Blathr Wayne Lorentz

I got a new Atari cartridge today. Itʼs Pitfall, by Activision.

This game was massive when it came out. Everyone I knew did everything they could to get a copy. But this is my first time playing it.

My parents were Sears people, and so unless I somehow came up with the money myself, they would only buy gen-you-wine Sears Tele-Games versions of Atariʼs games. And since Pitfall was Activision, not Atari, I was stuck. But not for long.

A few months later, a Commodore 64 was set up in my bedroom, and while my friends had tired of Pitfall and moved on to other games, I didnʼt care whether they lent me their cartridges or not. I had a whole new world of possibilities opening up under my fingers, right on my homework desk.

I got a new Atari cartridge today. Itʼs Space Shuttle by Activision.

From what Iʼve read, this is supposed to be one of the most difficult of the mainstream Atari 2600 games. Itʼs also supposed to be among the most rewarding to complete.

Itʼs supposed to be hard because the controls are very difficult. When Atari needed more buttons for one of its games, it just rolled out new controllers. Activision took a different path, and instead repurposed many of the existing switches on the Atari 2600 console to control functions of the game.

That Activision needed more buttons and levers to control this game makes sense, because youʼre flying a freaking space shuttle.

Also, from what Iʼve read, I shouldnʼt call this a game. Itʼs believed to be one of the very first consumer flight simulators, and it sounds like the sort of thing Iʼd have to take a full day off of work to get right.

Iʼm curious about how I would do with Space Shuttle, reliving the days when space exploration was about to be so common that weʼd “shuttle” people into outer space the way Pan Am shuttled people up and down the east coast. Here in 2021, neither of those things exist anymore.

I got a new Atari cartridge today. Itʼs Fishing Derby from Activision.

Fishing is probably the one sport that involves less physical activity than bowling or even golf. So how does that translate to an inherently active medium like video games? Surprisingly well.

Fishing Derby is easy to pick up, hard enough to be challenging, and also a lot of fun.

I like this game enough that Iʼm going to buy a nice, new reproduction label for the cart, which is suffering badly from actiplaque.