Back to the Past: River Raid (Atari 2600)

When was the last time I wrote a BTTP article. I don't remember. I only know that @Sleven requested me to make a River Raid review. His request actually made me think a lot. It is because River Raid is an Atari 2600 game released by Activision in 1982. It is a small game so there is few things to explain here. Also there is no music so in this case there is no remix for me to do. That put me into serious thought. After so long time, I finally managed to find out how I am going to make this review and here you go. Now I just need to tell you my experiences of this game and how fun this game was back in Atari days.

 

River Raid is one of the first games I played when I started playing video games at 4. This game probably came from my second cartridge that I owned from Atari 2600, which had 8 games including Pitfall. It is a simple vertical shooter where you have to control a fighter and destroy everything in its path while maintaining your fuel during your mass murder journey. You get points for killing anything and you get only 3 lives. You get 1 life bonus every 5000 points you get. You will lose your life if you collide with anything or if your fuel runs out. You can refuel your aircraft at the fuel stations. You can also destroy those stations to get more points. You can also change the throttle of the aircraft up and down. The whole point of the game is to score as high as possible. The game is very fast at its time and you need to have good reaction and movement (at least I had to do that) to be an effective player.

 

The best way to play this game is to use some specialized joysticks designed for Atari 2600. Those joysticks made players have more control and flexibility to move the plane. My neighbor brother always used this sort of joystick to play River Raid. I dont remember whether I had such control or not (damn I am getting old, I am losing memory). At least what I remember that me and my brother challenged each other every time I visited there. Sometimes he owned me, sometimes I owned him. When I used to own him I used to like to see his expression of despair. It felt like I was very dominant. I felt that I am out for world domination. At least the game allowed to destroy anything at your path. Well that all I can say for this game. This game is part of my childhood. I grew up with sort of games. I used to like it a lot. It is so surprising that such a simple game like this can make players play this game for hours.

 

I made a gameplay video exclusive for NoobFeed. Since I dont have any remix to do, i needed to do something to make my client (here in this case Sleven) enjoy his hearts out so I have added some interesting elements in the video. Enjoy the video.

 

If you all have any request to review any past retro games, feel free to ask. I am your service 24/7 although I may take a hell lot of time carrying out these requests. If not, then I will try to find some more games that I played during my childhood days and review it.