Stampede: Atari Archive Episode 63

At last we come to the end of 1981, as we look at Activision's Stampede! This unusually themed "shooter" comes to us from Bob Whitehead, earning a great deal of praise for its challenging gameplay and excellent visuals, as well as its western theme. This video also includes a roundup of 1981 in North American gaming!

[@Geferulf_TAS]

It's a crime you have so few subs. You are by far the most comprehensive presenter and single source of A2600 information on YT.

[@anactualmotherbear]

Every episode of this series offers so much history, and that's what I come for... not just a look at these little 10 minute bursts of video game fun.

[@sheets75]

I've always enjoyed Stampede but I think this is a case of a game that I appreciate even more as an adult. When I was a kid, I would just mindlessly play it, having fun but never getting very far, but playing it now I see the strategy involved in choosing between roping the cattle or just moving them along, and making sure you're in position to get the black ones or avoid the skulls. (I still suck at it, though.)

[@Rando1975]

One of my favorites for the 2600.

[@Cafeman_2D]

Nice feature on an underrated 2600 game. Stampede is like Kaboom, the more you get used to its patterns, the more you want to try just one more round. I never truly understood how to last long enough to score much past 3,000 points on Stampede, but it was always fun trying.

[@LKitesar]

everytime I wake up to see a new Archive it's one of my favorite moments of the month!

[@absolutezeronow7928]

Nice close for 1981. And 1982 is going to take quite a while, but at least you've got a plan to cover multiple games. Well, Apollo doing better than Skeet Shoot is kinda a low bar but looking forward to seeing how much they improve.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think if other 3rd-party companies had released good games in 1981 for the VCS, they would have had a chance to have a super-hit selling 1 million without all the competition in 1982. I guess there was some kind of chip shortage. Skeet Shoot, really? Of course one of the funny things is that Nintendo's Duck Hunt looks a lot like this game. I also have to ask how many copies of their old games from 1977-8 they manufactured, taking up store shelves in 1981 and hogging valuable chips (if there was a shortage)? They would retire some games from their catalog in 1981 (Black Jack, Basic Math, Flag Capture, Miniature Golf, Surround and Space War, though they'd bring Space War back), but not enough.

[@baddog57]

Excellent as always! Such cute little leg animations on Stampede.

[@vidarlystadjohansen9829]

This is such a great channel !

[@LeftyPem]

This was in the first handful of games our first Atari had when it came home around 1986. Put so much time into it without knowing the right way to play it.

[@Heike--]

The most underrated channel on KZbin. Looking forward to 1982! I like how the obscure systems are included too.

[@Phediuk]

Excellent work once again; congrats for making it this far. The deluge really begins starting next episode, and doesn't let up until the end of 1983.

[@ATippingBarn]

Happy New Year! Thanks for the continual uploads!

[@evad999]

Just wanted to say I really enjoy your uploads and am always excited when I see a new video on this channel. I hope you never get tired of releasing these. Thanks for all that you do!

[@BeyondTheScanlines]

A great start to the new year! Stampede's one I've not gone back to for a while now, but after seeing how it was influenced by Space Invaders, it certainly makes me want to go back and give it a shot. Certainly something to be said to see this era of simple fare for the console winding down, but '82 certainly makes a year with a lot of strong fare, even amongst the shifting market.

[@mikemayberry7121]

Another fascinating episode! I really enjoy this series. Been watching for years.

[@JIrish780]

I only discovered this game for myself on the Xbox 360 in the rather weirdly implemented Game Room, and it became one of my most played games on it. I really wish Activision would just release a new compilation of their 2600 games for Switch even if only as a digital release.

[@billkendrick1]

Awesome work as usual. Being an Atari fan, it's always interesting to see what the other parts of the gaming market was doing at the same time. Keep it up!

[@Jolt7800]

Stampede was one of those change of pace games that was difficult for me to master. But fun nonetheless. Thanks for the review!

[@sandal_thong8631]

It's one of the games that I still enjoy playing when I bother to hook up my Atari to my old TV.

[@TheRbushey1]

Thank u for the hard work love the channel hope u can do vids on imagic. Starpath Apollo history also 😅

[@IsaacKuo]

For many years I was puzzled by the game design of the flamethrower sequence in (Activision) Aliens. In this sequence, you must defend against the aliens with a flame thrower. The puzzling thing is that the aliens will retreat if you touch them - very much NOT how you'd expect that sort of direct encounter to end! So, the flame thrower sequence has you juggling making aliens retreat by touching them and firing your flame thrower to take some out. Weird! But at some point, I saw Stampede and I realized the Aliens flamethrower sequence was just Stampede rethemed. Activision had a great game mechanic that mostly fit the theme, and the result was one of the more tactically interesting parts of the Aliens game.

[@Eagles7sjn]

When is was 5 years old and I seen this game for this time it kinda scared me lol, why? That’s a good question 🤦🏾‍♂️

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think 1982 would be a key year for Atari and their long-term survival, as they had both hits and misses. Much revolves around Pac-Man. Every kid was hit by Pac-Man fever and wanted to play anything with dots in a maze. Atari's 2600 version would eventually sell 8 million, making it the best-selling Atari cartridge. But did they expect it to sell 10 million and threw out 2 million carts, manuals and boxes that didn't sell? Ms. Pac-Man would sell 2 million, so maybe a good, faithful version would have? If they had released it only with the 5200 as its included game (like ColecoVision's Donkey Kong) would that console have sold? Maybe the 5200 was not just 6 months late, but a year late? They say the Atari computers had the same level of technology, so maybe they should have only released computer game versions of their arcade games, and retired the VCS that year? They already lost many of their 2600 console programmers so had to out-source some 5200 games. It will be interesting to see our historian tackle the many issues leading to the Video Game Crash of 1983, and why it happened here and not in Europe, Japan and Brazil.

[@AtariArchive]

I'll get to Pac-Man in a few months! Suffice it to say the legend that they overproduced it appears to just be a myth - contemporary reporting suggests they expected to sell 7 million in 1982 and indeed did so.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@AtariArchive Thanks. That's what a historian does: separate facts from myth. But since I never got a newer catalog after Pac-Man, I figured they just took them out of unsold boxes and put them in their late 1982-3 game boxes to save on printing costs. That and getting B&W manuals for the first time!

[@sandal_thong8631]

Compared to Home Run, Football and Street Racer, Odyssey² football, baseball and skiing looked good. But they don't hold up to my memory of playing with other kids when seeing the screen shots. Pac-Man fever really took America; kids would play anything with dots in a maze, like a watch or handheld. KC Munchkin would run afoul of copyright infringement not because it's an exact copy of Pac-Man (it's not) or an eat-dots-in-maze game, but because he looks like Pac-Man and his enemies look like the ghosts/monsters! Had they done what other clones did and changed the characters, they might have been OK. Lock 'n' Chase (cops and robbers) and Mouse Trap (cats and mouse) come to mind.

[@Spider_Rico]

This game is also a bit of a brain teaser.

[@jeffkaczmarek3577]

Seeing this in the Activision catalogs when I was like 5 I just thought it was a stupid cowboy game and had no interest in it. I finally tried it two weeks ago at age 42 and was hooked, my highest score was around 3,800 on game 3 but I can't wait to hook up my 2600 this weekend and try again. Thank you for another great video and for nudging me to give it a try.