PrinceWatercress plays Enduro

In a first-time-ever for the channel, I play an Atari 2600 game.

If there's one Pole Position clone for the Atari 2600 that I would pick, it'd be Enduro hands down. There's a pedometer, a zillion cars in your path that you have to pass, and the sky that works its magic as a beautiful graphics breakthrough while it also acts as the only timer that you have.

As you progress through the game, your pedometer goes up much like one of the manual, turned-by-gears types of the cars of the day in real life. (This game was released in 1983, prior to the "crash," after all.)

To start the game, reset, then press the fire button.

You start the race in the daytime, before the sun sets. Hold the fire button to accelerate faster, hold left or right on the joystick to turn, and hold down on the joystick to slow down. It's bright and everything looks nice and clear, and for a first person driving game made for one of the consoles from the first half of the 1980s, everything looks good. Hold down the fire button, and move the joystick left and right to steer. Avoid all the cars, and race to beat the clock and pass the required amount of cars before sunset.

When the ground turns white, don't be alarmed. It's not snowing (even though I say it is; silly me). It just means that it's about to get dark. Once the ground turns a nice forest green, the sun sets rather beautifully in the background. This effect is easier to notice if you're not the one playing, and it's really nice. Just to put that last statement in perspective, I was born in 1986, my first system was the Super Nintendo (even though I played NES and barely remember playing Atari before this) and didn't play this game until I saw it at a friend's house in 2010. I actually played the game as my friend described how it looked as the sun set and night took its place, and just seeing this in action first-hand almost made me crap my pants, to say the least. For something that's from between the dawn and rebirth of video gaming in America, this is rather impressive.

If the screen is in black and white and the pedometer and Activision logo aren't, don't adjust your set. It's nearly dark out! The cars disappear and are replaced with the glow of their tail lights. Shortly afterward, it's pitch black, and your vision is limited. You'd better be careful here, as you can barely see half the road and the tail lights of other cars will pop up when you least expect them to. Speaking of which, if the tail lights are pink/purple, the cars are to the side; if they are red, the car is in the center.

When it's light again, you'll start the next stage if you've passed all the cars, and you'll have to pass even more cars than last time. (At least you'll be able to see the cars again.) If you didn't pass the total number of cars the game wants you to pass, it's game over. That quota is 200 cars on the first stage and 300 on every stage after that. If you make it to the fifth stage, the picture of the car next to how many cars you have yet to pass to complete the stage turns into a trophy, and if you can make it past that stage, you'll have beaten the Activision Enduro Patch challenge.

Hitting another car is disastrous. Besides bringing you to a complete stop for a few precious seconds, you get knocked back quite a bit. Every time that happens, it really sucks, as that's time and distance that's pretty hard to make up as you go along. That's especially more true in the later level, as the cars are spread out in more uneven patterns aren't all in a line like in the beginning of an Enduro session. Your best bet is to keep a high average speed and keep it as long as possible throughout the game to give yourself the best possible chance.

If you hit the guardrail at either side of the road, you'll slow down a bit, but at least it's not as bad as running into another car and it's easier to regain control. If you have a choice between hitting a car and the guardrail, hit the guardrail.

On turns, you'll move with the turns if you leave the joystick in neutral. When on turns, you want to be careful, as it is easier to run into cars. If you run into a car, as many as six cars you passed will move past you. If you haven't reached your quota yet, that's not a good thing.

Looking back at all this, it's pretty easy to understand why I like this game over other games of the genres for the 2600, like...say...Night Driver. The graphics aren't bad to the point that they're slightly confusing like in Night Driver, and unlike the much-revered Pole Position, where you have a few seconds before every race to make yourself feel "ready," this game is non-stop. You'd better be ready for a long, long drive once you become really, really good at this game.

Would I recommend this game? Hell yeah. And after playing it for the channel, I still stand by that opinion. It's probably one of the most underrated Atari 2600 games of all time for its ease of controls, comfortable learning curve, and the transition from sunrise to sunset to sunrise again which still looks great all those years later. If you see this game, pick it up, especially if you have a 2600 that still works. It's definitely worth it.