"A far cry from its arcade roots."

Many games made for the Atari 2600 were simply ports of popular arcade games, like this game, Venture. However, most arcade released games were just too powerful and advanced to fit on a puny rectangular cartridge that fits inside of your system. No game shows this better than Venture. While Venture is not a bad game, there were a lot of things different in this game than from the original arcade game that I felt weren't beneficial changes.

Venture's storyline and objective stayed virtually the same. You play as Winky, a smiling little round guy who ventures into halls and chambers searching for treasures that lay hidden in each dungeon. In each chamber lies a valuable prize protected by evil monsters. Winky has only a bow and arrow to defend his self. There is a main map, where Winky (represented by a single dot) must be maneuvered into all of the various chambers on the screen. He must gather the treasure in each chamber in order to move on to the next dungeon. Unfortunately, it is hard to tell whether or not you have already been in a chamber or not. Coleco made the mistake of not changing the color of the chamber on the main map once it has been searched like was done in the arcade. This isn't really a big problem, but I find myself getting annoyed by this every time it happens to me.

Unfortunately, there are only two level variations of this game. After you beat the second one, the third one is simply just a copy of the first level with a little added difficulty. This really doesn't help the game's replay value at all because the game gets very boring and repetitive this way. The controls also weren't very good in this game. Winky will only shoot in the direction he was last moving, and it is hard to change firing directions without moving a good amount. This really makes the game play more challenging that in the arcade, but in the end just makes the game more frustrating.

Graphically the game wasn't terrible though, the backgrounds and just the game in general wasn't very detailed and was very plain. For example, as I've said before, on the main map, Winky is represented by just a one pixel dot, as are his arrows. This just shows how low-tech this game is, even considering that it is on a four bit system. The sounds were probably the best part in this game. Though there wasn't any background music, which is always a plus in Atari games, the sound effects were pretty original and I can't recall hearing some of them, namely when and enemy dies, in any other games before.

Venture isn't a terrible game at all, but it is very disappointing compared to the game it was based on released in the arcade. This game is a prime example of how games were just being ported on to the Atari 2600 without much thought put into them. I would recommend buying this game, but don't expect the game play of this version to be nearly as satisfying as the arcade version.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/06