Retro Review: Combat - Atari 2600 - 1977

I think for my first Retro Review it would only be appropriate to review the first video game I can remember playing.  For me it was the game Combat on the Atari 2600.  As a youngster I became fascinated with my teenage uncle's Atari.  He was playing Yars Revenge and I asked if I could have a turn.  He promptly told me no.  However my Grandmother had my back and demanded that I was given a turn.  Unwilling to give up his controller he made a concession...  it was called Combat.

Combat was originally released in 1977 with the launch of the Atari 2600 system.  It was a simple game pitting one player versus another in either a tank battle or an aerial dogfight with various numbers and types of fighter planes.  Combat was a home console version of an old series of black and white arcade game named Tank.  As a launch title for the Atari 2600 it was a staple of many game collections for the system.

Combat did have one big flaw for some gamer due to the fact it was only a multiplayer game.  None of the games 27 different variations have a one player version that can be played.  If you didn't have a friend you spent your time shooting at a stationary tank or shooting down harmless airplanes flying in a straight line.  I always thought there had to have been a kids that got the Atari 2600 with Combat included and didn't get any other game with it and could rarely play it properly.

As a one player game you could maneuver your tank through  a horrible maze of blocks.
Then shoot the hell out of a stationary tank.

And this is why my uncle was hellbent on playing it.  Nothing is more satisfying than destroying your little nephew off of your game system, and I obviously wasn't playing it without him.  He was right, after a few merciless rounds of having countless tanks and planes destroyed I would have enough and he could resume his one player quests through games like Space Invaders and Pitfall.  But nearly everyone who had an Atari also had Combat, and over the years I logged my time on that game.

The game play on Combat is fairly straight forward.  For the tank modes of the game you move your Tank forwards and backwards by hitting up and down on the joystick and rotating the tank pressing left and right.  The button fired a deadly square that reacted differently depending on the game mode.  For every deadly square you bounced off your opponent got you a point.  If you were hit by a deadly square you spin uncontrollably and are restarted in a random direction.  The different modes are either a standard shooting mode or a tank pong mode where the tanks bullets will ricochet off of the barriers.

The plane modes are basically the same concept only instead of pressing up the plane moves forward on its own, you only worry about steering and shooting.  The different modes are a bit more interesting for the planes.  There are actually three types of planes: Biplanes, Jets, and Bombers.  There are a number of different modes using the different types of planes.

The planes made for a much cooler game experience.
The clouds in the middle provided cover for your plane.

To give a fair review of the game I have to think back to the time.  As one of the original Atari 2600 titles it did have a lot to offer. And compared to some of the other titles that came out for that system, it was a masterpiece.  People always remember it for having the slow clunky tanks, but the plane battles were quite good.  And as far as being a piece of trivia, it was one of the first well known multiplayer shooters.

My personal favorite mode was the mode with one on one jets.  Since the planes moved automatically it was far easier to just have to steer. And the battles were much better, with a tank many modes would have obstacles that you would have to maneuver.  Two bad players (or drunks) could barely get their tanks close enough to fire.  With the planes if you flew off the edge of the screen you would pop up on the other side so no one was ever truly safe.  That just made for better battles and more exciting gameplay.

But also to give a fair review there were some downsides.  As I said before there were 27 different modes in the game. If you have ever played one you will know that you don't get a convenient menu screen like modern games do.  You had to use the pain in the ass game select button to scroll through the different game modes.  All of the first modes were the tanks so you had to already hit the button quite a few times to get to the planes.  If you missed the mode you wanted you could end up having to hit that button over 50 times until you are playing in the mode you want.

Don't ever get trapped in a corner in tank mode.
Especially as a 4 year old playing your first ever video game.

As my first game there were tons of better options for me.  Combat is certainly best suited for a group of 4 or more people swapping controllers.  With the lack of single player mode and a painfully slow tanks it can hardly be considered a masterpiece.  However it really was an innovator as far as being a multi-player shooter, and one of the first games to feature aerial battles.  So let me leave you with some YouTube footage of this little piece of view of this little piece of video game history.