I was having a nice recollection about the days just before the C64 made it's appearance when all of the computer magazines were filled with info on the 400/800's, Apple II's, PETs and VIC-20.
It was during those days that the 800 would occasionally "inherit" a game that seemed to be developed on and marketed to the Apple II first and then later translated to the 800. The point being, these games had a very "Apple-like" feeling to them. Some of the characteristics of these games were often:
1) Scratchy sound effects and/or music
2) Hi-res (GR.
modes with artifacting to create color
3) Little or no use of Atari-specific features such as P/M graphics or wide color pallets
Some examples of what I mean might be:
Lode Runner (Broderbund, the original artifacted color one).
Chop Lifter (also Broderbund)
Snake Byte (Sirius) in which ALL of the game sound came out of the 800's built in speaker -- just like an Apple II
The Ultima Series
To me, these games were great fun and it was fun to see games that looked and felt like our Apple brethren playing on the A800. It was even interesting to see the same "limitations" in terms of sound effects or video slowdowns with lots of non-PM moving objects on screen.
In an odd way, the A800 and the A2 never seemed to have same type of vicious competitive vibe that the A800 and C64 seemed to get into. A2 owners were sort of a slightly different breed, whereas the C64 owners that followed were nothing like them. After the C64, these types of software ports seemed to lessen. Perhaps because fewer games were developed on the A2 first and were now on the C64 first?
At any rate, feel free to comment if you remember this the way I do.
And can you think of other games that follow my examples?