Video Life (Atari 2600) review on HonestGamers

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Review by Felix Arabia
October 25, 2008

Video Life is not a great game. It isn’t even a good game, or much of a game for that matter. As the back of the box would have you believe, you navigate a small cursor across a screen, managing life organisms. You can monitor your little pet and watch it grow! Or die! Or just kind of sit there!

As I came away from the experience, it felt more akin to doodling crude pictures of whatever came to mind, complex details forsaken. I can confidently state that this site holds the world’s only HG-logo-laden Video Life image. Yes, those are my initials on the image. I drew it myself. I’m a pretty good artist, at least by Video Life standards.

I think this game is more comparable to a poor man’s Mario Paint than to an archaic precursor to Tamagotchi. As fun as it would be for me to state otherwise, the material doesn’t go far beyond simple sketches. You’ll either enjoy drawing purple images or you won’t. But while it may seem economical to end this review right now, there is still much to talk about. More importantly, it’s worth mentioning, otherwise I would be doing a great disservice by omitting such information. I have to tell you about Video Life’s charming mystique.

Like a lot of old, obscure Atari titles, there is more to Video Life than meets the eye. Though you and I may pass it off as pointlessly primitive, Atari game collectors in the know will treat this baby with extreme respect. It’s not that they view the game to be better than we would, but rather it’s that they understand the game’s inherent value.

Video Life is extremely rare, notching a coveted score of ‘10’ from Atari Age’s rarity guide. If that doesn’t tell you how rare this game is, allow me to provide an enlightening example.

You could spend loads of cash on pristine copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, and Psychic Assassin Taromaru (the three rarest and most expensive Saturn titles) and that still would not equal the amount of money needed to purchase CommaVid’s Video Life. Now we’re talking about thousands of dollars. Just so we’re clear, Video Life is a crude drawing tool. The three Saturn titles allow you to pilot a dragon in a beautifully rendered post-apocalyptic world, battle endlessly creative machine armadas in a brilliant mixture of 2D and 3D, and combat a gigantic frog aboard a precarious raft as a clairvoyant ninja, respectively. Clearly there is a great divide among these titles’ content!

Part of the arresting price stems from the fact that Video Life wasn’t sold commercially. In order to obtain a copy of the game, you had to buy CommaVid’s Magicard (another rarity), fill out an order form that came with that game, and then mail it in. Since not even CommaVid expected high demand, Video Life cartridge quantities were kept to a limit. Of the estimated 500 or so copies manufactured back in 1981, only a handful are known to exist today.

Where those lost cartridges are, I do not know. Maybe one could be in your possession. Wouldn’t that be nice?

If I owned a copy of Video Life – and I unfortunately do not – I’m sure I would rate it favorably. Seeing that its existence eludes me, maybe it would seem fair to rank it poorly out of spite. For what it offers, I exacted a modest amount of enjoyment. This isn’t a game you’ll play for hours on end; it’s a game you’ll brag about to all of your nerd friends or sell for a very pretty penny. That’s how we should measure Video Life’s true value: it’s worth getting if it makes economic sense only so you can sell it for a healthy profit or if you value collecting rare games. Otherwise, I think I’ll just give it a 4/10 so this review can pass through the system.

Rating
4	Weak Though there may be a few bright spots, the overall product is fairly weak and does not come recommended.
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Staff Score (Avg): 4.0 User Score (Avg): N/A Press Score (Avg): N/A
Reviews: 1 Guides: 0 Cheats: 0 Ratings: 0	High Scores: 0 Screenshots: 5 Videos: 0

Title: Video Life
Genre: Unknown
Developer: Unknown
ESRB: N/A

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