Rescue at Poseidon’s Gate doesn’t feature a story. The game has you playing as a diver with the goal of rescuing a sub that’s stuck and then rescue yourself or risk being stranded at the bottom of the ocean. The game is meant to be that of an arcade style game to a degree. So the lack of story in a game that’s made for the Atari 2600 is totally understandable.
The gameplay contains five phases to get through; with each one offering its own obstacles. Because of this, the game offers the full game experience, or the option to practice each individual phase. This is a good way to practice each section and then play the full game to get the highest score you can. The following is a breakdown of each phase in the game.
Phase one has you controlling your diver as he defends 100 meters down to the ocean floor. As you descend, you have to keep an eye on your air and fill it up with spaced out oxygen refill stations. In addition to managing your air, you also have to defend yourself against fish, crabs, eels, and jellyfish. Once you make it to the ocean floor, you get to start phase two.
Phase two has you traversing the sea floor and jumping to avoid incoming enemies or getting over the occasional rock formation. The jumping mechanic here is difficult to master and almost feels like you’re jumping on the moon (though I really have no idea what it actually feels like). Once you get to the wall entrance of Poseidon’s Gate, you will start phase three.
Phase three places you in the Shark Grotto that Poseidon’s Gate is protecting. Once you’re in the Shark Grotto, you must face a vast number of sharks. Once you defeat enough sharks, you free your mini-sub. Freeing your mini-sub will be the start of phase four.
The fourth phase is similar to that of phase two. This time, you’re navigating the sea floor in the opposite direction with the goal being to avoid the sea life and make it to the ship’s anchor and you then start phase five.The fifth phase is the final phase of the game. In this final section, you must traverse up the ships anchor. While you ascend the anchor chain, you must defend against the sea life trying to keep you from your goal, you must also stop and get oxygen to refill your air supply.
Graphically, Rescue at Poseidon’s Gate is rather impressive. The boat you’re on as you start your descent is large and pretty detailed. The diver character is also a nice and large size with quite a bit of detail to it. The game features a lot of sea life like fish, jelly fish, crabs, and eels that are all well animated and have fluid movement as they go about their pattern. The diver has a bubble trail above him that really gives the sense of being down in the depths of the water.
While one might think that this game looks rather dated, for the Atari 2600, the game looks really good. The game is well animated with some amazingly bright colors. This game is one of the most graphically impressive games I’ve played on the Atari 2600 in years. So it looks great, but how does it sound?
Rescue at Poseidon’s Gate has some awesome sound design. The music is good and the sound effects really help to make it feel like an arcade experience brought home to the Atari 2600. While it’s true that the graphics are more impressive than the sound effects, the game provides a good amount of sound design as a whole that compliments the game well.
Rescue at Poseidon’s Gate on the Atari 2600 is an impressive technical feat that successfully delivers a unique experience. The game does a great job at providing an arcade game at home on the Atari 2600 platform. It blends elements of modern gaming with the offering of a QR code to upload high scores to an online leaderboard and provide a game guide if you happen to get stuck. The game guide is dynamic so that depending on where you are in the game, the QR code provided will give you a guide for exactly where you are in the game.
Rescue at Poseidon’s Gate is the latest release from David Crane and the rest of the Audacity Games team. The game is a wonderful experience and a game that definitely deserves to be in every Atari 2600 library!
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.