Space Battle - Atari 2600

Space Battle- uninteresting name for a very cool game. It\'s sort of a cross between Megamania and Demon Attack but stands on it\'s own nicely.SB is a shoot \'em up like many VCS games but it has enough new features to make it a unique challenge. The first screen requires you to land your ship while avoiding a baddie trying to smash into you. This is pretty easy at first but on later levels it gets more interesting. After landing, you enter a level and SB becomes a shooter with a couple of twists. The bad guys are at the top of the screen and move in patterns that change regularly which makes hitting them a little harder. This is also where the first twist comes in. Shooting a bad guy makes the other bad guys in that row turn into shields so you\'ll need to shoot around them to hit a different row. This makes the shield change to the new row and so on. The second twist is that your fuel supply rapidly depletes so you need to catch fuel that is dropped from the bad guy ships. This is harder than it sounds because it only changes into fuel when it\'s pretty low on the screen and close to you. You\'re have to always be ready to move out of the way if it stays a shot or scoot under it if it changes to fuel. After clearing this section you battle a pair of \'boss\' ships that require multiple hits. There\'s no way to replenish your fuel on this screen so you need to make short work of the boss.The graphics in SB are decent, Some of the ships are a little too dark against the dark background particularly the bad guy that tries to stop you from landing. Sound is good too although the low fuel alarm is irritatingly pierce. It\'s not the best looking/sounding game veer but it\'s not bad by any means. Controls are good with options for steerable missiles a plus.If you like shooters, this is a nice addition. It\'s much more interesting than the endless parade of Space Invaders rehash homebrews the VCS seems to have.

Space Battle is a shoot \'em up, where you have to destroy armadas of enemy ships, battle boss ships, then land safely to move onto the next round. Space Battle manages to separate itself from typical vertical shooters on the 2600 with several welcomed additions: you have to constantly catch fuel pods to keep your ship powered-up, the enemies move very unpredictably, and instead of just giving shields to the player, the enemies have them as well. Whenever you shoot an enemy, the rest of the ships in its group will raise their shields, so you can\'t shoot that group again, until you shoot some other group, first. This, coupled with its three different stages, really makes Space Battle challenging, varied and unique. I have to play it using steerable missiles (option 2) to last very long.The graphics and sound are well done, although not as glitzy as some other homebrews. There are a few rough edges, and the game could have used a little more polishing here and there, like better gravity simulation during the landing stage and some other minor things. That said, Space Battle is a solid shooter, with enough unique elements to set it apart from the crowd, and most importantly - it\'s fun to play. It reminds me of some of the better, early 3rd-party games for the 2600. Space Battle re-captures some of the raw energy of those titles, but definitely in a good way. Well worth having for fans of shoot \'em ups.

If Space Battle is not an original game, the combination of other games elements makes it fresh,fun and quite entertaining. A bit of Lunar Lander, Space Invaders and other ones but mixed in such a clever way and with new features that makes it indispensable for Space Games fan.Furthermore some of the graphics effects of the enemies are simply amazing.