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Atari Games Too Bad to be True
Posted by Owen Good at 11:00 AM on August 17, 2008
Watercooler Games saw this earlier in the week and gave a detailed deconstruction of how a Free the Falklands! concept would be graphically impossible on the Atari 2600. I took one look and knew it was satire because one of the writers for this site, Jason Torchinsky, is a comedian and a name I remember as the editorial cartoonist of The Daily Tar Heel back when I was at N.C. State's Technician in the early 1990s.
But play along, because it's funny. Why look, his site, the Van Gogh-Goghs, have unearthed from some New Mexico landfill documented evidence of 11 scrapped projects for the Atari 2600! The casualties included such licensing/adaptations as Bosom Buddies (a cross between Kaboom! and Donkey Kong, and Kramer vs. Kramer (like Pong with children). My favourite, because I like poop jokes, is Gunther Gebel-Williams' Cage Cleaner. The bogus rationale for the bogus game sounds like pure pre-video-game-crash self-b.s.ing: "You can't blow up asteroids in real life, but you sure as [expletive deleted] can clean up [expletive deleted]".
The Best Atari 2600 Games You Never Heard Of [The Van Gogh-Goghs, via Water Cooler Games]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
trogam
Posted 1:27 PM 17/8/08
Well put together...and funny...
trogam
Lijik
Posted 12:43 PM 17/8/08
@stryker1800:
Really? Because I'm getting awful Tamagotchi flashbacks.
Lijik
Wahrheit
Posted 12:35 PM 17/8/08
Space cobbler? Tssh.
It's common knowledge that space cobblers are inferior to space butlers.
Wahrheit
sqoon
Posted 12:16 PM 17/8/08
@Shin-san: i found it brought to mind a fist, a small child and a prison sentence.
sqoon
TheThirdMan
Posted 12:15 PM 17/8/08
@WoosterB:
W00t, go Pack!
TheThirdMan
Shin-san
Posted 12:13 PM 17/8/08
Anyone thought for a second that punch buggy would be like that one Crysis video where the dude punched a truck, sending it flying?
Shin-san
Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.
Posted 12:07 PM 17/8/08
Sure as Shit can clean up Shit
html maybe?
Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.
Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.
Posted 12:07 PM 17/8/08
[i]Sure as Shit can clean up Shit[/i]
Thats brilliant lol.
Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.
stryker1800
Posted 12:01 PM 17/8/08
i like the pixel poop in the picture, makes me laugh
stryker1800
Weirdwolf
Posted 11:57 AM 17/8/08
I heard in the Falklands game that if you entered the cheat M,A,R,A,D,O,N,A the enemy troops were given some kind of super power-up drug that allowed them to bat away bombs and made it impossible to get to the final level.
Weirdwolf
WoosterB
Posted 11:52 AM 17/8/08
Some fanboyism here, but:
GO PACK! =)
WoosterB
Eltigro
Posted 11:44 AM 17/8/08
Is the shit shoveling one-to-one?
Eltigro
sqoon
Posted 11:08 AM 17/8/08
space cobbler would definately make my top five intergalactic shoe restoration themed games list.
sqoon
Veltis
Posted 2:35 PM 17/8/08
The worst Atari game ever is E.T., I still have nightmares about it. This one look pretty cool ^^.
Veltis
[ZTF]
Posted 3:14 PM 17/8/08
Punch Buggy actually sounded like an entertaining little game.
[ZTF]
dowingba
Posted 4:15 PM 17/8/08
Alot of those games look like pretty high quality titles compared to the Atari's shittastic library. The 99% of everything is crap rule was definitely relaxed for Atari's case.
dowingba
BigWeather
Posted 5:58 PM 17/8/08
Another "GO PACK!" from me.
You must've been at State when I was. I was a freshman in '89 and graduated in '94.
BigWeather
bobtheduck
Posted 6:23 PM 17/8/08
Was having the bars over the lion even possible on the Atari 2600? I'll admit, it's been a while since I played, but I don't remember much that overlapped in those games.
bobtheduck
willz0rz
Posted 6:58 PM 17/8/08
wow, lots of NC people here.
wewt
is Owen from NC?
willz0rz
Arnold Rimmer's Garden Strimmer
Posted 9:00 PM 17/8/08
@Eltigro: I see what you did there. :D
Arnold Rimmer's Garden Strimmer
Ashurahori
Posted 10:06 PM 17/8/08
Back then, any program with a simple action was called a game. These aren't so far away from the truth as we know.
Ashurahori
Foxstar Sixtail
Posted 10:31 PM 17/8/08
@dowingba:Remember when people thought that Actvision used black magic to get such high preforming titles out of the 2600? They were like part of that 1%
Foxstar Sixtail
Doomstink
Posted 11:05 PM 17/8/08
You would hate the state of the Technician these days. It's a joke. None of the stories are interesting (or relevant), the writers don't know how to use proper grammar, and they don't check people's names before going to print (they put me in there as "Josh Faircloth" when my name is "Fairhurst").
I started NC State's Student TV channel for the sole purpose of giving students an alternative to the Technician. We barely have anything on air right now but we've only been around for a couple months.
On another note, totally didn't know any of the writers here were alumni from my school.
Doomstink
jmsalal
Posted 11:03 PM 17/8/08
@willz0rz: I'm Tar Heel born, Tar Heel bred, and when I die, I'll be Tar Heel dead...lmao...nods to fellow NC brothers!
jmsalal
KillerCRS
Posted 11:12 AM 17/8/08
On the subject of Atari 2600, I believe that it'd be a PERFECT subject for the Wii's Virtual Console.
KillerCRS