Alien Abduction (Atari VCS, 2023)
Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 1:00 pm
I want to love this game. It was created and programmed by the man that did the 2600 game H.E.R.O. which is considered a classic. And hey, there's aliens, there's a problem to solve - the princess was abducted by aliens and apparently you are the guy to save her!
I do not currently love this game. This feels a lot like Gravitar, where it didn't click for me at first, so I am not going to trash anything, but here are some impressions:
These pictures were taken with a phone and do not represent me as an artist.
I dunno. You have a stick that shoots lasers, but not enough to traverse the entire screen. You press the red button to use your jump pack, but you can't just press down to drop to the next level, you sort of have to press to jump and go up and little and then go down. It's challenging in so much as there is an energy and health bar and they drop pretty quickly.
I am guessing this might be a bit like Keystone Kapers - that was a 2600 game that was going to ramp up the difficulty every single level in the mall, and you played the first three screens to get to where the impossible craziness happened. I could see that happening here. There is really no explanation what the other items are, some of them look like health power ups, some of them look ... yellow or gold.
The way the green alien looks is pretty funny, and I genuinely mean that. Here is his big giant ass head! Haha. Your ray gun doesn't seem to work on him. I dunno.
As somebody who makes text games, I understand that there is a "grammar" that all text game fans get and it can be incomprehensible to those that don't go in knowing some things. A 2600 game doesn't give you a lot of space to inform people or attach instructions, and once you buy the game in the VCS store I can't find a way to see a manual. At $8.99 I'd support the guy that made H.E.R.O. no matter what he did, but I am not quite totally getting how to play this one effectively. Don't hit me for saying this!
I do not currently love this game. This feels a lot like Gravitar, where it didn't click for me at first, so I am not going to trash anything, but here are some impressions:
These pictures were taken with a phone and do not represent me as an artist.
I dunno. You have a stick that shoots lasers, but not enough to traverse the entire screen. You press the red button to use your jump pack, but you can't just press down to drop to the next level, you sort of have to press to jump and go up and little and then go down. It's challenging in so much as there is an energy and health bar and they drop pretty quickly.
I am guessing this might be a bit like Keystone Kapers - that was a 2600 game that was going to ramp up the difficulty every single level in the mall, and you played the first three screens to get to where the impossible craziness happened. I could see that happening here. There is really no explanation what the other items are, some of them look like health power ups, some of them look ... yellow or gold.
The way the green alien looks is pretty funny, and I genuinely mean that. Here is his big giant ass head! Haha. Your ray gun doesn't seem to work on him. I dunno.
As somebody who makes text games, I understand that there is a "grammar" that all text game fans get and it can be incomprehensible to those that don't go in knowing some things. A 2600 game doesn't give you a lot of space to inform people or attach instructions, and once you buy the game in the VCS store I can't find a way to see a manual. At $8.99 I'd support the guy that made H.E.R.O. no matter what he did, but I am not quite totally getting how to play this one effectively. Don't hit me for saying this!