3-D Tic-Tac-Toe

Name:	3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Company:	Atari
Model #:	CX-2618
Programmer:	Carol Shaw
Year:	1980
Released?	Yes
Notes:	Carol Shaw's first 2600 game.  She later went on to program the 2600 mega hit River Raid.

Remember that really cool 3-D Chess game people would play on Star Trek?  If you were thinking this game would be anything like that you're in for a big disappointment.  What you get is plain old Tic-Tac-Toe played over four different levels (wouldn't three make more sense?).  While the premise may sound interesting, the result is less than stellar.

The biggest problem with 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe is the perspective.  Everything is displayed at an angle in an attempt to simulate 3-D.  No only does this make it very difficult to line up your pieces, the effect doesn't work very well on the 2600.  Also, notice you can see a large "comb" on the left side of the screen.  This is caused by the CPU writing each line of sprite data out to a set of hardware registers in close synchronization with the video display's horizontal retrace timing.  Many early 2600 games had this problem, but for some reason it's really noticeable here.  Why not simply make the background black?

Taking a dull game like Tic-Tac-Toe and making it 3-D doesn't help hide the fact that it's still just Tic-Tac-Toe!  The almost total lack of sound and visuals really hinders an already mind-numbing game.  One gets the impression that this game was simply made as "filler" for the Atari's 2600 library.  

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