Spent some time recording some two-player gameplay for some upcoming Atari A to Z Flashback episodes today. Given the general uselessness of my friends even before the whole pandemic started, I've taken to recruiting my wife Andie to help with this.
Andie is very helpful and supportive with this, but I always feel a bit bad when I ask her to play something she obviously doesn't enjoy. Thankfully, both games we recorded today were a ton of fun, and we were pretty evenly matched. It's always nice when this happens — and it always makes me look on the game in question more fondly as a result.
The games in question today were Outlaw and Pong Sports, aka Video Olympics. I've never really played Outlaw all that much in the past, but it's super-fun in two player. The single-player target shooting variations are a bit dry and boring, but in two player it's a blast, with a variety of different ways to play.
I really like Pong Sports, too. While it's essentially little more than what you'd get on one of those standalone Pong consoles from the '70s, the fact all these games are together in one place and support up to four players makes it really fun. I also really like the variants that unfold from a "side" view and have gravity — the "Basketball" game may not really resemble actual basketball but it sure is fun!
It's always nice to (re)discover old games like this that really do hold up today. I've talked a bit before about "The Davison Cup" I liked to hold around my birthday (before the current nonsense happened), where I'd invite some friends over and we'd play a tournament of many and varied multiplayer games — including a bunch of Atari 2600 stuff. Next time we manage to do this — assuming that ever happens — these two are definitely going to be part of it.
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