The final March 1981 release, Tennis, is another sports game from the folks at Activision, which drew attention with titles like Boxing, Skiing and Dragster in its first year. While tennis as a sport has been a standby for game-makers almost as long as video games have existed, Alan Miller’s rendition was one of the earliest attempts to make a version of the sport that was more accurate than what you’d gotten out of Pong clones the previous decade.
In addition to titles published by Atari and Sears, Activision had two releases in March 1981 as well. The company’s six offerings from 1980 were broadly considered to bring a new degree of graphical refinement and interesting subject matter to the VCS, and the developers at the company continued to produce inventive and impressive games in the new year. Case in point is Laser Blast, which takes the common video game premise of a space-themed shooter and flips it around, resulting in a challenge where players go on offense.
At first glance, Stellar Track seems like a minor VCS release, and it is – as a Sears exclusive that requires the instruction manual to learn to play, it’s hardly the first game people talk about when bringing up the all-time classics on the platform. But what makes Stellar Track interesting is that the game itself is just a single part of a much broader history of games and popular media, a link in a greater tapestry. This is the story about the early days of fandom, a struggling science fiction TV show, and working within strict limitations to produce one of the most widespread computer games ever made. This is the story of Star Trek.
March 1981 introduced a pair of novelties to the VCS library, in that they are first-party Atari games that are also retailer-exclusives. Steeplechase and Stellar Track are the first two of four games that had some kind of exclusivity to Sears, then one of the largest retailers in the United States and a partner of Atari’s in the home gaming space since it stocked Atari’s dedicated Pong console in 1975 under its own branding.
At this point in the VCS’s history, the platform has hosted a slew of traditional, real world games. Chess, checkers, backgammon, blackjack, and several others have helped fill out the VCS library with ways for enthusiasts to enjoy these games by themselves – or at the least a venue to play them without the setup. With that in mind, today’s game is practically the end of an era: Othello marks the last VCS game from Atari itself trying to translate one of these pastimes to the console. It is also incidentally the first of five games we’ll be looking at that came out in March 1981, which seems to have been the busiest month for new VCS releases that year.
Atari didn’t take long to open up 1981 with a new release, as Championship Soccer – or Pele’s Championship Soccer, as it was quickly rebranded – started reaching store shelves that February. Despite being initially planned for a fall 1980 release, the first real soccer game on the VCS was seemingly delayed until after the Christmas season.
Rounding out the blockbuster year of 1980, Bridge is perhaps the most niche release to come out of Activision on the VCS. In fact, it’s arguably the most niche game on the platform. This is a single-player conversion of the team card game of the same name – a card game, it should be noted, that has appeared on home video game consoles approximately one time that I’m aware of, and that’s right here.
While Atari itself may have wrapped up its 1980 wares in September, Activision had two final games for the year. The company itself announced these as shipping in December for sale in January, though it does appear at least some retailers started receiving and advertising them as available late in the month, shortly before the Christmas holiday in the US. Of these two games, Skiing is unquestionably the better known release today, as it wound up as an excellent rendition of the snowy sport.
September 1980 saw a surprising amount of maze-related content published on the VCS. In addition to Carla Meninsky’s Dodge ‘Em, Atari also published Rick Maurer’s follow-up to the smash hit Space Invaders: Maze Craze, also known as Maze Mania under its Sears title. And unlike Dodge ‘Em or 1978’s Slot Racers, Maze Craze is less about doing things within the maze so much as it is about navigating the maze itself.
At the same time Alan Miller was working on Activision’s Checkers cartridge in late 1979, at Atari, Carol Shaw had started work on her own translation of the board game, with both designers oblivious to each others’ efforts. While not as visually striking as Miller’s game, Video Checkers has more options and a stronger computer opponent, making this a better challenge for those who are pretty decent players already. Continue reading “Video Checkers (Checkers) – September 1980”