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Crack'ed
When Atari started to develop new software for the 7800, it was only natural that they would try to port some of them to the 2600. Not only did this help revitalize the 2600 with hot new games, but Atari got two titles out of one idea! Most of the games that were developed concurrently on the 2600 and 7800 got released but Crack'ed was one of the few that for whatever reason got scrapped. While it may have been a average title for advanced systems like ST and 7800, Crack'ed actually made for a really nice 2600 game.  You are a professional Ornithologist (that's a scientist who studies birds for non-scientific types), and your thrilled to find that a family of rare South American Hornbills has nested in the "Ye Old Yolk Tree" (don't ask). Your excitement is short lived however as you soon discover that the eggs are under attack from snakes, rats, owls, birds, and other things attempting to steal the eggs for their own evil purposes (insert evil laugh here). Grabbing your slingshot (how about a nice shotgun instead?), you must attempt to defend the eggs until the timer runs out. If the enemy manages to get to a nest all is not lost, you still have time to shoot them and rescue the egg (look for the flashing enemy). But while you're out trying to rescue a rogue egg, you risk leaving your other nests defenseless. You also have to expertly drop the egg back into a nest (any nest will do) which can be difficult as well. Remember each nest can only hold three eggs. Apparently Hornbills like to nest in subways as well as in old trees. In the subway (which looks more like a sewer) you must fight off snakes, rats, and little creepy subway guys (oddly referred to as gorillas in the game code). If you succeed in defending your eggs in the subway you will go back to the Old Yoke Tree, On this second loop if you can beat the Subway Mania level you move onto the Rooster Ranch bonus round. In the bonus round the controls are a little different, as you must shoot roosters popping out of windows by moving the two aiming wedges on the edges of the screen. Moving the joystick left and right controls the horizontal wedge (X-axis), and up and down controls the vertical wedge (Y-Axis). It takes a little bit to get used to, but you'll soon find yourself blowing away really creepy looking roosters in no time. While the 7800 version boasts six different levels, the 2600 version has been stripped down three. But considering what they managed to cram into those three levels, adding anymore would have been difficult. It's amazing to see how many moving sprites the programmers got moving at once with little or no flicker, showing that people had finally learned how to master the 2600. The controls are a little tougher in the 2600 version, but they would have been polished up a bit in the final version.
Although Crack'ed is fairly complete and
playable, there are still a number of bugs that needed to be
ironed out before it could be released. There are
graphical glitches, unstable scanline issues where the screen
bounces up and down occasionally (the first level suffers from
this the most), a missing two player mode, and numerous bugs
including a fatal one on the Rooster Ranch screen if you push
the targeting sights too far into the corners.
Interestingly earlier versions of the game had a debug mode of
sorts in them where you could press the reset button to
instantly complete a level, however this disables normal
resetting and once the game is over it must be turned off and on
again to start a new game. Another debug tool that was
that the Select button will freeze the game as long as it is
held down. Both of these were removed from the latest
known version however. 
It's hard to figure out why Atari never released this little gem for the 2600. Not only does it look almost as good as the 7800 version, but the 2600 could have used more first person shooting games. It was thought that the game taking too long to come together (it was started in mid 87 and still not complete by late 88) and the 2600 market was drying up, but this is just a guess. Whatever the reason, it's a shame because Crack'ed is actually a pretty fun 2600 game that should be played by everyone at least once.
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