This post brought to you by the letter “V”, Video Games at Home (Part 2)

Continuing from Part 1 I continue the journey of systems I have owned over the years, and some of the games that I have enjoyed for them.  I look forward to your thoughts on any of these, and if you owned any.  Thanks again for being here as always, and enjoy the rest of the article.  

Atari 5200 (Atari Inc., 1982)  Actually this was one of my favorite systems growing up, minus one thing.  The Controllers!  They were notorious for breaking, you would often either have to pop it open to see if you could get the keypad buttons to work, or see if the joystick part would reset its self so it would pop back to center.  It was a pain, and if you could not fix it, an expensive system to use, for buy replacements!  But I loved the games! My favorite 3 were:

• Pitfall II:  This was not a game to be taken lightly back then.  It was a polished version of the Atari 2600 Cartridge, with better graphics, better sound, and a wonderful surprise.  When you finished what you thought was the game, as if you finished the entire 2600 version, a whole another world would open up! This was unique to the Atari 5200 and 8-Bit Atari computer versions, it was harder, longer, and you were on a quest to find 4 items that combined would allow you to escape that second part of the world and transport you back to the beginning of the game to a part that you could see when you started, but could never get to.  It was amazing.
• Gyruss:  If all the games that had Arcade conversions, this by far and to this day was one of my favorites.  The game mechanics of surviving each planet of the solar system to try and reach earth to save it was amazing, the Atari 5200 version was about the best in my opinion home version made of this game.
• Jungle Hunt:  The 5200 version shined in the graphics category, and the game play was fun, swinging from vine to vine getting your timing down, running up hit, avoiding boulders running down at you to squash you, swimming while trying to kill sharks and avoid getting chomped, and trying to save the girl on stage 4 without upsetting the villagers.  Rinse and Repeat, each time getting harder, still great game to play!

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) (Nintendo, 1983)  I think this was one of the systems much like the Atari 2600 did, that helped revolutionize the video game market.  I had to be a very good boy to get this for Christmas one year, and it was worth it!  My favorite games for it were:

•   Tecmo Super Bowl:   for the NES, I can’t say enough about this game!  It was truly a remarkable game that led to sequels on the Super Nintendo when it came out.  But to be able to take and play an entire football season, with a team or multiple teams if you chose player control was amazing, to be able to make substitutions, and change out plays from your playbook.  I still play this game today!  Through emulation on my computer and with updated current rosters but the game play was what made this game the cult hit that it is, and makes my Top 5 favorite home video games of all time!
• Super Mario World 3:    Again the graphics for this game, the length of the game and all the worlds that you can go through, and the ability to save your game where you left it, were all things the NES had going for it, but with Mario on his biggest game journey to date at hand, this game was just spectacular in all ways imaginable.
• Baseball Stars 2:  This was another game that my friend and I would play forever, again able to play an entire season, with cartoon type graphics, power ups, making your own teams.  It was graphically ahead of its time, and a joy to play!

This completes Part 2 for today.  Stay Tuned for Part 3 where I will cover the next Video Game Systems I owned.  Which was the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and the TurboGrafx-16/Turbo Express (I had both).   If you missed Part 1, you can can read it here.  As always I thank you for reading, hope to see you back, and have a nice day!  🙂