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.

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.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Nothing says Star Wars more than three purple bars in a bad Defender clone, except for three purple bars and a gray dog in a bad Defender Clone.  The imagination is a powerful thing and all of the brilliance that we incorrectly imagined rested in the mind of George Lucas we also imagined rested in this cartridge.  I'm hoping for better things from The Old Republic.  I'm an eternal optimist and/or I am experiencing battered nerd syndrome.

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.

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.

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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.