Football - Atari 2600

The guy next door worked at Westinghouse. He was an engineer. I've known him my whole life. I can remember when I was a kid thinking he looked like the guys at mission command watching rockets blast off. When an astronaut said "Houston, we have a problem," the guy they were talking to looked a lot like this guy. Black glasses, salt and pepper hair cut short, short-sleeved white dress shirts with no-nonsense ties.
And he was smart. In between building bombs or whatever it was he built all day he and his engineering buddies figured out how to hack an Atari 2600. They built this metal box that connected to the cartridge slot. On top of the metal box were two slots for computer chips and tiny levers that locked them in place. As soon as a new game came out, somehow he would come home with the chips. It was brilliant. Looking back now I realize it was illegal and probably the wrong message to send to the neighborhood kids.
But back then I was happy to be one of the neighborhood kids who got to play new Atari games as soon as they came out. His youngest son was my best pal.
And we loved to play Atari Football.
This is at once the worst sports game ever made and the best. It is ugly, clunky and about as realistic as the football game you played in school with the triangle made of paper. But it's also an absolute blast to play. Richie and I played this game for hours while the summer sun rose and fell outside. To our credit, we also played outside. But many an afternoon was spent choosing to pass or run with the three lunchbox-shaped players on the flickering screen of the giant Zenith in his living room.
Madden is the undisputed king of virtual football these days, and it deserves its success. But you didn't need an encyclopedic knowledge of professional football to enjoy a gridiron match-up when I was a kid. All you needed was the ability to decide whether to pass or throw. And if your best friend's dad was an early hacker, all the better.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Stuntman: Ignition - Xbox 360, PS3

There was a game for the Atari 2600 called Human Cannonball. In it, you tried to launch a dude into a safety net. Of course, the "dude" was a blocky stick figure and the "safety net" looked like a highway traffic sign. This game was joined by other titles of the era that tried to put the player into a scenario that was plausible if not probable. Playing "Human Cannonball" as a kid was probably as close as I was going to get to being in the circus.
Stuntman: Ignition is a great game because it captures that childhood fascination of growing up and having a cool job. What kid wouldn't want to be a stuntman? And now my thoughts turn to the late, great Evel Knievel. He was like a super hero when I was a kid. As I grew older, I viewed him more as a punk rock redneck. He did whatever the hell he wanted and didn’t care what people thought.
Even though he sounded like a barroom blowhard in most interviews, the man got up on that Harley Davidson dressed like a Las Vegas Captain America and he really jumped. No computers. No “trick photography” as they used to say. He really did it. No one can take that away from him.
If you asked him, he was a daredevil. That’s fine. Stuntman is another word for it. Playing this game I thought of him often. Also, I thought about some of my favorite movies from that era in the late 1970s and early 1980s that relied heavily on stunts instead of special effects. Just about any movie with Burt Reynolds, every episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and many more. I won’t argue their merits as classic cinema, but they were fun.
So is this game. If you’re patient and persistent, you’ll like this game. And if you’re paying attention, you’ll understand two things: Being a stuntman takes precision, and stuntmen/stuntwomen are cool.
In Stuntman: Ignition you are the stuntman. You will perform six stunt sequences in six films along with a host of other side missions and game modes. You will drive a variety of vehicles that all handle well and are fun to drive. As you drive each vehicle through a series of progressively complicated sequences, a director will call out stunts for you to perform on the fly. Some are easy (jumps) some are hard (two-wheeling).
And sometimes it just doesn’t feel fair.
The icons that show you where to perform your next stunt often pop up too late or are hard to spot. The director’s timing is also questionable. There will be a lot of trial and error before you nail most of the sequences. If you like the game — and I loved it — you won’t mind. If you don’t have a lot of patience for getting things just right, this is not your game.
One thing I didn’t expect: The game is funny. Each movie in the game is a spoof of a Hollywood blockbuster genre. The solid voice acting is as good as any other game I’ve played and the extra features — a level editor and fun (if a bit vacant) online component round it out.
Stuntman: Ignition is a real treat that didn't get the attention it deserved. If you like movies, cool stunts and a challenge, this is the game for you.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Warlords - Atari 2600

Think about this the next time you’re crushing the Chimera or halving the Horde: Warlords did it first.
Well, not first. Not even best. But to the people who remember waiting in line for machines to open up in arcades Warlords was one of the visionary games that brought people together before the word “multiplayer” was ubiquitous. A lot of games in the golden age were multiplayer. Pong could not be played without an opponent when it was first released as a bar novelty. Through the years kids would gather around cabinets such as Gauntlet and TMNT along with a ton of side-scrolling beat-em-ups and lose quarters together. But it was the 1981 release of Warlords for the Atari 2600 that got people together in front of the TV for 4-player action. Other multiplayer games came before it, but none of them hold up as well. Instead of beating a buddy in Combat or besting one person’s score in Pac Man, Warlords let you lay the smackdown on three people sitting right next to you.
And it was fun.
In the game you defend yourself from three other players - preferably human. Each player occupies a castle that they defend with a shield. It’s been a long time since I read the instruction manual for the Atari 2600 version, but I believe each character represents one of four brothers fighting endlessly over the fortune of their dead father, the king. Cool. The object is to chip away at your opponents’ castle until you can strike them dead. When this happens, their “ghost” can be seen wandering the fortress.
None of the upgrades or Atari classic compilations have really done justice to the game. To be played right, you need an Atari 2600, a copy of “Warlords” and two sets of working paddles. Luckily, all those things will cost you around $50 on eBay.
Believe me, it’s worth it. The sad truth is that many classic games are simply not fun to play anymore. Our memories of most games are often better than the games themselves. But as we get farther away from the classic era of gaming, I think it’s important to remember not only the games that made a difference, but the ones that are still fun to play.
Warlords is just such a game.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com