I mainly remember this system for how its Donkey Kong screenshots practically made me weep with envy.
At the time I thought it looked arcade perfect. It doesn’t – Donkey Kong himself looks all wrong, and the layout appears to be … backwards? Anyway, it was still pretty damned impressive.
Was there much going on in this console other than fancy arcade ports? I know Smurf Adventure caused some salivation in my family. Anyone own one? Can anyone name 10 great games, or even 10 they played?
I had one! I liked Donkey Kong Jr better than Donkey Kong. Played a lot of Zaxxon. I somehow duped my parents to buy me the steering wheel and Turbo in the service of writing a high school freshman psychology paper on learning curves, using video game performance as the focus. :D
Uh, Montezuma’s Revenge… I’m kinda tapped out after that. Maybe Q-bert? Mostly arcade ports it seems. I wouldn’t touch a Smurf game if you’d paid me.
I had one too, cashed in my 2600 and game library to finance it. Really bad call. Anyway, I played a bunch of a scrolling shooter called Cosmic Adventure - I think? And some kind of stunt biplane kind of game. Had the Smurf game and Zaxxon too, they were just beautiful. And if you compare Donkey Kong to the 2600 version it damn near was arcade perfect.
I got one for Christmas one year. I believe that was the only gift I got that year, but at the time it was so worth it. I will never forget getting home from my grandparents on Christmas Eve late and my dad pulling it out and hooking it up for me to play a bit of Donkey Kong before bed. I don’t think my mom was amused :).
I also used to sneak into my parents’ closet and admire the box they had hidden in there for weeks before Christmas, heh.
I don’t think I can name 10 games that I played on it, though. My library even at the end probably only included 5 games or so. Here are a few that I remember:
Donkey Kong
Venture
Zaxxon
Gorf
Miner 2049er
I was super excited to get Miner 2049er and was my favorite. I believe the Colecovision port of it was one of the better ones and they also did a very good port of Zaxxon, I believe. These were all available on other systems, though.