Gamma-Attack

Gamma-Attack is a shooter game released for the Atari 2600 in 1983 only in the United States. It was developed by Gammation, an obscure video game company founded in Fairborn, Ohio in 1982 by a programmer named Bob Esken, whose company disbanded shortly after the release of their game, however returning in 2008 to make homebrew games for the Atari community.

It is the rarest video game of all time; initially, it was believed to have only shipped 20 units at release, and since 2008, only one copy is known to have survived to this day. However, there exists refurbished units of the game that were sold. While not the only game to only have one existing copy of itself, it is also the most expensive video game of all time, with a copy on sale on eBay for about $50,000 which ended up never selling since. The current owner of the only original copy of the game is known to be named Anthony DeNardo, who stumbled upon the game without even initially understanding the extremely rare nature of the game.

Description (on box)
You are the commander of the only Gamma ship in this stellar field. The Vegan war fleet has taken control of your Gamma outpost planet and is defending it with Vegan laser pulse tanks. This planet is the only inhabitable planet in this star system, and you must stay there and fight the Vegans as long as you can.

Move your ship across the surface of the planet and destroy Vegan tanks that you encounter. Destroying all tanks advances the player to the next level. Each laser pulse that your Gamma ship receives reduces your hovering altitude. When your ship crashes, the "Gammy" appears and your game is over.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Fancy graphics, with well-detailed rocks on the background and an accurately drawn ship and tanks. This is technically impressive for a platform that could only display weak sprites, while it's understandable for a console released in the 1970s.
 * 2) Being forced to shoot in diagonal is what makes the challenge in this game. The only direction in which not only the tanks, but also the ship shoot in is diagonal, which forces the player to adjust carefully the position of its ship to shoot and destroy the tanks, and otherwise, often fail the shoots.
 * 3) A fast-paced gameplay; as the game progresses, more tanks appear and they shoot faster projectiles that can eventually become extremely fast, making the player have very little reaction time to dodge them. In a similar manner to Space Invaders, this forms a strategy where the player has to engage before shooting the tanks which, at the same time, would also hit the player if it's reckless.
 * 4) The player only has one life in disposition with no continues and no way to get an extra life, but there is also a unique effect when the player gets hit by tank projectiles even for the 1980s, which reduces its ship's hovering altitude. When the ships receives enough damage, it crashes into the planet, ending the game immediately.
 * 5) Also, when the ship's hovering altitude decreases, it also makes the game harder, since the player would also want to also control the hovering altitude of its ship to target the tanks more easily, especially when its ship is close to crashing and the player cannot even hover its ship anymore. This is an early game where getting damaged makes the player weaker rather than getting no flaws or getting help.
 * 6) For some reason, when the tanks are destroyed, during their disappearance, they will continue to shoot. This makes the game even harder because if it happens, the player has to get away from the projectiles shot by tanks to destroy a group of tanks without getting its ship damaged. Also, the ship has infinite reload, but after destroying a tank, there is a reload time that prevents it from shooting for a brief moment, to do not make the game too easy.
 * 7) * Also, when a tank gets out of the screen, it will always appear on the other side of the screen.
 * 8) Decent sounds, especially those that play when a projectile is visible on the screen. However, there are some bugs with the sounds.

Videos
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