Atari 2600 Games by Imagic (and Absolute) | Trying all 17

Late into the 2600's life, Activision bought the rights to a couple Imagic and Absolute Entertainment games. How many of these games do Activision own today? I have no idea! Let's just look at all of them. Absolute Entertainment included!

0:00 - Intro

0:21 - Atlantis / Atlantis II
1:58 - Cosmic Ark
3:06 - Demon Attack
3:38 - Dragonfire
4:30 - Fathom
5:48 - Fire Fighter
6:42 - Laser Gates
7:39 - Moonsweeper
8:47 - No Escape!
9:33 - Quick Step
10:37 - Riddle of the Sphinx
11:49 - Shootin' Gallery
12:18 - Solar Storm
13:21 - Star Voyager
14:15 - Subterranea
15:07 - Trick Shot
15:45 - Wing War

16:53 - Pete Rose Baseball
17:37 - Skate Boardin'
18:18 - Title Match Pro Wrestling
19:09 - Tomcat: The F-14 Fighter Simulator

19:28 - Reflection

Outro Music: Launch Base Rearranged - Savaged Regime

Background Music:
Running in the Family - Level 42 Instrumental
Herding the Animals - Rayman Rabbids OST

#atari #imagic #retrogames

[TheDoStuffChannel]

1:58 if you unfocus your eyes and you look at the background, it looks recessed

[FamilyJuuls]

I won a copy of Atlantis II back in 1982. I had something like 48 hours to get as high a score as possible, take a Polaroid photo and express mail it back. I told my super skeptical dad I could win gold bullion and travel to Bermuda for the finals. I wound up with swim fins, a snorkel and a t-shirt all meant for a small child and the Atlantis II cartridge. Super fun game and challenge. I wound up parting with the game back in 2003. It financed a car, airline & hotel in New York and seats at Madison Square garden to see David Bowie. I understand it's kinda rare now (ha! ha!). Only differences between it and the regular Atlantis game were 1) It had a printed label on the outside of the box that was simply typed 'Atlantis II' . I recall after many years the adhesion of the label caused it to fall off. It left a glue mark and I kept the label. 2) Each target you hit was worth 1 point. 3) The speed of the game was, seemingly 5 to 10x faster than the fastest speed on the original Atlantis. 4) It only had a the night version background.
I recall scoring no more that 500 or so on my best try. Super fun game and an even cooler company for 2600 games. Dragonfire is awesome. Subterranean is fantastic. Demon Attack to this day provides surprise and excellent game play.

[_Bit]

Cosmic Ark is one of my all-time favourite Atari 2600 games; I find it extremely rewarding to get to the next planet to see what new aliens Space Noah needs to pick up. There's a real sense of progress and journey that few other 2600 games capture as well.

[FreihEitner]

"Demon Attack" -- thank you! I played that game once at a friend's house circa 1982 and never knew what it was called, but the gameplay -- especially the way enemies come in from both sides of the screen to form a single creature -- stuck with me for years.

[EarlThird]

If you're debating making more of these videos, put my vote into the firm yes category. I really enjoy the publisher specific approach, and I think they help provide an often much needed context to the games that came after the earlier generations.

[AngryCalvin]

Imagic did it's best work on Texas Instruments Home Computers. Super Demon Attack and Fathom were really good. Microsurgeon was out of this world technology-wise and there was nothing else quite like it.

[JimLeonard]

The animation for the person you're trying to save in Fire Fighter is cracking me up! Waving arms and yelling in, what, 12 pixels? Hilarious!

[flyabusa]

Riddle of the Sphinx was my jam back in the day! I think I got it in '82 and played the heck out of it. I event sent away for their hint book. Definitely in my top 5 2600 along with Yars Revenge, Enduro, Motorodeo and Pitfall.

[PSPMan]

Okay I really wish I had helped you out with this video now, a lot of these look genuinely fun. That fathom game looks amazing.

[JohnDoe-ecmz]

It still amazes me that an ancient 40 year-old hardware that originally designed to play blocky games such as pong, break-out and combat could do all these !!

Limitation really does breed creativity.

[ScrapKing]

Imagic was one of the best reasons to own an Intellivision. Beauty and the Beast was a much better Donkey Kong than DK itself IMO. And Atlantis was far more involved on that system, with the ability to fire each of the guns independently, and a ship you could deploy to dogfight with the incoming alien ships. Swords and Serpents was also very good on Intellivision.

Thanks for the video, it was really interesting to see Imagic’s 2600 games.

[DrTedNelson]

Cosmic Ark and Star Voyager were two favorites of mine as a kid, but I loved Riddle of the Sphinx. That was the first adventure-style game on the system that I really got into, and it actually had an ending too, which was rare for the time.

[Richieb]

We loved imagic. Even had the fan club magazine, numb thumb. Demon attack is probably the best space shooter on the system. Riddle of the sphynx took a lot of my after school hours to complete. And dragonfire is my all time favorite 2600 game (along with Hero and megamania). Love trying to get to the tougher dragons and better treasures.

[KeithPhillips]

That land speed scrolling effect in Moonsweeper is some incredible 2600 programming. 😳

[_Bit]

A local friend of mine named his band "Ocean City Defender" and I'm still convinced it's the best band name ever. #BringBackZellers

[SmeddyTooBestChannel]

I can explain 19:46!!!
The Atari can only handle 4 sprites: 2 programmable sprites, a "ball", and a "bullet". To achieve the effect of multiple sprites on-screen, they're drawn multiple times vertically (notice that in a lot of games on the Atari like Demon Attack, the enemies never align each other on the Y axis. They're always spaced out. Double Dragon is also a good example of this as enemies are always on the top two sides of the stage). The only way to have the two sprites coexist horizontally is by duplicating them (see Space Invaders, notice that they all share the same "frame of animation" and are equal distances away from each other) or using flickering (see Pac-Man). I'm not *super* well versed in how it all works, but you can check out the book "Racing the Beam" for reference. It's quite fascinating.

Now, why they didn't just use a work-around like flickering for a game where it's necessary to grab something quickly??? I dunno.

[BuckBumbleYT]

Demon Attack is one of my favorite Atari shooters and my favorite boxed game in my ENTIRE collection

[Andros]

I really, really love Moonweeper. It overshadowed all of my Atari 2600 games when I bought it, and I still play it on emulators. It's simply amazing what Bob Smith could pack in 8 kilobytes, indeed it's a little technical miracle.

[JohnSTF]

Demon Attack, Fathom and Laser Gates were some of my most favorite games back in the day for the 2600. I also remember playing Dragonfire and Atlantis on a 2600 clone filled with various games. Never knew about Skate Boardin to be honest, but it looks fun. Imagic surely made some really great games for the 2600. Thanks for making this vid!

[nadiaaugustine]

I don't blame you, FrameRater.
the Atari 2600 Library is a wild and unpredictable world to properly chart, and the wideness of it's rarity scale is beyond measure.