Game History: Atari’s Adventure
The Doom 3 of the Atari System
How many of you remember this? Created by Warren Robinett and released in 1982 (A very good year for birth I hear) and selling over A MILLION copies, this game was also a revolutionary piece for the gaming industry. It was the first to have screen/room changes, item pickups/drops, a secret, and is the game that coined the phrase "Easter Egg"; as in programmed secrets... not the Easter Bunny sugar snacks.
You control our Hero, a nameless green pixel. The nameless king of your nameless kingdom has had his Enchanted Chalice stolen by the nameless evil wizard of another nameless kingdom. Gripping so far, isn't it? However the nameless lands are perilous indeed! On the lookout for you are three Dragons (bet you forgot they had names) that look more like creatures you'd expect to see being fed bread crumbs by retired one-toothed dotcom'ers. Also thrown in the mix, is a bunch of items and keys, and a nameless bat. Right then, let the pixelation begin, fear my cursor you quacks!
Okay. An Atari cartridge can hold about 4 Kilobytes... That's about the size of that Tiffany Amber Thieson 'exposed' picture you got tucked away on your hard drive from your BBS days. Yet somehow, this guy was able to get the entire game onto 4K with sprites, backgrounds and sounds. So although remarkably horrid looking, it is actually rather respectable for being such a large game. For those of you inept to math and cannot comprehend how little 4K is, an N64 cartridge holds 8,000-12,000K or the fact that your basic CDR holds 640,000-700,000K shows how tiny this grandpa cartridge is.
Your mission, traverse the nameless lands to obtain colored keys in turn to open colored nameless kingdoms, slay dragons, and steal your enchanted chalice (which has a brilliantly executed color scrolling script) and bring it back to your golden nameless kingdom. Alright now, I'm dying to do this, let's have a looksie at the sprites.
The Stars and Supporting Cast:
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Hero - The mightiest pixel in the entire Atari universe. |
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Key - Numerous variations to the color, each opens whichever castle matches it's color. |
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Magnet - Draws whatever item is in the room towards you. Usually used to get back items that are stuck in the wall, however you're pretty boned if this gets stuck in a wall. |
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Sword - Our hero's mighty blade... Somethings are already so funny, it's irrelevant to try to even make it any funnier, so it's a freakin arrow, that's it, I just can't make that any funnier. |
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Bridge - Two purple bars that let you walk over/through the walls. Our hero is such a monster he has no problem hauling around a freakin bridge, but in no way can he carry two keys at once. I take the whole mighty hero thing back. |
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Enchanted Chalice - All this hassle for this, uh, seizure inducing, demon head looking, cup. |
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Bat - Originally supposed to be named Knuberrub, it was decided the name was 'too weird' and was instead, like the rest of the story, left nameless. It picks up random objects and brings them to you in exchange for what you have... sometimes taking away your sword in exchange for a dragon. |
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Yorgle - Why is it the only things to be named were the dragons? Well anyways, this is supposed to be the yellow dragon. He's slow, and roams the nameless lands, steering clear of the gold key for some reason. |
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Grindle - The smeary-green-snot colored dragon. Guards minor items or keys, and is also slow. |
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Rhindle - The bad ass red dragon. Yes, bad ass. He guards more important stuff, like the seizure chalice, and moves just as quickly as you, only with the ability to fly over walls, which makes him highly annoying... and bad ass. |
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Final Notes:
So what happens if you finally drag the chalice back to your nameless castle? Why the castle walls start strobing like the chalice! Wow. That was fun. As sad is it is to say, this game can actually get pretty 'effing hard. It's got three difficulty levels. Level one being insanely easy, two being slightly more tedious, and then the third... The items spawn randomly throughout the area, there are numerous castles to open and physically impossible mazes to venture. There's even a pitch black maze where you only have a small square of light around you, or that damn bat that flies around swapping items or bringing dragons to you. You kids think your games today are hard, prah!
As much as I would love to make fun of this game, I actually like it too much to razz on it to the Nth degree. Alas, you don't need snazzy graphics, catchy music, in depth title, or Tommy Vercetti to have a fun or challenging game, and that's coming from a complete FX whore like myself. Go down to Value Village, pick up an Atari+games package for like, five bucks, or go download an emulator and the game.
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