the greatest slice of 4KB home entertainment ever

back in time, when i were lad in my best Yorkshire-Tees italics drawl, games and entertainment were limited by the format. the Atari cartridge system was, for a good few years, the be all and end all of home playing, there was simply no way that you could get any better than that. well, time has suggested that there in fact was something of a margin for better home entertainment systems, but how many have dominated like the Atari did?

of the games we had as kids, well, the favourites were Keystone Cops, River Raid, the ace Empire Strikes Back adaptation and of course good old Pac-Man, which Richard was the undisputed king of. oh, and Gillian quite liked Oink!.

nostalgia has once again got the better of me, and so i have been investigating the ways of the Atari across the interwebnet. it seems that the emulation software is easy enough to get your hands on, as well as all of the thousands of games made for it. yeah, thousands of them. not like the systems today, which get a couple of hundred made for them before they are obsolete.

obviously this means that i have discovered games i never knew existed for the Atari. one of them in particular caught my eye. i wish we had got this one when we were young, but even if they could have found it, you would have thought that our folks would not have invested in this gem for three children under 10 years old :





oh yes, that's right, me beauties! someone took the time, trouble and imagination to make a game based on the class film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!! nice one!

being 35, and "master of my domain" in the non-Seinfeld sense here, i happily downloaded it and had a play of it. as you will have gathered from the title of this post, it is with some ease one of the greatest things that i have ever played in the league of games which are 4KB or less in size.

what's it about? well, you are Leatherface, and you must take your trusted chainsaw to the people walking around the green, homely ranch of the Leatherface family. you have to be quick, for you need to take 5 out to gain more fuel for the saw. an odd, curious economies of scale structure for fuel i grant you, but an all together wise one.





erm, yes, well, the above screenshot may have some of you concerned about the aesthetics of it all. considering the space they had to make the game in, i think they did a pretty good job with it!

Michele is not too taken with it, i have to say. she's not happy with the content, sound, graphics or anything else you care to mention. understandably, i am not allowed to let James play or watch it either.





an Atari emulator (Stella) and this cartridge image will take you but a handful of seconds to find on google or something like that. i suggest you head off and do just that. ok, maybe get some of the other games mentioned too - River Raid in particular is a good fun blast!!

remember - Atari was good enough for Sigue Sigue Sputnik to sing songs of celebration about, which means it is good enough for you.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!