When I was a teenager, I spent what my parents considered to be an alarming amount of time in arcades. Even when I wasn't there physically, I was there in spirit. Drawing Galaxian logos on my notebook covers in study hall, diagramming Q*Bert patterns for my friends in Intro to Computers (I knew more about the Apple IIc than the teacher), stuff like that. My friends and I never fought over whether or not Donkey Kong could beat up Tron, but I was pretty bad off. In an attempt to get me to spend more time at home (not "quality time," just any kind of time) my parents bought me what was to shortly become the super-heavyweight world champion of home video game systems û the Atari 2600 VCS. Their logic was that if I spent five bucks at an arcade the money was gone with nothing to show for it as soon as I stopped playing, but if I bought a cartridge for my 2600 I had an expensive little chunk of plastic to remind me of my allowances gone by. As far as parental logic goes, it was certainly an agreeable situation.
Today the 2600 is a distant memory. New machines are here, powerful ones that can do things the arcade machines of my youth couldn't even aspire to. Comparing the Atari 2600 to a Jaguar or 3DO or even a Super Nintendo is like comparing a ColecoVision and a Lite-Brite. But there was something about that system. The awesome joysticks? No, I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. The hot graphics? Not even an acid freak would be impressed by them. It was the GAMES. You see, designers for 2600 software were working with a tough stipulation: make a game kids will like in 4K or less; they knew they couldn't make their games look good, so they had to make them fun. That's a concept many modern game designers can't seem to grasp. The 2600 proved that good games can sell even without awe-inspiring graphics.
One of the most prolific third party developers for the 2600 was Activision. Not only did they produce a lot of games, a high percentage of their games were great. Even kids who were five years old at the height of the 2600's popularity have at least a passing familiarity with games like Pitfall and River Raid. Activision had more than their share of classics for that system, games that dinosaurs like me still get a big kick out of.
Someone at Activision must still remember and respect these old classics, because they've just released the first of several planned Activision Action Packs for Windows. This is a CD-ROM with Windows versions of 15 classic Activision 2600 games. Undoubtedly, this will mean different things to different people, but for myself, all I can think to say is, "Thank you!"
The CD installs completely to your hard drive to the tune of 4.5 megs, and creates a program group for itself. The icons in the group are the scanned boxes of the games; they're small, but they still look great. The 15 games that come in the first pack are Boxing, Chopper Command, Cosmic Commuter, Crackpots, Fishing Derby, Freeway, Frostbite, Grand Prix, H.E.R.O., Kaboom!, Pitfall, River Raid, Seaquest (whenever I play this one I conjure up a mental image of Roy Scheider and shout "Benway!" but I'm weird anyway), Sky Jinks, and Spider Fighter. Damn good selection of games, I think. Games like Pitfall and River Raid can be used to pass large chunks of time, while some (Freeway and Fishing Derby, for instance) make great little game breaks when you're strung out on spreadsheets and other seriously boring Windows applications.
Like Microsoft Arcade, the Activision Action Pack reproduces its old games extremely faithfully. Each title looks, sounds, and plays exactly like the ancient 2600 carts most of us foolishly parted with in the late '80s. All that's missing are the cheesy-yet-classic joysticks and two sets of paddles. Two sets because one of them is always broken.
Naturally, people will be drawn to this package because it lets you play a bunch of old favorites. I haven't been able to play Kaboom! or River Raid in years, and I'm delighted to see them again. But what I like best about the Action Pack is that it gives me the chance to play some of Activision's less popular games my friends and I never owned. I always made fun of Fishing Derby, even though I'd never played it (my dad watches enough televised fishing, what do I need a game about it for?), and 13 years later I find out that it's kinda FUN. I'd never even heard of Frostbite, and now I can't seem to stop playing the damn thing. And like Jell-O, there's always room for Spider Fighter.
Releases like this help me keep my sanity in check. Yes, big budget games still appear with gorgeous graphics and all the depth of a Drano cocktail, but there's stuff like this, too. The graphics are ugly. The sounds are cheesy. The games are simple. I love it! Thanks to Activision for proving that low-tech can still be cool.
