Page 42 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #6

The Odyssey 2 Goes to War!

By Earl Green
(CGM’s resident Odyssey Guru)

rines against each other. Unlike Armored Bizarrely enough, the generals are inca-
Encounter! / Sub Chase! (or, for that mat- pable of capturing each other – mean-
ter, Combat), Conquest Of The World ing that one player could, in theory, ma-
would occasionally force one player to play neuver his general into position next to
a sub while the other played a jet. The the enemy leader, summon his robots to
sub’s advantage? Guided missiles and the that location, and win the round. And we
J J advantage? Being able to fly over land or sea trees, which serve as obstacles to both
won’t even mention the forest of little
ability to submerge out of firing range. The jet’s
human and robot.
to wipe out the sub. The cartridge, in and of
ust because Atari had Combat and
other titles representing the warlike side of the itself, was actually a very cool little game. War Of Nerves! may sound easy, but
Rather like Quest For The Rings, this video
it’s actually quite the sweaty-palm game if
VCS doesn’t mean that players couldn’t wage game was also playable as a board game. (It’s the right player is behind the wheel of the
war on other systems. worth pointing out here that other army. The computer controls all
The Odyssey 2 didn’t the Master Series, far from robot movement and combat, meaning
have a large slew of sparking any interest in hy- that – short of using the “summon robots”
wargames at its disposal. brid video games, crashed button – the generals, the only characters
The earliest such title, and burned – kind of like my which the players actually do control, tend
Armored Encounter! / jet did, every time I ran it to be the most helpless ones on the
Sub Chase!, wasn’t ex- into the ubiquitous pyramid screen.
actly worthy of a news- on the jet vs. jets screens.) Admittedly, the meager Odyssey 2 war
reel. It basically offered While Conquest Of The game library is weighted down largely by
variations on the simple World may well have been Combat-like games with minor variations,
theme of Combat. It did, the fanciest of the Odyssey but should you get the chance to play War
however, get away from 2 war titles, it wasn’t the Of Nerves! with a suitably vicious oppo-
the “Pong with tanks” most innovative. That nent, go for it – there hasn’t
mentality of Combat by honor would have to go to been a game quite like it since.
introducing a submarine War of Nerves War Of Nerves!, a strange
game to the mix. For new take on video war
any collectors out there, games that scaled the conflict down from a
Armored Encounter! / Sub Chase! is still fairly world war to a battlefield skirmish.
easy to find. In War Of Nerves, two players each control a
The coup de grace in the Odyssey’s small “general” character, guarded by a platoon of
handful of wargames, however, was the Ava- four robot soldiers. If either general is captured
lon-Hill-inspired Conquest Of The World. Con-
quest was one of the three Master Series titles by the opposition’s robots, that round is over,
and the game restarts until a series of ten
that paired what was advertised as an games has been won. Also, the robots clash
“expanded memory cartridge” (with fancy gold with one another (with the losers in each strug-
foil labels) in elegant boxes, complete with gle being temporarily immobilized). Only that
classy game boards and lots of easy-to-lose robot’s general can repair it by touching it, but
pieces. The object of the game was to forge that puts the general in danger of being cap-
alliances, take over enemies (and, occasion- tured by enemy robots. A general can also
ally, allies), and secure more territory around summon all of his operational robots (when the
the globe for your Bloc. Only when push came player presses the action button) toward his lo-
to shove did you resort to the cartridge, which cation, though this may again result in robot-vs.- Conquest of the World
pitted tanks, jets, and missile-spewing subma-
robot combat that could diminish one’s army.

Featured Easter Egg!
Featured Easter Egg!
“Plasma Pong” in Defender 2000 for the Jaguar

Submitted by Randy Femrite (randy@atarijaguar.net)

Enter “NOLAN” in any high score table to activate
programmer Jeff Minter’s tribute to Atari’s founder

fghjklPqrAH

Photo by Randy Femrite
Classic Gamer Magazine Spring 2001 42