Granny Vinnie Reviews

7800 Rank: 43rd Genre Rank: (Driving) 2nd Awards: 9th Best originality, 7th Worst Sound Car Battles Near Santa Fe Pros: Big game/ Cool password feature/ Tons of weapons and gadgets Cons: Serious lack of difficulty/ Gameplay gets old quick Rah-Rah-Ree! Kick Nuclear Fall-out in the Knee!

Overview: This game is Mad Max meets the 2600 game Enduro meets an Insurance Seminar. In a two words: Post-Apocalyptic Boredom! (Or is this three words?) This is one of the rarest games for the 7800...and this might be a good thing. Fatal Run finds the protagonist in a red sports car/hatchback racing against time to deliver a vaccine to 32 different cities. People are dropping dead like flies, and you are the world's only hope to reverse an airborne plague that has hit the atmosphere of the entire planet. In the process, you will be annoyed by a mysterious car gang who obviously wants to perish along with the rest of the world. You also will be annoyed be weird graphics...but who knows which will bother you more.

Graphics: The graphics range from bizarre to bad in this cookey little game. Upon first view of the game, we are treated to an awesome title screen shot, maybe the best title screen on the system. The game pictured in the title screen will end up looking more fun than the game we are about to play. Graphics are pretty standard fare during the beginning. The game has a Pole Position/ Enduro feel to it, with a great menu with radar, time, distance, tachometer, odometer speedometer, and a weapons cache'. Though the menu is great, the most amazing thing graphically about the game may be the lack of scenery. During the 5 to 6 mile jaunt from city to city, you will see two or three billboards with nothing on them or maybe an occasional dead tree or stone along the roadway. This could be a huge flaw in the game, but to me it just adds to the desperate, lonely feel to this title. Then, upon entering the city you will see the strangest collection of fools littering the highway you will ever see, even weirder than Mardi Gras. They will either jump up and down, or explode and turn into tombstones. One good thing about the future, according to the 7800, is that 2 out of 15 people will be cheerleaders. Too bad most of them explode. When we successfully deliver the vaccine to the mayor (assumed, not seen), we take a cash bonus and head towards a shop for repairs, gas, nitros and weapons. The shops graphics are actually good, complete with two diagrams of your car so you can see damage, and there's a selection of plenty of things to buy. Then we leave the city, and head towards the next. To break up monotony, Atari added some tacky color combos to the world from town to town. Yes, there are your typical night time, desert, mountain color schemes and back grounds...but also be prepared for orange grass, purple skies, and yellow mountains! The future looks fruity!

Sounds: The sound reeks. The same lame audio loop of random drum beats penetrate your head for the entire 32 city run. Again, this could be irritating, but to me it adds to the dark mood of the game. Too bad the guy in the car doesn't have a stereo to liven his spirits up. Van Halen's "Panama" would be great driving music for a leg or two of this trek. Each weapon you fire off or use has it's own unique sound effects. This is cool, but since the bad guys invested more in the quantity of vehicles than arming their vehicles, most auto combat sounds like what rubbing your eyes really hard sounds like. You just have to trust me on that. When entering a city, a happy tune plays if you made good time to the city, in turn saving more lives. But, if more people are perishing than surviving, prepare to hear sonic doom.

Gameplay: Basically, the biggest skill this game tests is mental endurance. Everything is pretty easy, it's just long and mundane. The driving is easier than Pole Position II, the combat is easier than any game, ever. Controls are good, and everything is easy to understand. Left button fires or uses a weapon, the right button selects your weapon of choice. Up hits the accelerator. Down hits the brake. Left turns left. Right turns right. Pretty simple! The only flaw here might be that sometimes it takes 2 or 3 seconds to select the weapon you need at that moment, so by the time you select it, the moment could most likely has passed. Basically, all you need to do is leave you selector on Machine Guns. Everything else is really just for breaking monotony. The game has tons of upgrades for your vehicle: Dynamite, Smoke Screen, Oil Slick, Shields, Nitros, Armor, Tires, Brakes, Windshields, Missiles, and much more. Upgrading your engine, weapons, and the like becomes what you live for. Because seeing your new top speed or how you handle in a turn might be your only highlight for several cities!

Originality: This game was a good idea. The problem is that the programmers needed to make the game harder, not brain suckingly long. If bad guy cars had the weapons like your car does, this game could have been a blast. This game reminds me a lot of the driving part of Sega Genesis’s Technocop. But sometimes different is not good, and in a lot of instances, the same applies to Fatal Run.

Value: This game is VERY long. In fact, if you play it all in one sitting, you may experience trances and loss of brain cells. There is a cool password feature, but all it does is send you to certain cities with the car you began the game with. Since the game progressively gets more difficult (barely), this will increase the challenge. In fact, the best way to probably play the game is to enter 'Turtle' at the password screen and play the final four cities with the most basic car. That way the game will only last 10 to 15 minutes, and the challenge will have you on the edge of your seat. Also, four cities is quick enough of a game that odds are brain death will not occur. The final ending sequence is also pretty cool, and may be the best of any 7800 game I have beaten. This should be noted: THE ONLY WAY YOU WILL NOT BEAT THIS GAME EVERYTIME YOU PLAY IT IS THIS: YOU FORGOT TO BUY GAS. Yes, this game is that easy, and that practical.

Overall: I know I have dogged this game from the beginning of this review, but you know what...I kinda like this game. I realize that it sucks, but deep down inside there is a part that enjoys the doom that surrounds this game. I really feel like this would be how it is if this scenario happened in real life: nerve racking, and boring. Yes, Fatal run is a marathon of a game, and probably takes the most time to beat of any game on the system. It is boring, ugly, and mind numbing...yes, it's lame...but you also may be in the 1 percentile of humans that actually look at this game and think to themselves, "Cool!"



Other Reviews:
Video Game Critic: D
CV's Atari 7800 Panoramic Froo-Froo: 2.5 out of 5.0 (Weak)
Atari Gaming Headquarters: 5 out of 10


Additional Info: I would like to take this time to thank Mitch Orman, owner of The Atari 7800 Page for allowing the use of his screenshots for this review.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Does Fatal Run have the best Atari 7800 ending sequence?

Yes! No! I don't know!

Email Vinnie