Atari 2600 : Combat
Combat came included with the 2600 system and that makes it one of the most ubiquitous cartridges that you run into on the secondary market. Combat is a perfect example of an early Atari 2600 game. Basically you are a square of sorts and you shoot smaller squares at other squares.
Combat was a military type game where you played against someone else to see who could shoot his opponent first. You got to blast away at your friend in a variety of different vehicles, Tanks, Biplanes or jets. I guess that's not really that much of a variety.
In the tank game you drive your little armored vehicle around the screen and try to get one over on the other tank before he gets at you. There was a variety of settings that allowed you to mix it up a bit including different screen set ups and different types of ammo.
I think that my favorite was the one where you could make the shot bounce around the screen. It was mad awesome when someone was hiding behind something like a mark and you could give them one in the rear end with a ricochet. That used to make my cousin Tommy so super pissed. That of course made me super happy.
When you got shot you didn't explode because that would be too violent (conjecture) so what happened instead was your tank spun around in circles for a second before stopping and starting the battle over again. Maybe this game is like a combat simulator-simulator. What I mean is that this isn't a real battle. It's a war game. A practice fight. So what you are doing is playing a video game of two tanks fighting a simulated battle. A simulator-simulator. I guess.
There was also an invisible mode. The deal was that every time you took a shot your tank would become momentarily visible allowing your enemy to get a bead on you. I wasn't that into being in an invisible tank. I think that I was just too young to try and land a shot on something that I couldn't see. It was tricky and in my younger days if something was too hard I'd usually just give it up. I still do that sometimes but far less then when I was ten.
There was also a mode where you got to play as a plane. That was a little more fun. My favorite of the plane games was the one where you could fly as a squad of three little planes against a much larger "bomber" that fired one really large square at a time. The flying games had some pretty cool clouds too. Two big fat ones right in the middle of the screen. I guess they were there to provide some kind of cover but it wasn't like you could put your plane in park and hide behind them for awhile and even if you could your foe would know where to look because there were only two places to hide. If you weren't in cloud one you must be in cloud two. Know what I mean?
I seem to remember reading somewhere that Combat was actually the first game made for the 2600. That must be why it was so boring. It's like, no one had any idea how to make an awesome game yet. That skill wouldn't come along until much later.
For a first try though Combat wasn't too bad. I enjoyed it and still remember it today. It had a variety of modes, was for two players, let you shoot your friends, had tanks AND planes that's decent for a first ever game. Combat set Atari off on a good foot. It wasn't Mario Brothers and the NES but considering that they don't even give games away with the system all the time anymore I'm still at least fairly stoked on Combat.
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