From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Greg Christensen wrote it in high school; Atari published it through APX and a classic was born. Five minutes down, one reactor, and the fastest escape in the catalogue.
Freddy’s courtship of Felicia plays out across bins, washing lines and a dozen apartment mini-games. Synapse’s most joyful game is a slapstick symphony in four voices.
Twenty-five harder stations, a gadget alphabet of lifts, tubes and transporters, and the same perfect fairness. Big Five’s sequel is the discerning miner’s choice.
Peter Liepa’s cave of boulders, butterflies and quotas began on the Atari 8-bit and became a language other players built with. The original is still the purest.
Datasoft turned a licence into a classic: twenty chambers, two tireless pursuers, one wizard to humble — and a second player can take the villain’s side.
Free Fall’s board of Light and Dark settles every capture in the arena. Archon invented a dozen genres in 1983 and remains the two-player Atari game to beat.
Steve Hales wrote a physics-led helicopter rescue epic as a teenager and Synapse shipped a classic. Descend carefully: the Fort is listening.
Synapse’s isometric Sopwith adventure remains the Atari’s most beloved workplace: bomb the bridges, strafe the valley, and bring her home to a very short strip.
The best Defender-style game never to see an arcade: Maclean’s Dropzone is pure speed, a scanner for a brain and a jetpack for legs. The Atari 8-bit at full tilt.
Noah Falstein’s looter-shooter a decade early: strip alien hulks, analyse the salvage, upgrade your rover and outrun the Guardians across twenty rifts.