Developer: James Wickstead Design Associates
Publisher: U.S. Games
Release Date: January 1982
Despite having some decent releases U.S. Games is fairly notorious in Atari circles. It doesn’t help that their parent company was Quaker Oats, but I think the main reason was that their first few games were all stinkers. It was a case of a new developer working for a new publisher and neither party knowing what they were doing yet. Space Jockey was their first game, and it plays like the work of an amateur. Sadly, because it is more common than their later games it is remembered better than higher quality later efforts like Gopher and Entombed. I suppose it didn’t hurt the company much in the long run, but it is a cautionary tale against leaving your comfort zone and jumping into a completely unknown business. Sometimes you just have to stick with oatmeal. I doubt Ubisoft could make much of an oatmeal with only a couple of months to prepare.
Space Jockey is a dull space shooter with enough design flaws to be completely broken in just a few minutes of play. It has a few different types of ship, but they don’t matter all that much. They all behave exactly the same by flying horizontally and shooting at you if you move in front of them. They never move up or down, so the game quickly becomes very easy. The bottom row has trees and houses to shoot, but only the occasional tank that shoots back. Nothing from above ever collides with your ship. So all you have to do is stay on the bottom and you can live almost indefinitely. I like to creep up sometimes just to break up the monotony a bit. It’s sad when a can’t lose strategy becomes so apparent so quick. It’s a shame they didn’t put more care into this one, because it could’ve been at least tolerable with some refinement.
The only interesting thing about Space Jockey was that after its release it was hacked and turned into the incredibly rare Air Raid. That game plays a little like a sideways Space Jockey. Air Raid was manufactured and sold at one toy store for a very short time, and the first boxed copy ever found sold for over 30,000 dollars. So at least Space Jockey is related to one of the most interesting Atari stories. Sadly, Space Jockey itself is one of the most boring Atari games of them all. It’s one of the cheapest too so everyone has a copy but nobody plays it. I would rather play NES Baseball because it can at least be fun with two players and it’s harder to break. I would rather play it than Home Alone though because at least it lasts for longer than a minute most of the time. It was clear at this point that U.S. Games had a lot of learning to do.
Atari 2600 quality percentage: 4/9 or 44.44%
1. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
2. Super Mario Odyssey
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Galaga
5. Donkey Kong
6. Exodus: Ultima III
7. Pac-Mania
8. Wrecking Crew
9. Super Pac-Man
10. Pac-Man
11. Viva Pinata
12. Dragon View
13. Excitebike
14. Drakkhen
15. Todd’s Adventures in Slime World
16. Arc the Lad
17. Clu Clu Land
18. Tails’ Adventures
19. Scrapyard Dog (Lynx)
20. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX
21. Mickey’s Racing Adventure
22. Metro-Cross
23. Double Dragon
24. Panic Restaurant
25. Felix the Cat
26. Adventure
27. Ice Climber
28. Gaplus
29. Dragon Spirit
30. Pinball (NES)
31. Ninja Golf
32. Fast Eddie
33. Super Soccer
34. Gopher
35. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)
36. Red Sea Crossing
37. Baraduke
38. Demon’s Crest
39. Evoland
40. Tennis
41. Renegade
42. Beethoven
43. Hogan’s Alley
44. Gamma-Attack
45. The Legend of “Valkyrie”
46. Galaxian
47. Dragon Crystal
48. Cosmic Commuter
49. Hot Pixel
50. PocketBike Racer
51. Wild Gunman
52. Defunct
53. Gyruss (2600)
54. Looney Tunes Racing
55. Squidlit
56. Gordo 106
57. Baseball
58. Space Jockey
59. Home Alone
60. Birthday Mania
61. Bad Street Brawler
62. Burly Men at Sea
63. Wayne’s World
64. WeakWood Throne
65. X-Men (HyperScan)
66. My Name is Mayo
67. Marvel Heroes
68. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends
69. Ben 10
(Images courtesy of mobygames.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment