Took a little over 8 hours to flip the score on Easy mode and get over 100k on Standard mode.
I've only played this on an actual arcade cabinet maybe once well over 35 years ago, and then on ports to PC about 20 years ago. Being for the Atari 2600, this is obviously a major downgrade from the arcade version. Yeah, the mushrooms are dashes (which is a shame, since they look like actual mushrooms on the title screen) and what you control is a rectangle, but it's still a solid game with about as good of gameplay as what I remember from the arcade and PC ports. The only bad thing I can say about it is that, when you are stationary, it takes about a half second from the time you push a direction to when the "magic wand" starts to move. This makes it rather annoying to move slightly in one direction, like if you want to take out a mushroom but you're just a touch to the left or right of it.
Since the score flipped at 100k on Easy mode, I was figuring it would also flip at 100k on Standard mode, so that's what my goal was. It turns out that the teddy bear head that indicates being on Easy mode uses up the space for the 100k digit, and without that, I'm guessing Standard mode flips at 1M points. On Easy mode, the only thing that can kill you is the centipede, so you don't have to worry about the spiders and fleas, other than for gaining points by killing them. Even without those threats, Easy mode is still a decent challenge for someone new to the game.
One thing to mention about the compilation that I played it on is that in addition to the game's manual (something that is sorely lacking in seemingly just about every other compilation and mini-console), the short comic book that came with the game is also included.
I'm not sure if a relatively recent Windows 10 update was the cause, but after having no issues for years with running the compilation, when I started it up, the compilation's intro screens went a reddish hue, and the sound while playing games wouldn't play. I tried reinstalling the compilation and it had the same sound issue (the compilation's sound would play, but not the games'). I had to bust out an old Windows XP PC to play it with sound.
