Retro Review: Defender Atari 5200

You're the Captain of the Spaceship Defender, and your mission is to save the humanoids from alien abduction. Use your radar scanner, smart bombs, and hyperspace power to protect the planet from alien assault. If the aliens successfully abduct the humanoids, the humanoids mutate, joining the alien forces. You must act quickly to prevent total destruction of your planet.
I got Defender for my 9th birthday for the Atari 5200, the graphics and sound effects were far better than the 2600 version. Compared to todays games like Ace Combat, and H.A.W.X it is primative but the game is the forefather of side scrolling shooters. Defender had some unique features that make it a classic and an innovator for future games, features such as the mini map at the top of the screen that showed your current relative location on the map, the abilty to change directions, and the fact that the player had multiple objectives...shoot the aliens and or rescue the juicy colonists daughters. These features would be incorporated in future games such as Gradius, Soviet Strike, R-Type.
8/10

The Dreadnaught Factor

Ok I got the fuel for the jump back to 2008 all we need now is 1.21 gigawatts or something.....

While we're waiting for lightening lemme tell ya about some of my other space adventures with the Atari 5200. The Dreadnaught Factor is one of the earliest known scrolling shooters I know of and it , like many games of the early 80's, was influenced by Star Wars. The object is to fly your star fighter over a dreadnaught (Star Destroyer) and shoot the gun turrets, and bomb the exhaust ports...presumably with proton torpedos. You would get multiple fly-bys to destroy the Dreadnaught,bombing the engines would slow or stop the massive ship which would make it easier to accomplish your mission. The first dreadnaught was a blatant ripoff of a star destroyer but the designs did vary after each destroyed dreadnaught. The game was designed and programmed by two guys and published by Activision. Imagine what a game on the PS3 would be like if only 2 people made it!? Nowadays the credits at the end of games like MGS4 and FFXII read like a movie and in some cases have bigger budgets.

The Dreadnaught Factor contains all the core elements of scrolling shooters such as the recently released 1942 Joint Strike. It's kinda cool to think that a game created by two guys 25 years ago still shows it's influence in games today. The graphics might have been simplistic but the gameplay was enjoyable and the game handled well, and in my opinion that's most important. Just because a game looks fantastic doesn't mean it will be fun to play, that's something older gamers know from these old school titles.

8/10

Star Raiders

Looks like we're gonna be stuck in the past a little while longer until I collect the plutonium needed for the ride back to 2008...

Since we're here lemme tell you all about Star Raiders, another game for the good ol Atari 5200. Never before in the history of video games has the player trully felt they were inside the cockpit of a starfighter, the feeling of tearing thru hyperspace in Star Raiders was a hypersnoozefest. I'm pretty sure anyone who bought Star Raiders must of hoped it would be a combination of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark....it wasn't, regretably Indy and Han are not in this game, but there are tie fighters, which I'm sure was NOT approved by Lucas arts. The game consists of two screens, your galactic chart, a grid that shows your bases, enemy ships, etc and the main screen which shows your forward and aft view of space. Plot your course and hunt down the enemy to protect your bases.

Star Raiders was the earliest space sim I can recall, you need to keep an eye on your velocity and fuel, and monitor you star chart to see if one of your bases is being surrounded. I don't recall there being much sound effects in Star Raiders and the enemy only had two types of ships, the majority of the time you'd be staring out at the greenish blackness of space and the white dots of stars...that's it.

The game was kinda technical for the time but I don't think it really used the 5200's color pallete or the sound chip to it's fullest potential. The game didn't have a score but gave players a ranks after dieing, ending the game or finishing it.

I remember getting bored with Star Raiders and finding the most pleasure in blowing up my bases.

2/10

Congo Bongo

After playing the demo of SEGA's gorgeous Valkyria Chronicals, I thought no better time than now to jump in the Delorian and take a spin back in time when I was the proud owner of an Atari 5200! The year, was 1983 and the first console war had begun between Coleco Vision and Atati's 5200 system. I wish I remembered how much games cost back then, it's depressing to think someone in my family paid close to the same amount for this game as a PS3 game.

It's been 26 years since I've played Congo Bongo but I do remember Donkey Kong was all the rage then and when I saw this I figured it was gonna be as fun....I was wrong. The 3Dish game screen was an aspect that probably had me going gimme gimme. I do remember the controls being infuriatingly difficult, as seen in the below video the first level "Primate Peak" had a jump that 99/100 times you'd die trying, and avoiding the various critters was an exercise in futility.

The games box art says it was the "official arcade version" and it was certainly visually better than the 2600 but it wasn't close to the arcade version graphically. The audio was as good as the 5200's POKEY chip could do, with it's 4 audio channels you weren't going to get an exact arcade port, I was 10 years old and didn't know better, so no harm, no foul. I remember spending long stretches of time trying to reach that damn ape, so I suppose it kept my attention. Out of the five or six games I had for the 5200 Congo Bongo has the best graphics, it only had two of the four levels that the arcade had but that was still twice as many as most games of that time. The game play was frustrating but that built a determination in me that lasted till today to want to beat a game I have and not stand defeated by cheap or over difficult AI, and lastly the box art was a huge step up from most of the stuff of the time. If you want to experience this obscure classic, Congo Bongo is an unlockable game in PSP's SEGA Genesis Collection.

7/10