Customer Reviews

Raiders of the Lost Ark for Atari 2600

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Wow, you can pick up this classic for less than a candy bar these days. This Atari 2600 adaptation of the movie really stretched the system as you had quite a few boards/screens (oooh), different pieces of music, including the famous theme plus the flute of the snake charmer that protected you from the squiggly line, and it took longer than most games of its day to complete.

It even required the operation of both joysticks--one to move Indy, who is defined by his box-hat, and the other to control his inventory of items like moneybags, a flute, a gun, the whip, etc. Because of this requirement, it was somewhat of a two-player adventure game. It's probably also one of the first games that provoked serious swearing at the TV screen back in the day. Just after you completed all of the steps that follow the film (buy this, avoid that guy, avoid that squiggly line, whip this, etc, etc) you could buy it at any moment from the raving lunatic in the market, or the falling boxes that Belog dropped on your head, or maybe you'd miss the parachute landing you need to make, when you have the shovel, to find the mound of dirt that hides the ark. And then you'd have to start all over and do it again, very carefully, with a quick hand to change from the moneybag to the gun. Yeah, this was an involved 2600 game.

Gotta give LucasArts credit for this one, it's memorable.

E. T. and Pac-Man (for Atari 2600) wre more fun than this game. Yeah, they killed the Atari corporation because they were seen by consumers as the worst video games in history, and who can blame anyone for such a review, but hey at least you didn't have to switch back and forth between two controllers. Whoever decided that they were going to make an atari game that required more user interaction than was possible with 1 controller is an idiot. Period. Wonder why no other game, especially modern games, use more than one controller for a single person at a time? Enough said, save your penny and flush it down the toilet...even if you flood you house that penny was better spent!

Perhaps I do not know how to play this game but did games even come with instruction manuals back then? It has proven to be very difficult and I am still unsure how to play it. You can move from screen to screen with your character but death is inevitable.

This was by far the worst game I ever owned on the old 2600. The game was basically impossible to win. When you finally managed to do everything just right, that stupid swarm of tsetse flies would get you! I mean really, do tsetse flies actually kill anyone??