...and now, to play all the one-player variations, minus commentary. Enjoy!
Long before they were called "Snake games," you had a ton of games backed on Blockade by Gremlin Industries. Not surprisingly, this Atari 2600 launch title was one of them. And back then, instead of running around running into a lone dot without hitting yourself or the wall, you played against another player in an attempt to trap each other, with the first person to run into a wall or part of their or the other player's being the loser. And it was fun. And we liked it.
Game Mode 1 is the standard two-player mode, while Game Mode 2 is one player against the computer, with the human player controlled with a joystick in Controller Port 2. The joystick moves your square around, with different colors used to tell the two players apart. Player 1's score and color is at the top left, and Player 2's score and color is at the top right.
As you move, you'll leave a trail that stays on the playfield for the duration of the round. The aim of the game is to get the other player to run into the wall, their own trail or your trail without doing the same to yourself.
The controls are simple. You don't use the fire button for anything in Game Modes 1 and 2; instead, you just move your square around and leave a trail with the joystick. That's it.
Both players need to strategically move around in order to trap the other player without accidentally trapping themselves. Whenever someone runs into a wall or a trail, the other person scores a point. The first to ten points wins.
The left difficulty switch controls the difficulty of the computer controlled opponent, with B/Novice giving you the easier difficulty and A/Expert giving you the harder difficulty. The right difficulty switch acts as a failsafe that keeps both players from accidentally backing into themselves. B/Novice keeps players from accidentally moving opposite their current direction and backing into their own trail, while A/Expert allows for it.
Game Modes 3 and 4 introduce Speed Up. Speed Up makes the game gradually go faster the longer it goes, with the pitch of the background noise getting higher as the game gets faster. The game will speed up up to five times before maintaining that speed, and whenever either player scores a point, the game goes back to normal speed, then gradually speeds up again. Speed Up Game Mode 3 is two-player mode with Speed Up, and Game Mode 4 is one-player mode with Speed Up.
Game Modes 2 and 4 are the only game modes out of the first 12 that are one-player variations; the rest are strictly two-player. That's a shame, because the rest of the game variations have other things going on.
Game Mode 5 introduces Diagonal Movement. This allows you to move diagonally with diagonal directions on the joystick, and can make for some interesting situations. If you know what you're doing and where you're going, you can move diagonally in such a way that you can move through the other player's diagonal paths.
Game Mode 6 combines Speed Up and Diagonal Movement. Game Mode 7 is the same as Game Mode 6, but it also introduces Erase. Erase makes it so that when you hold the fire button while moving, you won't leave a trail; instead, you'll just leave empty space behind you. If you know what you're doing, you can mess with the other player.
Game Mode 8 simply has Wraparound. Wraparound allows you to move past one side of the screen and instantly re-appear on the other. You can move past the left side and end up on the right, and you can move past the right side and end up on the left.
Game Mode 9 combines Speed Up and Wraparound. Game Mode 10 combines Speed Up, Diagonal Movement and Wraparound, as does Game Mode 11. Game Mode 12 combines Speed Up, Diagonal Movement, Erase and Wraparound all in one game.
Game Modes 13 and 14 are their own game: Video Graffiti. It's a game within the game that allows you to draw on the screen, and it's actually pretty nice. Both modes can be played with one or two players, and while Game Mode 13 does not allow for diagonal movement, Game Mode 14 does, so I stick to Game Mode 14.
Drawing is easy. Just hold down the fire button and move around with the joystick to draw. You can draw smiley faces, make letters and numbers, or whatever the blocks allow you to do. It's super simple and there's not much depth to it, but it is a nice little set of game modes.
If you make a mistake while drawing, you can just draw over the mistake to erase it. Thankfully, both game modes for Video Graffiti allow for erasing. You can also wrap around the screen and quickly move your cursor from one side of the screen to the other.
That's it for Surround. All in all, it's a nice launch game, but I wish there were more one-player game variations. It's a little easier to enjoy if you have friends to play it with. At least Video Graffiti is fun, albeit super simple, and it allows you to draw on the screen. You probably won't play this game for very long, but it is far from a horrible game and is worth picking up and playing for a least a few minutes.
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