Friday, April 17, 2009

FrostBite - Atari 2600

This game was like most Atari games, the further you got into the game, the faster it got. I always wondered if these games ever timed out or you got so far that it couldn't go any faster that it just looped back to the beginning again. I mean how fast could one actually play any game. Frogger, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders. There's only so fast a human being can react to something, then it becomes luck and having enough lives to make it through. Anywho, has nothing to do with the game, just my brain ramblings.

I remember Dad brought this game back from Labrador for me. And stereotypically enough, it was a Eskimo (I know,... don't use those words, but these are the words of a 8 year old, so deal with it.) who had to build his Igloo by jumping on ice flows to collect ice blocks and avoiding birds, crabs and clams and polar bears. So when I first looked at this game, I thought,"wow, this is what Eskimo kids must play" that and eat seal blubber.

Each level got a little faster each time with the direction of the ice flow changing and coming out at different sizes. There were also fish that you could eat that helped increase your score which helped you get extra lives. I remember it was pretty easy to max out my lives, but that was needed, because like I said in the beginnings, the game gets faster and faster, so the jumping comes down to insane timing and luck.



If you take too long to get your Igloo built a polar bear comes out to make your life harder by not letting you jump to your safety zones when the clams and evil crabs were in the way.

But all that aside, I really enjoyed this game has a kid, I got pretty damn fast at it as well. I tried it again recently on my Atari collection and its still has much fun has ever. And if I learned anything from this game is that Eskimos(Inuit) have a perilous life of building their homes while avoiding killer clams and evil crabs, with murderous birds try to peck their eyes out. Its a hard life up in the North.

7/10
This video is way too long. But the first little bit gives you a good idea of what it was like.

1 comments:

Loner Gamer said...

Very interesting... I never had the pleasure of owning an Atari system. I can see how this game can be fun to play in short bursts. What they need to do is compile all of the old-school/simple Atari games and turn them into a "WarioWare" type game where you switch from one mini-game to the next in rapid succession. That would be cool.

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