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What's your fav B/W game?


Keatah

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Yup, like the title says.. What's your favorite Black and White game?

The answers are likely to be early arcade games, or perhaps the home consoles.

 

Flipping the Color/B&W switch on the VCS does not count!

 

To kick it off, mine are Lunar Lander and Sprint 2.

 

Lunar Lander because I remember 1st playing it in a museum, and the deep rumbling bass was pretty atmospheric. Loved it. And it would become the "centerpiece" of many of my childhood flights of fancy. I liked the text versions, the programmable calculator versions, the Apple II versions.. Playing those in our blanket forts was loads fun! And naturally now, the arcade played through M.A.M.E. too.

 

Sprint 2 was interesting, it was likely (can't exactly remember) one of the first arcade games I played. I would go to Dispensa’s in California, and the druggies that hung out there would hoist me up so I could see what was going on. And occasionally I would swear and do stupid stuff to make them laugh. I thought of it as payment. Seemed to work.

 

In the “era” of Sprint 2, it was America’s bi-centennial year, and everything was festive and decorated in red, white, and blue. Seemed like there was no escape! But we weren’t complaining. The Dispensa’s toy store and arcade wasn’t that far from Magic Mountain. And of course riding the Revolution was a real treat for a kid. The way the coaster dove through the forest and skimmed the ground at top speed was a real rush. Then it’d climb out atop a hill and you could see the whole park and some sort of valley IIRC. The Antonov Schwarzkopf loop was pretty much designed to present you with a steady g-force throughout. I learned about gravity and all sorts of science by riding that coaster. Ahem.. getting back on track!

 

These games are rather simplistic. But they're what we had and full of memories and good times for those of us that played them back in the day.

 

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Edited by Keatah
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I agree, Pong remains the B&W champ after 45 (?) years. It is a game that despite its blockyness and simplistic controllers, people still like a challenge against someone else. It is also a game that simply adding colours to it really doesn't make much of a difference. Sprint really can use colours though.

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Some of the old 70s era b&w games held their own in the early 80s arcades but Pong wasn't one of them. Lunar Lander was an impressive machine with its control panel, so was the Night Driver cockpit machine. Space Invaders and Asteroids were great games but if I had someone to play with I'd go for Fire Truck or Biplanes.

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My favorite B&W game is an obscure early arcade game called Wheels by Midway.

 

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It's one of the first racing video games, debuting in 1975. Funspot used to have this one (and the two player Wheels II) and I would always play it every time I made a pilgrimage there. As a car guy, I really liked that the cabinet had a real, working Sun tachometer and a muscle car-style aluminum T-handle shifter. It's similar to games like Street Racer and Grand Prix in that you have to dodge as many oncoming cars as you can within a time limit. Having two gears plays into the strategy as well.

Edited by Silverfleet
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For me it's Super Breakout by a mile. Some time around the age of 6 or so, which would have been in 1991, I remember sitting on a barstool in a pool hall playing a Super Breakout arcade machine for the first time. At the time I didn't realize that it was a black and white game since the screen had an overlay that gave the illusion of color, but those one or two minutes of playing kicked off a life long love of brick breaking games for me. I've since made it a point to buy every Breakout style game available for every system I've ever owned, and I still love the classic Super Breakout arcade game just as much as I did when I was 6 years old. :)

Edited by Jin
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I would have to go with Asteroids, if only because I do not recall playing any of the other early, B&W games. I have never actually seen a Lunar Lander or Red Baron arcade machine.

 

Looking at the screenshot for Sprint 2, I seem to recall that my local arcade had one in about the early-1980s. As I do not much like racing games, I probably never played it.

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There are so many great ones. I love Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Night Driver. Avalanche and Space Invaders are both awesome, and underneath the overlays they're B&W. Canyon Bomber and Skydiver are a lot of fun. But you know what I play a lot of? Amazing Maze!

 

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Do you mean "B/W Era" games (essentially, from the 1970s) or just any game that happens to be B/W? In any case, here are a few of my silver-screen favorites:

 

Hockey, Tennis, Smash - Odyssey 100/200/400

Hockey, Tennis, Smash - Odyssey 300/2000, APF TV Fun, TV Scoreboard, etc.

Starship 1 - Arcade

Anti-Aircraft - Arcade

Tank - Arcade

Adventureland - TRS-80/Apple II/TRS-80 Model II

Pirate Adventure - TRS-80/Apple II/TRS-80 Model II

Strange Odyssey - TRS-80/Apple II/TRS-80 Model II

Voodoo Castle - TRS-80/Apple II/TRS-80 Model II

The Count - TRS-80/Apple II/TRS-80 Model II

Scramble - Vectrex

Minestorm - Vectrex

Berzerk - Vectrex

Armor Attack - Vectrex

Space Wars - Vectrex

Rockaroids - Vectrex

Asteroids - Arcade

Bowling - Studio II

Air Raid - TRS-80 (clone of "Target" for Sol-20; later adapted by Radio Shack as "Flying Saucers")

Paddle Pinball - TRS-80

Sea Dragon - TRS-80

Robot Attack - TRS-80

Galaxy Invasion - TRS-80

Sprint 2 - Arcade

280 Zzzap - Arcade (never played the arcade version of Night Driver)

Death Race - Arcade

Space Invaders - Arcade (B/W with color overlays)

Breakout - Arcade (ditto)

Video Pinball - Arcade (B/W against color foreground playfield)

Gunfight - Arcade

 

WOW, I did not know black and white games ever existed.

Seriously?

Edited by BassGuitari
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I agree, Pong remains the B&W champ after 45 (?) years. It is a game that despite its blockyness and simplistic controllers, people still like a challenge against someone else. It is also a game that simply adding colours to it really doesn't make much of a difference. Sprint really can use colours though.

 

Sprint 8 has minimal color.

 

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Do you mean "B/W Era" games (essentially, from the 1970s) or just any game that happens to be B/W? In any case, here are a few of my silver-screen favorites:

 

Mostly from the the 70's B/W era when "Color" was a new thing. Monochromatic TRS-80 & Vectrex games sort of count, they're later in time, but their hardware and software/programming was still B/W.

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Star Castle and Space Wars were great in the arcade. But the best memories come from the 2 player Atari football in the arcade with trackballs. It was just Xs and Os, but I would love to find one to play today (and find room for it in my house).

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The more I think about it, the more this thread brings me back!

 

A lot of the "Bronze Age" games that Atari/Kee Games and Midway released were a lot of fun. I don't know what it was, but I gravitated toward them when I was a kid even though they were way past their prime by then. I remember going to Six Flags over Georgia back in the late 90's when on a trip with the High School Band for a competition, and I stumbled upon an older arcade on the premises. IIRC, they had two arcades there: one with newer games (like Die Hard Arcade and Gauntlet Legends) and this older arcade with ancient relics. It was AWESOME. In there, they had games like Canyon Bomber, Sky Diver, Atari Football, Atari Basketball, Breakout, some of the Sprint games, and Fire Truck. It was like getting a history lesson. My friends were puzzled as to why I was so fascinated by these old games, but it was a very cool experience.

 

I really need to get back to Funspot soon. :D

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Flipping the Color/B&W switch on the VCS does not count!

 

My first thought was VCS PAC-MAN with the color turned off. It's way more playable that way. Asteroids is far and away my favorite early B&W game, sorry that's so obvious.

 

I had a Mac SE as my first real computer, and it had a little monochrome screen with decent resolution for the time. There was a wonderful port/re-imagining of Lunar Lander called Lunar Rescue that was a ton of fun. Also NetTrek, Continuum, Apache Strike, Dark Castle, Tetris, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Virtual Valerie, Welltris, Mission Thunderbolt, Dungeon of Doom, Crystal Quest, Sky Shadow, HyperCard World Builder, Shufflepuck Cafe, SimCity, Lode Runner ... and so many more.

 

Here's my pick for this thread, it should be familiar to most people, though maybe not in this form:

 

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