Laser Blast Review

Activision is probably the best-known third party on the Atari 2600. Indeed, some of the best games on the system, such as River Raid and Pitfall, came from Activision. Yet, in spite of the fact that many of the games Activision released never rose to the level of popularity achieved by those two, most of the games they released were at least reasonably high in quality. Is Laser Blast one of those games? Read on to find out.

Laser Blast is sort of like Missile Command in reverse. Instead of controlling a gun on the ground and shooting at things in the air, you control a ship in the air and fire at enemies on the ground. As you get farther into the game, the distance from the ground that you have to stay increases, which makes it easier for the enemies to hit you. To fire, you press the button, then you use the joystick to aim what direction you want the shot to go, then you let go of the button. But while you are aiming, you are a sitting duck to be hit by the enemies on the ground, so aiming fast is a must.

Graphically, most of the screen is a single color background, but what objects there are control well and are well animated. The sound effects in this game are not anything more than the average fare for the time either, but they are not bad by any means. Suffice it to say that the aesthetics do not add anything to this game, but they do not take anything away from it either.

Laser Blast is solely a one-player game. There is no two-player mode with switching when you get killed or anything like that. There are, however, four different game modes, each more difficult than the last, so the game does have the potential to last for a while even as your skill at it improves. It will not, however, last as long as some other games on the system have the potential to. Still, if you are a fan of the Atari 2600, you could do far worse than to get this game.