![\"\"](\"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Thoreau-Camp-Out-300x158.jpg\")
Thoreau\u2019s Camp Out! <\/strong>\nYou get to be Henry David Thoreau, writing his classic Walden Pond! The challenge is to get your thoughts down on paper before the nearby train comes through and ruins your concentration. At the end of each level, you face off against Don Henly, who bounces into your shack singing \u201cNew Kid In Town\u201d demanding you sign legal papers. It\u2019s the beauty of nature as you\u2019ve never seen it before! <\/p>\n
Ishtar: The Game<\/strong> Clown Car<\/strong> Sartre\u2019s No Exit<\/strong> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It may be tough for the kids to believe it today, but the Atari 2600 unit was the Netflix of its day. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1746,1747,1751,1748,1749,1750],"class_list":["post-2724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedy","tag-atari","tag-henry-david-thoreau","tag-humor","tag-jean-paul-sartre","tag-no-exit","tag-walden-pond"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ishtar.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7lGwW-HW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2724"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2730,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions\/2730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLook, everyone thought this was going to be a hit. Atari had released its Atari 7800 console the year before, and it seemed like the perfect entertainment industry synergy. Hoffman and Beatty had never been more lifelike. Show tunes were optioned, rendered lovingly in dulcet 8-bit tones. Players get to pick which star they want to be, and then ramble through the desert in a scrolling adventure similar to Pitfall but without the challenges. If you \u201cplay\u201d long enough, you eventually reach Babylon and are allowed to sit down. A real collector\u2019s item. Because no one else wants it. <\/p>\n
\nThe title says it all. You are in charge of getting clowns out of a car. As many as you can in three minutes. They get out of the car and run off screen. There\u2019s one! Now you\u2019re another clown. Run! There\u2019s two. What, another clown? Three! And so on. This one is also known as \u201cPizzahead\u201d amongst its cult following on Reddit, because it was impossible to design anything that looked like an actual clown on the Atari 2600. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/fart-copy-300x197.jpg\")
Fart!<\/strong>
\nNothing quite makes a teenage boy giggle with delight than run up to a friend and farting at them. Each player has a stack of party pizzas, and they eat until they \u201clevel up\u201d enough gas to go on the attack. The gameplay was actually quite intricate, as you had to run up to your friends and then turn around before letting loose. The timing was difficult, and the character didn\u2019t look any different facing forward or backwards. First player to fifteen completed \u201cblasts\u201d wins and then the level changes, from basement rumpus room to casual restaurant all the way up to the deck of a space station. Initially dismissed as an Outlaw rehash. <\/p>\n
\nThe last game ever designed for an Atari console, intended for the Atari Jaguar in 1992. This was supposed to make Atari a viable company again, competing with the flashy new products from Sega and Nintendo, but you can tell from the gameplay they knew the end was near. Three player sit in a room and debate their existence by manipulating the new abundance of face buttons on the controller to pick a series of scrolls, each containing different philosophical propositions. Theoretically, choosing the right path would allow you to prove your individual worth to the other players and thus escape the room. In reality, a bug in the Jaguar\u2019s chipset made it impossible to win the game. The companion line of trading cards was scrapped when the game tanked, leading Atari to decades of hibernation before nostalgia and Hasbro would finally rescue the brand and market it to stoned college kids. <\/p>\n