River Raid

The Good
River Raid is, if you aren't acquainted to it, one of the most famous and highest recommended games for the Atari 2600. However, my review is about the Atari 8-bit version, so I invite you to read my impressions on how it stands. The game itself is very simple. From a top-view perspective, you are in control of a plane and fly through a river with enemies on it. You have unlimited ammo, and a fuel gauge. Your goal is to move forward, destroy enemies, and keeping yourself with enough fuel to stay on air. Despite as plain it may sound next to current generation video games (2015), this is the very beauty of River Raid. I would like to call it more a survival game, rather than a shoot them up. Here are no power ups; your weapon serves its purpose well. You also don't have to destroy every enemy on sight, in fact on even stages - where the river splits in two sides - you can't; nor you have to complete every stage in certain amount of time. You don't even have to defeat a mighty, formidable boss to advance to the next level, as a matter of fact with just destroying bridges - even from far away - you'll do so. However, your fuel will unavoidably deplete, and just because you can fill it up by flying through air carriers, sometimes it won't be possible. The enemies will eventually make you notice seriously that you are outnumbered, and then, you will lose. The early stages are very easy, and will allow a fair learning curve, so most players won't feel frustrated about River Raid. However, it's more likely that many will come back to do better than before.

The Bad
The graphics are very simple and to some, it may reflect how good or bad this game has aged. The colors are bright and aren't what most people would consider the standard for a war game - darker, in my opinion-. However, one has to be aware of the time it was created, and personally I have a very hard time trying to find anything bad on it. Nevertheless, being this a version ported to a more powerful machine as the original, one could expect it had an upgrade - but fortunately, besides a few cosmetic changes, it doesn't.

The Bottom Line
River Raid is, to modern shooter games, like an early chariot wheel next to a current Formula 1 wheel. It can't have the same performance, but it's full of class. I recommend this game to anyone with an Atari 8 bit computer, and it's not even hard to get. If you are in doubt, give at least a try, there are many places online to test drive it.