Retro Game of the Day! Barnstorming

Retro Game of the Day! Barnstorming

Barnstorming by Steve Cartwright, released in 1982 by Activision for the Atari 2600.

This is probably one of the earliest "time-attack" games I can think of, in that it's not a car racing game yet still judges the player by how quickly they can "lap." In the case of Barnstorming, you simply fly a biplane straight over a field, dodging obstacles and passing through barns (did people actually try to do this in real life?)

For its time, Barnstorming was a smooth-playing and good-looking 2600 game. The sunset was sharp and attractive with a nice parallax effect, and the little details (spinning windmills, billowing scarf) were nice touches. The game followed a preset obstacle pattern for most of the modes, so adept players could eventually conquer the game in pretty short order (fortunately, a random mode was also present).

Another sign of the times, for several of their early games Activision encouraged people to work hard to score high; if a player did so and sent in a Polaroid, they could get a special Barnstorming patch in the mail.

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