#0005 Combat

 Well here we are. The Second Generation of Console Gaming. Today we're looking at 1977's Combat, the pack in title for the Atari 2600. And being that this marks a very important point in video game history, and since Combat it's self doesn't have that much to talk about, I think it's fair to dedicate this article to not only Combat, but to the Atari 2600 it's self.

When most people think about the first video game console, the VERY first video game console, many people will say “The Atari” talking about the Atari VCS, or later called the Atari 2600. But the 2600 actually marked the second generation of console games, not the first. Quite a few console games came before it such as 1968's Brown Box, the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari's own Home Pong, Binatone, Coleco Telstar, and even the Nintendo Color TV Game (it was aweful, Nintendo clearly didn't know what it was doing at the time.). At the time, all these console games either played Pong, (which people were actually getting tired of by '77, can't blame them) or were just... Aweful and a pain in the ass to play. all these Pong ripoffs and terrible home consoles led to Atari trying new and inovative new things. One of which was collecting all their arcade hits, and putting them all one one home console under code name Project Stella. This lead to the invention of the Atari 2600. A console in which you could play ALL your favorite Atari games simply by switching the cartridge. Only the second console in history to do so. it was also one of the first consoles to be in full color. The console it's self didn't catch on right away, in fact, it wasn't until 1979's release of Space Invaders on the 2600 did it really start picking up. But unfortunately, due to Atari's poor quality control on it's own games, tons of shovelware and crap games flooded the market. This lead to the biggest crash in video game history, the crash of 1983.

See, back in the 80's, you didn't have the internet as a guide to helping you find good games, even dedicated magazines were a rarity. This means, that if you went to your local Sears to buy a new game for the 2600 your Grandma bought you two years ago, you had to choose your game based on the cover or game description alone! So, not knowing what to pick, you see a game on the shelf called “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” “Hey!” you think to yourself, “I love E.T.!” So, not knowing any better, you purchase your game, and throw that sucker into your console... You later regain your consciousness in your back yard after an undisclosed amount of time, holding a baseball bat and shouting profanities at the plastic remains of something that might have, at one point, been an Atari game sitting in a mutilated heap on the back porch, and having no recollection of just what happened during that time. This was a problem. With so many terrible games on the market and no way of knowing which ones were good, or even playable, people stopped buying games all together, it would be two years before Nintendo finally came to the rescue and finally revived the video game console industry.

I'm going to say right now that while I'm not a huge fan of the Atari 2600, I will give it credit in that it brought video games back into the public's eye once again and had one of the longest runs of any console to date (it wasn't discontinued until 1993!). And while it did cause the Video Game Crash of 1983, and it had notably bad graphics compared to what Arcades were doing not even a year later, and led to thousands of bootlegs and crap games due to the fact that ANYONE could publish for the system. It still holds a place in Video Game history, and even I have to admit that all it's weird quirks makes it kind of charming. With that, let's get back to 1977, into the number one game that most people played when they turned on their Atari for the first time.

Combat was packed in with the system until it was replaced with Pac-Man in 1982. This game was advertised as being twenty seven different games. “different games” in this case means changing the type of bullets the tanks fired. In this game you play as either a tank, a bi-plane, or a jet, depending on which mode you choose. Your goal is to kill the other player's vehicle by shooting it, or by dropping bombs. Not much to it!

See, what puts this game on the list (other than being the number one most played Atari exclusive) is that it's pretty fun. Yeah, it's multiplayer only, but that's okay because I actually enjoyed running around trying to kill my brother's tank. Basically, if you go in expecting a tank game where you and a friend try and kill each other on an ancient console, then you won't be disappointed as the game has plenty to offer. But to be honest, the game it's self is not ground breaking or really addicting. If you're curious and have someone to play it with, give it a shot, otherwise, I'd say it's okay if you skip this game.

Up next: Space Invaders