Power Off! (Boxed) - Atari 2600

I would much like to retract my last review on this game because I quite wrong with my first assessment.
This really is a great game and if the ladders weren't a little bit of a difficulty to climb, there wouldn't be any real difficulty to the game at all.
I have figured out that if you are pressing over at the same time as up, you will climb the ladder with ease. However you must be accurate and your timing near perfect and that my friends is actually what makes this game fun... the fact that you have to learn this way is what makes you skillful at it and the more skill you develop, the more you will start to enjoy this game.
Very well developed game and I give it 5 stars, joysticks, whatever you want to call it, but yes I actually highly recommend this game.

Ebivision\'s most recent game is also their best. A very simple premise with absolutely addictive gameplay, you must deactivate power cells scattered on different levels, while avoiding sentry robots. You have no weapons - just speed and agility. The controls are near-perfect, and the game requires both patience and quick reflexes. You must analyze each of the robots\' movements, carefully plan around them, then run for your life! The graphics are excellent, with a nice variation of robot designs, good animation of the player, and a very cool scrolling title screen. The sounds are well done, including some nice title screen music, and the ever-present pulsating of a supercomputer gone wrong. My only minor gripes with the game are: there doesn\'t seem to be any way to earn bonus lives, and - as with all Ebivision games - you can\'t start a new game using the fire button. Even so, I highly recommend this game, including the extra few bucks to get the professionally printed box. There are few things that will take you back to the "good old days" like opening up a new, boxed game for your Atari 2600, and Power Off! is well worth it.

Part action game, part puzzler and all good. I ordered this mostly because it had robots and I have a thing for robots. Your objective in this game is to run around the levels grabbing all of the fuel cells to knock the power out on the robots that have taken over. There is a nicely illustrated manual that tells this story in great detail and was a pleasant bonus to this excellent game. The graphics are good with different robots appearing as you clear a level. I really like the running/ladder climbing sounds as they get a nice rhythm going while you play. There is also a menacing "thump"in the background sort of like an electronic heartbeat. Very cool stuff.This game is hard but not so hard that it ruins the fun. It takes a while to figure out the best path to take and what patterns the robots are running which is where the puzzle-like qualities come in. The running/climbing and split second timing you need provides plenty of action. This game makes me think of what Infiltrate would have been like on the Colecovision but it\'s on the good old VCS.All totaled: Great game that is going to make me take a 2nd look at the rest of Ebivison\'s catalog.

I like this one. It\'s simple but challenging. No buttons required but memory skills are a must. This is an action game, don\'t get me wrong but you do have to memorize the robots patterns to win. I like the gameplay, my only complaint is sometimes it\'s hard to climb the ladders, you have to hit them just right but once you get it down it\'s no problem. The manual is cool, neat story and artwork. Robots are always cool as well. The option of getting the nice box for $5 is also a plus and well worth it. This game is a must have in my opinion, go buy it! You won\'t be dissapointed with it.

Now I hate writing bad reviews, but... in this case someone just really has to tell the truth.
That being said, I'd just like to say that I think I could really enjoy this game... the graphics are decent for the Atari 2600 and the gameplay has the ability to be great...
However the ladders that your character Brian has to climb are not "hard" to climb, but yet they are "impossible" to climb and there definitely should have been a little more work done on that problem. Because of this problem it has made it very difficult to even get through the first level without using up all of my lives and I'm what you might call "good" at playing Atari games and video games in general.
There is no right place to stand when trying to position yourself in front of a ladder because sometimes he climbs when he's near the edge of it and sometimes when he's positioned directly in the middle of it, but I have tried to climb from those same positions time after time and the up directional "will not" get him to climb resulting in death because you just threw off your timing. I thought my joystick was broken at first and had to use a few more just to make sure.

Not only will you lose lives because Brian can't climb ladders, but you will also have to start back at the very beginning losing all the power cells that you collected which in turn leaves you having to do all that hard precision timing B.S. all over again which could mean dying on that first ladder again.

With no continues, only 3 lives and an impossibilty to climb, this game is very frustrating. Definitely needed more work.

Yet I keep playing and trying after a day or two goes by and have forgotten how quickly the game becomes a frustration just because of those pesky ladders. Henceforth the 3 stars.