Time Pilot

Having seen many a horrible port onto the 2600, the ports on the ColecoVision looked like gifts from all-father Odin himself.  Time Pilot was no exception.  This game was awesome.  It preserved the multi-screen scrolling and time traveling stages of the arcade version with a visual fidelity that really impressed.  There is not a ton of complexity or depth to the action and some of the challenge came from weakness in the controls, BUT Time Pilot kept us coming back for more.

Venture

Venture took AdVenture up a notch.  The colecovision had screaming hardware, hardware that seemed indistinguishable from arcade hardware to my young eyes, and Venture was a great port on the system.  I believe I heard about Venture from the same sortie that first brought back word of Dig Dug.  Venture included elements of Adventure, multiple enemies of an early Roguelike, and Berzerk and was an absolute blast to play and a blast to talk about. LOVED IT.

Satan's Hollow

I remember thinking that this game was equal parts awesome and insane.  Didn't they know that we were already taking heat on the D&D front about the devil?  I didn't need to hear about how a Galaxians variant shooter with an awesome joystick controller was going to turn me into the prince of darkness too.  Sweet cabinet art on this one but help a guy out there Bally Midway, my copy of the Fiend Folio was already causing trouble.

Yie Ar Kung-Fu

After Karate Champ there was Yie Ar Kung-Fu.  With a series of enemy characters with different fighting styles and weapons and what at the time seemed like totally over the top action Yie Ar Kung-Fu showed the way toward the fighting games that would follow.  Another gem from the Tilt at the mall, I remember this game seeming punitively hard...I liked that.

Defender

I loved CHiPs, and the cops on CHiPs loved defender. Therefore I loved Defender. I didnt hurt that the gameplay was incredibly fast and responsive and explosive.  Defender took many of the limitations of the era and made them into spectacular fun. Even the vastly inferior 2600 version was worth playing.  I really would love to find an arcade machine of Defender right this minute and unleash a smart bomb.

Gauntlet

I heard about the existence of Gauntlet before I got to play it.  The time period between these two events seemed extremely long. Nerd needs to play game....badly. Nerd is about to die.  Gauntlet was awesome for its class based dungeon crawling design.  It had amazing use of voice, but the constantly draining health was a pretty lame and inelegant quarter grabber.  The multi-player, party based component is what really took this one over the top.  There is controversy about the origins of the design that lead to gauntlet.  I went to the web to try to confirm the story I heard out of wotc that Richard Garfield had designed gauntlet, but the controversy I found there did not include him....the mystery remains.  Gauntlet is a certifiable classic.

Gorf

Galactic Orbiting Robot Force had an amazing synthesized attract voice.  I remember this game from some random trip to the Pizza Hut in Champaign-Urbana for god knows what.  It would periodically retort "Space Cadet". It sounded like SPAYZE CADUT but that was still pretty cool.  This game added several variations to the space invaders shooting formula with 5 separate play modes.  Laser attack and Flagship were both cool and the galaxians mode is well galaxians.

Berzerk

Three great things about Berzerk.  It was a shooter, it had speech synthesis, and it had a crazy bouncing smiley face of destruction that would chase you out of each level if you dawdled. Apparently it had 64,000 mazes.  I'm pretty sure I never got past about 10.  I really thought the bouncing smiley was cool even though I was not yet aware of the Prisoner and the smoke monster had not yet been conceived.

Pac-Man

An epic disappointment on the 2600, this wrote the book on how not to adapt an arcade classic. Sad really.  I was never a huge fan of Puck Man in the arcade but this adaptation really sealed the deal.

 

VS

Spy Hunter

Dun dun dah duh dah duh dah Dun....Is that the Peter Gunn theme or did they change it enough to pretend it's an original composition.  Who didn't want to pretend that they were in a James Bond car chase.  Apparently Midway used the Bond theme on the initial run of Spy Hunter but was never able to get the rights, so we got the music that really makes this game. The Weapons Van also added a bit of a Knight Rider flair as well.  This game had cool power-ups and a weight to the steering and collisions that really sold the action. Watch out for those 'copters.

Lunar Lander

A simple idea, but a brutally hard game for children with dire fiery astronaut ending consequences.  You get 900 fuel units for your quarter and the lives of the crew of the lunar lander in your hands.  I remember being fascinated by this game but never really finding it to be that fun.  More simulation than game, Lunar Lander is an early warning to game developers to pick fun over reality every time.

Prince of Persia

Jordan Mechner made Karateka and then went on to create a certifiable classic, Prince of Persia.  We debated at length why the animation in PoP was so much better than everything else coming out at the time.  We compared it to the rotoscoped animation in Bakshi movies and that was a pretty good explanation.  With keyframes based on a series of photographs taken of Jordan's brother the little prince ran, climbed, jumped, and died with a fluid grace never before seen. While the trial and error game play could be frustrating the original Prince of Persia was an amazing gaming experience that is still being ported to new platforms today.

Huck's Trilogy: Part 3

Light Cycles Turning
Cone, Tower, Tanks, and Grid Bugs
Flynn Kills M.C.P.

Huck's Trilogy: Part 2

Isometric View
Altitude Represented
Plane Battles Dragon

Huck's Trilogy: Part 1

Plumber, Girl, Hammer
Barrell Rolls Down The Girder
Gorilla Escape

Football

Before I ever got nintendo thumb, I was pinching the skin of my hands and wrist on the atari trak-ball.  Football was a major draw of the mall and a pretty serious workout.

Super Death Chase

Also at the Holidome they had a gem called Super Death Chase.  It was the slightly altered follow up to the controversial Death Race arcade game.  In Super Death Chase you drove a car over undead stick figures as they milled about a graveyard.  When you ran one down it was replaced with a tombstone.
LOVED IT.

Space Invaders

There is nothing better than a summer vacation which consists of getting a roll of quarters and hitting the Holidome in Springfield to play some Space Invaders.  The pool, the putt putt, and the ping pong were fine, but the real draw was the arcade.

Canyon Bomber

It was the late 70's.  It was 1977 or perhaps '78 and the family was eating at Jack's Back.  In addition to being able to throw peanut shells on the floor this restaurant was exciting due to their strange alien amusement device.  They had a game called Canyon Bomber and it blew my mind.  I would later play a game also called Canyon Bomber on the Atari 2600 which expanded the formula to include launching torpedoes at ships and colored planes and blocks instead of glorious black and white blimps. But I believe my journey began here.