Ultra SCSIcide - Atari 2600

Sometimes the product sells itself to the right person. It appeals to something inside you that triggers that “I must acquire this” mentality. When someone holds a 2600 cart in front of me and tells me it’s like Kaboom! only sideways and a little more involved, my wallet’s already out of my back pocket before I’ve even uttered the words, “I’ll take it.”In the game you control a hard drive read head (no joke) and you scan back and forth across a spinning HD platter to read the bits of data in the correct order. How do you know the right order? Each bit is a different color and you have to match the changing read head color to the bit color. As the bit passes through the head you “read” the data by pressing the button, then it disappears. When all the bits are gone, the level is done and you start over with everything going a little faster.It\'s definitely harder than Kaboom! since you\'re not just grabbing bombs, but discerning which color you need to acquire next and ASAP, since you lose points and your latency buffer decreases each time the bit passes by without being read. If the buffer runs out, game over. Being able to quickly and accurately discern the next color bit is imperative, and I think skill at rhythm games like DDR and Guitar Hero help. You\'ll need to stare at the entire board at once, never really concentrating on a single part of the screen. That\'s really what makes the game so much fun and challenging. Most games allow you to concentrate on a small portion of the screen at any given time, but not here. You\'re best served by staring through the screen, never really focusing in, taking the playfield as a whole. With practice, you\'ll be able to get that Zen like stare where you\'re doing exactly what you need to do onscreen without really realizing it. There\'s something about the paddle controller that really lends itself well to these types of games.My only complaint is the scoring system. It\'s sometimes hard to tell how well you\'re doing because you score is calculated in hex. Which basically means instead of rolling over after it gets to 9, it continues to f. So you end up with a score that\'s 2d0192 something. The first two numbers are the round you\'re in, followed by the score. It\'s interesting, and math geeks will probably love it, but for the rest of us it\'s just confusing.Like the other homebrew games I\'ve bought, this one comes with a full color label and manual. The game and the manual also come in a hard drive anti-static bag, which just makes the geek in me smile.It’s an excellent take on Kaboom! and will challenge even expert players, and it’s an excellent addition to any Atari collection.[adapted from review @ www.thebbps.com]

Okay, it\'s time to dust off the paddles and spray a little contact cleaner in there. Fast-paced doesn\'t even begin to describe Ultra SCSIcide once it gets going. The game takes place in a hard drive, and it\'s your job to catch (or "read") colored data bits in the correct order as they go speeding by. Read the wrong ones or wait too long to read the right ones, and the hard drive will crash! It\'s pretty easy for the first few levels, but the bits begin speeding by so fast they essentially just turn into colored blurs. The game requires fast reflexes, and good concentration. Joe Grand did a nice job of keeping the colors different enough so you can tell which is which (even on my old TV), but you still have to pay close attention, since the faster the game goes, the harder it becomes to tell one lightning fast blur from another. Joystick support is also available, which works surprisingly well given the speed of the game, but paddles are the way to go here. One downside of the game is that the score is shown in hexadecimal. While cool in a geeky sort-of way, it really doesn\'t do much for those of us who aren\'t used to it. An option to just use numbers would have been welcomed. Also in keeping with the theme, Ultra SCSIcide comes in an anti-static bag, which is a very cool idea.

Love kaboom??? Want a new twist to that style of game play? You found it. There really isn\'t there much to say... except for the fact that the bits are moving sideways rather than down, does make for quite a challenge.