Star Ship Atari 2600 Review

[@cadugarcia81]

I love the fact that there are people revewing atari games nowadays

[@Narrator007]

It would be even funnier if there were more people reviewing Atari 2600 games than people reviewing Atari Jaguar games.

[@MattMcIrvin]

That 2 minutes 16 seconds timer showed up in a bunch of early Atari games. They often timed things in "jiffies" (60ths of a second, which corresponded to fields of a TV signal). 8192 of those, which is 2 to the 13th power, come to 2 minutes 16 and a half seconds. So it's easy to count off that many jiffies in binary. I've heard that the PAL versions of these games played a bit longer because the PAL console's jiffy was 1/50 second. I think this was intended as a port of the arcade game Starship 1. I feel like this is a game whose reach exceeded its grasp--they were trying to do something really ambitious before they really knew enough 2600 programming tricks to manage it properly. Later 2600 games like Starmaster and Star Voyager actually got it right.

[@DragnSly]

A game where you repeatedly shoot down the word "OZ."

[@chuckhaffner1602]

This game holds fond memories for me. When my dad brought home our VCS in 1977, this and Video Olympics were the two games he bought along with it.

[@JR-zp3nw]

Aqualung, are you going to review Blaster Master and Kid Icarus for NES?

[@sirembrum49thegreatmoth2]

Interesting they had a first person shooter as the starters of Atari!

[@fluttershystayshigh4202]

Some of those yellow shapes on the screen legitimately look like toilets, not even joking.

[@vgchronicles]

I would have gave this game an "F", it's because it's broken if you play it on an actual Atari 2600. I have this game and it's broken!

[@MattMcIrvin]

If I recall correctly, this is a rare case where the one-player game uses the RIGHT controller, not the left one. If the joystick seems inactive, is it plugged in the right port?

[@bildo1977]

@@MattMcIrvin Yes. You are absolutely correct. Home Run also did this. The home team was designated in the right controller jack. Playing against the cpu made the human player the home team. I understand the logic of it in Home Run, but not in Star Ship.

[@dad7275]

I always thought one of the objects coming at you looked like a toilet lol. I had fun with this back in the day but yea it is kind of bland.

[@MilesEdgeworth129]

Idk, kinda looks like the Enterprise if it were yellow and had a single warp nacelle.

[@bildo1977]

I believe that Star Ship is an arcade port of Starship 1. Just something to throw in here.

[@johnny--dollar]

I spent $20 on that game over two nights at the bowling alley, everything else was pinball.

[@JohnCharb87]

Nine Inch Nails at the end with KZbin friendly version.

[@ToHoldNothing]

I've never been deep into music, even with genres I like, though I had phases where I did enjoy certain bands significantly: Evanescence, System of a Down, even Disturbed or Drowning Pool. The music sounded semi familiar, but I had friends who would've recognized it immediately: same with Slipknot, Korn, etc

[@midwestmonster9886]

If nothing else, I find it amusing that you're blasting the Starship Enterprise. That'll teach those snooty space scientists.

[@chrisho6874]

I actually used to pretend they were Klingon battle cruisers and had fun just blasting those Klingon bastards.

[@MattMcIrvin]

In the arcade game it was inspired by, Starship 1, it looked like the enemy spaceships were unlicensed knockoffs of the Federation starship designs in Franz Joseph's "Star Fleet Technical Manual."

[@Dazlidorne]

The game looks like it had a lot of potential, but was unfinished. I bet they probably rushed it so that they could release it on launch. I'm sure it sold a lot of copies before the word got out that it was bad.

[@powerpup97]

So this game came out the same day as Basic Math? Makes me wonder back in 1977 which game kids would prefer to play and which game parents would want their kids to play.

[@GaryBeltz]

What song was used for the outro?

[@ToHoldNothing]

Nine Inch Nail's Starsuckers Inc. (Or Starf*ckers Inc, since apparently it was censored, back in the late 90s)

[@Poodleinacan]

Yikes. An attempt was made... And the result failed

[@lucifersam7946]

That Lunar Lander variant is so pathetic.

[@DansModelBench]

One of the worst carts from the early releases. It almost plays like a demo cart from a programmer learning the system.