You're the sole space fighter pilot penetrating a heavily-armed, mobile alien fortress. If you can survive wave after wave of fighters and ground defenses, you'll have the opportunity to destroy the Zaxxon robot at the heart of the complex. (Coleco, 1982)

Just about the only thing this game has in common with its arcade progenitor is its name. Now, keeping in mind for the moment that Zaxxon was the most visually stunning arcade game of its day, it was quite a challenge for Coleco to grab the rights and translate the game for home console systems. Even the version of Zaxxon Coleco produced for its own platform, the ColecoVision, fell a little bit short of the mark. But the Atari 2600 edition of Zaxxon may serve as proof that Coleco should have stopped with the ColecoVision adaptation. With its embarassingly clunky graphics and game play, which bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the arcade game, the Atari 2600 Zaxxon was as much of an embarassment as Atari's own home version of Pac-Man was.

Rating:  Ten cents - approximately how much one of these cartridges is worth today.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster