...and I'm done doing Atari 2600 for a while. I have two rough drafts for Tutakham and Atlantis set. I just want to type up a No Escape! review before moving on.

The adventurous moments, the challenge, the action... those are things I remember. It's not that they aren't present, it's just that you have to tolerate a lot of questionable decisions made by the developers. Why can't you shoot vertically? Why sport such drunken play control? Maybe they felt it would have made the game too easy, but I beg to differ. I'm sure they could have found other ways to turn up the challenge.

Even as a kid, I didn't have an especial love for this game. I popped it in to cleansed the old palate. It provids quick and simple action, and sometimes that's all you need. However, the game is so simple, with sessions so short, that it's difficult to stay focused on it for more than a few plays.

This game is the definition of repetition.

What this game needed was some refinement. Certain areas should have been smoothed out for fairness, other areas more structured to cut the reliance on luck. It had a solid idea, it had a fast pace and it was simple. In some ways it was too fast-paced and too simple.

Dunhill did a great job of adapting a piece of every day life into an arcade game, but they left too much of the game to chance. If there were a way to know which investments were wiser at various points in time, include more brainpower to the equation than simple guess and pray, then this game would have been brilliant. All it took to harm the game's greatness was one small misstep.

It was clear that [the developer] didn't put much time, attention or care into their product, especially when you consider the oversized scuba sprite. A move like that bespeaks lazy and cheap development. In the end, you're left with little reason to play Shark Attack over the piles of more effective Pac-Man clones.

Pitfall II isn't a great game. It's tedious at some points, overly frustrating at others. However, it isn't a terrible one either. It has the classic Atari charm and an adventurous atmosphere.

As you hone your skills, you'll find situations growing more desperate and thrilling. Each key factor-- mechanics, rules, progressively climbing difficulty, spot on collision detection--comes together to make a simple, fast-paced and addictive title.

There was something addictive about Moonsweeper. A good portion of it was the same old story: command a spacecraft, gun down extraterrestrials, laugh at their burning pieces on the planet surface. But Imagic dressed it up in such a new and unique way that it felt fresh. You didn't just move back and forth at the bottom of the screen whilst shooting a horde of odd shapes, nor did you just zoom along and fire at the occasional threat a la Zaxxon. You actually did both!

No, Missile Command is not easy on the eyes whatsoever, and yet somehow that's incredibly beautiful. Most of the screen is wide open nothing: a blank night sky and a bleak environment. There you sit, alone, vulnerable, no discernible geographic advantage, waiting in anticipation for those rockets to arrive. It's disquieting because you get the sense that you are it. You are the only remnants of a civilization, and once the bases you're defending are toast your only existence wi...