Yahtzee

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Russell Babylon

It's Yahtzee. You've played Yahtzee, right? Same thing here. The only difference is that there's a glitch where the left-most dice shows up as two dice when the game only registers it as one. Otherwise, it's the same basic deal...My only real question is why Atari never tried to put out a version of this themselves. It seems like it would have been a simple, easy game to make…and it probably would have sold quite a bit if it had been released in the late 70's/early 80's. My grandmother kept an electronic game of Yahtzee to play on the toilet for years…if this had been released in the early days of the Atari 2600, my grandmother, and others like her, may have been converted into a video game player. Instead, it got created unofficially in 2000. Eh, at least we got it eventually, I suppose...but it still feels like money was left on the table there.

Review added: 09/29/2019

Yars' Revenge

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Atari

Yars' Revenge is a unique little shooter that only spans one screen, and because of that, it feels kind of repetitive...But it’s also so dang addicting that the repetition doesn't affect it as much as you might expect. The concept is also very simple and not confusing to read at all. You control a Yar, which is the fly-lookin' thing, and you want to destroy the shield in front of the Quotile hiding behind it, avoiding the deadly swirl and using the Ion shield (the multi-colored stripe on the screen) to shield yourself from the Quotile's regular, homing fire. After destroying the Quotile by using the Zorlon Cannon (flying into the Quotile and pressing the fire button), you get a screen-sized explosion...Followed by another Quotile to destroy. See? Simply explained. If that confused you, no worries. The game is pretty easy to pick up and play, and you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Like most games of the time, the longer you play, the more the difficulty increases, which does help a bit with the repetition...But as I stated earlier, the game is good enough (and the segments are short enough) where the repetition doesn’t really hurt it overall. In my opinion, it’s one of the best games of its generation, and easily one of the better games on the Atari 2600.

Review added: 07/28/2019