ATARI BYTES

This week on the podcast, we're excited to offer another Conversation Bytes segment. This time, we've got Eoin Marron, the artist drawing the new "Centipede" comic from Dynamite Entertainment.  Centipede is a classic 1982 arcade shooter and a favorite among Atari fans. The game about a giant, rampaging centipede, angry, jumping spiders, and mushrooms galore already got the comics treatment via a p...

If you learn only one thing from ATARI BYTES episode 79, let it be this:  Bears who live in crystal castles, shouldn't throw magic gems. Wait. That's not it. Actually, throwing magic gems is  exactly  what you should do in this 1983 Atari port of the proto-3D arcade adventure game CRYSTAL CASTLES. I mean, how else is Bentley Bear going to defeat the evil witch Berthilda? With an earnest heart-to-h...

EPISODE 78 of the podcast is in the ZONE, baby! Unfortunately, the zone is the BATTLEZONE. So, you know, duck! We are tank-ful for this 1983 Atari port of the 1980 arcade tank shooter. And we know after you listen, you'll give us your TANKS for the episode too! My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Pinball Spring", "Reformat" and "Take a Chance". Atari...

In episode 77, we find out whether the Pac-Apple falls far from Ghost Tree. Then we gobble it up because....mmm, pac-apples.  We're playing JR. PAC-MAN, the 1984 son-of-a-classic-arcade icon. Does the game surpass it's predecessor? Or is it an embarrassing disappointment to the family? Then we dig into whether Jr. Pac has daddy issues or if he's his own Pac.  Also, we eat some ghosts! And a bicycl...

EPISODE 76: SPIDER-MAN swings in on a web to fill your earholes with sticky podcasting fluid. We're playing the 1982 Parker Brothers adventure in honor of SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING being in theaters right now. (As this episode drops.) The Green Goblin has planted a super bomb in the high voltage tower atop a skyscraper. Will Spidey defuse the bombs in time? Will the Green Goblin get away? What exactl...

EPISODE 74: SKY JINKS. In this 1982 high-flying adventure from Activision, you need cat-like reflexes (though, ironically, felines are notoriously bad pilots. They prefer train travel.) to bank left and right around those pylons while dodging trees and hot-air balloons. Sure, you want to finish the time trials in record time, but, hey, don't let all those fast, high-altitude turns make you queasy...

Did you know that "dogie" as in "Git along, little dogie," is spelled with just one "g" when it's cattle, not with two like in "My doggie just peed on your cat"? Me neither! That's just one of the many things we learn in episode 74 of the podcast where we drive those dogies across the digital prairie in Activision's 1981 tribute to the American cowboy STAMPEDE. So go find your ten-gallon hat and c...

Episode 73 is a heapin' second helping of River Raid-esque goodness. RIVER RAID II from 1988 takes what we loved about the original Activision legend and overlays an early era flight simulator. Does the game soar or crash and burn? Hmmm. 1980s. Fighter jets screaming overhead, performing death defying maneuvers as the sexy pilots complete their mission while trading witty banter. Does any of that...

ATARI BYTES EPISODE 72: CHOPLIFTER! has taken flight! That's two exclamation points already. That means you know the 1987 port of this 1982 Apple game to the Atari 7800 has to be good. Who are the Bungelings? How fast can the delegates run? Who knew the post office could be this exciting? So. Many. Questions. But we're here with the (made up) answers. My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com f...

For Episode 71, ATARI BYTES gets back to nature with an adventure in the animal kingdom - WOMBAT... *Checks Notes* Whoops! I meant, we're playing the 1977 Atari original COMBAT. Tanks! Bi-planes! Jets! Mayhem abounds!* *No wombats were harmed in the production of this episode. Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat", "Pinball Spring" and "Take a C...

EPISODE 70 invites you to be a star and to get your RAID on! STAR RAIDERS is here! This 1982 Atari game was the first to utilize the space-age video touch pad peripheral. It was also the last. That may give you a clue how this game is going to go. Speaking of firsts doubling as lasts, listen to this episode closely for the first appearance of my wife - Mrs. Bytes - on the show. She was thrilled to...

What's in a name? Exactly what you'd expect when the name is a title like the 1979 Atari game CANYON BOMBER. What's that about? Well, there's these canyons....and you bomb them. Truth in advertising! Find some sandbags to hide behind, then join us. It'll be a blast! Thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Pinball Spring", "Take a Chance" and "Reformat". Ata...

One day at the Atari Labs in the 1970s, they looked at Breakout and said, "Yeah, this is pretty good. But we can make it better. We have the technology. We can make the paddle smaller. The balls bouncier. The colors colorier. And we can make 'colorier' a word too. We're Atari and there is zero chance we'll implode in a video game crash just a few years hence." The result of this bravado was 1980(?...

We're back! After an unplanned week off at the exotic locale of my local hospital, ATARI BYTES is back. And we promise you, this episode is worth the wait! First, we talk about the 1982 Atari legend SWORDQUEST: EARTHWORLD, the first in a famously unfinished series of games and pack-in comics at the center of a contest that also went unfinished, courtesy of the video game crash.  Then, after the ga...

On episode 66 of ATARI BYTES, we're gonna BREAK...OUT. Mighty mighty. Gonna let it all hang out... And by IT, we mean the 1978 Atari original BREAKOUT. It's a game about smashing bricks and...well, smashing more bricks. And providing the ying to our gaming yang, we also have a Lego correspondent in the studio giving a play-by-play of his assembly of a stack of Lego bricks into...well, you'll just...

Join us for episode 65 featuring the debut of what we expect will become a recurring segment on the show: Conversation Bytes! Our guinea pig guest for this new interview segment is Scott Rhoades, fiction author and longtime writer of technical manuals - including manuals for games like BasketBrawl and Shanghai on the Atari 7800 and the Lynx during a stint with Atari in the 1980s and '90s. Thanks f...

See the flag. Capture the flag. It's all in the name. Our subject this week is: FLAG CAPTURE, a flag-ship game (see what I did there?) for Atari, being one of the first eleven games released in 1978. You and an opponent race across the field of play, striving to be the first to "capture" the "flag" and which point...well, not much happens. Is this a pirate game? I don't know, but it sure feels lik...

Ahh! Baseball! The smell of the grassy outfield and the dusty infield. Does Atari's 1978 appeal to the Louisville Slugger in all of us score a HOME RUN or is it the sporting equivalent of AMIDAR? (We're never going to forgive that game for wasting our time.) Head down to your digital ballpark and find out! My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat...

We're taking another spin through the time vortex and jumping out in the era of the Atari 7800 this week to play the 1986 iconic Atari game ROBOTRON 2084. If you're one of the few who hasn't heard of or played this legendary game, this might help: just imagine this is an even MORE dystopian version of the world set out in George Orwell's novel 1984 . It's no surprise that Orwell might be intereste...

So, what do we get in Atari's 1978 adventure game SPACE WAR? There's space. There's war. Sort of. Tune in to find out just what we mean by that! My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat", "Pinball Spring" and "Take a Chance". Atari Bytes show notes It's a Podcast, Charlie Brown Find awesome "Go Play Some Old Games" shirts, mugs and more at our st...

For all you haters who think video games rot the mushy brains of impressionable youth, the 1978 Atari game BRAIN GAMES is for you. It's like a console version of the classic handheld games Simon and Merlin without the portability. Or the bright colors. Or the fun. Doing its part to foster a generation of drug free, sex free, non-fun-having gamers, playing BRAIN GAMES is like being the 1980s teen o...

I wear my sunglasses at night. This made it a bit difficult to play this week's game NIGHT DRIVER, the 1980 game from Atari. I pretty much crashed into everything, then just reset the game and pretty much acted as if nothing happened. It's kind of like what Congress does. Put on your sunglasses and hop into the driver's seat. Atari Bytes episodes and show notes It's a Podcast, Charlie Brown The At...

WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN... Seriously. Do it. Do it now. Okay, sit down, you look ridiculous. This week on the podcast, we have a 1983 Parker Bros. game about looting ancient Egyptian ruler King Tut's tomb. The game is called TUTANKHAM, and is apparently so good, you won't have time to put the last "en" on the name before you must rush off to play it. Do we agree? More importantly, what stories has t...

We wondered why one reviewer declared that the best thing about Mythicon's 1983 game STAR FOX, the intended first in a series of games, was that Mythicon didn't make any more games in that series. Now we know. This space adventure(?) has something to do with recuing mysterious space-y energy crystals, which might just be Walter White's blue meth, for all we learn from the game, from some vague ene...

We love us some Activision on the podcast, so doing the 1982 high-flying adventure CHOPPER COMMAND was a no-brainer. But is this helicopter game hella-good? Will the Sun God Helios be favored or displeased by all the heli-stuff that isn't him? So many questions. Also, we shoot things with lasers. Go find an air sick bag and join us! My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons...