Taito‘s 1980 arcade hit, Phoenix, was converted to the Atari 2600 by Michael Feinstein and John Mracek and first published in February 1983 by Atari. Although it is a decent attempt at bringing the arcade version to the 2600, it still falls short of the original. I’d say that it’s still one of the better fixed-screen shooters on the VCS, though.
Tag Archives: 1983
Pressure Cooker, Atari 2600
Pressure Cooker, by Garry Kitchen, was first published for the Atari 2600 in 1983, by Activision. It is a food-preparation game where you play as a burger chef (called “Short-Order Sam“) trying to package items with the right ingredients for your customers.
Urban Upstart, ZX Spectrum
Pete Cooke‘s graphical text adventure, Urban Upstart, was first published by Richard Shepherd Software in 1983. It’s a first-person game, where you use a text parser to move around and issue commands, and is set in the fictional English town of “Scarthorpe” – a rough place to live, by all accounts. So rough, in fact, that the aim of the game is to escape the place by any means possible.
La Pulga, ZX81
Released by Indescomp in 1983, La Pulga is the ZX81 prototype of the classic ZX Spectrum game, Bugaboo (The Flea), aka Boogaboo, aka La Pulga in Spain.
Bomberman, MSX
The very first release in the famous Bomberman series was this game – aka “Bomber Man” – which was developed and published by Hudson Soft, for the MSX, in 1983. This is basically a prototype of the Bomberman we know and love, that was to come some years later.
Time Pilot, ColecoVision
The ColecoVision port of Konami‘s 1982 arcade game, Time Pilot, is a decent attempt to bring this simple, eight-way scrolling shooter to the home. It was first released in 1983.
Halloween, Atari 2600
Halloween on the Atari 2600 is another “classic” horror movie license [that was sarcasm, by the way], developed by VSS, Inc. and published by Wizard Video Games in 1983. It is based on John Carpenter‘s classic 1978 film of the same name, and in it you play as a babysitter, trying to save children from the unstoppable murderer, Michael Myers.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Atari 2600
Developed by VSS, Inc. (of Texas), and published by Wizard Video Games in 1983, the Atari 2600 version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre* is a travesty of a video game, and a perfect example of the kind of careless rubbish being released to market that triggered the North American video game market crash of the mid-Eighties.
*= The correct title of Tobe Hooper‘s classic 1973 film is “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (note the words “Chain” and “Saw” are separate), and NOT “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre“. Wizard Video Games got the title wrong, so I’m sticking with the correct title for the film, rather than bastardising it incorrectly, like they did.
Choplifter, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 version of Choplifter was ported by Dane Bigham and first published by Brøderbund in 1983. While the game is definitely smoother and more playable than the earlier Apple II and Atari 8-bit versions, it’s still not without its problems.
Moon Patrol, Atari 5200
Developed and published by Atari, Inc. in 1983, the Atari 5200 conversion of Moon Patrol is an adequate, but hardly ‘dazzling’, port of the classic Irem arcade game.
The King of Grabs 