Solar Fox for the Atari 2600 was a tough call for the inclusion in this book.  I love the game and still play it, but it has some of the most simplistic graphics of any cartridge produced in 1983 – a grid of squares, some enemy projectiles, and a trio of ordinary looking ships – and, more importantly, the play action lacks a key component found in Bally/Midway’s largely ignored coin-op game from 1981: shooting.

That’s right, an obscure maze shooter has been stripped of its firepower and still ranks as on of the greatest 100 console games of the era.  The reason lies in a simple, but all-important three-letter word: F-U-N.

Even though you can’t blast the enemies, Solar Fox for the 2600 remains a blast to play.  As the Video Game Critic (videogamecritic.com) said in his reviews, it’s an “interesting space game [that} combines elements of Pac-Man, Q*Bert, and Galaga.”

Check out more of the rich history of the industry in Brett Weiss’s books The 100 Greatest Console Video Games 1977-1987 and other great books available at his web site www.brettweisswords.com and make sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here!

Brett Weiss Brett Weiss (43 Posts)

A full-time freelance writer, Brett Weiss is the author of the Classic Home Video Games series, The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987, Encyclopedia of KISS, and various other books, including the forthcoming The SNES Omnibus: The Super Nintendo and Its Games, Vol. 1 (A–M). He’s had articles published in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Game Informer, Classic Gamer Magazine, Video Game Trader, Video Game Collector, Filmfax, Fangoria, and AntiqueWeek, among others.  Check him out at www.brettweisswords.com