B out to the outfield like that. A quick double right-tap-click and your right fielder is activated, field the ball and then click-up throws to 2B, just amazing how you had full command of an entire baseball field with just one lousy joystick/button. Cmon, keep trying and grade it again. OK that's enough from me, all 3 of these games get an A from me.
Great video! Huh I remember having a lot of fun playing Burgertime. I have to go back and see if the controls no longer hold up. I know the one in the nes I had a terrible time getting on / off ladders.
I would of bought more M network carts but by that time the Atari 800 was at Sears and my friend and I were writing BASIC for the first time ....a new passion ...
Space Attack on both A difficulty is something else. Way more challenging and enemy fleets move in the background while attempting to down the 12 ships. Made that game an almost S tier instead of B or C tier.
Lock N Chase is a very underrated game. It's one of the better Pac-Man inspired games which actually deviated enough from the formula to not be just a bad copy. The graphics are surprisingly smooth for the 2600, too. Dark Cavern is very good as well - almost like a roguelike game for the 2600. I never owned Super Action Football, but it looks surprisingly playable relative to the other football games of the day.
I like Lock 'N' Chase and Dark Cavern, both of which solved the flicker problem somehow (but I hate the word "underrated"). I think the Super Challenge Baseball and Football games may be better than Atari's Realsports versions, but they didn't have a 1-player option and came out at the same time. I don't think any of the M-Network games sold 1 million or more copies, despite TV and comic book advertisements. So if people agree that these games rate C to B, this may be why.
The reality of He Man hurts...but your list is respectable. One thing I want to point out. Tron's Deadly Discs. Press the fire after releasing the disc at ANY time, and you can call the disc back.
Another great video, thanks Jon! I watched this over fruit and oatmeal breakfast with my 8 y/o son and we even got Mommy to watch with us. She's not much into video games, but she smiled and laughed a few times and took notes from your TH-cam video-making skills for her own YT channel. ;) Cheers!
Your videos are premium! I already know many of the games, but some I don't yet. I am currently compiling a list of Atari games for the new Atari2600+, here in Germany the prices on eBay are fortunately moderate. But it shouldn't be more than a maximum of 25 - 30 games.
To start off, I really like these vids… ranking each game by a certain manufacturer is a cool way to do it since the quality seemed very tremendously from one software house to another….. that being said, I would say that an nostalgia factor is adding one grade to each of these reviews, placing each game one category higher than I would rank it personally
Great video, as always. I was a little shocked that He-man was ranked so low, but then I started to play it & oh man is it bad. On the intellivision, it's a solid game, though. Very nice rankings. Mattel definitely had some great games, but honestly I've never liked the cartridge design. They're hard to stack, feel cheap, & look ugly. Although I do give them props, since the way the cartridges & boxes were made, you always knew whether you were getting a Mattel game or not. Whether that game was good or bad, I won't say or ask.
I only bought three 3rd-party games for Atari through 1983. One was Pitfall! and the other two were M-Network's Armor Ambush and Super Challenge Baseball. Unfortunately, since they didn't include 1-player versions, the "super challenge" was to find an opponent willing to learn the controls to play well, which is likely why they don't score well in this video. I remember M-Network advertised their games on TV in 1982, but didn't realize they were ports of Intellivision games. Apparently none of these sold 1 million or more copies. Having a one-button joystick like Atari really limits your ability to play sports games, which is one reason Mattel Intellivision's sports games were so much better. Basketball was the only sports game from the '70s I got for my Atari, which was probably the only one in the 1970s better than Odyssey² sports games, which also had a one-button joystick. I did get Pele's Championship Soccer in 1981. It looks like the M-Network sport games were a step up, but came out at the time of Atari's RealSports line which also had its flaws. It's too bad they didn't release some of their games for Atari in 1981 before the glut of games in 1982. Having multiple sprites on the screen at the same time caused flicker in games like Adventure, Superman, Pac-Man, and Wizard of Wor. They worked around that in Berzerk by not having two robots on the same row, and mostly fixed it in Ms. Pac-Man when ghosts were not on the same row. But I would be interested to know how they got around the flicker in a game like Lock 'n' Chase or Dark Cavern, the latter having 5 enemies on the screen at the same time. So many Atari games needed to use symmetrical play fields across the vertical axis, presumably to save memory. However, though there are some symmetrical parts of the screen in Armor Ambush, screens have terrain features that are not; and there seems to be quite a few screens to enjoy. It looks so much better than Combat that I'd hoped that it would catch on among players. I'd like to see a "making-of" for this game too.
I loved Space Attack, on the harder settings it required a good amount of strategy. I think the Super Challenge Football game was the original Mario Cart in making you hate your brother (OK we all know that was Atari Combat). My brother (RIP) had this juke move that always made me miss him during a run play. I liked Air Raid too. I wish Mattel made a M-Network Space Hawk version for the Atari. That would've been cool.
Exactly like in its Intellivision equivalent, Dark Cavern starts very slow and maybe even a bit boring, but after a few minutes you start getting into the action and...BOOM, those robots start shotting you from all over the place against you and it becomes incredibly appealing. Cheers from Italy.
Mostly agree with the rankings, though Burgertime would have been a couple notches up. It's frustrating sure, but that adds to the challenge. Would have been amazing if they doubled the rom size and made better looking graphics. I also would have graded Bump 'N Jump as a B. He-Man is definitely an F. ;)
I recently found out that M Network/Mattel even made special joysticks for Tron that will work with any game, but were branded for it. They look a lot like the joystick on the amazing looking Tron coin op arcade cabinet. Very cool! Ambush looks like a really upgraded version of Combat! Too bad it is multiplayer only. I love that Astroblast lets you use a joystick or paddle. I wish more of the Atari games where you just move side to side let you use a paddle as an option. Dark Cavern is really fun! It's more different from the other maze games that it resembles than it seems at first. Kool Aid was invented in my home state so I've an extra soft spot for it and collectibles for it. Cool that they made a game too. Thanks for the warning about He-Man! It has such a cool box that it's tempting to get. Glad I never have yet. I'd like to find the comic book though. Space Attack looks like a good idea but it also looks like it really needed to be made for a console with more than one action button on the controller. Having to hit buttons on the console itself is a real pain, especially these days where we usually don't sit on the floor next to the console anymore. :) Great video!
Memory lane! I played a good number of these games, because for whatever reason they were super cheap (don't know why but maybe Intellivision over-manufactured) ... here's the thoughts on the ones I remember playing: - Air Raiders - the sound design was good for its time and managing fuel and ammo was a great challenge - Astroblast - was alright, very fast paced, but one of those games where I didn't want to use the paddle and thus it lost me - KoolAid Man - ok I never played it but I sure remember all the comic book ads! - Lock n Chase - was very satisfying and responsive to play, especially since the Atari Pac Man port was so clunky - the two "Space" games - I think I put these down after 5 minutes seeing they were hard to understand and with no score - Super Challenge Baseball - Probably my favorite of them all. This one has a special place in my heart as the frustration of having trouble selecting fielders and them moving so slow while runners went all the way around the bases was hilarious when playing with a friend. It made it really rewarding when you were actually able to get someone out. The pitching/throwing mechanics were fun too. - Super Challenge Football - in some ways ahead of its time for sure. The giving assignments to your players was fantastic.
I thought I read astroblast had the ability to play joystick or paddle? This is knd of on my radar because of the paddle option for my 2600+. Thanks for your takes. Never had M network games but now can be got for a couple bucks.
My grandfather had an Intellivision.The Baseball game on Intellivision is so great, we'd play it for hours and hours. Sad that the Atari version is lacking so much of what makes the Intellivision fun. I do really like Adventures of Tron though. It's a game I didn't even know about back in the day. Picked it up a year ago or so and it's probably my favorite M-Network game on Atari. Astroblast is pretty fun too but Astrosmash on Intellivision is better.
frogs and flies and that first tron game was a mainstay for me, sorry that Masters of the bottom tearvesre wasn't so great, I never knew it existed till the internet..well the one on the VCS that is. great vid my man!
My son really took to Frogs and Flies. I was showing him games I grew up with and thought he’d dig Combat for 2 player. Nope. The one I really didn’t care for was his favorite. 🤷♂️
Adventures of Tron is S-tier for me. I still play it (using an emulator, but I still have the cartridge). I like how much Tron stuff they fit in. Bits, grid bugs, Recognizers, and even the Solar Sailer. It's a platformer where much of the game is figuring out which direction the enemies will go... the only safe place is behind them and safety is very temporary. Recommended, seriously.
"Byyyy King o' Nerds"... ok, will finally mention: in the late 70s, my older brother, his friend, and me, made up horror dramas on his Bigston cassette player... complete with fake commercials, and yes, our own parody of Mennen :)
Astroblast was fun but my all around favorite has to be the flawed Burger Time. Slow and sluggish compared to other console versions but still very much enjoyable in my opinion.
I was jazzed with the M network sports titles...way beyond what Atari sports was. However my early VCS was somewhat incompatible with the carts it had trouble booting up and I remember reading back then an issue with design for old systems (??). Never the less I thought m network baseball and football were outstanding.
Hate to break it to you, Jon, but you played Masters of the Universe on the advanced level. The difficulty switch positions are reversed for this game, so you were playing in the "b" position and starting on level three. Hence the "3" on screen. Try it again in the "a" position.
Awesome retro game video as usual, however... Kool Aid Man shoulda been a B, not sure if it was my desire to own the game so badly based on comic book ads (glad you included it!) and the delusion of thinking the VCS version would look as cool as the Intellivision screenshots! but still to this day it's a game I gotta play anytime I play some Atari. As a kid I didn't even know there was a He-Man game, and you better believe I would have wanted it. Good thing that never happened because it DID did suck arse. And Space Attack... come on, it's a solid A!! However I will admit, without reading the instructions, you'd have no idea what to do or even understand what's going on!!! Not sure how exactly I'd rank the Tron games, but Deadly Discs was definitely better than Adventures!
Thanks, B. I can see a solid argument for Space Attack, but Kool-Aid? 😁 I think you're judging it based on nostalgia rather than the gameplay. Which, by the way, is totally fair!
Frogs and Flies was the number one game in my house that my sister and I played together. I have such great memories of that game, especially with the difficulty switch flipped so you can land in the water or make small jumps on the pads. What a fun game!
I loved both Tron games. I still play both of them on my Anbernic RG-352, along with Astroblast. My dad was obsessed with Air Raiders and Star Strike. I also loved Lock and Chase and Armor Ambush.
Fun fact about the M Network games: My family grew up kinda low to middle income and games were expensive, but a lot of these games started showing up on closeout at Odd Lot in Brooklyn, usually for less than $5.00. My dad and mom got me a ton of games that way; closeouts, used, second hand... Whatever they could, and my collection, while it wasn't huge, was definitely interesting and a lot of times I'll see titles on a list that I felt like only I had or knew about.
Also MOTU was literally the worst game I owned. Period. End of story. LOL
LOVE Frogs And Flies. It may look way better on the Intellivision, but it plays better on the 2600. Astroblast rules too.
Agreed. MOTU, while a fun game on the Intellivision, was completely & utterly butchered on the 2600. Astroblast, lock & chase, & the tron games are my fav from mattel.
M Network really gave it a good try with the 2600. The baseball game was my favorite, as I was able to get a handle of controlling the player. I once pitched a 1-hittter in that game. And I loved Space Attack...I used to play it saying "It's just like Beggars Canyon back home!"
Super Challenge Baseball looked and played pretty well. The "super challenge" was to find an opponent who either had the game or was willing to learn the controls. Too bad it came out the same year as Realsports, which probably split the audience, so to speak (and its baseball and football games had glitches). I just rewatched his video on Imagic, which included Pete Rose Baseball, which had a glitch so you couldn't use certain fielders to get the ball if it was out of their location. Bad programming. The only problem I could see with M-Network's is that there's no shortstop. But what are you going to do with only one fire button?
Dark Cavern is still fantastic. Those robots get really vicious after a few rounds.
I know, right? You can't sneak up on them in those later levels because they can see behind them.
@@GenXGrownUp I've never been great at the game but something about it keeps me coming back to it
TRON: Deadly Discs is awesome! Incredibly addictive and always keeps you on your toes. My younger brother and I vastly preferred playing it over similar (and more boring) games like Berzerk.
Space Attack (originally Space Battle on the In tell I vision) was originally another development of a Mattel license. Originally it was intended to be a Battlestar Galactica game, but there were two problems. One was that although Mattel had the licenses to produce toys, and electronic games, they didn't extend to video games. The other issue is that when the Intellivision Space Battle was nearing completion, acquiring a license didn't matter in light of the show's ratings. So it was decided to release the game as a generic space game.
If you ever play the original Intellivision game though, it's pretty apparent what the initial inspiration was. For one, they really nailed the design of Cylon raiders, right down to how they fly in the show. The look of the "strategy" screen also looks like the "war book" computer displays in the show. Even the three squadron colors correspond to those of the Viper squadrons; Blue, Gold, and Silver spar squadrons.
awwwww man!!! I probably would have harrassed my mom mercilessly for the intellivision if they branded it as a BSG game! Hahah. Their loss....
I count Space Attack as the M-Network's version of Atari's Star Raiders (Imagic had Star Voyager, and Activision had Starmaster).
Mattel had some kind of voodoo to get so many independent characters moving without flicker. Esp football and soccer. Wow!
No kidding!
I'd like to know more about that!
They must have had programmers for these who were extremely efficient in writing code, using the bare minimum of lines to make each thing happen and who know just how much memory they needed to get decent looking images and animations. The flicker we see in some games comes from the game running low on memory whenever there are too many objects on screen at once. I bet the really flickery ones were rushed too much and weren't debugged enough before they were shipped.
@@enfieldjohn101 There are videos saying that flicker results in alternating too many enemies/objects in the same player-2 register or something. Mouse Trap only had 3 cat enemies so didn't flicker. Ms. Pac-Man's solution was to use line-by-line drawing to the screen so that it only flickered when ghosts were on the same row. In Berzerk, the enemies never get on the same row so don't.
I wondered if you could alternate the player-1 sprite with an enemy in the same way, so you could have more enemies without noticeable flicker. Maybe M-Network did it for Lock-n-Chase and Dark Cavern? But I suspect with 5 or more enemies, CBS's Wizard of Wor must have been incredibly flickery like Superman gets with too many things on screen at the same time.
Played the hell out of LockNChase, Astroblast (never knew it worked with paddles though!), and Frogs N Flies.
LockNChase and Burgertime were two of our faves, controls notwithstanding. Funny how much better the Pac-Man knockoffs were than the actual Atari game!
Super Challenge Baseball was infinitely more frustrating on well-used (and less sensitive) joysticks. On new joysticks (or any third-party joystick of decent quality) it became much easier to select fielders and throw to the right place. It didn't stop my brother (3 years older) from being a poor winner though!
good review...I liked m network the games remind me of the great year that is 1982....I liked football tron....star strike...I remember the commercial for m network...' m network is the cure for the video blues'singing that song in my head!
With only 2-3 million Intellivisions sold but 10 million Ataris by the start of 1982, the writing was on the wall. Mattel finally figured the way to make money on their game library was to sell some to Atari owners. Too bad they didn't get some of these out in 1981 before their was a glut, so maybe one of their games might have been a hit; though he rates most of them C-to-B.
My friend and I played the heck out of M Network Baseball. We had rosters, used an official baseball scoring book and kept stats. Total nerds, but it was a blast. Why were Al Bumbry (Orioles) and Kent Hrbek (Twins) so good "in" this game? This deserves a homebrew with a CPU player.
That's awesome! I've often said that any game, with the right second player, can be elevated to S Tier in that instance because of the fun it delivers!
That was the "Super Challenge:" to find a worthy opponent willing to learn the controls. Sadly, it didn't have a 1-player option. I found out the Intellivision games didn't either. So if I'd gotten an Intellivision, I probably would have been disappointed in their line of games, since they didn't get Atari conversions or many 3rd-party games, or their licensed Burger Time until really late in 1983.
Frogs 'N Flies will ALWAYS be an old Atari favorite
I got my systems late in their life cycle. We were poor, but I do remember Frogs n Flies and while yes, the depth of ANY of these games wasn't there, making a high score was way more fun.
Loved playing Super Baseball with my brother as a kid. Really felt that M Network was preferable for sports titles, even on the 2600.
Probably a result of Mattel being serious about sports games for the Intellivision.
Frogs and Flies was the ONLY game I remember playing on the Atari 2600 with my mother, who gave me my Atari for a Christmas present as a kid. I LOVE this game on A-Difficulties. Great game, looks great, plays great, and a lot of fun for ALL ages/sexes. Also, Football was great, but I never had anyone to play with, so that's my biggest disappointment with it; wish it had 1-player. Played a lot of Adventures of Tron (I think I got that free with proofs of purchases or something) and Space Attack. The only other 2 I played regularly as a kid were Burgertime and Lock'n'Chase, but they were "one game and done" titles for me.
I used to love frogs and flies graphics. Not only they look like The things they try to represent, but it even has a day and night cicle. At least, until sunset. I loved Atari games that do that, like the Voleyball one.
I was so amazed when I found the sailboat accidentally in RealSports Volleyball, I thought that was the neatest thing.
@@agentmith I remember there was a shark but, I don't remember a ship. I need to play ir again to see it!
@@SylveonTrapito Yes, it was a shark fin and not a sailboat.
Growing up , I had one friend who had an Intellivision. He was always trying to get us to come over to play it. And while the graphics were definitely superior, the controller was a nightmare. It had a 9 digit number pad that you would slide a plastic cover over indicating which button did what. But that also destroyed the tactile recognition of which button you were pressing. For games like baseball, each button indicated a player you could switch to, but inevitably you had to look down at the controller to figure out where you thumbs were, and why you kept selecting the right fielder instead of the first baseman. Also the controller was the first to use a digital pad, except it was a large disc that was difficult for small hands to control. My friend also neglected to tell us about the "running off the screen" trick in football and soccer, which was great for him, but frustrating for us. Strangely enough I never had an issue with the ColecoVision's number pad because the buttons were big and separated by plastic walls. And you have to remember, this was also a time when kids still might choose to play outside over playing video games. We still had games like lawn darts, and slip-n-slide that had much more potential for bloodshed than any video game. Hey we were kids. We were invincible.
I had a similar experience with Intellivision. I was fascinated by it, but each time I got my hands on one, it just felt so unintuitive compared to the simplicty of the VCS. Thanks for watching, Mike! 😁
Loved all of it an whole heartedly agree. Even when you gave Baseball a D. I agree with the D because the control is wonky. But I played this with my brother for decades. As a two player game you both deal with the frustrating controls and struggling with getting the right player to run after the ball became the best part of playing. And like you we didn’t read the manual so we never knew how to hit a home run. For decades!!! So infield hits added to the urgency to get to the ball quick. It gets an S for some of my favorite gaming memories.
I like to hear stories like this, because the Atari initially was a two-player machine, like some Arcade games were in the 1970s and the previous generation 1 consoles that only had one or a few games in the circuit board. However, by 1982 the one-player games were the thing, and M-Network missed out not having a computer player. I'm told the Intellivision games these were based on didn't either for some reason (limitations of the system?).
IIRC you can only hit a home run right down center field. I could be wrong about that. I only managed it once and I gave up on it really quickly. Easily one of the worst games on 2600.
@@jamierose9095. I think it as easy as pressing up on the joystick as the batter. More speed in theory. Can launch it consistently out of the park. Made the two player experience less about skill or composure.
Another great video im definitely gonna give bump n jump a try it looks fun
You should! Thanks for watching. 😁
Space Attack was a favorite on Intellivison at my Uncles house as a kid, I am going to check out the M version!
Tron Deadly Discs was one of my favorites
Super Challenge Football to be so simple really is a fun to play. I have always wished that someone would do an updated hack to somehow add punts and FG's.
As someone who owns the Atari version of "Football", I would have been ecstatic having the M-Network 's title on the same platform. While I had some idea of memory and resource limitations at the time, I had no concept of generational consoles. What we had was what we ever will have. I loved both baseball and football so much I was a naive early adopter of both Atari titles. Thank goodness for competition from Activision and M Network.
I felt Atari's Home Run and Football (why didn't they call it "Touchdown"?) from the '70s were so bad, I didn't want to have them in my collection when I could have gotten them at the thrift store for $1-2.
Great video! M-Network also released a blue Tron joystick to go with those games. I believe it looked like the joystick on the arcade cabinet.
It's too bad they didn't release a version of the 4-stage Tron Arcade game that had shoot-the-spiders, shoot-the-bricks, tank maze and light cycles levels. I loved that Arcade game. I had Surround (1977) but it wasn't cutting it.
It did look like that. My family had one.
It worked okay, but we had some joysticks with leaf switches that we felt were the best.
Lock and Chase is noteworthy as the Pac-Man clone on the 2600 with rock solid, flicker-free graphics. They used clever tricks to do it. Nobody else figured those tricks out.
@@stevehastings2010 Yeah, I'm looking forward to a video on that. I think Wizard of Wor had even more enemies than Pac-Man, but really bad flicker. They should have learned from this.
A follow up video to this would be to compare the actual Intellvision games these were modeled off of. Tron Deadly Discs is awesome on the Intellivision.
That's a great idea! The 2600 ports were always inferior, but it's definitely worth a comparison. I'd like to see the same done with Coleco games.
Great video. Troy Deadly Discs was the first game I bought with my own money when I was little and my favourite game.
Dark Cavern deserves a second look. Those different color robots give different point values and really influence your strategy. Those green and yellow ones are not only really high point values, they are only that color for a short period after they spawn. So you want to get to them fast as soon as they appear. And they can only shoot in the direction they are looking. So that influences your strategy for tracking them. Some of them are always looking around, some only look ahead. And the ammo appearing at random spots forces you to run around the maze instead of camping out in a good spot.
All good points and things I observed. None of that would likely push it beyond a B in my book, though. Thank you for watching! 😁
Little Andy's friend, little Jamie from up the street, had Super Challenge Baseball. We had lots of fun playing that game with other "littles" from the neighborhood. We were amazed at how many glitches we found in the game (like the home run detection being VERY inconsistent). The most bizarre one is if the ball gets hit to the third baseman and you hold right and hit the button at the exact second the ball hits the third baseman, the ball will NOT go to first base, instead it will make this half circle bee-line down to the bottom of the screen, the ball disappears and the game calls it a home run for the other team. We figured the game was "whipped." My uncle was a Catholic priest and the game was so full of glitches I asked him to bless the game and my uncle said "God has better things to do than bless video games." We just played the game for what it was and had fun. Astroblast is a really good game. I wanted Discs of Tron back in the day but could never find it. Everyone had Adventures of Tron, but nobody had Discs of Tron so I never got to play it.
I actually had Discs of Tron but not Adventures of Tron. Weird.
Bump N Jump even retains the Arcade's secret bonus trick.
Koolaid Man and He-Man work only on 6 switch Atari 2600 units.
Peter Pepper is the protagonist of Burgertime.
The difficulty of Dark Cavern resets after a score of 400,000.
Wait, what? Work only on six-switch consoles? That's not accurate. Four-switch units have all the same functions, the difficulty switches are just moved to the back.
@@GenXGrownUp The only games modern gamers should have a problem with are those that use the Color/BW switch to do something in the game, since some of the retro consoles don't have that switch.
Mmm'kay, lol. I love Mr. Mackey! I used to play Frogs and Flys with my sister. Great reviews!
Thank you 🤗
Adventures of Tron, Air Raiders, and Discs of Tron were my favorites.
Star Strike - When I saw screenshots of this, I loved the 3D effect, but when i actually played it, I thought the game was kind of boring. Coincidentally, I once saw a small, fake screenshot for the Intellivision version of Zaxxon, and it looked a lot like this game. I was very disappointed to later find out that the Intellivision version looked about the same as the Atari 2600 version, rather than this.
BurgerTime - The reason most of the enemies look like flapping squares is that rather than being programmed sprites, those are built-in missile graphics, which were basically just rectangles. Programmers could control their size and color, but not their shape. The developers did this because using sprites for all the enemies would have lead to the dreaded flicker problem that plagued Pac-Man, especially if there was a whole row of enemies chasing the player. I'm not sure I agree with their decision, but there was an actual reason for it, it wasn't just them being lazy.
Space Attack remains one of my all time favorite 2600 cartridges! I first played it at a friend's house, and while we were playing his older brother commented "that's about as close to a real space battle as you'll ever want to get." Since I play Elite Dangerous, that's comical nowadays, but at the time it felt like he was right.
By the way, Frogs and Flies is an adaptation of the arcade game Frogs.
Thanks for the info. I figured it was an original concept; oh well, at least it was playtested with kids' quarters at the arcade. Though that's no guarantee of a hit or successful conversion.
Excellent video, outside of the whole Masters of the Universe difficulty switch debacle. When you do this kind of content, you are the best on the entire TH-cam platform.
Thanks for the kind words!
Glad I didn't bust my a$$ to get that mail in Kool Aid game. I was satisfied he was in the Journey game. Lol 😅
I played it at a friend's home and it was OK. But would I have wanted to play it hours on end by myself? Maybe not.
I like to joke of all the dogfood kids had to eat for proof-of-purchases to get "Chase the Chuckwagon" one of the worst games made for Atari, and I'm told in about 3-5 days, and didn't involve chasing anything.
Ah, I played many of these games back in the day. One thing I wish had been included in this video are video clips of what the original games looked like on the Intellivision, just to see the comparison. My cousin had an Intellivision while we had the VCS. Sometimes his games looked better, but the Intellivision controller was the pits in my opinion, which made the VCS games more fun to play (for me).
I hope to branch out and explore the Intellivision soon. Perhaps a Mattel/M Network comparison is in my future.
Baseball was a tough translation, i think your grade is fair. The Intellivision version was great in that you used the overlay and pressed the player on the controller to throw to.
I have played competent single-button versions. Most notable for me is Star League Baseball on the Atari 8-bit computer - a spectacular single- or multi-player game that figured out how to select the most logical player automatically for you without feeling like a cheat or being forced.
I loved Super Challenge Baseball ... once I figured out how the controls worked.
Fun video as always! M Network does not get enough attention, IMO. Astroblast is an F- for me. That's the beauty of opinions!
I remember playing the arcade version of Bump 'n Jump with my best friend back in the day. He was killing me in score so I decided to try playing a level without hitting ANY cars...and I ended up with a huge bonus! I found out later that this was a well known trick (that I was nonetheless not aware of). I can't remember if it was just the first level or every level that you could do that on, but if you're ever looking to get a high score on the arcade version (and some home conversions), that's one you can try. But be warned, it's not necessarily as easy as it sounds!
I can imagine!
I'm a Xennial who had a NES, but is now going back to learn aboutgames from late 70s/early 80s consoles and 80s microcomputers. Lots of games to discover for the first time! Thanks for the vid.
Thank you for watching. 😀
My brother and I drank a lot of Kool-Aid one summer to mail-in for that game. Your ranking seems right to me; it's not a great game, but not bad at all...especially considering it was a marketing tie-in game.
Haha! I love that you got the it "real" way and put in the work. Thanks for sharing! 😀
There's supposed to be an easter egg too, where the Thirsties change their sprite.
I'd move Bump'n Jump to S (it's a lot of fun, varied and technically impressive game on the VCS) and Lock'n Chase to A (the maze is always the same, but the mechanic of locking the enemies is very fun, and if you manage to trap one inside two of your doors you get a lot of points). Astroblast is great, especially with a paddle, but it gets repetitive after a bit, so I'd give it an B. On the other hand, I'll check out Dark Cavern, it seems a kind of game I'd enjoy
I'm intrigued about the whole "trapping the cop" thing. How does that work since you can only drop doors on the horizontal?
@@GenXGrownUp you can only do it in two spots: bottom left and bottom right of the screen. When you are followed by an enemy you can place two doors in a row, but you have to time it exactly. You must place the first door while the enemy passes that exact spot in the maze
@@danielespeziari5545 Ahhhh, cool. 😀
I had two M-Network games - Astroblast and Dark Cavern. I never know why they were shaped differently or that Intellivision was a thing, but they were both pretty fun and featured heavy in my rotation. Honestly, I think you were undersold Dark Cavern a little - that game is FUN! Plus it holds up well. I do know tha tMasters of the Universe is pretty lame, but that He-Man theme is worth a little credit, right? Also, NEVER turn off the Bump-n-Jump music! I still get that stuck in my head at times.
I always found Burger Time on any platform to be a fun but challenging game to play,
Given your exhaustive and methodically accurate descriptions, Im surprised you didn't clarify that Dark Cavern is a rename of Night Stalker. Do you happen to know why they renamed it for the VCS version?
I opted not to call out every rename (i.e. Astrosmash/Astroblast) -- I had it in the script early on but felt it didn't add anything to the discussion for this video's purposes. From what I've read, Mattel renamed their VCS ports to keep them at a distance. Then you could say, "Night Stalker - ONLY on Intellivision" without blocking the M Network division from creating a port. 😀 Thanks for watching!
A lot of these are best-effort ports with slight name changes. Astro Blast is Astro Smash, Frogs and Flies is Frog Bog, Space Attack is Space Battle, Star Strike is... Star Strike.
I bet they renamed most of them because of missing features--like in Night Stalker, there's a progression of different robots with extra capabilities. I don't think those made it to Dark Cavern.
Interesting...tricky marketing tactics abound. And yes, there were others that were renamed as well, thanks for the reminder.
I heard recently that they did that in case they were bad, they didn't want it to negatively affect their console's games.
I don't know why, I loved Astroblast and would play it for hours. Loved the changing background colors. 🎉 Air Raid was another one I just liked playing
Air Raid seems odd that the jets just fly across your line of vision and don't come towards you, fly away or change altitude.
Adventures of Tron is one of the very best games for the 2600. It's massively dynamic regards to how much choice you have at any time and soon becomes the most rewarding experience once you are aware to this. One complain is that the collision detection concerning collecting the bits is a bit random but this simply isn't the case once you understand the window of collision required. Easily one of the most satisfying games you will ever play on any system but you do have to at least be aware to the various fall back options available to you on your current plan of action. Truly amazing game but it's often misunderstood and rated as such
about as exciting as Adventure, you play as a square, moving around an empty screen, highly lauded game, but also the top 5 of boring Atari games.
The arcade version of Burgertime also has control issues
I always felt like there was a few pixel range where you could hop on/off a ladder - so many ports require pixel-perfect turns or you won't move.
Your content is pure value. Thank you. 🎉
I never owned an Intellivision system and these ports were pretty much as close to playing these on our Atari back in the day. I did play Intellivision games like Astrosmash, Night Stalker and Space Battle when I could play them in stores like Sears or Kmart. I was thrilled to actually play the Atari counterparts of each of those games and a few others I never played before. Oh and those three Intellivsion games that I loved to play were Astroblast, Dark Cavern and Space Attack on the Atari.
Oh and incidentally I remember a kid's show like Captain Kangaroo that utilized the Space Battle game to shoot the UFOs when the kid said the word "pow," I believe. I think that was on the Bozo the Clown show, but I could be wrong.
I only played their auto racing game at a store. Sadly it didn't make it to an M-Network conversion, probably because it would have required the Steering Controllers which only came with Indy 500. I got Indy 500 from the initial launch in 1977 in 1981, and it was still good. But because only a few people had the controllers that was a disincentive to make any more games like that. Too bad.
OH YEAH
These are up there with Activision as my favorite games on the console. I used to play Frogs and Flies for hours, I loved jumping into the water and making up stories about the other frog. I did this for most Atari games, come to think of it. Thank you for covering these!
What kind of stories? Now I want to know!
Jon, great video! I too would shout at the screen playing MOTU. I still have my copy and I loved the MOTU tune on it.
I loved Masters of the Universe. The enemy interactions never got old to me because it was very complex and therefore required a lot of action. The rotating bullet forces you to stop and deal with enemies instead of flying straight to the castle. Dealing with them is very specific. You must line up with them then turn to shoot them. As you’re doing that, You can drop bombs by holding down and firing. Bombs leave a hole and you can lure enemies into it. Doing both together results in a lot of twitch action. As your skill increases, you learn to drop bombs and lure enemies into the holes as soon as they appear on screen before they can attack-which is very satisfying. The Skeletor screen requires that you plan your route in advance instead of trying to react when the wall is directly in front of you. You can also block Skeletor’s shot by holding the button which raises He-man’s sword. While you hold up your sword, you can’t move, so it can ruin your route. It’s a good balance. The character art in the intro and at the end of the game is amazing for this hardware. The intro is also one of very few “cutscenes” on this platform and it’s very well done.
I have really been enjoying your ranking videos! I would love a homebrews ranking for the 2600 by you! 🙂 Thanks for all the great videos!
🤘👍👍👍🎥💥 Being big fan of all Atari products, including for sure Atari 2600, and also having few videos about Atari, I'm highly interested what other "competitive" channels present about this iconic console! Do you remember how much this console was wanted by children in the 70s and 80s? ❤😏
I surely do remember - I was there!
I remember wanting a better system like _Intellivision,_ or _ColecoVision_ which were advertised on TV showing better graphics. But once you had one, parents wouldn't get you another, and Atari was the cheapest and playable, unless you got stuck with _Odyssey²_ or something. Some kids were able to get around that by getting a better system through a computer like _Atari 400/800_ or _Commodore 64._ Since my computer, the _Commodore VIC-20_ didn't have sprites, it wasn't any better than Atari. Also screenshots of video games in ads in comic books looked the worst for _Atari VCS_ and dissuaded me from getting ones that are said to be good, like Popeye, Joust and Mario Bros.
However, upon seeing recent reviews of old Intellivision games, I probably came out ahead as I got to play Space Invaders, Missile Command, Asteroids 1980-1 and more games that came out in 1982-3.
@@GenXGrownUp 👍 👍 👍
@@sandal_thong8631 Nice memories... However from time perspective, we can see that difference between Atari 2600 and other consoles at that time was quite minor... more marketing than real difference. Perhaps sprites were there a key difference...?
@@ITGuyinaction Oops. I must have lost or deleted my comment. Probably it was about watching the ads of Atari vs. Intellivsion (and VIC-20). First Mattel said their Intellivision had the better sports games (true). Then Atari countered saying it had games people wanted like Asteroids, Missile Command and Warlords while the competition, not so much. Then Intellivision said they also had space games, which seemed weak, though from comments people here liked the M-Network space conversions. Finally William Shatner showed up saying the VIC-20 was a computer that can play games too.
I really enjoyed your ranking rundown. I had a few of these titles as a kid. I have a few more now in my collection. The ones that I had back then were closeouts games from the crash. They were okay but not great. Especially compared to other developers. I remember as a kid playing deadly disks alot. And I desperately wanted an opponent to play armor ambush. But, rarely had a taker. That one intrigued me. But, now, 2 of my favorites that I play often are Burgertime and Lock n Chase.
Air Raiders was a favorite of mine when I was little. Thought it was so cool because nobody ever knew about it.
I had lots of these M-Network games, they were cheap at my local Ames (old-timey Walmart) so I loaded up and was generally not disappointed. Frogs & Flies was adorable and endlessly fun, an infinite range of angles and speeds you can jump at, and you could never master it because you could never predict the flies. Loved how it ended when it became nighttime. Adventures of Tron took practice but ultimately was the most challenging game on the Atari, it got harder and harder and was very playable, one of the few Atari games that held up to actual arcade games for pure fun. And finally I loved that baseball game! It was so good! Yes it took practice, but baseball is a complex game w/ 9 players and 4 bases, the video here proves you didn't get good at it. You would never run your 2B out to the outfield like that. A quick double right-tap-click and your right fielder is activated, field the ball and then click-up throws to 2B, just amazing how you had full command of an entire baseball field with just one lousy joystick/button. Cmon, keep trying and grade it again. OK that's enough from me, all 3 of these games get an A from me.
Great Stuff, as always!
Great video! Huh I remember having a lot of fun playing Burgertime. I have to go back and see if the controls no longer hold up. I know the one in the nes I had a terrible time getting on / off ladders.
I would of bought more M network carts but by that time the Atari 800 was at Sears and my friend and I were writing BASIC for the first time ....a new passion ...
Space Attack on both A difficulty is something else. Way more challenging and enemy fleets move in the background while attempting to down the 12 ships. Made that game an almost S tier instead of B or C tier.
Lock N Chase is a very underrated game. It's one of the better Pac-Man inspired games which actually deviated enough from the formula to not be just a bad copy. The graphics are surprisingly smooth for the 2600, too. Dark Cavern is very good as well - almost like a roguelike game for the 2600. I never owned Super Action Football, but it looks surprisingly playable relative to the other football games of the day.
I like Lock 'N' Chase and Dark Cavern, both of which solved the flicker problem somehow (but I hate the word "underrated"). I think the Super Challenge Baseball and Football games may be better than Atari's Realsports versions, but they didn't have a 1-player option and came out at the same time. I don't think any of the M-Network games sold 1 million or more copies, despite TV and comic book advertisements. So if people agree that these games rate C to B, this may be why.
The reality of He Man hurts...but your list is respectable. One thing I want to point out. Tron's Deadly Discs. Press the fire after releasing the disc at ANY time, and you can call the disc back.
Super challenge football was my favorite. The ability to program each lineman is mechanic way ahead of its time.
Totally agree!
Another great video, thanks Jon! I watched this over fruit and oatmeal breakfast with my 8 y/o son and we even got Mommy to watch with us. She's not much into video games, but she smiled and laughed a few times and took notes from your TH-cam video-making skills for her own YT channel. ;)
Cheers!
Wonderful! Maybe the highest praise I've heard all week. Thank you for watching! 😀
You are right about Football, one of the most fun football games outside of Tecmo Super Bowl and a few Madden and 2k titles.
Your videos are premium! I already know many of the games, but some I don't yet.
I am currently compiling a list of Atari games for the new Atari2600+, here in Germany the prices on eBay are fortunately moderate. But it shouldn't be more than a maximum of 25 - 30 games.
Thanks for the kind words, BIBO! Thank you for watching. 😀
To start off, I really like these vids… ranking each game by a certain manufacturer is a cool way to do it since the quality seemed very tremendously from one software house to another….. that being said, I would say that an nostalgia factor is adding one grade to each of these reviews, placing each game one category higher than I would rank it personally
Thank you for watching!
Great video, as always. I was a little shocked that He-man was ranked so low, but then I started to play it & oh man is it bad. On the intellivision, it's a solid game, though. Very nice rankings. Mattel definitely had some great games, but honestly I've never liked the cartridge design. They're hard to stack, feel cheap, & look ugly. Although I do give them props, since the way the cartridges & boxes were made, you always knew whether you were getting a Mattel game or not. Whether that game was good or bad, I won't say or ask.
This was a great video. Keep up the good work. Take care... :)
Thanks for watching!
Another great Tier video and yes, Astrosmash still stands up today as a great game :-) Thanks Jon and keep up the awesome work!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I only bought three 3rd-party games for Atari through 1983. One was Pitfall! and the other two were M-Network's Armor Ambush and Super Challenge Baseball. Unfortunately, since they didn't include 1-player versions, the "super challenge" was to find an opponent willing to learn the controls to play well, which is likely why they don't score well in this video. I remember M-Network advertised their games on TV in 1982, but didn't realize they were ports of Intellivision games. Apparently none of these sold 1 million or more copies.
Having a one-button joystick like Atari really limits your ability to play sports games, which is one reason Mattel Intellivision's sports games were so much better. Basketball was the only sports game from the '70s I got for my Atari, which was probably the only one in the 1970s better than Odyssey² sports games, which also had a one-button joystick. I did get Pele's Championship Soccer in 1981. It looks like the M-Network sport games were a step up, but came out at the time of Atari's RealSports line which also had its flaws. It's too bad they didn't release some of their games for Atari in 1981 before the glut of games in 1982.
Having multiple sprites on the screen at the same time caused flicker in games like Adventure, Superman, Pac-Man, and Wizard of Wor. They worked around that in Berzerk by not having two robots on the same row, and mostly fixed it in Ms. Pac-Man when ghosts were not on the same row. But I would be interested to know how they got around the flicker in a game like Lock 'n' Chase or Dark Cavern, the latter having 5 enemies on the screen at the same time.
So many Atari games needed to use symmetrical play fields across the vertical axis, presumably to save memory. However, though there are some symmetrical parts of the screen in Armor Ambush, screens have terrain features that are not; and there seems to be quite a few screens to enjoy. It looks so much better than Combat that I'd hoped that it would catch on among players. I'd like to see a "making-of" for this game too.
I loved Space Attack, on the harder settings it required a good amount of strategy. I think the Super Challenge Football game was the original Mario Cart in making you hate your brother (OK we all know that was Atari Combat). My brother (RIP) had this juke move that always made me miss him during a run play. I liked Air Raid too.
I wish Mattel made a M-Network Space Hawk version for the Atari. That would've been cool.
Thank you for sharing your recollections. I give your childhood memories with your brother a solid S TIER! 😀
Armor Ambush & Baseball were my top 2 favorites from this label.
Exactly like in its Intellivision equivalent, Dark Cavern starts very slow and maybe even a bit boring, but after a few minutes you start getting into the action and...BOOM, those robots start shotting you from all over the place against you and it becomes incredibly appealing. Cheers from Italy.
Frogs and Flies os a HUGE hit with my 10 year old son and his friends..... That and the original Atari Basketball....
This was an awesome video
You're very kind. Thank you.
Mostly agree with the rankings, though Burgertime would have been a couple notches up. It's frustrating sure, but that adds to the challenge. Would have been amazing if they doubled the rom size and made better looking graphics. I also would have graded Bump 'N Jump as a B. He-Man is definitely an F. ;)
I played BurgerTime on the NES a few years later and had fun with it.
I had the Kool Aid game! Saved enough points and waited my 4 to 8 weeks for shipping!!!
You earned it the hard way? Kudos!
I recently found out that M Network/Mattel even made special joysticks for Tron that will work with any game, but were branded for it. They look a lot like the joystick on the amazing looking Tron coin op arcade cabinet. Very cool!
Ambush looks like a really upgraded version of Combat! Too bad it is multiplayer only.
I love that Astroblast lets you use a joystick or paddle. I wish more of the Atari games where you just move side to side let you use a paddle as an option.
Dark Cavern is really fun! It's more different from the other maze games that it resembles than it seems at first.
Kool Aid was invented in my home state so I've an extra soft spot for it and collectibles for it. Cool that they made a game too.
Thanks for the warning about He-Man! It has such a cool box that it's tempting to get. Glad I never have yet. I'd like to find the comic book though.
Space Attack looks like a good idea but it also looks like it really needed to be made for a console with more than one action button on the controller. Having to hit buttons on the console itself is a real pain, especially these days where we usually don't sit on the floor next to the console anymore. :)
Great video!
Thank you for watching!
I still remember the commercial for these Mattel carts,,," M-NETWORK is the CURE for the video blues!"
Absolutely!
Air Raiders was the only M-Network game I had back in the day. Good game!
Memory lane! I played a good number of these games, because for whatever reason they were super cheap (don't know why but maybe Intellivision over-manufactured) ... here's the thoughts on the ones I remember playing:
- Air Raiders - the sound design was good for its time and managing fuel and ammo was a great challenge
- Astroblast - was alright, very fast paced, but one of those games where I didn't want to use the paddle and thus it lost me
- KoolAid Man - ok I never played it but I sure remember all the comic book ads!
- Lock n Chase - was very satisfying and responsive to play, especially since the Atari Pac Man port was so clunky
- the two "Space" games - I think I put these down after 5 minutes seeing they were hard to understand and with no score
- Super Challenge Baseball - Probably my favorite of them all. This one has a special place in my heart as the frustration of having trouble selecting fielders and them moving so slow while runners went all the way around the bases was hilarious when playing with a friend. It made it really rewarding when you were actually able to get someone out. The pitching/throwing mechanics were fun too.
- Super Challenge Football - in some ways ahead of its time for sure. The giving assignments to your players was fantastic.
I thought I read astroblast had the ability to play joystick or paddle? This is knd of on my radar because of the paddle option for my 2600+. Thanks for your takes. Never had M network games but now can be got for a couple bucks.
Interesting that Mattel got the Atari to do the Intellivision Running Man. That and the voice box were their biggest selling points.
You omitted the fact that in Lock 'N Chase, two carefully timed locks can actually trap the "cops" in a box for bonus points.
Yes, I didn't cover every nuance of every game in this overview.
My grandfather had an Intellivision.The Baseball game on Intellivision is so great, we'd play it for hours and hours. Sad that the Atari version is lacking so much of what makes the Intellivision fun. I do really like Adventures of Tron though. It's a game I didn't even know about back in the day. Picked it up a year ago or so and it's probably my favorite M-Network game on Atari. Astroblast is pretty fun too but Astrosmash on Intellivision is better.
Tron Deadly Discs & Dark Cavern were my favorites
frogs and flies and that first tron game was a mainstay for me, sorry that Masters of the bottom tearvesre wasn't so great, I never knew it existed till the internet..well the one on the VCS that is. great vid my man!
Thank you for watching!
I'm a fan , always will
Loved Football & Baseball. Controls were fine for me.
My son really took to Frogs and Flies. I was showing him games I grew up with and thought he’d dig Combat for 2 player. Nope. The one I really didn’t care for was his favorite. 🤷♂️
The M Sports Football was their best sports offering
It's a good one!
Adventures of Tron is S-tier for me. I still play it (using an emulator, but I still have the cartridge).
I like how much Tron stuff they fit in. Bits, grid bugs, Recognizers, and even the Solar Sailer. It's a platformer where much of the game is figuring out which direction the enemies will go... the only safe place is behind them and safety is very temporary. Recommended, seriously.
"Byyyy King o' Nerds"... ok, will finally mention: in the late 70s, my older brother, his friend, and me, made up horror dramas on his Bigston cassette player... complete with fake commercials, and yes, our own parody of Mennen :)
That parody is a real ad, though. King of Nerds VR (linked in the video description) supports GenXGrownUp.
@@GenXGrownUp Ha! No way! Will have to click, then 🙂
Astroblast was fun but my all around favorite has to be the flawed Burger Time. Slow and sluggish compared to other console versions but still very much enjoyable in my opinion.
I was jazzed with the M network sports titles...way beyond what Atari sports was. However my early VCS was somewhat incompatible with the carts it had trouble booting up and I remember reading back then an issue with design for old systems (??). Never the less I thought m network baseball and football were outstanding.
Never really played these, as i had Intellivision growing up. That said, kived these games on that system
🎶M Network is the cure for the video blues!🎶
Dark Cavern is my favorite of these games.
Was Astroblast on a pc compilation
Lock n’Chase:10/10
Hate to break it to you, Jon, but you played Masters of the Universe on the advanced level. The difficulty switch positions are reversed for this game, so you were playing in the "b" position and starting on level three. Hence the "3" on screen. Try it again in the "a" position.
I dunno - it'll be a cold day in hell when I fire that game up again! 😁
Okay, for scientific curiosity I just played on difficulty A. Aside form being slower, no better. I stand by that F. 😂
Awesome retro game video as usual, however...
Kool Aid Man shoulda been a B, not sure if it was my desire to own the game so badly based on comic book ads (glad you included it!) and the delusion of thinking the VCS version would look as cool as the Intellivision screenshots! but still to this day it's a game I gotta play anytime I play some Atari.
As a kid I didn't even know there was a He-Man game, and you better believe I would have wanted it. Good thing that never happened because it DID did suck arse.
And Space Attack... come on, it's a solid A!! However I will admit, without reading the instructions, you'd have no idea what to do or even understand what's going on!!!
Not sure how exactly I'd rank the Tron games, but Deadly Discs was definitely better than Adventures!
Thanks, B. I can see a solid argument for Space Attack, but Kool-Aid? 😁 I think you're judging it based on nostalgia rather than the gameplay. Which, by the way, is totally fair!