Haunted House

The Good
For one of the first “scary” games, it’s still quite a lot of fun. The ghosts and other creatures look good for Atari, and I will never not find the player character being a pair of eyes that roll around amusing. The goal of the game is to collect 3 pieces of an urn and return to the entrance. Sound simple? Well that’s because it is. You can light matches by hitting the button, which is required to be able to see the items. Half the time I pick up a piece of the urn without even realizing, so I’m not sure how required it really is. There are multiple floors of the mansion, each with their own aggressive solid-color background. Once you get all the pieces and descend the stairs to the exit, you win.

The Bad
And when you win, it takes about two minutes. That’s really one of the main problems of the game nowadays. It is pitifully short. Now personally I do enjoy that, but if you were to buy a boxed copy or something along those lines it’s a little overpriced. I do understand that most all Atari games can be beaten in less than five minutes, but Adventure still took me about 10 mins on my very first play through, and that was with the manual. Also the main appeal of this game, it being scary, doesn’t really hold up nowadays. Even back then it doesn’t seem like it’d be that scary, but I wasn’t there so there’s no way for me to tell.

The Bottom Line
Overall, a short little Atari game, that doesn’t really keep its main appeal in the modern age.