Wow. Im 42 and have been playing Atari most of my life. My dad got one when i was a baby but i still havent heard of a few of these. Thats one thing i love about this system! There were just so many games for it or variations of games that even in 2023 im still learning about ones i didnt know existed!
Same here I'm 43 grew up with it and honestly pretty much all I play anymore is segas total war series and atari I can't stand call of duty or battlefield anymore way too much bullshit
Home run! This is probably the stable of games that I knew the LEAST about. MASH was my only cartridge that I own. But there are a couple more that I see now that I need to keep an eye out for. ThanksJon. Very informative and entertaining. 👍🏻👍🏻
Oh, I've got stuff to say, all right! (Nothing confrontational, though.) Many of the games by 20th Century Fox were actually by a company named Sirius. Sirius was one of the biggest third party video game developers of its era, but 20th Century Fox was reluctant to pay them for their work, and as a result, Sirius was starved of revenue and went bankrupt. This theft of goods and services regrettably was a standard business practice in the 1980s... it's also how Commodore was able to make the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 so cheap. Order chips from a supplier, don't pay them for the product, KEEP ordering chips until the supplier goes out of business, buy what remains of the company after bankruptcy, forgive your own debt. Also! Alien was created by Dallas North. You may know him better as Douglas Neubauer, the creator of the Atari 2600's best game Solaris.
Turmoil is a phenomenal game. I love the insane pace of it. It’s honestly one of the most under appreciated shooters on the 2600. I’m glad to have Flash Gordon demystified. I can recall having seen the movie and trying (unsuccessfully) to understand what the game had to do with it. Great rankings! Personally, I would probably move Bank Heist up a bit. I really enjoyed the risk and reward of trying to bag all the banks you could manage before running off to the next unsuspecting town. 😊
These are the best series. i’ve watched like a million of them while home sick this morning. its a great way to systematically familiarize yourself with (nearly) the whole collection.
Fantastic Voyage is one of the best shmups on 2600. I remember spending a lot of time playing Megaforce and Buck Rogers I found boring and strange, games that at the time were kind of obscure, like Frankenstein's Monster. One thing is for sure, the style of 20th Century Fox cartridges look very good on the shelf.
The first 4 releases Turmoil, Fast Eddie, Worm War 1, and Deadly Duck were all released at the same time. The boxes are different from the remaining games. I believe they were programmed by Sirus before 20th Century Fox had their own programming company.
Haven't played any of these. They don't seem to come up very often in the UK. But something you can say is that these games perhaps deserve more love than they get. Graphics and the desire to make them more replayable seem impressive for the 2600 games of the time.
Fast Eddie has always been one of my personal favourites. It’s a shame it never got a PAL release.. Thank god that the 2600 is (kind of) region free lol
I've been looking forward to this one. While I haven't played too many of these I've been wanting to. try more of them out. And though you gave them low grades, M*A*S*H and MegaForce were two of my favorites as a kid. In fact I still have them and enjoy playing them now. Also worth noting, Earth Dies Screaming is Fox movie. Though nothing remotely like the game. I've seen it, and liked it, a few years ago.
I used to play Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes with all the difficulty settings turned up so the enemies were fast and their shots were as wide as the sprayer. The wall building aspect made it different enough from other shooters I'd give the game a solid B, and it was one of the 2600 carts I still got a craving for in the NES/SNES era, but the limited amount of threats at a time keep it from being an unqualified classic.
Great video. I played Fast Eddie back in the day and always enjoyed it, and in my GenX Grownup collecting somehow gravitated towards Beany Bopper and Turmoil. Those are both excellent games as well. And I was glad to hear another opinion on Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes and Porky's, both of which I find incredibly frustrating LOL :)
Excellent job as usual Jon !!!! I absolutely enjoy these rank tier videos. I owned a lot of Atari games and almost all of the Activision, Imagic, Parker Bros and M Network. But, never any of these titles. After watching this, the only title I'd be interested in playing is Aliens......sure is a pac man clone. The next rank tier I'm voting for is M Network.
Thanks for mentioning the podcast, and when I went there I saw the Discord link so now I'm there (albeit using a different username) and I'll chat when I have a spare moment. Oh and I do have only one of those 20th Century Fox games. Glad it's one of the two in the S tier, Alien. My goal is to get a least one game from each third party companies since the cartridges are a little different from the standard first party Atari ones.
For some reason the commercial for Deadly Duck has stuck with me since I was a kid. I always enjoyed MASH. Me and my sister used to play that one constantly.
I owned Alien, Fantastic Voyage and Beefsteak Tomatoes. My parents bought them for me at a discount from the Kaybee bargain bin during the crash sometime in '83. I spent many hours playing my Fox games. Not only were they fun and had good replay value but i also liked that they were based on actual sci-fi movies... sorta. You had to use your imagination a little bit with the 2600.
The only ones I remember playing were Alien and Beany Bopper. Alien was fun but I was expecting scares like the movie (11 year old kid, come on). Beany Bopper holds a special place because when it came out my little sister was born and we nicknamed her after the game. It has stuck to this day!! 🤣
Getting into the VCS proper now. Buying a 2600+ and a VCS and will be building a collection of games to play and enjoy. Thanks for making these! Subbed!
I had Fast Eddie growing up. I learned that you could change the color of the level by using the color/ bw switch on the Atari. You simply press the switch to bw and the level color would cycle through random colors. Then you would press the switch up to color and it would stay that color.
Little Andy never had any of these games, he was too busy playing Activision, Atari, M-Network, and IMAGIC games. But he did have a friend who had Mega Force and Andy played it a lot during sleep overs. Andy and his friend had a lot of fun playing that game so little Andy would have scored it higher.
I didn't discover Mega Force until a few years ago, as an adult. Still, I would score it higher. I mean, it's no Pitfall 2 or Jr. PacMan, but it is a very fun game for what it is. Among the Defender style games on the 2600, it's probably my third favorite--behind Stargate and Star Wars TESB and ahead of Chopper Command and any other game of that type.
We had a little Mom-and-Pop book store in town that would open and let you play games before you purchased. I still remember first playing Enduro there! Thanks for watching. 😀
There were video game magazines that rated or had recommendations for Atari games, but not too many kids got them. We weren't that savvy consumers, and many like me trusted if it was by Atari it would be good until it wasn't. Adults should have required us to playtest them first. I remember trying out and liking _Space Invaders_ and _Dodge 'Em_ when they came out. I did play a number of games at other kids' homes 1981-4, but didn't buy the 3rd-party ones from Activision and Imagic for myself until I grabbed everything I could at $1 each at the thrift store in the 1990s.
I never owned or played any of the 20th Century Fox Atari 2600 games, although I heard and saw pictures of them and even though Porky's was on my radar to watch as a kid !... it was never on my radar to play. This video DID kinda pique my interest in it though... Seems pretty OK actually. I'm sure that wouldn't last though. NOW... MASH, Alien and Megaforce... they would have been right up my alley back in the day and I remember really wanting to own them and talking about them with my friends who owned 2600s. And I completely agree with your ranking of Alien. It seems worthy of the ranking and title !
I only had 4 of these. Deadly Duck, Fast Eddie, Beanie Booper, and Worm War I. My mother still loves Deadly Duck to this day. I haven't played the others in quite a while, but I remember been quite fond of them.
I got the MASH game as a b-day gift and I got the edition that game with an Army green T-shirt wrapped up with the box! And I agree that Alien is the best game on that list...my child mind never looked at it as a Pac-Man clone.
Beanie bopper was one of my go to games in those days! It was as technologically good as a 2600 game could be, and one of the most fun. Mega force was one i liked too. Not great, but we had it growing up and played it a lot..
If I remember correctly, there was a contest for people to design the M.A.S.H. game, or maybe it was for a sequel to this one... I just remember my brother submitting an entry about Hawkeye killing enemies as a level... and even as a little kid I was thinking "Hawkeye didn't shoot anyone"
MASH's operation minigame was kind of easy to cheese depending on game mode and difficulty switch settings. some of the more difficult shrapnel, while awarding higher points values, didn't give you as good of a return on points-per-second because of how long it took to maneuver them out of the body. So you quickly learned to triage each patient, registering that you got a deep one and deliberately pushing that block of pixels into the side wall as quick as possible to get the failbuzz and move on to the next patient, whom you hopefully have a better chance at saving quickly.
Aliens is kind of like a mashup of pac man and wizard of wor, looks fun, never played. We had fast eddie and turmoil on the 8 bit computer too iirc. Worm war 1 looks really fun too.
Back in 1981, 1982 (and maybe 1983) kids had Pac-Man fever so anything like that could intrigue kids. I never played _Aliens_ but heard it was a good clone, if you're content with 3 enemies. Of the clones, I now have _Lock 'n' Chase._ Somehow that avoids flicker and still has 4 enemies, perhaps by not having them on the same row at the same time.
Nice collection of games made by 20th Century Fox. Since these games were owned by Disney as 20th Century Studios, Atari 2600 had a decent library of games made by TCF. “Turmoil”, “Worm War 1”, “SpaceMaster X7” and “Alien” are the good ones. The company ran from 1982 until 1983, and they made many good games outside of its movie studio at the time.
Fantastic Voyage and Worm War I were two of about 17 games I got in a lot for $15 in 2017, shortly after I got my first 2600 Jr. No manuals, just cartridges. For both of these, playing without a manual felt like for several rounds on both, every time I failed, I'd learn something new about the game, how it was meant to be played that I would have known had I had the manual. Even at 25 years old(at the time), it was cool learning to play games that are, on the surface, very simple through trial and error without it being at frustrating levels. Still two of my favorites for the VCS.
Ok, I remember all these games and in 1982 Pac-man and it's clones were everywhere, but a D & D first person shooter? I remember thinking this was so cool and played it endlessly. Crypts of Chaos was ahead of its time in 1982.
You have to admit, even if some of the gameplay was sloppy, 20th Century Fox at least gets an A for effort. The creativity in some of these titles are excellent. Unlike some other companies who just phoned some of their games in, at lest 20th Century Fox made an effort to entertain
I LOVED WORM WAR I totally forgot about it !!! I also did like Megaforce for some reason, and Fast Eddie was always fun. Some great titles I forgot about
I recently discovered that the guy who programed Turmoil also did the NBA Jam arcade game. Turmoil is a fun pick up and play 2600 game. It reminds me of a 2D version of Tempest.
Great video! I disagree with Mash and Fantastic Voyage. I think those should be higher up on the list. I really enjoyed them as a kid and still do, especially Fantastic Voyage. For a company doing licensed games I think overall they did a pretty good job.
So far I've only played Bank Heist, and I think your ranking is fair. I'd put it somewhere between C and B. I love maze games and this one has an interesting concept. Next I want to try Fantastic Voyage and Worm War I.
I am in shock over Worm War I, because I had the same reaction as a kid. I played it maybe for a couple minutes tops. I picked it up a flea market or something in the mid-80s, so of course it had no instructions and no box. But hey, for fifty cents it was at least worth checking out. Wish I could go back and show my younger self this video!
The only ones of these I had back then were Alien and Flash Gorden. Alien got the lions share of attention. Still does. I pretty much agree with your rankings although I would have put the beefsteak maters game a notch or so up. It has some intere4sting play mechanics. I got to like it after one particular week of the HSC on AtariAge.
Amazingly, my Atari 2600 game collection does not contain a single 20th Century Fox title. Alien and Turmoil both seem pretty easy to find on eBay, and they are not expensive, so I might need to track down copies of those.
I just don't see them that frequently in piles of old carts. I have hundreds upon hundreds of carts (mostly dupes) from purchasing so many lots, but maybe only have a half dozen Fox titles. It's weird! Both Alien & Turmoil are well worth owning. Thank you for watching! 😀
I used to love Spacemaster X-7. I actually mainly watched this video because I could never remember the game's name, and I was hoping it might have been a Fox release.
Thanks for watching - glad you enjoyed it! If you're interested in Star Wars games, I didn't miss them; Parker Brothers had that license for video games back then and I covered them in this video: ua-cam.com/video/fKFjwZ7ec2E/v-deo.html Thank you for the kind words. 😀
Crypts of Chaos was the only thing like it for the Atari so I loved it for what it was and definitely used my imagination to enjoy it beyond its limitations.
@@GenXGrownUp I have a question for you. Would you recommend I wait for the Atari 2600+ or get the Retron 77? The SD card aspect of the Retron is tempting, but I feel like the 2600+ will have more support and build quality.
@@mistergone5156 That's a tough call, and depends on how you expect to use it. From what we've learned so far, the 2600+ does the same thing the RetroN 77 does with physical carts: rip them to memory and play from there. Beyond that the RetroN has an SD slot and load/save states if you like those features. The RetroN has a firmware issue where, if you use the community firmware (which allows you to fill up the SD card with games), the paddles don't work like they should. Plus, it's about 1/2 the price of the 2600+ and available now. There are just so many unknowns about the 2600+, but it seems to simulate only the core functions of the 2600 and likely won't have any of those modern, added features.
@@GenXGrownUp Thanks for the advice, it is a tough one. I feel like Atari hardware will be more reliable than Hyperkin's, the paddle issue burns (Kaboom!). I could always play the extra games on the computer if I wanted.
A good portion of the Fox games are ports of microcomputer games. I would have thought they would have slapped the names of more of their movies on the games that came out.
I still own Fast Eddie as a pirated cartridge called "Modern Knight". As far as I know (there's no dump on the internet for that version and my old 2600 doesn't want to be connected to my TV, so... meh, I'm kinda disappointed), it was exactly the same despite some changes in graphics. It's a mystery cartridge, and as far as I know today, it's quite unusual to find. In any case, it was one of my favourites back in the day. Some other personal stuff: - I always believed that "Alien" was a hack and not an official game 😄; - I always thought that "Earth Dies Creaming" could have been a great game, but it failed miserably; - I've always liked "Spacemaster X7" and today it's one of the most played games (in emulation, of course).
Eeyup.. Never went much past a round or two on Worm War 1… That really does get quite fun the deeper you so into it! Think I prefer Difficulty A where the work movement is randomized! You all prefer A or B?
i have a flashback 10 and i was trying to decide which 2600 i wanted because nostalgia-wise, I think I’d actually rather a Sears telegrams system. But then I learned of the 2600+ and it seems silly bot to go with all the different possibilities that that system can provide on top of a brand new hardware with new parts.
Worm War I is the only title from the 17 in my collection which somehow failed... I've wanted to burn it into an EPROM since then to play it again, but I never got around to do it.
Crypts of Chaos is an idea way ahead of its time! Ambitious for sure! Cool concept no doubt! But it's just slow, hard to tell where you are & as stated uses one controller to do way too much.
Can't say I agree with you on Spacemaster X-7. Spacemaster is probably one of the best games for the Atari and for this company. And M*A*S*H, the operation is very unique. There are no other games with this premise for the Atari.
I have like three 20th century Fox games and The main thing I don't like about him is some of them don't have proper and labels I like the fact how they have little notches in them so they're stackable but I don't like the fact that they don't have a proper label at the end of the cartridge I know turmoil had a proper end label though
Three comments: 1) I want to get Worm War 1 to try coop with my sons. There are precious few good cooperative games on the 2600, due to the system's limitations. It's great when you find a good one. Wizard of Wor is another one that is both a good game and a fun couch-cooperative experience. 2) I think you are too harsh on Mega Force. For me, the kitsch of it being connected to the weird movie is a plus. But the game play is good. In my opinion, it's one of the better Defender-esque games on the 2600. I put it above Chopper Command, in fact. 3) Your low ranking of Beefsteak Tomatoes strikes me as another miss, though I confess I don't own it and haven't played it much. Still, I think it's fun and it has a unique concept, and I'm not alone in this opinion. For example, the No Swear Gamer has it in the upper part of his ranking of games-somewhere around 40 out of over 200 games ranked, iirc, and the Video Game Critic gives it a B+.
That's the great thing about these ratings - they're subjective. What I find most important is someone explaining WHY they rank a game as they do (as you and I have here). Thanks for watching!
@@GenXGrownUp It's obvious that you put time into these games and make sure you really understand them before assigning a grade. So I respect your opinion, even if I don't always agree.
Jon, I've been wondering why the slogan isn't something like "You have to grow up, but you don't have to get old." Being that the channel is called what it is, that would imply to me that you did actually have to grow up. Something for the philosophers to figure out maybe.
@@TheSlickMachine That's almost exactly it! I know a lot of people my age and younger who gave up on the things they loved from their childhoods as they got older. They chose to grow up along with growing older. I like to celebrate the things from my youth and never gave up on them - that's what I try to do with GenXGrownUp. 😀
Little Wadey 💯 percent missed the 20th century fox boat. They totally had a pretty bad reputation and add to that my young attention deficit issues (and my poor moms inability to constantly buy little wadey new atari tapes AND burger chef every night), yeah I totally appreciate these rankings because maybe I can finally play these games. Haha little jonny looks and sounds like the kinda guy that wadey would walk back & forth to school and to our arcade The Cue Club with.
I heard another reviewer rated some of these games as worth playing or at least in his top 50% of 261 Atari games, but I still don't see myself interested in _Alien, Fantastic Voyage, Beany Bopper, Turmoil_ etc. I did like _Tempest_ but don't see _Turmoil_ as the same game.
Wow. Im 42 and have been playing Atari most of my life. My dad got one when i was a baby but i still havent heard of a few of these. Thats one thing i love about this system! There were just so many games for it or variations of games that even in 2023 im still learning about ones i didnt know existed!
Adventure was my favorite. 😊
Agreed. Thaks for watching!
Same here I'm 43 grew up with it and honestly pretty much all I play anymore is segas total war series and atari I can't stand call of duty or battlefield anymore way too much bullshit
Home run! This is probably the stable of games that I knew the LEAST about. MASH was my only cartridge that I own. But there are a couple more that I see now that I need to keep an eye out for. ThanksJon. Very informative and entertaining. 👍🏻👍🏻
Glad you enjoyed it, Butter!
I loved Mega Force and MASH when I was a kid.
Oh, I've got stuff to say, all right! (Nothing confrontational, though.)
Many of the games by 20th Century Fox were actually by a company named Sirius. Sirius was one of the biggest third party video game developers of its era, but 20th Century Fox was reluctant to pay them for their work, and as a result, Sirius was starved of revenue and went bankrupt.
This theft of goods and services regrettably was a standard business practice in the 1980s... it's also how Commodore was able to make the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 so cheap. Order chips from a supplier, don't pay them for the product, KEEP ordering chips until the supplier goes out of business, buy what remains of the company after bankruptcy, forgive your own debt.
Also! Alien was created by Dallas North. You may know him better as Douglas Neubauer, the creator of the Atari 2600's best game Solaris.
Ironically, the Alien Pac-Man clone was a million times better than the official Atari Pac-Man port.
I was going to post that exact same thing. And it was released the same year!
I spent way too much time playing Turmoil. That game is just way too addictive!
Had great fun playing M*A*S*H back in the day in 2-Player mode. The head to head competition really elevates the game.
Finding that's true for lots of games on these tiers. Having a buddy to yell at and compete with can elevate almost anything to a higher level!
Turmoil is a phenomenal game. I love the insane pace of it. It’s honestly one of the most under appreciated shooters on the 2600. I’m glad to have Flash Gordon demystified. I can recall having seen the movie and trying (unsuccessfully) to understand what the game had to do with it. Great rankings! Personally, I would probably move Bank Heist up a bit. I really enjoyed the risk and reward of trying to bag all the banks you could manage before running off to the next unsuspecting town. 😊
Funny how _Vanguard_ gets the music from _Flash Gordon_ the movie, but this game gets the movie art on the box.
The Earth dies Screaming (1965) and Spacemaster X-7 (1958) are also great films to watch. Crash Dive (1943) is an ok film
These are the best series. i’ve watched like a million of them while home sick this morning. its a great way to systematically familiarize yourself with (nearly) the whole collection.
Fantastic Voyage is one of the best shmups on 2600. I remember spending a lot of time playing Megaforce and Buck Rogers I found boring and strange, games that at the time were kind of obscure, like Frankenstein's Monster. One thing is for sure, the style of 20th Century Fox cartridges look very good on the shelf.
They sure do! Thanks for watching. 😀
The first 4 releases Turmoil, Fast Eddie, Worm War 1, and Deadly Duck were all released at the same time. The boxes are different from the remaining games. I believe they were programmed by Sirus before 20th Century Fox had their own programming company.
That's cool extra detail. Thanks!
I'm glad because the Turmoil Box and cart look cool.
Turmoil has been on my top ten for decades. No one ever mentions it. It’s always about Yar’s Revenge and Adventure.
I'm on your side: Turmoil is the bomb.
That game was designed by NBA Jam's Mark Turmell! Turmell, Turmoil! Get it?
I remember being blown away as a kid by the worm animation in that game. Still frantic fun to this day. Good times.
Turmoil aged well. Love that one!
It scratches that Tempest itch without it being Tempest.
Haven't played any of these. They don't seem to come up very often in the UK. But something you can say is that these games perhaps deserve more love than they get. Graphics and the desire to make them more replayable seem impressive for the 2600 games of the time.
Fast Eddie has always been one of my personal favourites. It’s a shame it never got a PAL release.. Thank god that the 2600 is (kind of) region free lol
I've been looking forward to this one. While I haven't played too many of these I've been wanting to. try more of them out. And though you gave them low grades, M*A*S*H and MegaForce were two of my favorites as a kid. In fact I still have them and enjoy playing them now.
Also worth noting, Earth Dies Screaming is Fox movie. Though nothing remotely like the game. I've seen it, and liked it, a few years ago.
Ahhh yes! I had a hunch it was this one! 😋
Love me some Fantastic Voyage!
Hope you enjoy it!
I used to play Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes with all the difficulty settings turned up so the enemies were fast and their shots were as wide as the sprayer. The wall building aspect made it different enough from other shooters I'd give the game a solid B, and it was one of the 2600 carts I still got a craving for in the NES/SNES era, but the limited amount of threats at a time keep it from being an unqualified classic.
Great video. Keep em coming
Thanks! Will do!
@@GenXGrownUp wishing you all the best from Scotland....
Video is 21 minutes, 12 seconds... RIP Neil. Anyway... I don't think I had any of these back in the day. Great reviews.
Neil?
@@GenXGrownUp2112 is an album by the band Rush, and Neil Peart was their drummer, who died a few years ago.
@@JustMe99999 Ah-ha! Got it!
Great video. I played Fast Eddie back in the day and always enjoyed it, and in my GenX Grownup collecting somehow gravitated towards Beany Bopper and Turmoil. Those are both excellent games as well. And I was glad to hear another opinion on Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes and Porky's, both of which I find incredibly frustrating LOL :)
I too, love me some Beany Bopper! It's one of my favorites.
I have enjoyed watching these Atari video rankings. I would love to see the silver label Atari games.
That would ne an amazing two-parter. There's just barely over 40 games.
*Jon! We need this one!* 😋
@@KeithPhillips I count 33 games released by Atari in 1983 (talk about a glut!) and only 15 in 1982. I'm not sure which are silver.
Excellent job as usual Jon !!!! I absolutely enjoy these rank tier videos. I owned a lot of Atari games and almost all of the Activision, Imagic, Parker Bros and M Network. But, never any of these titles. After watching this, the only title I'd be interested in playing is Aliens......sure is a pac man clone. The next rank tier I'm voting for is M Network.
Thanks for mentioning the podcast, and when I went there I saw the Discord link so now I'm there (albeit using a different username) and I'll chat when I have a spare moment. Oh and I do have only one of those 20th Century Fox games. Glad it's one of the two in the S tier, Alien. My goal is to get a least one game from each third party companies since the cartridges are a little different from the standard first party Atari ones.
Welcome, welcome, and welcome! 😀 Alien is probably the one I see most often, and it's a great one! I'll talk to you on the Discord. 💬
i had Fast Eddie, Fantastic Voyage and Mega Force back in early 80s. You are right about them except for Mega Force. That game was great.
Another great tier video Jon and you had me at SpaceMaster X7. Decent game with an awesome name :-)
For some reason the commercial for Deadly Duck has stuck with me since I was a kid.
I always enjoyed MASH. Me and my sister used to play that one constantly.
The chaos of Beany Bopper looks so fun
I owned Alien, Fantastic Voyage and Beefsteak Tomatoes. My parents bought them for me at a discount from the Kaybee bargain bin during the crash sometime in '83. I spent many hours playing my Fox games. Not only were they fun and had good replay value but i also liked that they were based on actual sci-fi movies... sorta. You had to use your imagination a little bit with the 2600.
The only ones I remember playing were Alien and Beany Bopper. Alien was fun but I was expecting scares like the movie (11 year old kid, come on). Beany Bopper holds a special place because when it came out my little sister was born and we nicknamed her after the game. It has stuck to this day!! 🤣
Getting into the VCS proper now. Buying a 2600+ and a VCS and will be building a collection of games to play and enjoy. Thanks for making these! Subbed!
Welcome aboard!
I had Fast Eddie growing up. I learned that you could change the color of the level by using the color/ bw switch on the Atari. You simply press the switch to bw and the level color would cycle through random colors. Then you would press the switch up to color and it would stay that color.
I don’t know why, I thought Gorf was by 20th Century? Anyone remember who did put that title out for the Atari?
CBS Electronics. 😉
Little Andy never had any of these games, he was too busy playing Activision, Atari, M-Network, and IMAGIC games. But he did have a friend who had Mega Force and Andy played it a lot during sleep overs. Andy and his friend had a lot of fun playing that game so little Andy would have scored it higher.
Little Andy sounds like a kid with good taste.
I didn't discover Mega Force until a few years ago, as an adult. Still, I would score it higher. I mean, it's no Pitfall 2 or Jr. PacMan, but it is a very fun game for what it is. Among the Defender style games on the 2600, it's probably my third favorite--behind Stargate and Star Wars TESB and ahead of Chopper Command and any other game of that type.
The store near my house used to let me try the games before buying. Probably why I never bought these games. LOL. Nevertheless, great videos. Thanks !
We had a little Mom-and-Pop book store in town that would open and let you play games before you purchased. I still remember first playing Enduro there! Thanks for watching. 😀
There were video game magazines that rated or had recommendations for Atari games, but not too many kids got them. We weren't that savvy consumers, and many like me trusted if it was by Atari it would be good until it wasn't. Adults should have required us to playtest them first. I remember trying out and liking _Space Invaders_ and _Dodge 'Em_ when they came out. I did play a number of games at other kids' homes 1981-4, but didn't buy the 3rd-party ones from Activision and Imagic for myself until I grabbed everything I could at $1 each at the thrift store in the 1990s.
My first Atari game was SpaceMaster X7. Greetings from 🇬🇹 Guatemala
I never owned or played any of the 20th Century Fox Atari 2600 games, although I heard and saw pictures of them and even though Porky's was on my radar to watch as a kid !... it was never on my radar to play. This video DID kinda pique my interest in it though... Seems pretty OK actually. I'm sure that wouldn't last though. NOW... MASH, Alien and Megaforce... they would have been right up my alley back in the day and I remember really wanting to own them and talking about them with my friends who owned 2600s. And I completely agree with your ranking of Alien. It seems worthy of the ranking and title !
I only had 4 of these. Deadly Duck, Fast Eddie, Beanie Booper, and Worm War I. My mother still loves Deadly Duck to this day. I haven't played the others in quite a while, but I remember been quite fond of them.
I must admit, Deadly Duck has a certain charm. 🦆
I got the MASH game as a b-day gift and I got the edition that game with an Army green T-shirt wrapped up with the box! And I agree that Alien is the best game on that list...my child mind never looked at it as a Pac-Man clone.
Beanie bopper was one of my go to games in those days! It was as technologically good as a 2600 game could be, and one of the most fun. Mega force was one i liked too. Not great, but we had it growing up and played it a lot..
I friggin' »--> LOVE
If I remember correctly, there was a contest for people to design the M.A.S.H. game, or maybe it was for a sequel to this one... I just remember my brother submitting an entry about Hawkeye killing enemies as a level... and even as a little kid I was thinking "Hawkeye didn't shoot anyone"
There are a couple of games on this list that I didn't know about, but I gave and still continue to give games from this publisher a wide berth.
MASH's operation minigame was kind of easy to cheese depending on game mode and difficulty switch settings. some of the more difficult shrapnel, while awarding higher points values, didn't give you as good of a return on points-per-second because of how long it took to maneuver them out of the body. So you quickly learned to triage each patient, registering that you got a deep one and deliberately pushing that block of pixels into the side wall as quick as possible to get the failbuzz and move on to the next patient, whom you hopefully have a better chance at saving quickly.
I subbed after seeing you out beany bopper in the A tier. One of my top 5 fave atari games
I'm glad I earned your viewership! 😀
Aliens is kind of like a mashup of pac man and wizard of wor, looks fun, never played. We had fast eddie and turmoil on the 8 bit computer too iirc. Worm war 1 looks really fun too.
Aliens was a Super Surprise back then. Played it allllllll the time. Really high quality game.
Back in 1981, 1982 (and maybe 1983) kids had Pac-Man fever so anything like that could intrigue kids. I never played _Aliens_ but heard it was a good clone, if you're content with 3 enemies. Of the clones, I now have _Lock 'n' Chase._ Somehow that avoids flicker and still has 4 enemies, perhaps by not having them on the same row at the same time.
Nice collection of games made by 20th Century Fox. Since these games were owned by Disney as 20th Century Studios, Atari 2600 had a decent library of games made by TCF. “Turmoil”, “Worm War 1”, “SpaceMaster X7” and “Alien” are the good ones. The company ran from 1982 until 1983, and they made many good games outside of its movie studio at the time.
Fantastic Voyage and Worm War I were two of about 17 games I got in a lot for $15 in 2017, shortly after I got my first 2600 Jr. No manuals, just cartridges. For both of these, playing without a manual felt like for several rounds on both, every time I failed, I'd learn something new about the game, how it was meant to be played that I would have known had I had the manual. Even at 25 years old(at the time), it was cool learning to play games that are, on the surface, very simple through trial and error without it being at frustrating levels. Still two of my favorites for the VCS.
Cool!
Ok, I remember all these games and in 1982 Pac-man and it's clones were everywhere, but a D & D first person shooter? I remember thinking this was so cool and played it endlessly. Crypts of Chaos was ahead of its time in 1982.
You have to admit, even if some of the gameplay was sloppy, 20th Century Fox at least gets an A for effort. The creativity in some of these titles are excellent. Unlike some other companies who just phoned some of their games in, at lest 20th Century Fox made an effort to entertain
Not only admit, but applaud! 👏
16:10 - The "tomato sprayer" looks like the the toothpaste from the Activision game Plaque Attack.
I LOVED WORM WAR I totally forgot about it !!! I also did like Megaforce for some reason, and Fast Eddie was always fun. Some great titles I forgot about
I recently discovered that the guy who programed Turmoil also did the NBA Jam arcade game. Turmoil is a fun pick up and play 2600 game. It reminds me of a 2D version of Tempest.
Yes! It's very much a flattened Tempest. 😀
Fantastic voyage and worm war one,,hooked for hours on end😮😂
Great one as usual Jon. A L I E N looks like a definite one to check out. Retropie here I come. I’m going to go out on a vine!! Really Jon? Really? 😅
LOL! Thanks for being the only one to catch that (or at least say so). 🤣
Great video! I disagree with Mash and Fantastic Voyage. I think those should be higher up on the list. I really enjoyed them as a kid and still do, especially Fantastic Voyage. For a company doing licensed games I think overall they did a pretty good job.
So far I've only played Bank Heist, and I think your ranking is fair. I'd put it somewhere between C and B. I love maze games and this one has an interesting concept. Next I want to try Fantastic Voyage and Worm War I.
I still owe Worm War I a huge apology! Thanks for watching. 😀
Both the movie and game Megaforce were AMAZING AND WONDERFUL! (totally looking through nostalgic glasses) 😂
Haha! 😁
In the movie Revenge of the Nerds there is a scene when the guys are living in the Gym and you see Wormser playing Space Master X-7.
I am in shock over Worm War I, because I had the same reaction as a kid. I played it maybe for a couple minutes tops. I picked it up a flea market or something in the mid-80s, so of course it had no instructions and no box. But hey, for fifty cents it was at least worth checking out. Wish I could go back and show my younger self this video!
Don't beat yourself up. That one is easy to dismiss, but I'm so glad I finally discovered what it offers!
I think it's cook that the boxes use a similar trade dress to the VHS tapes put out by their short-lived pre-CBS home video division.
I love Fantastic Voyage. Yeah, that's all I have to say. Ha. Great game. It may deserve a "B," but it gets an "A" in my book.
The only ones of these I had back then were Alien and Flash Gorden. Alien got the lions share of attention. Still does.
I pretty much agree with your rankings although I would have put the beefsteak maters game a notch or so up. It has some intere4sting play mechanics. I got to like it after one particular week of the HSC on AtariAge.
Amazingly, my Atari 2600 game collection does not contain a single 20th Century Fox title. Alien and Turmoil both seem pretty easy to find on eBay, and they are not expensive, so I might need to track down copies of those.
I just don't see them that frequently in piles of old carts. I have hundreds upon hundreds of carts (mostly dupes) from purchasing so many lots, but maybe only have a half dozen Fox titles. It's weird! Both Alien & Turmoil are well worth owning. Thank you for watching! 😀
I used to love Spacemaster X-7. I actually mainly watched this video because I could never remember the game's name, and I was hoping it might have been a Fox release.
The Earth Dies Screaming was a not too bad British sci-fi movie released in 1964.
I thought it sounded familiar, but it wasn't one I'd seen. Thanks!
beefsteak kind of like plaque attack shooting teeth , this is like choosing flavored tooth paste colors and putting them in teeth/wall
I love Fantastic Voyage: it’s River Raid with even more elements. Gonna have to play some Worm War I today too!
Cool video. You missed Star Wars games. You have a cute smile by the way😊
Thanks for watching - glad you enjoyed it! If you're interested in Star Wars games, I didn't miss them; Parker Brothers had that license for video games back then and I covered them in this video: ua-cam.com/video/fKFjwZ7ec2E/v-deo.html
Thank you for the kind words. 😀
Crypts of Chaos was the only thing like it for the Atari so I loved it for what it was and definitely used my imagination to enjoy it beyond its limitations.
Wow, Crash Dive might be one of the first horizontal shmups.
Are there any box protectors for Fox games? My standard Atari 2600 box protectors will not work. Great video!
Had Deadly Duxknon my Vic20.. loved it 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
That shirt is S tier. Good video once again.
Haha! Thanks! You can get your own it you want: amz.run/72Lq
@@GenXGrownUp That's awesome! Thank you. Pretty sure if i get the shirt that makes us twins. Pretty sure that's how that works.
@@InsertGame1 You may be right.
I tried it again. Worm War 1 is great. I never knew! Set the right dif switch to A and the worms movements are randomized. Even more fun.
I missed out on all these games except Mash and Porkys, the only 2 I owned
Turmoil and Fast Eddie are two of my all time favorites on the 2600! I'll give them points for making a Porky's game, but yeah, it's bad.
Two great picks!
@@GenXGrownUp I have a question for you. Would you recommend I wait for the Atari 2600+ or get the Retron 77? The SD card aspect of the Retron is tempting, but I feel like the 2600+ will have more support and build quality.
@@mistergone5156 That's a tough call, and depends on how you expect to use it. From what we've learned so far, the 2600+ does the same thing the RetroN 77 does with physical carts: rip them to memory and play from there. Beyond that the RetroN has an SD slot and load/save states if you like those features. The RetroN has a firmware issue where, if you use the community firmware (which allows you to fill up the SD card with games), the paddles don't work like they should. Plus, it's about 1/2 the price of the 2600+ and available now. There are just so many unknowns about the 2600+, but it seems to simulate only the core functions of the 2600 and likely won't have any of those modern, added features.
@@GenXGrownUp Thanks for the advice, it is a tough one. I feel like Atari hardware will be more reliable than Hyperkin's, the paddle issue burns (Kaboom!). I could always play the extra games on the computer if I wanted.
Loved Turmoil !
A good portion of the Fox games are ports of microcomputer games. I would have thought they would have slapped the names of more of their movies on the games that came out.
My gutter mind sees a sprite fighting off crabs 🦀 and just goes there 😂
Turmoil was one of my favorite games.
I still own Fast Eddie as a pirated cartridge called "Modern Knight". As far as I know (there's no dump on the internet for that version and my old 2600 doesn't want to be connected to my TV, so... meh, I'm kinda disappointed), it was exactly the same despite some changes in graphics. It's a mystery cartridge, and as far as I know today, it's quite unusual to find. In any case, it was one of my favourites back in the day.
Some other personal stuff:
- I always believed that "Alien" was a hack and not an official game 😄;
- I always thought that "Earth Dies Creaming" could have been a great game, but it failed miserably;
- I've always liked "Spacemaster X7" and today it's one of the most played games (in emulation, of course).
Eeyup..
Never went much past a round or two on Worm War 1…
That really does get quite fun the deeper you so into it!
Think I prefer Difficulty A where the work movement is randomized!
You all prefer A or B?
I love playing MSAH on my 2600! Fun game. Not great, but fun.
i have a flashback 10 and i was trying to decide which 2600 i wanted because nostalgia-wise, I think I’d actually rather a Sears telegrams system. But then I learned of the 2600+ and it seems silly bot to go with all the different possibilities that that system can provide on top of a brand new hardware with new parts.
And too, the 7800+ will be coming in just a few short weeks!
Worm War I is the only title from the 17 in my collection which somehow failed... I've wanted to burn it into an EPROM since then to play it again, but I never got around to do it.
Crypts of Chaos is an idea way ahead of its time! Ambitious for sure! Cool concept no doubt! But it's just slow, hard to tell where you are & as stated uses one controller to do way too much.
Agreed!
I loved the earth died screaming 😂
Can't say I agree with you on Spacemaster X-7. Spacemaster is probably one of the best games for the Atari and for this company. And M*A*S*H, the operation is very unique. There are no other games with this premise for the Atari.
To me, Space Master X7 gives off a Star Castle vibe.
I have like three 20th century Fox games and The main thing I don't like about him is some of them don't have proper and labels I like the fact how they have little notches in them so they're stackable but I don't like the fact that they don't have a proper label at the end of the cartridge I know turmoil had a proper end label though
Three comments:
1) I want to get Worm War 1 to try coop with my sons. There are precious few good cooperative games on the 2600, due to the system's limitations. It's great when you find a good one. Wizard of Wor is another one that is both a good game and a fun couch-cooperative experience.
2) I think you are too harsh on Mega Force. For me, the kitsch of it being connected to the weird movie is a plus. But the game play is good. In my opinion, it's one of the better Defender-esque games on the 2600. I put it above Chopper Command, in fact.
3) Your low ranking of Beefsteak Tomatoes strikes me as another miss, though I confess I don't own it and haven't played it much. Still, I think it's fun and it has a unique concept, and I'm not alone in this opinion. For example, the No Swear Gamer has it in the upper part of his ranking of games-somewhere around 40 out of over 200 games ranked, iirc, and the Video Game Critic gives it a B+.
That's the great thing about these ratings - they're subjective. What I find most important is someone explaining WHY they rank a game as they do (as you and I have here). Thanks for watching!
@@GenXGrownUp It's obvious that you put time into these games and make sure you really understand them before assigning a grade. So I respect your opinion, even if I don't always agree.
BEANY BOPPER BOPPER BEANYS!!
How have I never heard of any of these games???!!!
I dunno. But the good news is, you can now experience them as if new!
Jon, I've been wondering why the slogan isn't something like "You have to grow up, but you don't have to get old." Being that the channel is called what it is, that would imply to me that you did actually have to grow up. Something for the philosophers to figure out maybe.
Oh, we do have to grow old, though -- there's no avoiding it. It's aging. Growing up, on the other hand, is a state of mind.
@@GenXGrownUp I think I have a better grasp of your semantics. Sort of like you've synthesized into a grownup that can still enjoy himself.
@@TheSlickMachine That's almost exactly it! I know a lot of people my age and younger who gave up on the things they loved from their childhoods as they got older. They chose to grow up along with growing older. I like to celebrate the things from my youth and never gave up on them - that's what I try to do with GenXGrownUp. 😀
Little Wadey 💯 percent missed the 20th century fox boat. They totally had a pretty bad reputation and add to that my young attention deficit issues (and my poor moms inability to constantly buy little wadey new atari tapes AND burger chef every night), yeah I totally appreciate these rankings because maybe I can finally play these games. Haha little jonny looks and sounds like the kinda guy that wadey would walk back & forth to school and to our arcade The Cue Club with.
I heard another reviewer rated some of these games as worth playing or at least in his top 50% of 261 Atari games, but I still don't see myself interested in _Alien, Fantastic Voyage, Beany Bopper, Turmoil_ etc. I did like _Tempest_ but don't see _Turmoil_ as the same game.
I liked MASH. I especially liked the bit of music in it. Rare for an Atari game to have any music at all.